“Good,” says the mother, “this way I’ll be able to keep track of you at all times.”
Now the daughter wants to know how old she was when they moved from the apartment where she was born to the one where she grew up.
“How old?” her mother asks. “Why?”
“No reason.”
“You know me, no reason is not a reason.”
“Let’s say because of a dream.”
“You have time to dream before a trip like this?”
“It was a dream that didn’t ask permission.”
“How can I give you an exact answer if I’m not sure how old you are now?”
“You’re not sure? Ima!”
“Yes, it is odd, but I just want to confirm you’re forty-three.”
“Why three? Where’d you get three? Not even two, and that’s two months away.”
“Not even two? So why do you think of yourself as a hopeless woman?”
“Hopeless? In what sense hopeless?”
“I apologize. In no sense. I already told you that the Uriah story is eating me up inside. But I’m not saying anything. Okay, forty-two. So if we do the simple math, when we moved from Ovadiah Street in Kerem Avraham to Rashi Street in Mekor Baruch — in other words, from the apartment where you were born to the one you grew up in — you were all of five, five and a half. When we moved I was already pregnant with Honi, who was born in the new apartment, which by the way was never new and never will be. But why are you digging into the past? What happened in the dream?”
“You and Abba always refused to show me the apartment where I was born, even though you described it as beautiful and special, with a view.”
“Yes, a wide-open view, from more than one window. But I’m sure that with so many births and so much new construction in the area, nobody has a view anymore. Yes, it was a very nice apartment, in a neighborhood that changed since then, became blacker than black, the usual story.”
“If it was such a nice apartment, why did you move?”
“Why, why, all these whys because of a dream?”
“Why not?”
“All right — we moved because your father insisted.”
“Why?”
“Again why? What was in that dream that upset you so much?”
“Abba was in it, for the first time since he died.”
“Ah… Abba… It’s about time. In my dreams, this week alone he appeared three times.”
“And said something?”
“No. He can only speak if we give him something to say. So far in the dreams he’s only an extra, standing up.”
“An extra in a dream? Good one.”
“You see? Sometimes I also have great ideas.”
“Absolutely. Sometimes too many. But still, why did you leave the lovely apartment?”
“You really insist on knowing.”
“Because you’re avoiding the answer.”
“All right. The young landlady, who lived on the same floor, died suddenly, and the husband quickly remarried, so the new wife could take care of the baby.”
“There was a baby?”
“I just said, she died in childbirth.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“Sorry.”
“But what did Abba care if the landlord found a wife to take care of the child?”
“Ask him when he comes to visit you again in a dream.”
“Now you’re hiding something.”
“Because it was a long time ago, and complicated, and if I go into detail you might miss your flight.”
“Don’t worry about my flight. It suddenly occurs to me that I also saw this young woman in my dream, the dead one.”
“You didn’t see anything. You were five years old then, or five and a half.”
“So that was how Abba started having those strange delusions!”
“Could be. You knew him. The humor, cracking jokes, his little comedy routines, it all came so naturally to him, unless of course something bad happened. Then he would get scared and imagine the worst. And since I was also pregnant when the landlady died, he insisted that we leave the apartment and move someplace else.”
Fifty
THE CHARTERED JAPANESE AIRCRAFT looked old, but the cabin was spotless. Most of the instruments were stowed in the belly of the plane along with the musicians’ luggage, except for the flutes, clarinets and oboes, which would easily fit in the overhead compartments. A few violinists who deemed their instruments priceless received special permission to keep them in sight during the flight. There were only twelve seats in business class, which were reserved for the conductor and his wife, as well as Herman Kroon, the deputy mayor of Arnhem and his wife, the Japanese cultural attaché who initiated the trip and the young composer Van den Broek. The remainder were allotted to senior musicians, most of them not young. Noga was seated, of course, in tourist class, beside a contrabass player, Pirke Wisser, a plump, middle-aged Dutch woman who, it turned out, was a grandmother.
Just after takeoff, at three in the afternoon, one of the pilots came out of the cockpit and with the help of a digital display briefed the passengers about the flight, which would first head north, not east, since the polar route was shortest. Thus now, at summer’s end, the sun would shine during most of the flight, and only an hour or two before landing in Japan would they encounter the starry night sky.
Winging over the North Pole struck some of the musicians as a bold, even presumptuous undertaking for an older airplane, and there was macabre joking that the orchestra’s crash into a giant iceberg would be a boon for Arnhem, not merely relieving the municipality of a budgetary burden, but obviating any costly search for bodies and instruments. For some musicians, fear of flying is intensified by such black humor, and there are calls for self-control and silence. All are exhausted following the festive farewell concert, and since the sun will stand still in the heavens, it’s best to lower the shades.
Crammed in her seat beside a round window, the Israeli harpist floats above white lakes of ice, pondering her interrupted dream. Will her imagination manage next time to chat with her silent father, the extra? Now that the dream has been interpreted, will she be able to dream it again? She smiles sadly at the grandmother beside her, a tall, stout player in whose hands the contrabass seems like a violin that grew up and stood on its feet. The Dutch woman smiles in return, and is well aware of her neighbor’s concern. Yes, based on many years of experience with the orchestra, she believes that someone will be found in Japan to play second harp. “Everyone in the orchestra,” she says, “especially after such demanding rehearsals, is determined not to forgo the Debussy.”
Meanwhile, the Arctic Ocean gets bigger and whiter, and the words of the older musician do more to allay her concerns than the promises of the conductor and the administrative director, and Noga asks if she’d like her to pull down the shade on the midnight sun. “Light never bothers me,” the grandmother replies. “I can sleep peacefully even when the grandchildren read or play by my bed at night.” Grateful for her reassurance, the Israeli inquires as to the number and ages of her grandchildren. “Only seven for now,” answers Pirke Wisser, and Noga asks to see pictures, but this grandmother does not carry pictures of her grandchildren to faraway places; they are engraved in her mind. Instead, if the harpist would like, she can tell some amusing stories about them.
Feeling warm and secure alongside the grandmother, Noga leans her head on the glittering window and slips into a cozy nap, until someone touches her gently. The elderly first flutist, her occasional lover, seated up front with the notables, would like to introduce her to the conductor’s wife, who wants to thank her.