I was sure that prior to the accident Yonatan had been a musician. There was a hard black guitar case in the room and a black box that looked like an amp. There were posters of what must have been his favorite bands up on the walls. One stretch of wall was decorated with framed photos, but they weren’t family pictures or anything like that, they were just photos, not always clear, sometimes shadowy and blurry, all in black and white. I thought to myself that it would have been interesting to hear him play, this Yonatan.
I was jealous of people who could play music. When I was a kid I really wanted to learn how to play an instrument, and for a while my wish came true. An engineer who lived in the village had gone to study in Russia and had come home with a music teacher for a wife. The engineer had not found work and his Russian wife, who was known in the village as Sweeta, started offering piano lessons to the kids in the village. My mother sent me to her house every Wednesday and for six months I had a weekly one-hour lesson. Sweeta was happy with my progress and said that if I wanted to continue to develop I had to have a piano at home. It could be a used one, she said, or an organ would be okay, too, but I had to have something to practice on. Mom went to Petach Tikva especially and bought me a battery-operated keyboard. When I brought it over to Sweeta’s house, she said that it wasn’t an instrument at all, that it was a toy. She showed me how it played nursery rhymes. And it only had eight keys, which was useless, because I needed to practice playing with two hands. That was my last lesson. I told my mother, who didn’t understand why I had given up the piano, that the teacher had said I wasn’t good enough.
LIQUID FOOD
I took the jar of food out of the fridge and placed it on the bedside table. Pressing the button, I raised Yonatan’s bed to what I thought was a suitable angle. His expression never wavered, and his stare, which had been set on the ceiling, was now leveled at the desk opposite his bed. I brought a chair over to the side of the bed and looked at the clock. In a minute it would be eight p.m.
The procedure sounded so simple and natural when Osnat explained it. But when I touched his inert body, a shiver went through me. Maybe it really would have been easier if I had spoken to him, as Osnat had recommended, but back then I was not able to relate to that thing at all. I wasn’t sure if he could even hear or see. While pulling down his blanket I tried to avoid all bodily contact. I stretched my arms to their full length, keeping my distance, and with unsteady hands tried to tuck the paper napkin into the neck of his pajamas. I felt the heat of his body and my hands jerked back as if I’d touched a poisonous snake.
“You can’t know what they know,” Osnat had told me. “You can’t know what he feels. But we have to be as humane as possible and treat him as though he were fully aware of everything around him. You shouldn’t mention his condition and you shouldn’t say things like ‘poor thing’ or ‘he’ll never get better.’” I reminded myself to act naturally and, inhaling through my mouth, I straightened the napkin under his chin.
I scooped up a flat teaspoon of the gelatinous purple food, just as Osnat had shown me, and tried putting the spoon into his mouth. Nothing. He did not open his mouth at all and I wound up smearing the food across his lips and down his chin. I took a napkin from the drawer and cleaned his face. Then I put some more food on the spoon and tried to pry his mouth open with my other hand, using a thumb and finger on either side of his jaw, feeling his teeth through his skin, but his mouth remained shut. I was scared that he’d suddenly open his mouth and clamp down on my fingers but I reminded myself that if he bit me it would be considered a medical miracle and that everyone would be glad.
Using a lot more strength than I had anticipated, I finally managed to open his mouth and guide the spoon inside, but nothing happened. The food stayed on the spoon. I turned it over in his mouth and shook the food off onto his tongue. “Slide it all the way back,” Osnat had said. There was no movement whatsoever, no sign of swallowing. I pried his mouth farther open and looked inside. Just as I had thought. All the food remained exactly where I had left it. Nothing had been swallowed. What do you do with this thing?
I knew this was not for me. I should have refused the job. But I hadn’t, and now I had no choice. I was alone and there were tasks that had to be done. I slid the long spoon back into his mouth and moved the food back toward his throat. With my other hand I raised his chin in the air, forcing his head back in a movement that reminded me of my grandmother and the way she used to feed her chicks. I wondered if something had gone wrong, if his situation had somehow changed since I had arrived. Otherwise Osnat and Ayub would have told me that feeding him is one of the most difficult chores. I tried my system again — squeeze open his mouth, insert the spoon, deposit the food, raise his chin — and then again. It wasn’t easy or fast, but it worked. When the food was consumed, I moved on to the water substitute, employing the same technique. By the time the meal was over I realized that I had touched him without so much as a second thought and that a full hour had passed.
I removed the napkin and wiped his face with two wet cloths. Then I used the button on his bed to return him to a prone position. That was it. All I had left to do was to rotate him every few hours and to watch him fall asleep. “He goes to sleep right after the meal,” Osnat had said, “and he stays asleep till morning.”
But Yonatan did not fall asleep. His eyes remained open and fixed on the ceiling. I decided to flip him onto his side. It wasn’t difficult: with one hand on his shoulder and another on his hip, I tugged once and he was on his side, staring me in the face. I should have flipped him the other way, I thought, so that I wouldn’t have that incomprehensible look staring me in the face. I could have moved my chair over to the other side of the bed, but that wouldn’t have looked good. You have to be mindful of his feelings, I reminded myself. I stayed put, doing whatever I could to avoid his gaze. Every once in a while I looked back at him to see whether his eyes were still open. They were, hauntingly so, but more than anything else they simply testified to the fact that he was not asleep.
A sharp smell filled the room. It was nothing like the unventilated, medicinal scent I had encountered when I first came up to the attic. No one had mentioned this to me. Not Osnat and definitely not Ayub, that son of a bitch. I went over to the window and opened it all the way, trying to overcome my nausea and cursing myself and Wassim and Ayub and Osnat. Yonatan, there was no longer any doubt, had defecated in his bed. I considered calling Osnat and telling her that I was very sorry but that I would be leaving right away. Instead I found myself on the phone apologizing for bothering her at this hour and asking all too politely how I should handle the situation. “It’s very simple,” she said. “You take off the diaper, clean him up with some wipes, and put on a new diaper. Strange, that almost never happens at night.”
I tried to work on autopilot. I marched over to the bed and pulled down his blanket. His body was surprisingly robust and athletic, considering, and he wore what looked like rather expensive pajamas. I decided on two things: I would get this done, and I would quit. This would be a one-time thing. I’d stay through till the end of this awful night and then go back to my life in Beit Hanina. At this hour, Majdi and Wassim were probably home. What I wouldn’t give to be with them.