And I say, these parents who do not give up, who are not content with this sandy conclusion beside a lonely hill, who glare with hatred at the young officer, who from sheer anger and disappointment are ready to attack him, these parents demand further explanation, for who can assure them that their Boaz, Boaz their son, is not sitting at this very moment, in summer clothes, with long hair, on a distant beach, in the port of a far-off country, watching the landscape that lies open before him and sipping a soft drink. Perhaps he had reasons for not returning home, even at the price of his parents’ misery. He grew suddenly disgusted by something, or something scared him. And if his parents would only study the problem from such an angle, instead of scurrying from one army office to another, there might be a chance of picking up his trail.
But how could they –
I too once visited such an army office, searching for him, and I saw how hopeless it was, in spite of the smiles and the willingness and the sympathy. But that was only after two months or more, when we realized that the lover had really disappeared, that he wasn’t going to return. Until then we had said, he must still be on the move, caught up in new experiences, confused by encounters with unfamiliar things. What does he know about the real Israel. Besides, we were so busy that we hardly had the leisure to think about him. Asya was at the school all the time, filling in for teachers who had been called up, running around in the evenings between meetings of the emergency committees, visiting the parents of pupils from the senior grades who had been killed or wounded. At night she used to come home exhausted, collapse on the bed and fall asleep right away. And I had a heavy load of work also, the garage was full of cars already in the first days of the war. Some of my customers were on their way to the front, already in uniform, and they brought their cars in for major repairs, thinking that the war would be a short one, a quick journey of adventure, a good opportunity to have the engine overhauled or the bearings changed, or get a new coat of paint, and in a few days they would be returning home, picking up their cars and going back to their business.
But they didn’t return so quickly. My parking lot filled up. One of my customers didn’t return at all. I had to return the car personally to his parents’ house, to shake hands with the mourners, to mumble some words of condolence and, of course, to cancel the fee, which amounted to several hundred pounds. The other cars were taken away by the wives, those of them who knew how to drive. I never had so much to do with women as in those weeks immediately after the war. They took the cars over, and slowly but surely they ruined them. Driving without water, without oil, even forgetting to look at the fuel gauge. In the middle of the night the phone would ring, and a woman’s voice appeal for my help. And I would drag myself out in the middle of the night, roaming the darkened city to find in a narrow side street a young woman, a child really, standing panic-stricken beside a huge luxury car with an empty fuel tank.
But that disruption also came to an end, and life began to return to normal. The men came back from the army, wandering about in the mornings in their khaki clothes and heavy boots, buying supplies in the grocers’ shops, dust in their eyes, looking dazed, stammering a little. They came and collected their cars and postponed payment. A hard winter was setting in. Dull days, sodden with rain. It became harder and harder for us to sleep at night. Waking in the middle of the night to the sound of thunder, going to the bathroom, switching on the radio for a moment. So it was that I discovered the extent of Dafi’s insomnia. The lover’s disappearance began to penetrate. Yearning for him, wondering where he is. Asya knows no peace, running to the phone every time it rings. She says nothing, but I catch her look –
In the mornings I have taken to driving to the garage by a roundabout route, by way of the lower city, passing his grandmother’s house, looking for a sign of life behind the sealed shutters with their peeling paint. Sometimes even parking the car for a moment and running up the deserted staircase to examine the broken letter box that hangs there precariously, to see if there’s a letter or a message for him, or from him. Can we abandon him, forget him? After all, who but us could know he is gone?
DAFI
Dafi, my dear, it’s a white night, there’s no point in trying. You’ll only end up crying again, kid. I know you, I heard you whimpering under the blanket. It’s only when you try too hard to sleep that all these things get on your nerves — the faint snoring of Daddy or Mommy, the noise of a car in the street, the wind rattling the shutter in the bathroom. It’s already past midnight. You thought you’d get away with it, pudgy, but tonight is a night without sleep. There’s no choice. Stop, enough turning the pillow and tossing from side to side, playing dead. No more fooling. Who are you trying to kid? Open your eyes, please, pull yourself together, sit up and put on the light and make a plan for killing the time that’s left between now and morning.
I knew this afternoon that tonight there’d be problems, that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. It’s a strange thing, this premonition. Tali and Osnat came around this afternoon and stayed until the evening. We had a good time, chatting and laughing and gossiping, about the teachers to begin with, but about the boys most of all. Osnat’s completely crazy, she’s been like this since the beginning of the year, she’s got nothing else to talk about, just boys. Every few weeks she falls in love with someone new, goes right off her head. Usually boys from the seventh and eighth grades who don’t even know they’ve been fallen in love with. But that doesn’t stop her from making a fantastic story out of it, every time it happens. I really love her. She’s ugly and thin, wears glasses, and she’s got a tongue like a sharp knife. Tali and I roared with laughter at her descriptions, we made such a row that Daddy opened the door to see what was going on, but he closed it again in a hurry because Tali had taken off her shoes and her sweater, opened her blouse, let her hair down and lay down on my bed. Wherever she goes she’s always taking something off and getting into other people’s beds. Completely unbalanced. A real looker and a good friend.
We had fun. Osnat was standing in the middle of the room with her glasses pushed down on her nose, imitating Shwartzy, and suddenly in the middle of all the fun and excitement, beyond Osnat’s head, outside the big window, there’s a little purple cloud, a night cloud, floating very low, actually touching the rooftops. And a little lightning flash ignites inside me, deep inside my head, a physical sensation. Tonight I won’t be able to sleep, a prophetic warning. When Tali and Osnat are fast asleep, I shall be tossing about here on my bed. But I said nothing, I went on chatting and laughing, and there was just that obstinate little flame burning away inside me, like the little pilot flame that’s always alight in our oven. No sleep for you, Dafi. Afterwards I forget about all this, or I pretend to forget. In the evening they went away and I sat down to do my homework, still expecting a normal night. I did a quick analysis of the two prophecies of wrath in Jeremiah and compared them. I soon polished off the images of death and destruction in The City of Slaughter. Stupid questions. But as soon as I opened the maths book, I started yawning. I suddenly felt terribly tired. Maybe I should’ve laid down on the bed and slept, made the most of it.