He who was absolved of all guilt erased his anger. “Here, Nikon make this, is very expensive, I brought for Effi as present.”
We passed the enchanted object between us, a gift for Effi, not for me. His preference for Effi was immortalized.
Grandpa Lolek hadn’t meant it. He did prefer Effi, but hadn’t intended to insult one of his “like grandchildren” on the couch in his home, after a dark moon had melted away. There was no reason for tears, even though they almost burst from my eyes. (It was at that moment that I made up my mind: I would go to the Municipality on my own and find out who Katznelson Street was named after.) In any case, the bestowal of the Nikon upon Effi was unplanned, and it was not the product of generosity. An hour earlier the camera had still sat in a display window at Carmel Center, scanning with a shuttered eye the passersby who did not buy it because it was too expensive, who only lingered briefly, eye to eye, to exercise their longing, to covet, to finally glance askance at a cheaper model displayed two shelves below. The look in their eyes changed — this was something they could afford — and they gazed at the plain model with the loathing of compromise, as if to say, “We’re doing you a favor.” Eyes yearned, calculated, went into the store to buy the simpler models. Two gentleman stood opposite the camera, ignoring the display window, busy doing business. The one wondered quietly whether the other was capable of meeting his financial obligations — he’d been warned against doing business with him. The other, dressed in finery, a hero of Monte Cassino with blue metallic eyes, sensed the man’s doubts and feared the transaction would fall through. He had to make a quick impression. His look fell on the camera in the display window. He scanned the price. Panic. Contemplation. Vacillation. Decision. The hero of Monte Cassino walked into the store and came out with the Nikon in hand, explaining to his interlocutor, “This I bought for Effi, so it will make her happy. She is like my granddaughter, Effi.” This time the like was intended to clarify that he gave his like relatives expensive gifts without a moment’s hesitation. Imagine, then, what gifts he must give his real relatives. Imagine how financially secure he must be.
“Thanks, but what am I supposed to do with a camera?” Effi asked. And a minute later, “Oh well, stand up and pose, we’ll give it a try.” And we stood up.
At first she photographed everything she came across, then landscapes on Saturday hikes, and finally family affairs. This blatant invasion of Grandpa Lolek’s domain came after he had been defeated by Brandy in the fight to reach the Moshe Pole, and after the family members had begun, one by one, to buy small, modest cars, doing away with hegemony of the Vauxhall once and for all. The battle was fought through two weddings and one briss. Finally, a moderate victory was achieved because:
Effi took nice pictures.
She didn’t ask for payment.
Grandpa Lolek was in her pictures.
The latter was an advantage praised even by the loser. In almost all of Effi’s pictures stood a tall, serious man, a hero of Monte Cassino, and his look at the lens took into account generations to come, who would ask, who is that? The masculine one, standing in his finest suit?
Effi did not like spontaneous photographs. She preferred the formal kind, arranging people like bowling pins. One click and they were dismissed. Then, “No, actually, stand that way again, it may not have come out well.” Smiles were arranged in rows, lips frozen. At weddings, parties, everywhere. Rows, lines. Little trapeze shapes with the adults in the back row, gathering with-gentle-hands-on-shoulders the children in the front row. It was the beginning of the photography era. Effi with a camera around her neck, always arranging people. As soon as people saw her, they would arrange themselves in rows. Women would reach up to their hair, men — down to their flies. They smiled when they saw her; you never knew. Always flashes, always instructions. In winter she blended with the lightening. In summer — the heat, the flies. “Stand, I’ll take a picture.” “Smile now.” They built her a fully equipped dark-room with chemicals that only two or three years earlier we would have tried to drink. Now she was careful, gave warnings, behaved responsibly, sealed the bottles, made labels with thick markers, separated containers.
Grandpa Lolek’s passing on of the photography obsession and the natural effects of age began to come between us. Effi signed up for a photography course, and I for an amateur radio course (which was a little too amateur for my taste). She graduated to a photography course for gifted children. I responded by winning an essay competition on Jerusalem. The distancing continued, became more sophisticated, swept along deposits of grudges and hostility. Substances long ago fixed into the river banks were swept along, renewing forgotten arguments. At the apex of the route — the apogee — Effi’s photographs were accepted by Maariv Lanoar magazine. My turn. I was appointed head of a ship in my seafaring course (salt water when falling overboard at the port, filthy water when falling in at the mouth of the Kishon River). That wasn’t enough. In a desperate step I defected from Tarbut encyclopedia and switched to the Hebrew Encyclopedia. I began at “a cappella” and started reading.
Then we started to divide our assets. Effi demanded the four-part poster of Yehoram Gaon, which we had both labored to compile. I demanded that she apologize for her comments about Mike Brandt.
No.
Me neither then.
The poster stayed with me, a hostage for an apology never given.
It had started two years previously, when news came that Mike Brandt had committed suicide in Paris. I was overcome with grief. He was from Haifa, one of ours, and had become a famous singer in France and in the world. Then suddenly they said he had jumped out of a window, and despite all his success in Paris it was decided that he would be buried here in Haifa, in the same cemetery where Aunt Zusa owned a plot. Effi said, “So what?” and showed no understanding. I was used to national grief, when everyone was sad for a lot of people, but this time I felt a new sadness, only for Mike Brandt, the way I felt when I read in the encyclopedia about Katznelson the poet, the Katznelson for whom we had named the neighborhood street. It said that he had managed to escape the Warsaw ghetto and get to Paris, and there he sat, a brand snatched from the burning fire, lamenting his perished wife and children. He wrote poems, expressed hope — if only he had died with them. And it was this prayer that was heard, of all the prayers uttered in all those years all over the world. A train came especially to take him from Paris to Auschwitz, to the gas chambers. A whole train for one weeping Jew, while war was raging and trains were an expensive commodity.
I thought about Katznelson when they brought Mike Brandt back here. It was a sorrow that Effi could not comprehend. We fought, with hatred. We found more and more things to divvy up. We halved joint collections and erased each other from important lists. We left no detail in our lives that did not bear the stamp, “Inspected. Proper procedures followed.” We even divided the grandparents, all of whom had been tirelessly collected under the Law of Compression. Borders were demarcated. Partitions that had previously symbolized mere preferences were lined with barbed wire fences: No Entry. Grandpa Lolek and Grandpa Weil went to Effi. Grandpa Menashe to me. Grandma Eva was divvied up as an afterthought. Grandpa Yosef was undecided. It seemed that if there had to be a decision, Grandpa Yosef would prefer me, because of the scholarliness. But we found Grandpa Yosef high above territorial borders, even during this nationalistic frenzy of the separation of grandparents. Grandpa Yosef remained the only thing that would still connect us.