The longer you look at one object, wrote Flannery O’Connor, the more of the world you see in it. And so I keep looking at the submarine base outside my window. I can’t help it. Or I don’t want to help it. I know there’s something important in that old submarine base, something symbolic or perhaps poetic, something at once ephemeral and indestructible. Like in a story. Like in a good story. I see there’s nobody there anymore, no children playing on the roof, no children anywhere, no longer any life.
Monastery
The clunky brown Citroën was parked in front of Hotel Kadima.
I opened the door and had to move a small suitcase from the passenger seat before I could get in. I asked Tamara what the suitcase was for. A surprise, she said, tossing it into the back. So, where are you taking me? I asked, but Tamara just started the engine and smiled again and asked about my brother. So that was your brother with you at the airport? I said that it was, that it was my younger brother, that I was fourteen months older. You look exactly alike, she exclaimed. Yes, I said, at first glance, though we’re actually very different. Different how? she asked, jamming on the brakes. My brother’s taller, I said. Darker. Sweeter. Freer. And he’s got the hands of a god. Tamara gave a quick laugh. What about your sister? Oh, my sister, I started to say, and then stopped, thinking or maybe feeling for the perfect word. My sister is the most intrepid, I could have said. My sister is the most ethereal, I could have said, but ethereal as in mercury, as in a dry leaf in the breeze, as in those little habits like cracking your knuckles or running your tongue across your upper lip, habits that don’t mean anything and at the same time mean everything. When’s the wedding? Tamara asked. Tomorrow afternoon, I said, but I’m not going. She turned to me, confused. What are you saying? She was driving atrociously, erratically, speeding up and then braking violently at the last minute, jerking the gear-shift back and forth as though in a rage. I thought I might get queasy. I decided not to go to the wedding, I said, gripping the door handle tightly and overstating my resolve. I can’t go, or I don’t want to go, I said, I’m not sure which. She mumbled something. Maybe a reproach. Maybe just a groan. Maybe she didn’t believe me. After a pause, I asked her about her friend Yael. What friend Yael? Your friend, I said, Yael, the one who was traveling with you when we first met. I don’t know who you’re talking about, Eduardo. When I met you, I had just finished my military service and I was traveling through Central America. Alone.
I didn’t understand. I thought she was kidding. I thought about saying Yael, that girl who worked in the Scottish bar in Antigua, with my same last name, with the beautiful shoulders and the silver belly-button ring.
Tamara leaned over to the glove compartment and took out a small green box. She had no idea she’d just run a stop sign. She pulled halfway over to the curb and parked appallingly. She leaned over to the glove compartment again and took out a stack of papers or maybe postcards. Look at this. And she turned on the hazard lights.
THEY WERE BLACK-AND-WHITE photos printed on cardboard. They still had a chemical smell. They were all out of focus, out of frame. In one I could make out the profile of a nose; in another, a half smile; in another, part of a neck; in another, one thick dark eyebrow. I didn’t understand. What is this? I asked. A friend of my father took them, Tamara said. An old Jew, she said, and then, like a quick jab, she added: A blind man. She wasn’t smiling. Her hands were playing with the small green box. A blind photographer? I asked. Can there even be blind photographers? A car behind us honked, perhaps insulting us for her terrible parking. His pictures are all of Palestinian children, Tamara said. He travels to Palestinian cities and towns and takes pictures of Palestinian children. Once, I went with him and my father to Ramallah. He would sit on a bench or sometimes he’d sit on the ground and wait for a boy or girl to come up to him, and then suddenly he’d hand them his camera, an old Leica. The children were as fascinated by his camera as they were by his trust and by his blindness. And while they were touching the camera, he would reach out a hand and start touching them. Their hair, their arms, their shoulders, especially their faces. Slowly. Gently. With something akin to affection. He was getting to know them with his hands, I suppose, with his touch. The children hardly noticed, or just giggled. Then they’d give him back the camera and he’d take a single photo of each child. Or I guess of a single feature of each child. Very quickly. Almost without their realizing it. Later, on our way back home, I asked him how he decided which feature to photograph. Tamara paused, waiting for a noisy truck to pass. First he told me he didn’t know. Then, after considering it for a little while, he said that it was always the most beautiful feature, of course. Then, after another little while, smiling, he said one’s eyes could always find the most beautiful feature. Tamara opened her door. Those are copies of the pictures we took that day in Ramallah, she said. Do you like them? I was going to say yes and no. I was going to say that Paul Wittgenstein, after losing his right arm in World War I (What kind of philosophy must it take to overcome that? his brother Ludwig wrote), not only learned to play the piano with one hand but commissioned great composers — like Prokofiev, Strauss, Ravel — to write him oeuvres and concertos for the left hand. I was going to say that, according to the notebooks of Thelonius Monk (or Melodius Thunk, as his wife used to call him), a genius is the one most like himself. But I just stuck the pictures back into the glove compartment with the slew of maps and papers and candy wrappers and chocolate wrappers and something that looked like two condoms, still sealed in plastic.
Here, she said handing me the small green box. I’ll be right back.
Noblesse, in white letters. Virginia Blend, in black letters.
I LIT A CIGARETTE. It was hot inside the Citroën. Perhaps because the images of those children were still in my head, I noticed two girls on the other side of the street, playing among the pedestrians. They must have been ten or twelve. Sisters, maybe, or best friends. Suddenly, one of them flung herself to the ground, head-first, and did a handstand. And just like that, straight up on her hands, nimble, she began to walk among the pedestrians. Like it was nothing. An upside-down pedestrian. A feet-up pedestrian. An inverted pedestrian. Then, still on her hands, she turned and walked back to where the other girl was. Now it was the other girl’s turn. She didn’t have the nerve. Her friend or sister seemed to be encouraging her, explaining to her how to do it. To no avail. The first girl stretched tall once more, raised her slender arms up into the air, and again hurled herself down, again walked feet-up among the pedestrians. Perfect. Elegant. With the precise and studied grace of a gymnast. Her legs straight. Her feet pointed way up in the air, amid all the pedestrians’ heads. When she finished, the other girl clapped. They both clapped. I rolled down the Citroën’s window, and as I tossed my cigarette out, it occurred to me that pirouettes are always incomprehensible. Then something strange occurred to me: that I must not forget that scene; that I must make an effort to recall the scene of the girl walking upside down on a sidewalk in Jerusalem, feet-up in Jerusalem, feet-up among the Israelis; that I must find the most beautiful feature and take a mental photograph, a blind man’s photograph; that some day I’d understand why. I closed my eyes as though imitating the old photographer, as though that were enough, as though my eyelids were the shutter and just by closing them the image would be fixed. When I opened them, the two girls were racing off, zigzagging, almost leaping through the crowd, holding hands.