I run my fingers over the wrecked car, seeing the broken windows, the bloodstains on the seats, a child’s shoe and beside it a toy car of the same model and colour. My head spins, my stomach turns over, I nearly faint. “Do whatever you like,” I say and get into my car and drive home.
It’s ten o’clock. The house is quiet. I pull down the blinds, strip to my underclothes, get into bed and try to sleep. A dim memory of a distant childhood disease stirs in me. Me, who never indulged myself this way. I lie there, my eyes closed, feeling feverish. Outside I hear the singing of children from a distant garden, the beating of carpets, somebody playing a guitar, a woman laughing. An Israeli morning. Desire growing slowly, dim, unclear, unwittingly. Outside the smell of blossoms. Something is happening to me, the exhaustion of the last few weeks is breaking something inside me, dissolving the strain of many years. I throw off the blanket, strip naked, studying my heavy body in the mirror. The front door opens. Dafi. She’s on my trail too, the last few nights have turned her into an insomniac. She goes into the kitchen, opens the door of the fridge, walks about the house, comes into my room. I’m naked under the blanket.
“Daddy? You startled me. What’s happened? Are you ill?”
“No, I’m just very tired.”
She sinks down on the bed. Just like a little girl. Her face is sad, drawn, her eyes red as if she’s been crying. I must put an end to these night trips.
“School finished already?”
“No, I just came home … I had an argument with the maths teacher.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing important. It doesn’t matter.”
“We aren’t going out at night anymore.”
“Why?” Her voice is feeble but she looks surprised.
“Enough. It’s over. No point in searching anymore.”
“Have you given up hope of finding him?”
“Almost.”
“And Mommy?”
“She’ll give up in the end too.”
The seriousness and maturity of her questions –
She’s silent, thoughtful. Something is troubling her very much.
“The car that we towed in last night … that child who was killed … do you know yet what happened exactly? Who it was?”
“I don’t know.”
She’s very tense, staring into space. A new wrinkle at the corner of her mouth. Hiding something. Lately she’s been getting more and more like Asya.
“Go and get some sleep.”
“I can’t. Too tired …”
“Then do some homework … What happened with the maths teacher?”
She smiles sadly, doesn’t answer, goes out of the room. I phone the towing firm and cancel our contract. “As from when?”
“As from tonight.”
I phone the old lady.
“Where is Na’im?”
“He’s gone to the movies.”
“Good. When he comes back tell him he can go back to his village and come to the garage tomorrow as usual. I don’t need him at night any more, I’ve finished with that.”
Silence –
“Mrs. Ermozo?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll tell him …?”
Silence again. Suddenly I feel sorry for her. Her last hope. She starts to mumble.
I understand at once.
“If you’d like him to stay at your house I can leave him with you and there’s no need for him to come to the garage, he can carry on helping you …”
Like handing over a piece of property –
Her voice shakes, as if she’s about to cry.
“Thank you, thank you, let him stay a little longer, until I’m used to being alone again …”
“As long as you like …”
“Thank you, thank you, it won’t be for long. God bless you. You really are a wonderful man.”
ASYA
Late at night. Everyone’s asleep. The house is dark. Rain and high winds outside, the wind beating at the shutters. I’m in the kitchen, cooking busily, preparing fish. Cutting off the heads, scraping off the scales, slicing the white bodies to remove the inner organs, my hands covered with blood and guts. And the fish are unusually revolting, wild fish, big fish, their dead eyes yellow, scales like feathers, hard and sharp, greenish. The pan is on the stove and the water is boiling. I must hurry.
Someone is sitting behind me at the table, I know who it is. I turn around slowly, the knife in my hand, he’s reading a newspaper and eating a thin slice of bread, he’s in army uniform, on his face the bristles of a black beard.
“What happened, Gabriel? Where have you been?”
He doesn’t look up from the paper, turns the pages.
“But the war isn’t over yet. You sent me away …”
“What isn’t over?” I cry desperately. “It’s all over and you gave us no sign. Adam searches for you at night.”
“Where is he searching?”
“Look, listen …”
And we are silent, hearing him, hearing the heavy footsteps of someone moving about the house, opening the doors of cupboards, moving drawers.
Gabriel smiles ironically, something in his face has matured, become riper, more self-assured. He folds the paper and comes towards me, looks into the bubbling pot, turns up the flame.
“What are you cooking here?”
“Fish.”
“Fish?” He’s surprised. “Fish?”
I tremble, hoping perhaps he’ll touch me. Should I embrace him? But he’s already turning to go.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going back.”
“But the war is over …” I’m almost shouting.
“What’s over?” he says angrily. “Look at the calendar.”
And on the wall calendar the date really is still the tenth of October. “But that’s a mistake, we forgot to change it.” I’m laughing now. I go to the calendar and with my bloodstained hands wildly tear off the pages, crushing them savagely in my fist, but he’s already gone.
DAFI
Suddenly I feel restless and I go down to the centre of town to look for a swimsuit for the summer. And sitting next to me in the bus is a man with a familiar face. At first I drive myself crazy trying to identify him, it’s as if he’s come out of one of my dreams, a huge man with long unruly hair, forty perhaps, eagerly leafing through an evening paper. At last I get it — the man who types at night, across the wadi, he and no other.
He gets off at a bus stop and I follow at once. At last I shall find out something about him. The man who types, my night accomplice, in rumpled clothes and faded jeans, walking slowly, looking in the shop windows, the paper tucked in his back pocket. He goes into a bank and I follow, I stand in a corner and fill in some forms, depositing a million and drawing out two million. Waiting while he draws out some money (only two hundred), dropping the paper in the rubbish basket and following in his tracks. He goes into a stationery shop and I follow him, he stands there, eyes sparkling, examining wads of paper. The saleswoman asks, “Yes, young lady?” “This gentleman is before me,” I reply. He looks at me kindly. “The younger generation. What manners! It’s quite all right, you can go first.”