He was disappointed but he bowed his head with a captivating gesture, thanked me for the meal, put on his cap and left. A few seconds later he came back, asked me to lend him five pounds. I gave him ten.
He left the garage, the dog no longer barked at him but followed him for a few paces. I hurriedly finished my work with the bills, went out of the office and climbed into the Morris, which stood there in the middle of the floor. I was going to move it into a corner but I changed my mind and decided to take it home with me, to see how it climbed the steep slope of the hill. It went up slowly but surely, the engine throbbing steadily. Everyone overtaking me turned to look, some with astonishment, some with a smile.
At noon the next day someone touched me lightly. He stood there beside me, a pleasant smile on his face. He held out ten pounds.
“Has your grandmother passed away?” I smiled.
No, not yet, but at the airline office they’d agreed to buy back his return ticket at half price. He now had a thousand pounds. Could he take the car? I thought carefully, for a moment I considered taking the thousand pounds and cancelling the rest of the debt, letting the car go, but suddenly I didn’t want to let it go.
“No I’m sorry … you’ll have to bring the rest of the money … anyway it’s better you should keep the money for the time being … have you started looking for work yet?”
He was disappointed but he didn’t insist. He murmured something about Jerusalem … he’d go there and look for work … there were no opportunities in this town …
Somebody’s going to get control of him, I thought.
At supper I found myself thinking about him again, seeing him pace slowly about the garage, his back slightly bent, moving cautiously among the cars, avoiding the Arab workers. The faded French beret, the professional vagrant. I remembered him fainting on the garage floor, his opened shirt, his thin white chest, his history of mental illness, his fixation about a dying grandmother. He doesn’t stand a chance in Israel. He must be taken in hand. I asked Asya, I thought perhaps there might be something at the school. Of course she didn’t understand what I meant, washing the dishes, in a hurry to get back to the study, surprised at my concern over a customer, not understanding the interest I took in him. But when I told her about the lost money she stopped short at the study door, and of course Dafi interrupted every other sentence. To my surprise I realized that it really was the loss of the money that bothered them. Dafi in her usual way started being facetious, suggesting ways of employing him in the house, her imagination running wild, he could wash the dishes, scrub the floor, help her with her homework. I looked at Asya, she smiled.
Of course I didn’t decide anything. But the next day I found the phone number that Erlich had written on the bill, which was still in my pocket. I phoned him. I got him out of bed, he was half asleep and confused, I told him to come around and see me in the afternoon. He asked, “Are you going to give me back the car?” I said, “We’ll see … in the meantime I may have found you a job.”
Five minutes before he was due to arrive I told Asya, she was surprised at first, then she laughed. He arrived with that perpetual cap of his, but in a clean shirt, sat down in the living room and began to talk. She liked him, as I knew she would, slowly the conversation developed, she asked him about Paris, about his studies there. And he, a confirmed lover of the city, started talking about places that she knew only from maps or books, describing ways of life, mentioning historical events, all this in a light, colourful style of speech, sometimes getting quite carried away.
Dafi came back from the beach, came straight into the room, just as she was, her hair untidy, all stained with oil. He leaped up at once, took her hand, told her his name, he had strange, funny manners, he even bowed slightly. The girl blushed, fled from the room. I whispered to Asya, “Why don’t you see if he can help you, he’s done a lot of translating and copying work.”
She took him into the study to show him her papers.
Dafi started pacing about restlessly, standing listening at the closed door of the study. But I felt suddenly weak, I couldn’t get up from my seat, couldn’t even switch on the light. Wondering if I should have told her something about his time in an asylum in Paris, or if it was better to let her find out for herself.
DAFI
It began just with going down to the beach at the beginning of the vacation, because Osnat and Tali and I had nothing to do after the Girl Scout camp was cancelled and it grew into a full ritual. Since I was born I’ve seen the sea every day from my bedroom window, but it was only in this last vacation that I came to know it, really discovered it. The sea fascinated us, made its way into our souls and our bones, I didn’t know it could be so wonderful. At first, in the first week, we were still taking books with us, newspapers, our holiday assignments, rackets, a transistor, afraid we might be bored, but after a while we realized it was another world and we began going just as we were. At nine o’clock in the morning we’d meet at the bus station wearing only swimsuits, no hats, no blouses, barefoot, like savages, clutching only some folded money, going down to the beach, finding a place in a corner a long way from the lifeguard’s booth, collapsing on the warm sand, the sun on our backs, talking lazily, telling one another about our dreams, beginning to enter the slow rhythm of sea, sun and sky, losing our sense of time, roasting in the heat, diving into the cold water, swimming, sinking, floating, finding a little island of rock, rising and falling on the surf, coming out and lying on the water line, wallowing in the muddy sand, digging holes, then going to buy falafel or ice cream, drinking water from the big tap, moving away from the crowd, finding a quieter place, sinking into drowsiness, a kind of Nirvana, a quiet listless reverie, like corpses on the beach, to the sound of the waves, not caring that the sun’s in our eyes. Slowly waking and starting to run, a light run, a gentle long run, the whole length of the deserted beach, farther and farther from any sign of human life, stripping naked and plunging again into the sea, where it’s shallow, among the rocks, looking at one another no longer with curiosity or with embarrassment but studying the parts that the sun hasn’t reached, needing to be brown all over, on our nipples and our asses. Putting on our swimsuits again and walking slowly back, hunting for shells, bending over a yellow crab, motionless in its crevice. Sometimes one of us dives into the surf again and the others wait till she comes back, all the time our eyes fixed on the blue horizon shimmering in the heat, feeling the sands shift beneath our bare feet. When we reach the lifeguard’s hut the last of the people are packing up to go, with their baskets, chairs and children, we stand and watch the setting sun, not wanting to move, until the lifeguard comes to us, tells us to go.
Day after day it’s the same and we never tire of it, that’s the amazing thing, we’re never bored, we find less and less need to talk among ourselves, we could lie there side by side for hours, or walk together in silence. Even Osnat relaxes, begins to realize that she doesn’t always have to be making remarks about everything, she’s even a bit prettier, she takes off her glasses sometimes, tucks them away between her tits and starts wandering about dreamily, like Tali.
On the bus going home, in the evening, we’re like foreigners among the smelly people, the pale, sweaty, noisy people who take care not to touch us. We sit on the back seat, ignoring the crude looks that we get, they stare at us so hard you’d think we were still naked, turning around and looking again at the sea as it recedes.