Grandpa Yosef was impassioned about this idea. Even though you had to take two buses to get from the Haifa train station to his house — a journey that twice defeated you — and even though he insisted on taking the train to Tel Aviv, he obstinately claimed that in our country we should have done away with trains. Trains could be used to transport anything you wanted, far away from people. Things should not be allowed to be transported far away from people. Everything should be on the main routes, on the roads, among cars, so that everyone knows what’s going on. Year after year, Grandpa Yosef’s explanation glimmered in the kaleidoscope of memories, recording itself as something-we-must-remember. Year after year, with slight variations, it asserted itself at the schedule board or on the way out as we passed by the kiosk without buying anything. Once Effi lost a ball while we were still on the train — we were the last ones in the car, hoping to find the ball before the train set off for Kiryat Haim. Even when we stood in crowded buses, dripping with uncomfortable sweat and holding too many packages and gooey boxes of bonbons, Grandpa Yosef insisted.
We would barely listen to him, still breathless from our Tel Aviv adventure at the amusement park and from the gushing well of Grandpa Yosef now sealed off, now regretting his words. But it was too late, the stories were already inside us, being marched down the road like hostages to a large camp, and new hostages were added every year. There was no choice, this was the only way to gather information. But the hoarded material still did not form a clear picture. The events, the people, the acts, were all fragments and crumbs, meaningless on their own, but an abstract picture emerged from their collective. Not a picture we could explain or describe, but a rich image whose details had no significance. Everything we learned, each additional story, formed a new sliver for the kaleidoscope, where the pictures spun around, erased themselves, and a new model was created.
We spent the nights after the trips to Tel Aviv at Grandpa Yosef’s, lying wide-eyed in the dark, listening. Every so often we heard trains faraway. And in later years, when I was a soldier taking ordinary train rides, catching a nap on the way, suddenly there would be a click and the trains would change with the light whisper of a well-oiled machine. Something full of innocent passengers was taken away, lunch-boxes-scattered-newspapers-do-you-have-the-sportspage-and-children-running-around-yelling-and-even-an-impudent-spit-ball-flying-out-the-window-hitting-a-stunned-face. All this was replaced with narrow-high-windows-no-air-down-there-bodies-squirming-devilish-siren-who-knows-what-village-passing-by-long-stops-hours-and-days-without-moving-tiny-sobbing-stops.
Our trains would travel beyond the woods. We let them run over the tracks near our sleep, their chilling sounds setting music to our dreams. In our sleep we listened to the footsteps on the paths (someone walking), to the wanderers wandering (someone unable to find peace), to the quiet conversations, the calls into rooms, “Everything all right?” (someone worried about someone).
One person we could ask, even though he was officially insane, was Gershon Klima, his own brother. Three generations of psychiatrists had confirmed his madness and if anyone questioned him, Gershon Klima had the documents to prove it. He was one of the younger people in the neighborhood, born in fact in 1939, the year of the Big Bang. He came to Israel after the war with an older uncle and aunt and strayed through many places, living a virtually normal life, until he found the neighborhood. Gershon Klima was an expert plumber who worked for Kiryat Haim’s department of sewage. He spoke Hebrew like ours and worked for a living. He gave out toffee candies, and there was always the hope that he would take us on a trip through the sewage system. We worshipped Gershon Klima. His privilege of going down into the sewer, trivial as it may have seemed to other people, was inestimable in our world, in which every dark opening was a gateway to our hearts. We were drawn to the secrecy inherent in hollow spaces. We liked caves, burrows, tunnels and hovels. Nor were we indifferent to always-closed-doors, basements or attics. But in our heaven, had we been asked to come up with one, we would have given first priority to the sewer.
We went to see Gershon Klima often. Not in his house — no one went there. But to the open manhole that marked his whereabouts. We would sit with our legs dangling into the hole — a test of courage — and direct our questions downwards.
“Gershon, can we come down?”
“Why not?”
“Gershon, when will you take us on a tour of the tunnels?”
Gershon Klima did not answer. Busy. He poked his head out only when he felt comfortable, like a turtle whose shell is all the sidewalks and yards and gardens around the manhole. He smiled at us. Asked how we were. Asked us to move a little so he could climb out, and told us what kind of problem he was fixing down there and why he was officially barred from letting anyone in. It later turned out that, officially, Gershon Klima himself was barred from going in because the neighborhood wasn’t even his work area. But the Kiryat Haim sewage authorities turned a blind eye: Gershon Klima solved all their problems, and besides — you didn’t mess with Gershon Klima.
Gershon Klima was a quiet, wise man. But he did peculiar things and lived a peculiar life, so he had a bad reputation. No one in the neighborhood wanted to talk about Gershon Klima and no one wanted to talk with him, apart from Grandpa Yosef, who was above the normal rules. People thought Gershon Klima was scary just because he lived such an utterly different life. But Gershon Klima was a wonderful friend and a very useful one. Before Brandy, whenever someone had to find Captain Moshe, it was usually Gershon who came through. He had a sense.
His craziness came in an orderly fashion. Usually Gershon Klima beat the craziness to it, arranging his own hospitalization with one calm telephone call. Neatly following an internal debate that led to a clear-cut decision, he would leave his house after dawn and sit on the little bench beneath the huge Indian bombax tree. A little bag lay beside him. In the bag, Gershon Klima had packed a few clothes, some medications and a large, heavy pipe wrench. His skilled hands were exploited even at the mental institution in Tirat HaCarmel, where there was always a repair or two for him to do. Of all things, it would be the arrival of the four male nurses which enraged him. He would leap up like a demon at them, thrashing against their grip. The struggle was quickly decided. Gershon Klima calmed down. Mumbling, his arms slowly waved in the air. “Never mind, never mind…” he would reassure himself, the commotion with the nurses suddenly seeming needless and inappropriate. He would drape his arms over their shoulders, then smile and mutter, “It was…that was it,” as if having explained something fundamental, something that had always darkened his sunlight. Now he could rest. But then he would squirm in their arms again, almost wrenching one arm free, his eyes glistening with the possibilities should he be able to free one arm. The nurses would overcome him and Gershon Klima was swallowed up inside the ambulance.
Once or twice we went out at night and were able to see Gershon Klima being institutionalized. When he caught our eyes, he stopped fighting his captors. He smiled at us like a rabbit slung over a hunter’s shoulder. “Everything…it was…it’s all right…” And he was taken away.