“Not too expensive?” She asked my advice.
“No, not at all. That’s all right.”
In the end she bought the cheaper one after all.
I said nothing, but I was livid.
I deliberately took her from there to a fashionable and expensive restaurant and ordered coffee, cakes and sandwiches, a light meal. She refused to eat anything and just drank coffee. “I’m not hungry, not hungry,” she insisted, but she watched me hungrily as I ate sandwich after sandwich.
“Sure you’re not hungry?”
“Quite sure.” She smiled, looking at the purse that she’d bought, trying to convince herself that she’d got a bargain. “It’s bigger than the more expensive one,” she explained, and I said nothing, smiling to myself, paying the waitress with a hundred-pound note and leaving a generous tip. But she ignored the fat wallet lying there on the table, she didn’t care how much money I carried about with me.
“Is that the old lady?” I remembered what the Arab worker had said and my heart missed a beat. But she smiled at me good-naturedly, picking up the crumbs from my plate and putting them in her mouth, finishing her coffee, glancing at the clock, always in a hurry, always thinking about something else, history, exams, teachers’ meetings. Am I getting her right?
ASYA
Driving Adam’s car and driving it well, though I’ve never driven it before. I feel the dreadful weight of the car, I never imagined it would be so heavy, the engine roars like a tractor, even so I make progress, changing gears smoothly. It’s hard for me to see the road, my seat’s so low, through the front window I see only the roofs of houses and the sky. I drive by instinct, feeling all the time that parts of the car are outside my control, slightly misjudging the turns, hearing the dull thuds as the car collides with the corners of the houses, but the car goes on, like a tank, no obstacle can stop it. I arrive home and it’s already evening. I park the car under a streetlamp, get out to inspect the damage. Nothing too serious, vague dents here and there but the paint hasn’t been chipped off, the metal has just sunk in, little pools forming in the surface. He’ll repair it himself, I think, and I run up the stairs. The door is open, there are people in the house, in armchairs, on the sofa, some of them sitting on the floor. Plates of cakes and nuts, dishes of olives and pickled cucumber. Who’s prepared it all? Perhaps they themselves. Sitting and whispering, not yet touching the food, waiting for me. But I go looking for Adam. Where is he? I go into the bedroom, he’s sitting there on the bed in his overalls, alone, as if he’s hiding. He looks strange, pale, younger, something’s upsetting him.
“What have you done to the car?”
“What have I done? Nothing …”
But he moves the curtain aside and shows me the car, lying capsized under the streetlamp, wheels in the air, turning slowly, like an insect pinned down on its back, flailing its legs, hissing softly. I’m really surprised, a little amused, from the next room the voices of the guests grow louder, they’re losing their patience.
“Hurry now, get dressed and go out to them, you can straighten the car out later … what’s the trouble?”
And he goes to the bed, stripping off his shirt, such pain in his face, and all the time I’m asking myself, how has he changed? How is he different? And suddenly I realize — he’s got no beard, he’s pulled off his beard, torn it out by the roots, scalped himself. It lies there on the pillow, lies there intact, I can’t bear to look.
ADAM
So how to describe her? Where to begin? With her smooth little feet at which I fell one night after the disaster, gripping them hard, hurting her, covering them with kisses, pleading in a confusion of lust and terror that we have another child, that we do not lose hope. This was perhaps the only time that I lost control.
It was about three months after the disaster, from which it seemed she was recovering rapidly. After only a week she went back to work full-time, to all her activities, but at night she didn’t sleep, didn’t even undress, sitting down instead to correct her pupils’ work, or reading, or dozing a little in her chair, or getting up to wash the floor, to wash dishes, sometimes even cooking at midnight. And she never put out the light until dawn. Quiet, businesslike, behaving sensibly but wary of me, recoiling slightly when she saw me approaching, as if I was to blame, or she was to blame, as if there was any question of blame.
For I refuse to attach any significance to a disaster that was nothing more than an accident. I’m not capable of listening to the arcane explanations — a deliberate accident, he sought his own death, subconscious intentions. I have some experience with car accidents. Every week cars are brought into the garage after accidents on the road and I’m forced to listen to explanations, even though I never ask questions, how it happened, what happened, who was to blame. It’s not my job to judge people, just to assess the damage and repair it. But the drivers are excited and they can’t restrain themselves, they must tell me what happened, thinking that I’m blaming them as I walk around and around the wrecked car with paper and pencil in my hand. As if I cared. They start describing the accident, detail by detail, in complicated language, sometimes even drawing a little sketch, ready to admit responsibility too but only in a very partial way, a very limited responsibility. The other man was driving too fast, the traffic lights were defective, or they start unfolding strange theories about blind spots in the field of vision of this type of car. The road, the sun, the government, explanations upon explanations, anything but — I drove like a lunatic, stupidly, carelessly, I am to blame. There are bloodstains on the car and still they continue to describe their expert manoeuvering — at the last moment they turned right, left, reversed, it could have been much worse, there could have been another death. Only occasionally is anyone prepared to say — A miserable accident, without meaning.
And that’s how it was –
After five years we had a son. He was deaf. We called him Yigal. His deafness was detected very soon. In the maternity hospital they gave us a special letter for the children’s doctor at the clinic. They explained it to us: “There’s something a little defective in his hearing, you’ll have to be careful, he can’t hear.” I won’t start going into detail, there’d be no end to it, a man gets to be an expert on his grief, learns the terminology, becomes acquainted with mechanical aids, compares notes with others in a similar plight, makes friends with other parents who have deaf children. Nor is it really such a terrible catastrophe. There are worse disabilities: blindness, severe blood diseases, brain damage. In general he was a healthy child, with a handicap that he could overcome. They were always giving us hope for the future. In the first year there were even certain advantages. He slept a lot, noise didn’t disturb him, it was possible to switch on the radio beside his bed, the sound of the vacuum didn’t worry him, in the street he slept peacefully through the roar of the traffic.
It was a full-time occupation. Asya spent a lot of time with him, and I, at that time working from morning till night, made an effort at least not to miss his bedtime. Standing in front of him and speaking in a loud voice, my mouth wide open, moving my tongue slowly and teaching him to say “daddy” or “head,” and he watching me with deep concentration, repeating the words after me with a strangely fluctuating volume of sound, very quiet or very loud, producing other words: “gaily,” “sed.” You begin to grasp another language, indistinct expressions, strange sounds, your own hearing gets sharper, you begin to take in nuances. He used to talk with broad gestures, and when a child does this he has great charm. It’s interesting that I understood him better than Asya did. I developed a special sense for understanding his words, which, peculiar as they were, still had a logic of their own.