“What truth?”
He made a supreme effort to pretend that his next words were no more his than the gray birds flying heedlessly above the pine trees he had played among as a child.
“The truth about my situation. I’m talking about my illness… because I don’t have much time left to live. I’m sure he would have taken that into account….”
“You’re ill?”
“Yes,” he said. Unforeseen and absurd, the declaration was made calmly. “I haven’t much time left.”
In the time that remained his imagination wove a narrative of intricate arabesques out of the secret illness of Samaher, the pretended illness of her narghile-puffing grandmother, the actual and deadly illness of Mr. Hendel, who was presently hovering above the two believers in his resurrection who were splashing in the swimming pool, and the illness that he now invented, with its real pain and imaginary symptoms, for an internationally renowned Orientalist improvising a lecture on it from his fantasies.
“Yes,” he said again, lowering his gaze to avoid the eyes of the young woman he had forced to factor his death into her father’s. “It’s a fatal disease that my wife alone knows about — and believe me, she too doesn’t know everything. We haven’t told Ofer or his brother yet. For the time being, I’d rather spare them. I’m telling you this, while swearing you to secrecy, only to prick your conscience, if you have one, into helping me get at the truth, or at least your version of it. It’s not only for my son’s sake. It’s for my own inner peace as well.”
26.
STRANGELY, HOWEVER, HE did not insist on an immediate answer. As if they both needed time to recover from the shock of his revelation, he held out his hand in farewell while expressing the hope that his dramatic confession would not keep them from meeting again. The final moments were devoted by him to a few appreciative words about the deceased. Then, adding the wish that the family’s sorrow and bereavement might become a source of creation and strength, he gave Galya a light hug, as casually as in the old days, and planted a fatherly kiss on her cheek in testimony to the memories and reckonings that time could not erase. Her body clung to his warmly, as if his approaching death were now one with the death that had just taken place. Pressed against her, he realized with a start that she must be pregnant. He said nothing and hurried to his car. Although it was already five after six, he was sure he would make it to the airport on time.
The traffic out of Jerusalem wasn’t bad. At the Kiryat-Ye’arim gas station he stopped to phone the airport. The final time, it turned out, had retreated from its finality by forty more minutes, thus enabling him, if the traffic continued to flow, to drop by Raya’s. Apprehensive about contacting his wife, who might cross-examine him about the whys and wherefores of having stayed too long in a place he should never have been in, he preferred to call his sister. To his amazement, she told him that Hagit hadn’t tried to get in touch with him. Raya was in the middle of making cheese fritters, a favorite dish from their childhood, and impatient to know when he would arrive. “Are you sure you have enough time?” she inquired. That, he told her, depended on road conditions. “Even if I come,” he warned her, “it will only be to wash my hands and face and pop a fritter into my mouth. Then I’ll be off.”
27.
THE TABLE AT his sister’s was already set. Rinsing away the sick and the dead at the sink, he called Hagit before sitting down to eat — and found, not an anxious, irritated wife, but a soft and sleepy one, freshly awakened from a delicious afternoon nap, lengthened past the usual span of her naps by her fatigue and the absence of her husband’s habitually restless body from her side. “What’s happening? What time is it?” she asked, with the innocence of a pampered child granted a special indulgence. “How are you?” Her voice was full of concern for him. “Did you sleep or at least rest at Raya’s?” He maneuvered carefully between maintaining a fog of uncertainty around his movements and complaining about the world’s many demands on him. “How is your back?” Hagit wanted to know. “Is it better?” “A little,” he answered grudgingly, loath to forfeit her sympathy for a condition that had vanished and been forgotten long ago. There was no knowing when it might come in handy again.
“I want you to promise me one more time, darling. Be patient and nice with my sister.”
“Don’t worry. She’s one person I’m always nice to.”
“Be nicer than nice.”
“Trust me.”
“How was the shiva?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Just a hint.”
“It’s hard for them. Hendel’s wife is still in shock, just as I thought she’d be. She’s a wreck.”
“Did you talk to Galya?”
“Yes.”
“What about?”
“What does one talk about at such times? About her father. About death.”
“That’s all?”
“More or less.”
He shut his eyes, recalling his outrageous lie.
“I hope you didn’t raise the subject of Ofer.”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly what?” The judge was waking up.
“We’ll talk about it later, Hagit. Not now. You don’t want me to miss your sister’s flight.”
28.
HE WAS STILL prying open with a finger the shiny eyes of his sister’s granddaughter’s doll when a plate of golden fritters, their crisp warmth enclosing little slabs of fried cheese, was set before him. It never ceased to amaze him how, despite his sister’s indefatigable and never ending hatred of their mother, she continued to make all her dishes, as if determined to demonstrate how simple and even improvable they were. It wasn’t easy for him to resist an improved taste of his childhood. In the end he had to plead with her — just as he had pleaded with his mother in her day — to stop plying him with more fritters and to wrap them in aluminum foil for his sister-in-law, who was by now probably circling overhead.
As he had feared, however, it was half past eight before, weary and exhausted, he was able to hold yet another woman in his arms — the fifth of the day by his count, although without a doubt the prime mover of the five. He embraced her gingerly, knowing that her youthful-looking body, which, after a single miscarriage, had borne no children, was thin and fragile at the age of sixty. Five years his wife’s senior and a year older than himself, she stiffened self-protectively in the innocent embrace of a devoted brother-in-law who had spent the day on his way to the airport to welcome her.
Ofra herself had been en route from British Columbia for thirty hours. Yet her small, delicate face, rather than showing signs of tiredness, was lit by a spiritual elation only further refined by the six-hour delay for repairs in Dublin. She and her husband, Yo’el, who worked for the United Nations as a consultant on the agricultural economies of developing countries, were not only frequent flyers who had accumulated zillions of points with four different airlines, but also conscientious travelers who loved wandering through the duty-free shops of the world, the details of which they studied as intensely as if they were back in the Zionist youth movement, in which they had met in Tel Aviv, memorizing the clues of a treasure hunt.
What was the point of commiserating with an abused traveler who had enjoyed every minute of the flight and even managed to catch two or three catnaps that, however brief, more than rid her of her jet lag? And so without further ado they set out on the road to Haifa, over which the spring night had scattered its scents and lights, while he told her the latest news of his family, but especially of the young Army Intelligence officer, her favorite (if only because he was named for her father).