Feeling guilty and upset she got into the Jacuzzi, and dripped in neroli oil, which had a label on it with writing in an unfamiliar hand, “For severe depression and healing wounds.” The thirty-six shopping bags had really cost a lot of money, she said to herself, conscience stricken. But never mind, it was because of the grief.
AFTER THE JACUZZI, Lirit moved the black bags onto the porch of the triplex, in case her father suddenly showed up and asked what they were. She wouldn’t have the courage to tell him the truth, and if he thought that she had started to get rid of her mother’s clothes, he might be angry.
In any case he wasn’t in such great shape at the moment; there was no point in getting into an argument with him now.
A few hours after the darkness deepened, and under its cover, she stood and threw the bags full of her old clothes off the porch, and they landed on the evergreen vegetation of the place. Afterward she went downstairs, picked them up one by one, and loaded them into the car.
Lirit didn’t have far to drive before she found, in a neighborhood next to Telba-North, a collection bin for the needy, as noted on the side in letters clearly visible during the day, but invisible in the dark. For a long time she stood there and hoisted the big bags into the bin, until it was full to overflowing and she had to cram them in by force. She left the last bag by the side of the bin, and drove away.
She called Inquiries for the number of the electronic answering service of arrivals and departures at Ben-Gurion Airport, and wrote down all the arrival times of the big airlines that seemed reasonable to her.
PART III
1
GRUBER’S FLIGHT TO NEW YORK (JFK), AND FROM THERE TO Israel by El Al, was supposed to depart from Ithaca at six in the morning. At four forty-five Bahat woke him up, full of a joy the likes of which she had not known for a long time. A new era was opening. She was smartly dressed and made up, as if she was going out on a date, not driving to the quaint Ithaca airport.
So intense was her desire for Gruber to be gone that if she could have she would have flown him as far as Cyprus herself. Anything further than that she considered too dangerous.
She went up to the guest room where the guest was sleeping. The door was slightly ajar. She went in and called his name three or four times. When he didn’t answer she came closer to the bed and even shook him, until he opened red eyes and said,
“Leave me alone, Bahat. Let me sleep.”
“But your plane leaves at six. You have to go to the airport now. Come on, your suitcase is already in the trunk, I packed it myself. You fell asleep with your clothes on, so just get up and freshen yourself up and let’s go. I found you a new toothbrush because I already packed yours.”
“Five more minutes,” said Gruber and went back to sleep.
Five minutes passed, and the story repeated itself until in the end Gruber sat up in bed with his eyes closed and sighed bitterly. Bahat thought he was groaning in pain and her heart went out to him.
“My dear,” she said gently, “we undergo hard things in our lives. But we have to carry on. You must get up,” she bent over him. “You have responsibilities.”
“Yes, but there’s no funeral, right? So I’ll leave on the next flight. It isn’t a tragedy. You know why?” He stood up, his eyes still closed, and his clothes smelling of alcohol, sweat, and other smells banned by international conventions. “Because the tragedy has already happened. The tragedy is behind us.”
“You have a responsibility to your children to be united with them in your grief. To seclude yourselves.”
“What business is it of yours in the first place?” asked Gruber in a kind of illumination and he opened his eyes for a minute. “Where do you get off telling me to seclude myself. Why should anybody in the world tell me how to behave in a time of trouble? What’s important is where I can go on sleeping now. All the bedclothes are stinking. I need fresh clothes. I sweated like a pig last night.”
“If you like I’ll change your bedclothes right now,” said Bahat on her way out of the room.
“Why change the bedclothes!” Gruber called after her. “Just bring me some dry tracksuit. And hurry up, I don’t want to wake up, or I won’t be able to get back to sleep.” He sat down and closed his eyes again.
“Okay,” said Bahat and hurried to the walk-in closet. She still didn’t get where the Israeli was going with this, or maybe he was simply broken up and he wasn’t going anywhere. She came back with an Adidas tracksuit. Gruber was already waiting for her half naked, having thrown his dirty shirt onto the floor like a boy.
“Give it to me,” he said. He put on the tracksuit, and went back to sleep.
Bahat thought it was a question of aftereffect and delayed reaction. At the most, he would miss this flight and leave tomorrow. The airport was open tomorrow too. It wasn’t the end of the world. Nevertheless, she wasn’t cut out for decadent enigmas, but for charging ahead.
She sat down in the living room and waited. There was nothing more for her to do. There was no longer any need or point to escaping into the spider research. She went to her Jewish bookshelf and took down a volume of the Talmud and tried to read it, but she had zero focus.
At one o’clock in the afternoon, Irad came downstairs and apologized profusely. He said that he was simply no longer capable of distinguishing between what was important and what wasn’t important. Bahat said that it was only human to behave strangely in situations of distress, and that it was impossible to expect everyone to be at their best every day, what he had done yesterday was enough, he was definitely head and shoulders above the average person.
She put his coffee down in front of him.
“How about a snack? Something sweet?” she asked.
“No thank you,” he replied, and after a minute he said:
“I’ve come to a conclusion.”
“Yes?” asked Bahat curiously.
“I’m not going back to Israel. At least not soon. I need more time before I go back there. I’m staying here in the meantime, if you don’t mind. I really like your bedroom and the direction of the view; it faces east, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s change, just for a few days. You get the morning sun. I don’t want to get rickets. My room doesn’t have a serious window.”
Bahat wanted to react to the criticism and tell him that she didn’t see any need for enlarging the window in the guest room since she hardly had any guests, and certainly not for long enough to make them worry about the shortcomings of the room.
“I’d like to stay in your room for a few days,” said Gruber, “and for you to sleep in the room you gave me. Just for a few days. .”
“But your children, and the terror suit project — what do you call it — the TESU.”
“My children,” he said and wrung his hands. “They have already received the blow. And now they’re ready to absorb the next one. I won’t let them know. They’ll understand for themselves. This way they’ll get it into their heads gradually. Not in a boom. I won’t answer the phone, and you’ll say that I’ve gone and you don’t know where. No,” he paused, “that’s too dramatic, I will speak to them. If they ring, I’ll talk to them.”
“And the project?”
“Last night I sent the defense minister an email. That there’s news, there’s a breakthrough, and the critics and slanderers can shut their mouths. I didn’t go into detail, so he wouldn’t take the credit at my expense. I said I was on my way. That doesn’t mean I have to be there to kowtow to him in two days’ time. Let him crawl a bit himself. There’s no question about it, Bahat, it’s a great achievement.”