The stink of a place that hasn’t been aired for years, spiders’ webs tickled my face. Slowly my eyes got used to the dark. A man’s clothes were scattered on the bed, there was a heap of old socks in a corner. The door of the room was closed. I opened it and found myself in a little corridor. I opened another door and went into a kitchen that was big but dirty, full of pans and sacks. Something was cooking on a low flame. I began to panic. There was somebody here. I went out of the kitchen in a hurry and opened another door, it was a storeroom, I opened another door that was the toilet, another door that was the bathroom, another door led onto the balcony, bringing me out again into the night, the sea was close by, quite a different view.
I was baffled. Everything looked old and neglected. There wouldn’t be much loot here. I tried another door and it was a big room with a bed in the middle and on the bed there was something wrapped in a blanket, like an old woman lying there. I went out of there and at last I found the main door. The lock was broken. Somebody had beaten us to it. The bolts were fastened. I pulled them back. Adam was waiting outside, smiling, he came in quickly, closed the door behind him and switched on the lights.
“The bolts were fastened.”
“The bolts?” He couldn’t believe his ears.
“It looks like your friend has come back.”
“What?”
But at that moment one of the doors opened and an old lady, small and plump and wearing a nightdress even crazier than my pyjamas, came out, looking at us. She stood there not saying anything, not a bit frightened. I saw right away that she could tell I was an Arab.
Now I really wanted to run away. I’d had enough of this night job that still might end in murder. I’m only a kid, I wanted to shout, even if I have finished school, he just doesn’t see that.
But the strange thing is that neither of them was a bit scared. The opposite, they smiled pleasantly.
“I see you have begun collaborating in housebreaking.”
He bowed.
“Mrs. Ermozo … grandmother of Gabriel Arditi … correct?”
“That being so, are you the bearded man?”
“The bearded man?” He was so surprised you’d think he’d never had a beard.
“Where is Gabriel?”
“I am always looking for him.”
“Then he really has come back.”
“Certainly.”
“Where is he?”
“That’s the question I ask myself all the time.”
They talked quietly, without fear. There was a silence. They were both excited. Suddenly they both spoke at once.
She said, “But why on earth should you be looking for him?”
He said, “When did you come back from the hospital?”
“I came home yesterday.”
“But I thought you had lost consciousness.”
“I found it again.”
VEDUCHA
And how did this begin? With the smell of a market. Yes, with the smell of a market. A long time now I have been saying, what do you smell? What is it? And then I understand, the smell of the market in the Old City. Smell of Arabs, smell of tomatoes, green onions and eggplants, smell of roast meat spluttering over the fire and smell of baskets, fresh hay, smell of rain too. And after the smells come the voices, little sounds, muffled, but I’m dragging myself up out of the well, clutching at Grandma’s skirt, Grandma Veducha, wrapped in a black scarf, erect and tall, walking about the dim alleys tapping with a long cane, her face white and mist floating among the domes. I jump from puddle to puddle looking up into the faces of the Arabs with their brown cloaks. On the churches, mosques and synagogues is a layer of white wool, a fall of snow, and I want to show myself to Grandma but she takes no notice, her face very pale, looking for something all the time, her basket still empty, but not stopping. I tug at her cane, wanting to stop her beside a sweet seller, but she pushes me away, walks on, from alley to alley, passing by the Western Wall as it used to be, old and small, the houses closing it in, climbing up to the Jewish quarter by steep and twisting steps, this must be before the War of Independence and I am full of wonder, for even when I was small I had the mind of an old woman. Everything isn’t in ruins yet. But Grandma pays no attention to me, it’s as if by chance that I come to be clinging at her skirt. From time to time she goes to one of the stalls, to finger a small tomato, to sniff an eggplant, grumbling in Arabic to the traders who laugh. Asking questions but buying nothing. Suddenly I understand, it’s not vegetables she’s looking for but a person. Arab? Jew? Armenian? And then I start to cry, from weariness, from the cold, from the mist, I’m very thirsty but Grandma doesn’t hear me, or if she hears me she doesn’t care, it’s like walking with a corpse. I’ve irritated her with my crying. And the bells start to ring and there’s a light rain falling, the sound of gunfire, people running, Grandma is hurrying too, laying about her with the cane to clear a path, striking at the heads of the Arabs who run before her shouting, and in the confusion she slips away from me, her dress slips out of my hand, and I’m still whimpering, not in the alley but in the corridor of a house, weeping softly, not the weeping of a child but the stifled weeping of an old woman, melting in tears. But I’m not unhappy, on the contrary, such pleasure, through my tears I am free of something from which I should have parted long ago, the world becomes lighter. Then I open my eyes, seeing the window beside the bed a little open, a black night and rain falling outside, heavy rain but very quiet, as if it doesn’t reach the ground but just hovers. And it’s cold but the mist has gone, I notice this at once, the mist that all the time has covered everything — gone.
I rose from the bed and drank a cup of water.
Still weeping –
Later they told me that for a day and a half I had wept without pause and the people around me were most concerned, they held my hand, caressed me, did not understand. This is how it began, this how consciousness returned. Only consciousness? More. The light itself. More light than I thought existed. Still consciousness without knowledge. Illumined consciousness, slowly breaking out, opening up. At noon on the second day I stopped crying as if the crying machine had broken. And when the nurse brought my lunch I knew already what they did not yet know. I have returned. I am here. I can remember it all. Everything is ready. All that is missing is my name. Someone has only to remind me of my name and the rest will fall into place. I smiled at the dusky nurse and she smiled back, a little scared and a little astonished to find me smiling now and no longer weeping.
I said to her, “What is your name, my child?” and she told me. “And what is my name?” I asked. “Your name?” She was utterly bewildered, thought I was playing games with her. “Your name …?” and she came closer to the bed, searching for a piece of paper down there among the latticework, glancing at it and saying in a shy whisper, “It says here Veducha Ermozo.”