“It’s too late.”
“I know that too. Actually I feel it.”
“If you know everything, why did you come?”
“To return the key to your mother and keep my promise to tell you that the time had come and I didn’t hide anything from my wife.”
“And you still didn’t think to look at my childhood harp, which you ran away from this morning, and which Honi will throw away tomorrow or the next day.”
“Wrong again. I took off the cover and looked at it, to try and understand its power.”
“And did you?”
“I saw a unique and unusual instrument, a primitive shaatnez, a hybrid of harp, guitar, banjo and more. I can see why your father, who knew nothing about music, wanted to get it for you, not in a music store but an antiques shop. It can’t make music now, many strings are missing, and those that are left are loose and bent, so how could I understand why it enslaved you?”
“You can’t. And neither you nor I can resurrect the dead, so go back to your wife and don’t torment her anymore with the illusion that you can turn back the clock.”
Forty-Four
SINCE THE RESIDENTS of the old folks’ home in Tel Aviv include some very old ones, soon to depart this world, the management tried to provide the healthy and charming lady from Jerusalem with a pleasant and comfortable stay, so that she might cast her fate with the residence and enhance its image. But as it became clear that the little perks and luxuries, the lectures and the concerts, had not produced a decision in favor of Tel Aviv, and that the popular lady would soon be leaving, everyone was sad, and Honi, feeling guilty for his mother’s decision, at the last moment spread idle promises of a repeat experiment. Thus their arrival in Jerusalem was delayed, and the savory lunch prepared for them by the daughter was turned into a half-eaten dinner.
Honi wears a look of dejection. “Don’t worry,” says his mother, “you won’t have to rush here for every little inconvenience. I’m surrounded by plenty of poor Orthodox people who’ll be happy to take care of me for a few pennies.”
“And for the same nickel they’ll bring you back to religion.”
“Not me. Abba and I managed to hold our own, and God made us stronger in the process.”
As her three heavy suitcases are hauled to the apartment one by one, she makes a tour of the three big rooms and marvels: “What’s this, Noga? Was I really such a good mother that you spruced up the apartment for me?” “Yes, you were great,” says Noga, “because you always made me feel free.” Tears gleam in the eyes of the old woman, whose emotions are usually blocked by irony. As Noga smiles at her mother’s tears, her brother storms through the resurrected apartment, grousing about the weak lighting and checking out Abadi’s bolt. “This is not a bolt,” he sneers. “It’s a parody of a bolt. If you had a dog here, that would stop the bastards.”
“Au contraire,” the mother says, laughing, “a dog will appeal to them a lot more than Israeli television.”
“No need to worry,” says his sister. “No more kids. Shaya personally brought his son to apologize.”
But Honi stands firm. “It all depends on Ima not tempting them again.”
“I am not responsible for the temptation. It was your father. He hoped that the television would make them secular.”
“A futile hope.”
“Of course, but when I saw how they wore themselves out running up and down the stairs out of sheer boredom, I began to feel sorry for them.”
“Beware of pity,” pronounces Honi, fixated again on the lights. “We have to change all the bulbs,” he says, poised to take his sister’s two suitcases down to his car.
“Wait a minute,” scolds his mother, “relax, what’s your hurry? This is the last night, this is goodbye. If you need to get back to your wife and children, have a safe drive home, and we’ll call a taxi to take Noga to the airport.”
Honi objects. He is the one who waited at the airport three months ago and will be the one to take her back there and be responsible for her until the last minute. The flight is at five in the morning, and Noga should get there around three — so no taxi, just him. That’s what he promised himself.
“If that’s what you promised,” says his mother, “you can relax. Instead of taking Noga now to your place in Tel Aviv and going back to the airport in the middle of the night, act logically and get a little sleep here. Even if I turned down protected living in Tel Aviv, I still need, at least on the first night, a protected home in Jerusalem.”
“Protected from what?” Honi asks.
“From loneliness and sadness.”
A pleasant calm settles on the old apartment, and Noga takes the fruit bowl from the refrigerator, sets out three plates and small knives and says, “Here, children, let’s polish off the Land of Canaan, but without the blessing.” And they peel and eat the remaining fruit, duly impressed by the beautiful, delicate glass bowl, especially the gold decoration at the rim. Honi says the bowl is fragile, should be handled carefully, and he gets up to wash it in the sink, where it falls and shatters and his fingers drip with blood.
“Was the bowl included with the Pomerantzes’ fruit?” he asks his mother, licking his wounded fingers, “or do we have to return it?”
“Let’s consider it included, since you broke it, on purpose.”
“Not really on purpose, but I also didn’t want Pomerantz to be too happy you’re coming back.”
“Don’t be a child,” Noga says. “Stop sucking your fingers. You can’t recycle the blood. Run cold water on them until we find a bandage.”
But the mother has forgotten what’s in the apartment and what isn’t, and they have to dig through drawer after drawer to find some ancient Band-Aids.
The bleeding is finally under control, but the shirt and pants are stained, requiring immediate attention, and Honi stands in his underwear before his mother and sister, who dismiss his embarrassment: “We’ve seen you naked before, no problem.”
Be that as it may, he’s cold in the Jerusalem evening, and his sister lends him a big shirt, his mother contributes an old bathrobe, and he sits comfortably, a man dressed as a woman, reminiscing about himself as a child, and instead of complaining again about his mother’s failed residence in Tel Aviv, he envisions the fast train of the future that will zip between the two cities in twenty minutes flat.
“Then you can come here every time I sneeze,” his mother teases.
And so the evening goes. They are still in the kitchen, and after they’ve carefully picked the shards of the bowl from the sink and eaten a bit more of the meal Noga prepared, the talk turns to the past and concentrates on the virtues and flaws of the father who died nine months before, and Noga recalls the rainy night she saw her father shuffling from room to room like a humble Chinese man.
“Yes,” the mother confirms, “in recent years when he would get up at night to use the bathroom, he would turn into a different character on his way back to bed — Chinese or Indian or Eskimo, or somebody disabled or paralyzed. We once saw a wonderful short film called Aisha, about a woman of ninety-six, all bent over, who would lean on a pail as she walked, and he was so impressed that he tried imitating her in the dark.”
“But why?” Honi is shocked, hearing for the first time about his late father’s nocturnal habits.
“To amuse himself and me.”
“And you were actually amused?”
“At first, out of surprise, then I reprimanded him.”
“Hardly reprimanded,” Noga recalls. “‘That’s not Chinese, it’s Japanese,’ she would tell him, as if Ima really knows how the Japanese walk. Then he’d look bewildered and take even smaller steps.”