Daddy has put on his pyjamas, his face is pale, he’s worn out, he comes into the kitchen to put out the light and finds me sitting there, still dressed, quietly drinking tea.
“Come and drink some tea before you go to sleep,” I suggest. But for some reason he’s angry.
“This is the last time I take you with me. You have to make such a big party out of everything.”
“But that’s life — a party…”
Four in the morning philosophy –
He turns away and goes to bed. In the end I go to bed too, stripping off by the open window, watching the clouds, a thin stream of light showing through. I’m not cold, the opposite, I’m all boiling hot and low down in my stomach there are dull twinges of pain, it’s nearly time for my period. In the pocket of my coat, crushed, I find the money. I go quickly into Daddy’s bedroom, he’s under the blankets trying to sleep.
“Daddy, what shall I do with the money?”
“Put it in my wallet,” he mumbles, “and for God’s sake go to sleep … this is the last time …”
“All right … all right …”
I take the wallet out of his trouser pocket. It’s stuffed full of bills. I count them — two thousand one hundred pounds. Why does he drag so much money around with him? I put in the night’s takings, then think again, you shouldn’t exploit workers even if they are members of the family, and I take out thirty pounds for myself, secretarial fees. I go to take another look at the man who types and he’s disappeared. I put out the lights and disappear under the blanket, me too.
NA’IM
It isn’t me who answers the phone but her, she’s always awake, wandering around the house, dozing in armchairs. I’ve never seen her properly asleep. “How much longer do I have to live?” she says sometimes. “It’s a shame to sleep.”
She comes into the room and switches on the light and starts waking me up with her strange Arabic.
“Na’im, child, get up, on your feet, time to leave your dreams.” And I get up, I always keep my underwear on under my pyjamas because she doesn’t go out of the room while I’m dressing, you just can’t get her to budge. “Don’t be silly,” she said once when she saw me trying to get dressed hiding behind the wardrobe door, “I’ve seen it all before, why should you be shy or scared?”
How did I ever get mixed up with this old woman? But I’ve got used to it, a guy gets used to anything. I get dressed, clean my teeth, put some nice scent on my face, drink some coffee and grab a slice of bread and then run downstairs to wait for them. I don’t like hanging around too long in the street at night. Once I nearly got picked up by the cops, luckily Adam arrived just in time. I see the lights of the tow truck in the distance and run towards it, jump up as it’s still moving, climb up, open the door and crawl in, smiling at Dafi, who makes room for me. We’re like a trained team, like firemen or a tank crew. Every time I say to myself — tonight she won’t come, but she doesn’t miss a single night, she has such control over her father, she does what she wants.
But exactly what she wants I don’t think she knows herself.
I sit down beside her, always excited, always happy like it was the first evening when I opened the door and saw her and nearly fell back into the street.
Though the seat’s big and we’re both small we can’t help touching each other, I just pray it’ll be a long journey. She’s wrapped up in an overcoat, a woolly hat on her head, she’s all bright and fresh. But Adam sits there at the wheel all gloomy, his heavy beard hanging down in front of him, shining in the light from the dashboard, he’s tired, not saying a word, looking out at the cars passing by. Once he stopped and stared for a long time at a little Morris parked near the sea, stared and stared and in the end left it and drove on.
Dafi asks me about the old woman and what I do in the daytime and I tell her and she laughs, her mouth smells nice because she brushes her teeth before she leaves. And through her clothes I start to feel her body, I am sure to come wearing just a few clothes, trousers, a thin shirt and an open-necked sweater, so I’ll feel her.
Talking and chattering, sometimes about politics, I say something about the Arab problem and she starts to argue. Neither of us knows much about it but even so we argue until Adam says, “That’s enough, be quiet … don’t make so much noise … watch the road and look out for a little blue Morris.”
But there’s no such car, I know, it’s all a dream.
At last we get to the broken-down car. There were a few times when we didn’t find it, because it had towed itself away and left no traces behind. But we always found a substitute on the way, we weren’t short of work.
These nights I learned a lot about cars, I wouldn’t have learned so much in years at the garage. Because in the garage everybody does only one job and here every car is a different problem. How to treat a fuel blockage, change broken fan belts, fix a clutch that’s come loose, how to take out a thermostat that’s choking the engine, how to fix torn water lines. He’s got golden hands and he knows how to teach me. “Come here and see, look, come and take hold of this, tighten this, unscrew that.” And I get so interested in the job I even forget Dafi, who goes and stands at the side, chatting to the driver’s wife or playing with the children, entertaining them.
Sometimes I used to say to him, “Let me, I’ll do that,” and he let me, relying on me. Especially when it came to crawling under the car and fixing the cable, I saw that at his age this was an effort, he wasn’t a young man and I used to do the crawling instead of him, I’d already learned the places to fix the cables. The first few times he used to bend down to check if I’d joined it up properly, but then he started relying on me.
And the chatter of the people around us, the advice, they never stop giving advice, everybody’s an expert. The Jews are real professionals when it comes to talking. Sometimes other cars stop just to give advice. First they ask how many dead and how many wounded and then they start telling us what to do. And the guys who are hurt, standing there covered in blood, they’re worried about the car, how much will it cost, whether the insurance company will cover it. There’s nothing the Jews care about more than their cars.
But Adam says nothing, pretending he doesn’t hear. I get impatient but he just doesn’t seem to care. But when the crunch comes and it’s time to fix the price, he hits hard. His prices are tough. He sends them to Dafi, she’s in charge of the money. She sits there in the cab with the money box in her lap, looking so sweet, taking cash, cheques, the lot. Writing receipts and sticking pretty blue stamps on them, they all ask for receipts. Some of them put them away in their pockets to show them to someone else who’s going to have to pay, but there’re some who throw them away in the road, taking them only out of spite, so we’ll have to pay the tax.
And the money piles up. Sometimes we made five hundred pounds a night.
We made, I didn’t. I went for days at a time without a cent. My wages go straight to Father, I don’t know anything about it. Every night I decide that this time I shall ask him for money, but at the last moment I always lose my nerve.
In the daytime I used to walk the streets, looking in shop windows and wanting to buy all sorts of things, wishing I could go to the movies, but not a cent in my pocket.
One night after I’d been working really hard, before he put me down outside the house, I said, “Can I have a word with you?” and then I started mumbling, embarrassed at having to talk in front of Dafi, saying that my wages went straight to my father, and if I could have something … a loan maybe …