I return from the study and find him sitting in the kitchen. The blinds are closed, he’s drinking soup, she sits beside him, watching him.
Establishing himself among us –
He smiles at me apologetically, fear makes him hungry, he admits. He’s always been that way, and he scoops up the rest of the soup into his mouth.
It seems that he’s decided to spend the night here, if we don’t object. He’s prepared to sleep on the floor, or on the sofa, wherever we put him. It’s just that in his grandmother’s house there’s no radio, and the house is directly opposite the port, the classic target for a first attack. In the First World War they always attacked the ports first….
He turns to Asya, as if asking for confirmation. But she doesn’t respond, she looks anxiously at me.
There was something laughable about him, but something pathetic as well, like a lost child. He will spend the whole war in this house, I thought, without anger but with a kind of excitement, a feeling that anything was possible now. I kept my distance.
Nearly midnight. A phone call from Erlich, the old cashier at the garage. He’s in high spirits, informs me that he’s been called up. He starts to explain to me where the accounts are kept, what our bank balance is, how much is owed to us, what to do about the wages, you’d think he was going away to fight on the other side of the world. A fussy, tiresome old yeke, though not without humour. “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” I try to reassure him but he isn’t reassured. In financial matters he doesn’t trust me. Finally he announces that he’ll come into the garage himself tomorrow morning, he’s being posted not far away, near the refineries.
“They’re drafting the entire population … really …” I announced. They were sitting in the dark. “And what about you?” I turned to him, not meaning to imply anything.
But he started to mumble, he doesn’t know, obviously he has no unit to go to, it’s true that at the airport they gave him a certificate to take to an army depot within two weeks, but he had no intention of staying for two weeks, he hadn’t known then that his grandmother wasn’t dead but had only lost consciousness. He hopes there’ll be no problems about leaving the country …
“There will be,” snapped Dafi. She had been strangely silent since he came into the house. “Why shouldn’t there be? They’ll think you’re a deserter …”
And he burst out laughing, in the dark, I couldn’t see his face, he laughed and laughed, but when he realized that we weren’t laughing he stopped, got up from his chair, lit a cigarette and started pacing about.
“Wait a few more days,” said Asya, “maybe it’ll all be over.” I say nothing. Something in the tone of her voice fascinates me. The midnight news. Nothing new. Reports we’ve already heard. At ten to one the music starts, marching songs. “Let’s go to bed,” I say, but it’s a crazy night, how can anyone sleep? Dafi goes and shuts herself in her room. Asya draws the curtains in the study, switches on the light, makes up a bed for Gabriel. I take the transistor, undress, get into bed with the radio. The window is open. The door to the balcony is open. Radios whisper from all the dark houses. Asya is taking her time, I get up and go out into the passage. I see him standing half naked beside the door to the study and she’s talking to him in a whisper, excitedly. She sees me and breaks off at once. A few minutes later she comes into the bedroom, undresses quickly, lies down beside me.
“What’s going to happen?” I ask suddenly, referring to the war.
“For the time being he can stay here … do you mind?”
I look at her, she closes her eyes. I do the same. The radio whispers beside me, from time to time I wake, turn up the volume, put it to my ear, listen, and go back to sleep. In the house there’s a constant movement of bare feet. Dafi is the first to start pacing about, then there’s the sound of his footsteps, Asya gets out of bed and I hear her moving about, there are whispers, a mixture of fear and stifled desire. Sweetness mixed with distant blood and fire.
Suddenly weakness overcomes me –
I rise at first light. Asya and Dafi are asleep. From the study comes the sound of lively singing. Another last picture of him, engraved deep in my memory. He’s half sitting, half lying, a sheet over his head, the transistor under the sheet playing marching songs. Has he gone mad?
I touched him lightly. He pulled the sheet away, revealing his face, no sign of surprise, but his eyes still closed.
“Are they advancing? Eh? What’s happening there?”
He was wearing my old pyjama trousers. I stood beside him in the heavy silence that is mine, that I know, that I control, the silence that calms the people around me.
“You’d better go,” I said quietly, almost gently.
“Where?”
“To clarify your position … you may have problems leaving the country.”
Deep anxiety in his eyes. He’s cute, I thought, this lover, this poor shaken lover.
“Do you think they really need me … haven’t they got enough men to be going on with?”
“They won’t send you to the front … don’t worry, but you must get your documentation sorted out, show yourself willing.”
“Perhaps in a few more days … tomorrow …”
“No, go right now. This war may end suddenly and it’ll be too late, you’ll be in trouble …”
“The war may end suddenly?” He was amazed.
“Why not?”
Asya was standing behind me, listening to our conversation, bare-footed, her hair in a mess, her nightdress unbuttoned, forgetting herself completely.
I touched his bare shoulder. “Come and have something to eat, and make an early start, there’ll be crowds of people there today.”
He looked stunned, but he got up at once and dressed, and I went and dressed too. I lent him my shaving kit, he washed and came into the kitchen, I made breakfast for him and for Asya, who was pacing about nervously. The three of us ate in silence, bread and cheese, coffee and more coffee. It was six o’clock. The radio began to broadcast a morning prayer, and then the day’s chapter from the Bible.
He was most surprised, listening with close attention, with fear almost. He didn’t know that this is how the day’s broadcasting starts here.
“Is this because of the war?”
“No, it’s like this every day.” I smiled. He smiled back at me, sometimes he could be quite charming.
I went outside with him. The blue Morris was parked close behind my car, like a puppy clinging to its mother. I asked him to open the hood, I checked the oil, the fan belt, examined the battery. I told him to start the engine. The sound of the little old engine, vintage 1947, which over the years had developed an odd little whine. The heartbeat of a child, but a healthy child.
“It’s O.K.” I closed the hood carefully, smiled at him. He suddenly seemed more cheerful. There was a lot of traffic in the street for such an early hour.
“Have you got any money?”
He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Yes, it’s O.K.”
“If you return today, come here. You can still stay with us. If they detain you for any reason, don’t forget us. Keep in touch.”
He nodded, absently.
And a last picture engraved on my memory — his cheerful wave through the window as the car drew away down the slope.