Their stories collect and grow sharper. They tie into one another. I write and go back to ask questions, and write some more. Not infrequently, their memory betrays me. Something is related, but when I ask a question about it the next day, it’s no longer clear — did it happen or didn’t it? And when? With every passing day something is lost. Memory is like plaster — when you touch it, it crumbles. I struggle to leave as much as possible intact. Every evening at home the documentation continues like a stubborn battle. Grandpa Yosef’s rains knock on the windows to remind me that somewhere out there another battle is raging. Grandpa Yosef fights against time. I pore over the testimonies, sometimes only understanding what I’ve written when I reread it at night. Then, sometimes, I understand their happiness — yes, it is happiness that I see erupting from them. They sit with me, unburdening themselves of massive gourds of memory, the gourds lying at an angle on the earth (thin stalks, unbelievably thin, nourish the huge resting bodies through connections forged among the leaves, into the earth, all the way far down and deep). They tell their stories, transferring their words to my notes, and stand back, leaving me to fight alone, to find order, to find the way, to document. (I combat memory while Grandpa Yosef battles time. We are both about to lose, but both as happy as victors.)
In Grandpa Yosef’s house, meanwhile, the battle has intensified and reached a critical stage. Time will either turn back or not — the next few days will tell.
Pots simmer on the stove, the aromas of spices are absorbed into the walls. Grandpa Lolek has been cured despite himself; with food, with rest, with soft walks to the end of Katznelson, with the renewal of debtism, with slow appearances at court, with futile debates consisting mostly of the clerks’ affection for him, pats on his shoulder and good wishes. Grandpa Yosef, constantly at Grandpa Lolek’s side, manages the patient, guards him, and keeps a curious watch on events at the courthouse, consoling the neglected plaintiff. Sometimes, for Grandpa Lolek’s and the car’s sake, I take them for a spin in the 1970 Vauxhall. We circle the neighborhood, driving in rings of streets that grow longer and wider, the Vauxhall like a great centrifuge, accelerating more and more, producing power, until Grandpa Yosef is finally satisfied and announces, “Home, now.”
On the surface, there is tranquility and responsibility in all his deeds. But the battle is raging. Every day he phones, and phones again, and forgets he has already phoned. He talks with me about Grandpa Lolek, boasting about the pounds he’s gained. He invites Effi to give Grandpa Lolek a medical examination, demanding—“Come, weigh him.” He talks with relatives, with friends, with all sorts of people he summons in no particular order, again and again, and it’s no wonder that when the phone bill arrives, he is astounded and angry. Anger also erupts over the electricity and water bills (the flames fanned by Grandpa Lolek’s objective estimation, “You’re being robbed”) and Grandpa Yosef, in a Caribbean mood, goes to enquire. The clerks welcome him warmly, who has he come for this time? But instead they are assailed by his wrath, lasting bitterness and furious demands, at the end of which Grandpa Yosef leaves with a slight look of shame on his face.
We believed he was losing. There were still only twenty-four hours in a day, and the hours were still only sixty minutes long. January proceeded at its dreary rate. Most of the time, the weather was still, but sometimes, especially at night, there would be a quick flash of lightning and a bolt of thunder that made the windows shudder and woke us, and we would wonder for a moment if perhaps Time was trying to overcompensate for its disgrace. November seemed to have returned, and even October. This downpour wasn’t only January rain — everything that had been held back in November was now finally being added to the quota. In the mornings we would smile sheepishly. And then one day at the market, there was a sudden whiff of guavas. Sammy shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know how this is possible. Guavas in January? I heard they already have melons in the West Bank, and that shouldn’t even happen in March.”
Time’s prophesying began to bother us. We noticed that lightning would strike, and only the next day would any thunder roll through the sky, born simply from itself.
The battle had reached its height. We were afraid for the loser’s health — be it Grandpa Yosef’s or Time’s. We expressed our concern. Wasn’t the care-giving exhausting him? Grandpa Yosef brushed off our worries. Artless and calm, entirely devoted to expediting the recovery, he found our questions mystifying. He used Anat as an alibi — she was doing half the work, after all, and besides, Grandpa Lolek was getting easier every day. He was already independent, self-sufficient. Why would it be difficult?
Inside, his subconscious forced him to keep working. Don’t stop. There are things to do, plans to make, food to cook. Later — it will be heaven, with Feiga and Moshe. Grandpa Yosef toiled from morning to night (as if there were no Grandpa Lolek at the tail-end of his recovery, silently gaining weight; as if he was in fact fighting for his life), and from time to time, with triple and quadruple measures of cunning, he would remember his brief tourist days and start talking. Completely relaxed, chatting agreeably, lost in the sweet forests of his memory.
“They have, in the Caribbean, houses with pink shutters and lovely red roof-tops, and everything there is modest, and there are luscious plants. The children run around the streets with no worries, and the ocean is so clear. At sundown, red painted boats cast blue nets and the fishermen tug this way and that, pulling out stingrays and crabs from the sea, and shrimp and moonfish. The wooden doors are left ajar, and fine artisans engage in their labors for all to see. Women in pure white dresses patiently embroider, and their stores are so bright that it’s blinding. In the market, everything is bustling, all the wares are out on display. Spotted fish and quivering seafood. Lemon-yellow bananas and other, nameless fruits. Strike them with your knife and their juice drips out, the aroma hitting your nostrils.”
Grandpa Yosef furtively crawled towards his destination, outflanking time, ablaze, and out in the open he fried and cooked and rolled and whipped. Excited by the exotically named “Princess of the Nile”—which was in fact a simple Nile perch — he served it on fancy platters and fine dishes, garnished with chopped cilantro and nuts. Scattering slivered almonds as Grandpa Lolek looked on, he would comment, “Of course, I would prefer to fry it in palm oil.”
He offered us a taste of the fish, dreamily reminiscing about the Caribbean as he handed out dishes. “There are restaurants scattered everywhere there, and cheerfully blazing fires. Fires in pits and fires under pots, and food wrapped in leaves and baked on coals. And I have not yet spoken of the little forests, and the lakes, and the light blue bays, and the coral reefs. The whole place is a Garden of Eden. As if there is not and never has been any suffering there.”
We reminded him that much of the Caribbean population was descended from slaves led shackled onto ships, and that the islands’ indigenous peoples had been completely eradicated. There was suffering there too. Grandpa Yosef mumbled, “Still…The quiet, the fruit,” and continued his secret struggle. He and his adversary squeezed into a little arena, grasped each other’s arms and pushed.
The decisive moment came unexpectedly on a simple February evening. Grandpa Lolek was sitting in the living room after dinner. He wiped his lips with the napkin Grandpa Yosef handed him, sighed a satisfied sigh and declared, “I think, time is for me to go home.”
And for one tiny moment that was multiplied to the power of eternity, composed entirely of fragments of the present and fragments of the past and fragments of the future, standing ever-so-briefly on the scales of time to become present tense, the world froze. The second passed and it was followed by a new one. Everything continued as usual. Time went on its way. Grandpa Yosef had lost. He carefully packed up Grandpa Lolek’s belongings. He emptied the closets, the drawers, the shelves. He left his home suitable for a single inhabitant.