Signs of my grandson everywhere. He always was an untidy boy but now he’s lost control. His shirts hanging on top of my dresses, dirty linen on the chairs, socks in the bathroom. French newspapers and magazines from before the war. An open suitcase on one of the beds. Everything laid out as if he’s just gone out for a short walk.
Well, then, where is he?
Mrs. Goldberg brings me something to eat, gefilte fish that she cooked for the Sabbath. It’s Sabbath eve, I forgot. For a whole year I have been outside time. She looks in silence at the chaos in the room, dying of curiosity, she would have liked to stay for a while but I get rid of her politely. The evening falls quickly and I’m still looking for a piece of paper, some message, to help me understand. The light bulbs are all burned out and I have to light a candle to find my way from room to room.
And suddenly I feel again the loneliness of the last years. Now I understand how I lost consciousness. I wish I could lose it again. I should never have left Jerusalem, even though there was not a single member of my family left. It was wrong to break away. Sin and iniquity. I tried to taste the gefilte fish and it’s so sweet it makes me sick. When will the Ashkenazim learn to cook? Sitting there in the kitchen among the dirty dishes, among the mouldy scraps of food, forcing myself to eat, not to weaken, eating and tears falling on the plate. And outside — storm, destruction.
So, he was here. What did he look like? Oh, Lord of the Universe. Where did he go? Perhaps he is dead, perhaps he too is lying somewhere unconscious. And how am I to find the man with the beard? I must start searching every corner of the house. Perhaps I will find some trace. I leave the dirty dish in the sink, I don’t have the strength to wash it. How dirty he’s made the house, he’s learned dirty habits from the French. I take the candle and roam around the half-lit house, examining the cupboards, and the beds, searching under the sheets, he’s slept in all of them.
In the end I feel tired, put on a nightdress and get into my bed. He’s slept in this one too. The sheets are soiled, but I don’t have the energy to change them.
The first night at home after a year. Who would believe that it would be like this? Better I had died. The rain lashes the windows. A hard winter. The doors in the house creak and a draught blows in, from where I don’t know. I lie there with my eyes open. I have never been afraid of loneliness, people know me as a solitary person, but never have I felt so uneasy in my bed. And then I hear a rustle from the shutter in the next room, as if someone is climbing in through the window. At first I thought it was just the wind, but then I hear light footsteps. He’s come back, I say to myself. And the door of my room really does open and a boy appears in the doorway, looking in. What is this, has Gabriel turned into a boy once more, and is he wandering about the house as he used to twenty years ago, when he was having a bad dream and walked about the house making noises on purpose to wake me up?
Oh, help, I’m sinking back again. Farewell old lady. This time there’ll be no awakening. But the boy is real, standing there in the doorway, in the light of the candle that I left in the passage, not a dream, he closes the door and goes away, opening more doors and closing them again. Finally drawing back the bolts of the front door.
Hurriedly I get out of bed, and just as I am in my nightdress I go out into the passage, seeing there a middle-aged man, a total stranger, wrapped in a big fur coat, with a big blond beard, the bearded man has descended from heaven again, talking to the boy who opened the door of my room, I know right away that he’s an Arab, I can sniff them out. Smell of eggplants, green garlic and fresh straw, the very smell that returned me to consciousness.
ASYA
I really trembled. For so many years I hadn’t seen him. And there he was, riding a bicycle outside the house. I must not lose him again. I clung fast to the dream. Yigal. He was riding back and forth on the broad pavement, so serious, on a big bicycle, he was tall and thin and I thought, he is alive, what happiness. I didn’t dare say a word. And he was riding around and around in a circle, very serious, concentrating on his riding, so intense, I couldn’t see his eyes. The bicycle looked very colourful, shining, loaded with gears, cog wheels and coils of wire. But most of all I was impressed by the brakes. Thin cables led from them directly to his ears, as if he must listen to the brakes. Some kind of safety precaution.
“Do you see?” said Adam, smiling, standing behind me on the steps, I hadn’t seen him, he was in the dark. It seemed he had arranged this. But I didn’t reply, only looked with longing at the boy on the bicycle. Slowly I began to realize that this wasn’t Yigal but some kind of replacement that Adam had brought here for me. But I didn’t mind this, it seemed wonderful and right to bring me a substitute. I just waited for him to grow tired of cycling around and around so I could see him close up, touch him, embrace him. But he didn’t look, didn’t hear, continuing gravely with the endless ride. “Yigal,” I said in a whisper, “come here for a moment.” And I thought, perhaps he can’t hear, perhaps he too can’t hear, but he heard and understood, he just took advantage of his deafness to ignore me.
And then we were in a big hall, Adam and I, a big hall flooded with sunlight, it was a party, a bar mitzvah or a wedding, long tables laden with salami sandwiches, and Adam pounced on them in his usual way and started to munch, ravenously hungry, and I was worried about Yigal, whom we had left there on the pavement. I left the party in the middle without touching the food and went back home in the afternoon, Sabbath, the streets deserted, the pavement outside the house empty. I started walking the streets searching for the “replacement,” growing more and more dispirited, whimpering to myself. Until beside a half-built house, on the hillside, on a heap of sand I saw the bicycle, slightly damaged, smaller than I had thought, less ornate than it looked before, but still those cables coiling out of the brakes, and at the ends, like little boxes, the earpieces of a transistor. They were quivering, something rustled in them. I picked them up, I heard a man talking, like a newscaster, someone saying, “Life … she has come to life.”
ADAM
Suddenly I felt so happy I laughed. I had thought I was so clever breaking in here in the middle of the night, and here she was — erect, small and vigorous. The grandmother come to life. And that blank face down which the porridge had trickled was gazing at me, alert and inquisitive. Oh, she’s found her lost consciousness all right, every last bit of it.
I wanted to embrace her –
The amazing thing was that she didn’t look afraid, didn’t try to cry out or call for help, on the contrary, she looked calm, as if she’d been expecting this night-time intrusion. She looked at me with trust, even held out her dry little hand. I gripped it firmly in both my hands.
“I hear that you are related to me, sir, I would like to know your name.”
And she winked at me. I was puzzled. It seemed she even knew about my visit to the hospital. Her hand was still in mine, what could I tell her — that I had spent months searching for my wife’s lover?
First of all I got rid of Na’im, who was still standing there staring open-mouthed, quite baffled. I sent him out to the kitchen and the old lady went with him and gave him sweets. Then I followed her to her bedroom. She moved a heap of clothes from a chair and invited me to sit down. Then she got into her bed. The bedroom was dim, the candle was burned down, only in the passage was there a small light. And so, sitting facing her in the dark, seeing her silhouette like a giant ping-pong ball, I heard her say, “I am listening …”