She works full-time in my school, teaching history in the upper grades, preparing three senior classes for the matriculation exam. On her worktable there are always piles of homework and test papers. All day she’s correcting papers. I don’t envy her pupils. She gets a real kick out of writing “Not good enough” in red pencil at eleven o’clock at night.
But she doesn’t spare herself either, she too is always writing tests and projects. She hasn’t finished studying yet, and she never intends to finish. She’s always running off to the university, to seminars, public lectures, teachers’ conventions. She’s registered for a doctorate, writing essays, being tested.
A woman forty-five years old, with a bird’s face, sharp but delicate, lovely eyes. No make-up on principle, there are streaks of grey in her tied-back hair, but she won’t dye it on principle. She likes clothes that are out of fashion, broad and absurdly long skirts, dark woollen dresses with a monastic look about them, flat-heeled shoes. With her lovely long legs she could make herself look really attractive, but she’s not interested in distracting people from their important business just for the pleasure of looking at her. That’s a principle too.
We live here according to a number of principles.
For example, not to employ a maid, because it isn’t reasonable that outsiders should clean our house and cook our meals, even in return for wages. So Mommy does the housework as well, energetically and aggressively.
Is there any house where the floor is washed at nine o’clock in the evening? Yes, ours. Daddy and I are sitting in front of the TV relaxing in armchairs and enjoying this bald man Kojak after the depressing news and she suddenly appears, wearing an apron, with a rag and a bucket, and orders us to lift up our feet so she can wash the floor beneath us. Working quietly but with a sort of restrained ferocity, not asking for help and not getting it either, bending down to scrub the floor.
“A revolutionary woman,” Daddy once said with a laugh, and I laughed too, even if I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant.
When she cooks it’s for several days at a time. At ten o’clock at night she comes home from a teachers’ meeting, goes into the kitchen, takes a big saucepan, slices up two chickens and cooks them. Two weeks’ food for the family. Lucky for her she’s only got one daughter who doesn’t much like the food she cooks.
In the morning, when I go into the kitchen for breakfast, I have to pick my way between test papers of pupils of the eighth grade (which of course I’m forbidden to touch or to look at) and headless fish dipped in flour and stuffed with onion, ready to be fried for supper. Such efficiency.
No wonder she suddenly stops working and falls fast asleep at eight o’clock, most of all she likes to sleep in front of the TV screen. In the armchair, all curled up. On the TV there’s a gun fight and she sleeps peacefully for an hour, two hours. Until Daddy wakes her, to get up and go to bed. She opens her eyes, rouses herself a bit and goes to correct exam papers. Sometimes we try to help her with the housework, even I make an effort, but by the time I’ve picked up a cup, or washed a spoon, the work’s all done. We simply have different rhythms, the two of us.
So in principle I’m on his side, even though there’s something a bit reserved and primitive about him. He hardly ever talks. Wanders about in overalls and with dirty hands. At least that beard of his is something remarkable, growing wild, making him look like an ancient prophet or an artist. Something special, not like all the others, not like a labourer anyway. When I was at the primary school I was ashamed because he didn’t look like all the others. When they asked me “What does your Daddy do?” I used to say innocently “Daddy works in a garage,” and at once I felt that they were a bit disappointed. Then I started saying “My Daddy has a factory.” “What kind of a factory?” they’d ask. “A garage” I said and then they’d explain that a garage isn’t a factory. Then I used to say “My Daddy has a big garage” because it really was a very big garage. Once during the vacation I went down there with Tali and Osnat and they were amazed to see all the cars standing there, and the dozens of workers rushing about. A hive of activity.
But then I thought, oh, to hell with it, why should I need to apologize, why add “big,” as if I’m defending him. And I used to say simply “Daddy has a garage,” and when somebody particularly irritated me with this question I used to say “My Daddy is a garage hand” and look him full in the eyes, enjoying his astonishment. Because in our class most of the pupils’ parents are professors at the Technion or the university, architects, scientists, executives in major companies, army officers.
And what’s wrong with a garage? Not only are we never without a car, we’re the only family with two cars, some of the children in the class don’t even have one car at home. And Daddy has a lot of money too, though you don’t see much evidence of it at home. This is something that I’ve realized in the last few months. I don’t think even Mommy realizes how much money Daddy’s got. For all her education it seems there are some things that just aren’t clear to her.
A strange couple. I wonder why they ever got together. What do they want? I don’t remember ever seeing them embracing or kissing. They hardly talk to each other.
But they don’t quarrel either –
Like two strangers –
Is this what they call love?
Again and again I used to ask them, together and separately, how it was that they met, and it was always the same story from both of them. They were in the same class at school for many years. But surely that’s no reason to stay joined until death, to have children.
In their school they weren’t particularly friendly. Daddy finished studying in the sixth grade, as he makes a point of reminding me whenever I ask him for help with my homework. Mommy of course went on studying. After a few years they met again and got married.
As if someone forced them –
When do they make love, for example, if they make love at all?
On this side of the wall I don’t hear so much as a whisper –
And at night I walk around the house a little –
Strange thoughts, maybe, sad thoughts.
Sometimes I’m terrified they might split up and leave me all alone, like Tali, whose father disappeared years ago, leaving her with her mother, who can’t stand her.
I hear their breathing. Daddy moans softly. At the window faint signs of dawn. Accustomed to the darkness, my eyes pick out every detail. My legs feel weak. Sometimes I wish I could go and crawl in between them under the blanket, like when I was a child.
But it’s no longer possible –
The faint, early chirping of an early bird in the wadi –
PART TWO
ADAM
How to describe her? Where do I start? Simple, the colour of her eyes, her hair, her style of dress, her habits, her manner of speech, her feet. Where do I start? My wife. So familiar, not only from twenty-five years of marriage but also from the years before that, childhood, youth, from the days that I remember in the first class of the little school near the harbour, the green and stuffy huts with their smell of milk and rotten bananas, the red-painted swings, the big sand pit, a derelict car with a giant steering wheel, the broken fence. Days of endless summer even in winter. Like in a blurred picture, no distinction between me and the world around me. She is there among the children, sometimes I have to search for her, there are times when she disappears and then returns, a thin girl with plaits sitting in front of me or behind me or beside me and sucking her thumb.