“How many children have you got altogether?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Just … curious.”
“Fourteen.”
“How many wives?”
“Two.”
He was really upset by questions like these, fidgeting nervously all the time with a screwdriver, turning his back to me, impatient to get rid of me and go back to his work.
To his credit, although he used to provide me with new workers, he never interfered later on and if I was forced to sack them he didn’t say a word, only bringing me a few days later some new cousin or relative from his endless supply.
On the first day of the war he arrived of course, but only a few others came with him. They were afraid to leave their villages, they didn’t know what was going to happen. I grabbed him at once.
“Where are the others?”
He said nothing, not even looking at me, what did I want from him? But I wasn’t letting him off that easily.
“Hamid, you tell them all to come to work. What is this? This war of ours isn’t a holiday for you. There are cars here that need repairing, people will come back from the front and expect to find their cars repaired. Do you hear?”
But he didn’t reply, looking at me with hatred, his hands in his pockets, as if all this had nothing to do with him.
“You should really be fighting with us, you should’ve been called up too. Anyone who doesn’t come in tomorrow will be fired. Tell all your relations.”
He shrugged his shoulders, as if he didn’t care.
But for the whole of that day I didn’t let him work on his engines, I gave him dirty, menial jobs, tightening brakes, changing flats, charging batteries. He said nothing but it was obvious that his pride was hurt. The next day all the Arabs came in and he went back to his workshop. During the entire war not a single worker was absent. Hamid even made it his business to bring in workers to take the place of Jews who’d been called up.
But beyond this I don’t get involved with him, nor with the others. I’ve always refrained from visiting their villages and being a guest in their homes, as some of the employers in the neighbourhood do. It always ends in trouble, it gets out of hand sooner or later. In general I’ve rather kept my distance in recent years, convinced that the business runs itself quite smoothly without me. Already there are many workers whose names I don’t know, what with such a turnover. The garage has become full of boys over the last few years, sometimes even children. The Arabs bring small boys with them, brothers, cousins, or just waifs from the villages. They are quiet and obedient, dragging the boxes of tools around, fetching keys, opening hoods, tightening brakes, wiping black handprints from the doors, changing stations on the radio. The Arabs love little personal servants like these, they like having somebody they can shout at, give orders to. It gives them a sense of importance and security. The more the garage grew in size, the more little boys ran about in it.
Once I asked Erlich, “Tell me, is this kindergarten costing me money?”
But he smiled, shook his head. “Don’t worry, they’re saving you tax, you’re profiting from them.”
Some of the boys were given the job of cleaning the garage, sweeping up, scrubbing the floor. The garage began to look clean and respectable. One day I was standing by myself in the yard, deep in thought, and suddenly somebody pushed a broom between my feet and said rudely, “Do you mind moving?” I looked down, a little Arab boy with a big broom, looking at me steadily and insolently. I felt a little stab of pain in my heart. I was reminded of Yigal, I don’t know why, something about those dark eyes.
“Who brought you here?” I asked him, wondering if he knew I was the boss.
“My cousin, Hamid.”
Hamid, of course. Every other man here is his cousin. It won’t be long before I discover that I’m related to him too. These Arabs, they don’t spare their children. They’d be better off at school than sweeping up the rubbish and picking up screws here.
“How old are you, boy?”
“Fourteen years and three months.”
“How is this? Didn’t you want to stay on at school?”
He blushed, in a panic, afraid I was going to throw him out. He started to mumble something about his Either, who wouldn’t let him … little liar.
And he went on sweeping around me. And suddenly I was moved, I put out my hand and lightly touched his tousled head, covered with dust from his work with the broom. This little Arab, my employee, what’s he thinking about? What’s his business? Where’s he from? What’s happening to him here? I’ll never know. He told me his name a moment ago and already I’ve forgotten it.
NA’IM
In the early days it was very interesting in the big garage. New faces all around me, coming and going, all kinds of Jews bringing their cars in, laughing and shouting. Some of the mechanics were Jewish bastards, some were local Arabs, corrupt as hell with their complicated jokes. Noise and confusion. On the walls in every corner there were pictures of naked girls, showing nearly everything, maddening, breath-taking, Jewish and non-Jewish blondes and brunettes, black women and redheads. Amazing. Unbelievable. Lying with eyes closed on new tyres, opening the doors of smart cars, resting tits and asses and long legs on engines or screws or sets of spark plugs. On the ass of one of these gorgeous chicks they’d drawn the whole year’s calendar, it was that big. These pictures drove me crazy. I was afraid to look at them and I couldn’t keep my eyes off them. Sometimes I got so hard it hurt. In the noise and the dirt among the cars and the workers I used to wander about in the first few weeks daydreaming. Several times my underpants got wet. In bed at night I was squeezed by desire, remembering the girls and not letting them go. Coming all over the place, a fountain of come I was. Leaping from one to the next, unwilling to do without any of them, kissing and burning and coming and getting horny again. In the morning I used to get up exhausted and pale and Mother and Father were worried about me. But then slowly I began to get used to the pictures and after a month I could stare at them indifferently, like at the other pictures on the wall, the two presidents, the live one and the dead one, and that old woman who’s the prime minister, all hanging there among the girls. I stopped getting excited.
At first I wasn’t really doing anything. Fetching tools for the mechanics and taking them back to the toolboxes, cleaning dirty fingermarks off the cars. I tried to keep close to Hamid but of course he didn’t need an assistant because he didn’t work on the actual cars, he stood at a workbench taking engines apart.
After a week they gave me a broom and a rag and a bucket and I spent all my time sweeping the floor, picking up old screws, spreading sawdust on patches of oil, it was my job to keep the garage clean. An impossible job and terribly boring. Everybody ordered me around, Arabs, Jews, anybody who felt like it. Even strangers who just happened to be passing. Fetch, boy, lift, boy, grab this, boy, clean that, boy. Anybody who felt like giving orders used to catch me and order me around. And they called me “boy” on purpose to annoy me. But I kept quiet, not wanting to argue. I was really fed up. I hated the work. I had no enthusiasm for anything, even the cars didn’t interest me. When will I get to be a mechanic, when will I learn something and what’s it all for anyway? Luckily the garage was so big I could disappear sometimes without being missed. I’d take the broom and looking at the floor I’d sweep and sweep towards the back exit until I was right outside the garage, go into the backyard of some empty house and sit down on a box watching the street, seeing children in school uniform going home with their school bags. So miserable. Thinking about the poems and stories they read and how I’m going to end up really dumb with this broom and these rusty screws. I’d cheer myself up a bit whispering a few lines from Bialik, once I knew so much of it by heart and now every day I remember less and less. In the end I’d get up and take the broom and start sweeping around me and slowly go back to the garage, still sweeping, going inside and mixing with the people, who hadn’t noticed that I’d gone or that I’d come back.