And she jumps up and charmingly mimics her father’s steps.
The chatter flows freely and merrily as the night slowly embraces their camaraderie. They drift on to relatives and absent friends, and even Uriah’s name comes up, but the two women are careful not to let slip one word about his performances and visits, and it would appear that Honi has not only accepted his failure to move his mother near him, but that the failure has lifted his spirits. He walks from room to room in his mother’s robe, planning how to renovate the apartment, to put money into it now that they’ve been spared the expense of the old folks’ home. And as he puts together a list of what to replace and what to fix, and especially how to improve the lighting, he arrives at the emptied clothes closet and rocks his father’s new black suit back and forth on its hanger.
“Take it,” urges his sister, “don’t be stubborn. Take it before Ima throws it out. You might need it someday.”
“That day will never come. Who wears suits like this anymore? Abba only had it made so he wouldn’t be conspicuous in the neighborhood.”
“Maybe in the future you’ll also need to not be conspicuous here.”
“Me?” he shouts. “Why?”
“So they won’t throw stones at you.”
He pauses, unsure if she is joking. Then, in a snap decision, he frees the suit from its hanger, folds it into a small bundle and declares that he will personally donate it to charity.
The family is getting tired, and as the mother is still confused in her apartment and has not begun to unpack, the temporary tenant who is leaving Israel indefinitely has to act the efficient housewife. She changes sheets, spreads out blankets, arranges towels, but her brother’s wet, bloodstained clothes she cleans with only partial success before tossing them in the dryer, which rattles the dimly lit Jerusalem flat with a vaguely menacing roar.
“Yes, we must get some sleep,” says the mother after her daughter has finally finished packing her bags. She urges her two children to turn out their lights, but because it’s hard to part from the daughter, whom she’d hardly seen during the three experimental months, she subverts the sleep agenda and has Noga join her for a midnight cup of tea. “Come, you’ll sleep on the plane,” she says to her daughter, “and I won’t wake up till the afternoon. Honi must go to bed. In two hours he has to drive you to the airport.” But Honi is lured by the spontaneous tea party. “No worries,” he scoffs, “from Jerusalem to the airport at two in the morning takes half an hour, tops,” and wrapped in the old robe, he joins his mother and sister, but instead of tea he makes himself a strong Turkish coffee.
Now, as Noga studies her brother’s weary face, her heart melts and her anger fades. Nonetheless, she is careful not to mention Uriah’s bizarre appearances, lest her brother think he made it all happen. So they sit, warm and drowsy, refusing to let sleep come between them. “Children,” the mother suddenly declares, “please don’t be upset that I failed the test. On the contrary, be happy about the failure. Now, with no insane maintenance payments in Tel Aviv, here in Jerusalem I feel like a wealthy woman. And as a wealthy woman, even old Stoller will have to respect me and make do with the piddling monthly rent until my dying day, which will be many years from now — being rich, I will have a greater will to live. And as a rich woman,” she goes on, “I will not only phone you, Noga, every day, but I may even come to visit you in Europe, to listen to your harp. What do you say?”
“Shh… she’s asleep,” says Honi.
Indeed, the harpist hasn’t held out, and as she sits at the table her eyes are closed, her breathing is heavy, and her head droops and nods. Her brother and mother stand her up gently and lead her to her bed, lay her down and cover her. “Even one hour of sleep will help,” declares Honi, “so she won’t be confused and get on the wrong plane.”
Now, in the quiet of night, the mother is very much tempted to tell her son the Uriah story, but loyal to the promise she made to her daughter, she restrains herself and goes to take the pants and shirt from the dryer, their bloodstains warm but undiminished. The time passes quickly, and at two in the morning, it’s difficult to wake the sleeper, and lest she stumble on the way to the car, her brother and mother help her down the stairs, put her in the front seat and fasten her seatbelt. Only then, in the chill of the coming dawn, does she open her beautiful eyes and kiss her mother and whisper, “Now that you’re rich, you can have free protected housing in Europe with me.”
The car sails away with the windows open, so the summer night breeze will rouse the sleepy woman. In the airport, despite the bloodstains on his clothes, Honi insists on steering his sister through the check-in process, including the baggage inspection. And because it’s hard to say goodbye, he holds Noga’s boarding pass in his hand, so he can accompany her to the place where he will be told: Stop.
It’s hard for her too. She knows she is returning to a foreign orchestra, free of any obligation other than her music, while her brother remains in a country that never ceases to be a threat to itself, saddled with a demanding family and a lonely mother who insists on growing old in an old apartment. When Noga takes the boarding pass from him, she wonders: Why not give him some hope that she, for one, is not so lonely. After all, she was not only an extra here, but also a woman who was wanted and loved. Standing by the doorway of the security area, she gives her brother a quick rundown of what happened since the intermission at Carmen in the desert, the story of the former husband who invaded the opera stage and then turned himself into a wounded extra, before daring to appear as himself in their childhood apartment to demand the child who wasn’t born.
Honi doesn’t seem surprised, as though it was he who thought up the convoluted story she is confiding to him, and as she keeps talking, he is careful not to stop her, just to take her arm gently and move her from place to place, so she will not block the flow of passengers to the metal detectors, or notice the tears that fog his eyes.
Forty-Five
AFTER NIGHTS OF WANDERING among beds, the sleep she’d hoped for on the flight to Amsterdam was unsettled and spotty, and in the morning, on the bus from the airport, her eyes were fixed on the great green fields and the plentiful water, as if she were visiting the Netherlands for the first time.
Three months ago, the landlord’s son helped her carry the two suitcases down the narrow, winding stairs, but today she does without his help, to avoid a long conversation with the landlady, who will be curious to know the outcome of her mother’s experiment with assisted living.
Her attic apartment consists of two rooms, small but comfortable. And since she has lived there for quite a while, it’s easy to spot any changes that took place in her absence. The three houseplants stand in place and have been tended properly, and the kitchenette is sparkling clean. But there’s a whiff of suspicion that the landlord’s son, or possibly her friend the first flutist, took advantage of her absence and came to sleep, alone or otherwise, in her bed.
So she rips off the sheets, shoves them in the washing machine and, before putting on new ones, lies down on the bare mattress and tries, eyes closed, to make orderly sense of her memory of Israel. But the passion for her instrument propels her instead to the musicians’ café by the concert hall, where after a couple of double espressos her mind is fixed on the waltz in the second movement of Berlioz’s Fantastique.
As it turns out, it is not this piece that awaits her, but another one, richer and more complex. This is the news about to be delivered by Herman Kroon, the orchestra’s general manager, who is happy that “our Venus” has returned, and clenches between his teeth, unlighted, the pipe Noga bought for him in the Old City, trying to get a taste of the Holy Land. Before telling the musician about the program change, he is curious to know what the elderly mother has decided, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Where is it better to live out her old age?