— No. I didn’t mean to go any farther.
— Of course, Mother. How could you even think it? I thought I’d stand quietly by the door for a minute and step back out again without being noticed — assuming, that is, that there was anyone in there to notice me. But the apartment was so exactly like the night before, just as dark and overheated and quiet, that I began to wonder: what is going on here? Is it happening all over again or am I traveling backward in time? I was getting to be too contrary for my own good, because this time I was sure that he had really gone and done it — and I had to give him credit, Mother, for being civilized enough to turn off the lights and do it in the dark…
— Good God, no, Mother, why would I want to frighten you? What for? I’m just telling you my thoughts. I hadn’t seen anything yet, and though I knew the apartment by now, my eyes were still getting used to the dark and I was just beginning to make out familiar objects, like the telephone in the living room next to the figurine of the horse, or the row of little Greek urns. I could see as far as the closed door of the grandmother’s room, and I remember thinking, Mother, all right, Hagar, this is the time if you feel like it to let out one of those screams, you know, those blood-curdling screams that people go to the movies to hear, except that this isn’t a movie, it’s not even a book, and no one will hear it or share it with you, you’ll be screaming purely for your own pleasure, purely for your own terror, so what’s the point? As long as you’re here anyway, and there are witnesses who have seen you, which means that you’re sure to be investigated, you may as well know what to answer, so why don’t you go see what’s happened… And so I began inching my way down the hallway, still in the dark, Mother, because I didn’t want to see the full horror, just its shadow, although plenty of people are more frightened of shadows than of what casts them, and as soon as I opened the door I saw that the room, which I had left neat and orderly in the morning, was…
— No, listen! Listen. You have to…
— No, you have to. You can’t just keep saying I imagined it all and leave me with this story that’s overwhelming me so I can’t breathe, Mother, because the room looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane, as if some madman had run amuck there, attacking the bed and ripping the sheets and throwing around old clothes and old papers and pictures. And this time too, Mother, like in one of those recurring nightmares, the little scaffold was set up again: the blinds were shut tight, the blinds box was open with the belt hanging from the rod and knotted in a noose at one end, and even the stool was back in place. It was a repeat performance. Maybe, I thought, he put it on every night to rehearse his own death until it became so obvious and convincing that he could stop fighting it… and then, Mother, for the first time I felt so sorry for him that I really wanted to help, so that instead of walking away from that scene, which — you’re perfectly right — was much too private and intimate for me to have any business being there, I wanted to work my way deeper into it, to keep moving in that contrary direction that was pulling me like a magnet, and so I walked down the hallway to the back of the apartment, to this little bathroom off the kitchen, because I thought that if everything was happening again, he was probably in there washing himself as part of his suicide exercises…
— I’m glad I finally got a laugh out of you.
— Yes, Mother, it was definitely funny, my walking around that dark apartment like some kind of sleepwalker so as to find him and talk him out of this suicidal frenzy he was in. I would have broken down the bathroom door too, but it already was open, as was a door behind it that led to this little rear terrace that I hadn’t noticed before — and there, on the terrace, which was cluttered with all kinds of brooms and buckets and what-not, was my suicidal Mr. Mani in his big, heavy overcoat looking more like a ball or a closet than a man, peacefully smoking a cigarette in the fresh air beneath this sky that had suddenly cleared and even had stars in it, so absorbed in himself that he didn’t even notice me come in. I was still wondering how to let him know I was there when suddenly he turned around — and all at once, Mother, he went into the most terrible shock. The cigarette fell from his mouth and he let out this strange, painful cry as if he too were in some movie or book and the director had asked him to give it his all. Right away, though, he realized who I was and pulled himself together. He even laughed and tried making a joke of it and said, “Good God Almighty, don’t tell me it’s you again! You’re really something! I’ve never seen anyone so stubborn. Just tell me this, though: how in hell did you get into this apartment? Did you steal the key this morning when you left?”
— Yes, but not in anger, Mother. He was perfectly good-natured, as though he were secretly happy that I had come to save him again. I began to mumble something about the neighbor who all but made me enter his apartment, and right away he said, “Yes, that Mrs. Shapiro, she’s always worrying…” There was this vague resentment in his voice, as if Mrs. Shapiro took so many liberties he wasn’t even sure what they were, and then calmly — he was still standing on the terrace — he began talking about the snow, as though trying to convince the two of us that that was what had brought me back to Jerusalem, that I wanted to see it while it still was there, because the weather was clearing, and cold as it was, it wasn’t cold enough to keep the snow from melting. Well, Mother, when I saw him all squirming and embarrassed like that I felt so weak myself that instead of confronting him with the horrible truth of what I had seen and understood, I began to murmur something about the snow too, to which I added that I really had come back for Efi’s sake, because I wanted to go to the unveiling in his place…
— Yes, that’s just what I said. I didn’t want him to guess that I had been following him around to keep him from killing himself. At first he looked very surprised, as if he had forgotten all about the unveiling… and in fact, if he had really meant to die that night he couldn’t have been planning on going to it, since the dead don’t attend ceremonies for the dead. Gradually, though, the idea seemed to please him. Maybe he really wanted to believe that that was the reason I had crashed his apartment again. Anyway, he bowed his head with this sort of doleful acknowledgment and only said with a strange smile that it was a shame I wasn’t a man, because he needed ten men for the cemetery, without them he couldn’t say the mourner’s prayer…
— It would seem so.
— Yes, it’s very odd… you would think it was this intimate thing that you said whenever you felt like it, but that isn’t the case at all. He even tried explaining it to me… but suddenly — he was talking about it and I was looking out at that field by the old leper hospital, which was covered with these white splotches of snow — suddenly he said something, Mother, I don’t remember what, that affected me so that I got this big lump in my throat and burst into tears, don’t ask me why, right there on that little terrace between the brooms and the laundry rack…
— Yes, real tears. They came from deep down and kept coming. I couldn’t stop them even though I knew they were making me look ridiculous. He didn’t say a word, though. He just stood there listening to me cry and calmly smoking another cigarette, as if I were getting what I deserved for hounding him and intruding on him…
— No, Mother. He was not right.
— No, he was not, and neither are you. Because what you think of as presumption, or even total irresponsibility, was simply my duty, Mother, a duty that was being spun out of me like the thin web of a spider…
— The spider inside me right now.
— The one made by the formula.
— That’s what we learned in school about the development of the embryo…