In which case, he’s not so damaged after all.
Suddenly a frantic pummeling rattles the front door. She wraps herself in a bathrobe, firmly fastens its belt, shakes out her hair and combs it with her fingers, and only then opens the door for the pale and terrified chaperone. She escorts him to his protégé, who sits in the armchair wrapped in a big towel, transfixed by monkeys delousing one another with care.
“He’s going to fall and crash if you keep this up,” she scolds, not unkindly.
Yuda-Zvi says nothing. His face is red, he bites his lip, and then, in a heartbreaking gesture, he kneels before the little boy, who is not looking at him, and feels and smells the damp towel. “What is this?” he asks. “You washed him?”
“Of course.”
“Why? What did he do to you?”
“He slid down the drainpipe and came in here filthy and stinking.”
“So what?”
“What do you mean, so what? He had to be washed.”
“How?”
“How? With soap and water. You’ve heard of water? You know what soap is?”
Shaya’s son studies her with undisguised anger.
“And the clothes? His tzitzit and the shirt with the special embroidery?”
“Don’t worry, it’s all safe, except for an old diaper. But make sure, Yuda-Zvi, not to dress him now in those dirty clothes. Take him up to Grandma and change him.”
“He has no other clothes here.”
“Just take him from here as he is, wrapped in this towel, which is a gift to you. But first swear to me on your father’s life, the life of Shaya Pomerantz, that never, but never, will you sneak in here again, not through the door or through the window, because if this tzaddik were to fall and get hurt, what would all his Hasidim do?”
“They’ll find another tzaddik,” he mumbles darkly, and measures her with a blazing look that assesses her nakedness under the robe. He’s not a child anymore but a furious adolescent, who rips the remote control from the little one’s hand and shuts off the TV, strips the towel from the boy and flings it with disgust on the floor, then pulls the screaming, naked child to the still-open door and, without a parting word, takes him up to the grandma who no longer knows she is a grandma.
Twenty-Five
SHE WANTED TO TELL her mother the story of the boy, but then thought better of it. Her mother would not interpret the episode the way she understood it, and she did not want the joy she felt crushed by her mother’s irony. And so, after a long afternoon nap, her strange elation still intact, she goes out. She decides to walk to the city center and take in a foreign film, then remembers that the movie theaters abandoned the downtown area years ago and relocated in malls, so instead she heads for the shuk, which she had spurned and ignored for years but has lately begun to fancy.
Evening slowly falls in Mahane Yehuda, and Noga feels a strong craving for meat soup, red, thick and hot. So she prowls the alleys in search of that underground dining room, hoping that despite the hour it has not yet been converted into the bar. But the minute she goes down the stairs, her hopes are dashed. The shutter separating the room from the kitchen has been lowered, and the long communal tables have been divided into small tables, with a boy circulating among them lighting tea lights in saucers, resembling yahrzeit candles. Next to the bar are a guitar and an accordion, still in their cases, and the two people finishing their meal are apparently the musicians.
Again her gaze is drawn to the ceiling. The black camera, real or fake, still perches in its place, though the angle of its gleaming glass eye seems to have shifted.
She turns to the candle boy.
“Excuse me, is there anything left to eat?”
“All gone, lady. Come back tomorrow.”
She was about to leave when she notices, not far from the lowered shutter in the rear, the retired policeman, the stammering extra. He sits facing the entrance as if expecting someone, perhaps her.
With a small step she could withdraw and disappear into the shuk, but Noga senses that the veteran inspector has noticed her arrival, and that he knows she has spotted him too. Should she disregard him? Elazar sits motionless in his corner, doesn’t stand up or wave. She certainly doesn’t want to indulge his desire, but is it right to ignore him?
She walks toward him with a smile, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t seem surprised, as if they had planned to meet.
“I was thinking I could find something to eat here,” she explains. “After our evening, I came back the next afternoon and had a delicious meal. But it seems they close early and get ready for another night.”
“What would you like to eat?”
“Whatever… not much, maybe soup… something simple.”
“If only soup, that’s possible. Come, sit down.”
“Meat soup,” she says, unable to restrain her craving, then backs off. “If there happens to, um, b-be any…”
He seems shocked. “M-m-meat?” He echoes her stammer. “Right n-n-now? I d-don’t think they have any left at this hour. But s-simple s-soup, maybe hot, thick lentil soup. That won’t b-b-be enough?”
“Definitely enough,” she exclaims, blushing. “Of course… the meat isn’t important… lentil soup or whatever… thick and hot is wonderful.”
He disappears, and her eyes wander around the gray cellar, the flickering flames adding an air of mystery. The musicians, done eating, take out their instruments and start to play. The cascading notes of the guitar and accordion arouse a visceral nostalgia for her harp, and her eyes well with tears.
The policeman carefully sets before her a bowl of steaming lentil soup and two slices of dark bread.
“How did you manage that? Are you a partner here, or a relative?”
“Neither one, but a police commander, especially a retired one, has p-p-power and influence.”
“Especially retired?”
“Because he still keeps his old contacts and secret information, without being subject to any r-rules.”
She cautiously sips the soup, and the eyes of the eternal inspector follow her spoon as if she were a child who requires supervision. Does he understand, she wonders, that despite his power as a policeman, he cannot touch me?
“And what’s happening with the little haredim who’ve been b-b-breaking into your apartment?”
“I think today I stopped them once and for all.”
“How?”
She tells him about the little boy who got a thorough scrubbing.
“That was smart,” says Elazar approvingly, “a good intuition. I know them, and if you, a secular woman, a stranger and not m-m-married, dared, even with a little boy—”
“But an important one, a kind of tzaddik.”
“Exactly. So if you, a free woman with no children, t-t-took off his clothes and made him take a bath, that will f-f-frighten not only the boy who looks after him, but the parents, who will finally wise up and c-c-control his misbehavior.”
“And imagine”—she laughs with embarrassment—“when I washed him, I myself, because I’d jumped out of the bathtub to save him, had nothing on.”
“Naked? Better yet,” he says excitedly. “You did w-w-well. And with no bad intent. You were right, no need to call the police.”
“And you believe that this will put an end to the break-ins?”
“I believe it, because I know them. Now they’ll be afraid of you. They’ll realize that you’re unpredictable. But how much time do you have left, anyway, before the end of your experiment?”