People soliciting for donations knocked on his door all the time. Pairs of children, slippery professionals, innocent young women like Anat. They were all treated alike. When knuckles rapped on the door, it was not enough for him to wait in tense silence for the nuisance to go away. Nor did he use any of the wonderfully odd phrases that thrive in the world of supplicants and their resisters: “No one’s home,” “We gave yesterday,” “Mom’s sleeping” (in a masculine, childish low voice). Grandpa Lolek’s door was open to all — he was an equal-opportunity resister. Usually the supplicant would leave and turn to nearby doors, waiting for some reason for the resister’s door to close. Sometimes things developed into a casual conversation or a lively debate. Bitterness fueled by tired feet often inflamed hostility and led to implied ill-wishes. Grandpa Lolek enjoyed the conversations. “Is important to stay in touch with young generation,” he said.
When I met Anat, they were already in the depths of an argument. Anat, justice at her feet as always, like a faithful puppy, was pleading with Grandpa Lolek. She wanted to show him diagrams and reports. Perhaps he would like to visit their headquarters one day? A lovely, red-faced Andromeda, with no way out. Grandpa Lolek was unperturbed. When he saw me coming, he asked if I had had any luck with the blender.
Anat turned to me. She, a righteous soul, and me with the blender.
“Your grandfather is against donations on principle!” She exposed Grandpa Lolek’s terrible secret.
“My grandfather is against lots of things,” I said, slightly taken aback. Why had she assumed we were grandfather and grandson? I could have been a technician. We could have been, as indeed we were, extremely distant relatives, were it not for the Law of Compression.
“Are you in favor of donations?”
We looked at each other. Anat was the first to recover.
“You can donate five, ten or twenty shekels,” she said.
I bought two vouchers for ten and one for twenty. Grandpa Lolek grunted contemptuously. “How’s the blender?” he asked.
Electrical appliances went to die in his home. Pushing a button was, for him, only one of a dozen options, an unimaginative way to give life to an appliance. Knocking, shaking, rattling and all their various permutations were more correct methods, expressive of the relationship between man and his property. And when an appliance broke, he would find an opportunity to give it to me so I could get it fixed for cheap by my friend. There was no friend — just a repairman. Nor was he cheap, his prices were the same as everyone else’s. But Grandpa Lolek insisted that I had a friend who fixed things practically for free. So he allowed himself to saddle me with the bills.
Long afterwards, Grandpa Lolek reconstructs the course of that fateful day. “For you, I did it all. To keep Anati at mine house. I knew you were to be coming, and she, what sweetheart.” Happily hugging Yariv, he perceives his own role in my son’s existence. He worries a little — Yariv is five now, already going to kindergarten, where they teach him all sorts of nonsense about Chanukah gelt and such.
Yariv is also worried. Grandpa Lolek has started teaching him to clean out the ashtrays in the Vauxhall, buy cigarettes, polish shoes. Grandpa Yosef is easier for Yariv to handle. Theirs is a boundless love. Grandpa Yosef was Yariv’s godfather at his briss, where the flames of his pride threatened to burn down the hall. Every encounter between them involves trade in chewing gum and kisses. Grandpa Yosef rocks Yariv on his slightly rheumatic knee, switches him to his arthritic knee, and back again. “Grandpa, horsey!” Yariv commands. And to hear the word “Grandpa,” Grandpa Yosef is willing to work hard.
Effi looks at righteous Grandpa Yosef playing with Yariv and says, “God aims and misses…” And our thoughts go to Moshe.
We wanted Grandpa Yosef to have a consolation son, something to give meaning to his difficult life. We wanted Moshe to get up one day, take the mask off his face, and explain that the whole thing had been a test — some sort of Jobian trial. We looked at Moshe, wondering if the moment was approaching. We glanced at Grandpa Yosef looking at his son. But we never saw complaint in his eyes. Only once in a while, it seemed, there was a glimpse. A thought exposed: “It’s because of our seed, we who came from there.” But the words never left his lips.
Moshe lived most of his life sitting on the low fence across from the apartment building. That was where a long life spent in institutions in which he did not fit and in futile attempts to improve his condition culminated. In his thirtieth year, he sat down on the fence and got on with his life. Year after year after year. Morning to evening, the hours anchored Moshe’s life. Like moored ferries, swaying slightly, they lapped at each other with a gentle sound. A ritual strand of saliva hung from his lips. Expressions appeared on his face and dropped away, not belonging to him, just passing as if he were a bustling train station. His limbs lacked coordination. Enormous, doleful powers stood him tensely in one spot, his back and hands seeking respite but not finding it, just freezing for a few moments in a rigid position like a Shakespearean actor before a monologue.
In the morning, on his way back from synagogue, Grandpa Yosef would pick up a roll. He would sit Moshe on the low fence next to the red mailbox and put the roll in his hand. He would wrap Moshe’s fingers around it and squeeze lightly until Moshe’s hand stirred. Then he would put down a plastic water canteen and a little hat with a picture of an anchor. When everything was ready, Brandy would take up her position and the shift would begin. Moshe, from early morning until sundown, alone on the fence. The birds, the lawns, the paved path, the old almond tree — their groans, their rustles, their bows. Moshe was at one with them.
As the long days sailed across his face, Moshe did not withdraw in the face of crises, fearless of danger. Around him, in the neighborhood, nature took its toll, disasters befell the shores of the gardens and the palely whitewashed houses. But Captain Moshe remained silent and erect, his face watchful. He stood on deck when life beat down Regina from the second floor and Adella Greuner from next-door. By all appearances, he concerned himself only with his bread roll. Took bites out of it, chewed, massaged its body with rhythmic, sleepy prods. Only the sun frightened him, and he moved his cap and tilted it according to some internal mechanism, defensive and respectful of the one who was always above. And sometimes, making a Captain’s decision, Moshe would get up and set off on a voyage. He was blessed with two strong and sturdy legs, which he exploited for long journeys. From his still position on the low fence he would suddenly erupt into purposeful walking, as if called to duty. But the journeys’ endings — at a garage in the industrial zone, a butcher in the next Kirya, in the middle of an intersection — put to question the existence of any organized plan. Before Brandy came along, Grandpa Yosef was the one who took him back to the fence, where he rubbed his feet and back. Once Brandy entered Moshe’s life, she handled everything.
But Moshe’s outward journeys were rare. He usually remained on the fence, internally a Marco Polo. In wonderful China he discovered silk, drooling a thread of saliva for us, hinting, hinting as hard as he could, if only we could concentrate and understand. He discovered gunpowder. His eyes black, pain traveling from his extremities to every part of his body. Rapid, bustling commerce across all borders, over all waterways and land. Undeterred by the Mongolian wilderness, the Yellow Sea of China, or the overflowing Yang-Tse River, Moshe closed his eyes for a moment while blocks of pain changed hands. Goods in return for goods. A bustling city, and Marco Polo stares inside, wide-eyed.