But I decided I wasn’t going to be content with a general answer. It was important to me to know if he personally hated us and what he was really thinking. Then he said he didn’t hate us at all, and he looked me straight in the eye, blushing bright red.
Of course I believed him –
The phone rang. It was Osnat. She was worried because I told her she couldn’t come around to our house. She started asking questions and in the end she dragged the whole story out of me, and she was really surprised when she heard I had a little Arab in the house, one of Daddy’s workers, even though I told her he was really sweet.
In the meantime he’d finished his breakfast and he was sitting there motionless in his chair. I’d noticed before that he always stays wherever you put him until you move him to somewhere else. Now it’s about time he started moving by himself and taking on some personal responsibility, as Shwartzy’s always telling us. I said to him, “You can go now, Daddy doesn’t need you anymore. Go home now and he’ll see you in the garage.”
He jumped up from his seat in a hurry, grabbed the bag with his pyjamas in it and was about to go, I didn’t mean for him to rush off so fast. I was sorry I hadn’t invited Osnat along to hear him recite poetry. I asked him if he knew where the bus station was but he said he’d walk. Suddenly, I don’t know why, I felt sorry for him, he looked so forlorn in his dirty overalls, having to walk alone down Carmel on the Sabbath, on the way back to his village, wherever that is. Suddenly I was sorry he was going and I’d never see him again, he’d turn into a big stupid Arab like all the Arab workers that you see around the place and he’d marry some stupid Arab woman. So I said to him, “Just a moment, I’ll come with you,” because I wanted to show him how to get down Carmel by the steps in the middle of the hill, where it’s nice to walk on a day like this.
A bit strange walking with a labourer on the Sabbath in Carmel Centre beside the busy cafes and the people in their best clothes, my luck that he was taller than me. I showed the steps going down and even went a little way with him. Suddenly I got the crazy idea that maybe he was married after all, who knows when they get married. I asked him, indirectly, and I understood that he wasn’t. We carried on walking down among the bushes and the flowers till we met Yigal Rabinovitz and Zaki coming up the hill. They were a bit surprised to find me with him. And then I thought, how far am I going to walk with him? To his village? And I parted from him. He could look after himself now. And he disappeared down the slope straightaway, into the wadi. I stood there for a while chatting to them and we went back up the hill. I thought maybe they’d like to come to a café with me but they were on their way to a basketball game. Such babies. I went to Tali’s house but she wasn’t in and her mom as usual didn’t know where she was and didn’t care. I went from there to Osnat’s house but there the whole crowd were just sitting down to their lunch. I wouldn’t have minded being invited to eat with them, but they didn’t invite me. I went home and the house was suddenly terribly quiet, his sheets and blankets folded in the study, everything still in its place. People just don’t realize how depressing it is to be an only daughter. I felt exhausted and miserable. All my energy had gone into that ridiculous breakfast. Outside it was starting to cloud over, the brightness of the day had gone and it was getting darker. I sat down at the table and ate all the chocolate that was left, looking at the huge pile of dirty plates and pans. I went out of the kitchen in a hurry so as not to make my depression worse. I wanted to read something, something real and not the depressing newspapers again. I remembered how yesterday he sat on the edge of the armchair in the dark and quietly recited Dead of the Desert. I looked for a poetry book to read. I used to have Alterman’s Stars Outside always on the desk but for a few weeks now it’s been missing. So I picked up the Bialik, what else could I do, the book was open at Dead of the Desert, maybe at last I’ll understand why it’s so important.
I heard Daddy and Mommy coming in, I took off my shoes in a hurry and got into bed with the book, covering myself with the blanket so they wouldn’t bother me. They were tired and irritable, they’d found nothing. Mommy saw the mess in the kitchen and came right to my room.
“Why did you leave all those dishes in the kitchen! Couldn’t you have washed them?”
“Nothing to do with me. That Arab boy of yours …”
“Did he need that many plates for his breakfast?”
“Picture to yourself … he’s a growing boy, you know, you were there last night.”
She looked at me with hatred but I held up the book to cover my face, and went on reading.
And silence returns as before and barren the desert stands.
ADAM
I was full of hope. I felt that I was finding him, that I was now on his trail. I didn’t want to lose a moment. Asya got dressed, Na’im was still asleep, when Dafi woke up I told her what to say to him and what to do with him, and the two of us set off for Dimona to look for his uncle. It was a bright Sabbath day, the roads full of traffic. It was five years perhaps since we’d been down in the Negev and it was pleasant to discover new roads, unfamiliar settlements. I had no address in Dimona, just the name — Gabriel Arditi. The same name that the army computer stubbornly kept producing all the time — not without reason, it now appeared. This man was his uncle, perhaps he was hiding in his house. I had always thought of Dimona as a small town and here it was, a booming desert city. We didn’t know where to start, we could see no end to the blocks of apartment houses. But the inhabitants turned out to be friendly and co-operative and they took the trouble to help us. This man knew one Arditi and that man knew another. They took us from one to another until at last we found him. He was in the middle of lunch and he opened the door with a fork in his hand. It was a disappointment. I told the story briefly. He looked at us suspiciously. First of all he didn’t believe that the grandmother was still alive. “You’re mistaken,” he insisted, “Gabriel’s grandmother, his mother’s mother, died just after independence.” He was certain of that. Even then she was a very old woman. We must be thinking of another grandmother, or an old aunt. About Gabriel he knew very little. He had heard that he went away to join his father in Paris. He hadn’t heard that he’d come back.
“Are you part of the family too? Surely you are Ashkenazim …”