I must get out of here –
I try to smile, going to the window and opening the shutters, letting light into the room, going out in silence, into my room and locking the door, collapsing on the bed, burying my head in the pillow.
Time passes. I hear her get up, start moving about the flat looking for me. She knocks softly on the door, turns the handle, but I don’t move. After a while she leaves the house.
I take off my trousers, the sharp forgotten smell. Like a growing boy. I put on clean underwear, long trousers, go to the window and look out at the reddening sky, at the street, the passing cars. She’s sitting there on the step of the tow truck, small and huddled.
Waiting for Dafi, or for me –
I hesitate, but in the end I get dressed, go downstairs and outside to the truck. She stands up, blushing.
“May I ride with you?”
“Where to?”
“I don’t mind.”
Does she really understand? A little girl, so pretty. I can study her now coolly. She looks up at me in submission, in love. I open the door for her, she climbs in and sits there, staring at me all the time. We begin to drive in silence through the streets of the darkening city, joining a stream of heavy traffic, driving aimlessly through the streets.
“Look, there’s Dafi,” she cries suddenly.
And yes, that’s Dafi standing there on the pavement, looking dejected. I stop. Tali leaps down and embraces her.
DAFI
Of course I can’t let this pass in silence, I must get my own back. I run to the teachers’ room to look for her, picking my way among the teachers drinking tea and knitting, the room full of cigarette smoke. I ftnd her standing in a corner talking to Shwartzy and I go barging straight in, standing between them, interrupting their conversation, clutching at her skirt like a one-year-old.
“Mommy …”
She frowns at me.
“Just a moment, Dafi, wait outside.”
But I pretend not to hear, acting stupid, not leaving her alone.
“Mommy …”
Shwartzy turns his back on me in disgust. Since that business with Baby Face he hasn’t so much as said hello to me in the corridor, he wants to have me expelled.
Mommy draws me aside, pushes me out of the way.
“What’s happened? Why are you bursting in here like this?”
“I just wanted to remind you that at four o’clock today we’re going to meet downtown to buy me a skirt. So you won’t forget again … like you always do …”
She’s only forgotten once, but I haven’t forgotten that.
She goes red with anger, she’d like to thump me, but she must keep her dignity before the other teachers.
“Is that why you came bursting in here?”
“Why not? You’ll be leaving the school soon and we won’t be meeting at home.”
“Why does it have to be today?”
“Because that’s what we arranged … how much longer are you going to put it off? You know I haven’t got a single skirt I can wear … everything’s too small and too old …”
“All right … all right … stop whining.”
“I’m not whining.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“What’s the matter with me?”
“Why are you being so unpleasant?”
“What do you mean unpleasant?”
I know how to annoy her, how to be nasty.
“What was the question you were asking in class? What exactly did you mean?”
“Nothing.”
But she takes hold of me firmly, pushes me into a corner, she isn’t bothered about the other teachers seeing.
“What suffering were you talking about? What did you mean?”
“There’s no suffering. I was wrong. I thought there was a bit of suffering in this country but I was wrong, everyone’s terribly happy I … just made a misatake …”
She’d like to tear me apart. Her lips tighten.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing …”
The bell rings and I run away.
Of course we didn’t buy a skirt in the end. I just wanted my revenge. Anyway shopping has become a nightmare lately. She takes me to her old women’s shop and the old women choose me something ancient, some shade of grey, old-fashioned length and breadth, and put great pressure on me to buy. And at the last moment when they’ve already put in the pins and marked it with chalk and Mommy’s starting to argue over the price I object and call the whole thing off, taking her to another shop, a trendy shop, picking out of a basket some rag with patches on it that costs twice as much and insisting on it. And then she objects, and there’s no way of knowing which annoys her more, the patches or the price, and so we go to a compromise shop and buy a compromise thing that neither of us likes and in the end it just gets left in the wardrobe.
And that’s the way it was this afternoon too. She didn’t know that really I wasn’t interested in a skirt but in her, I wanted to get revenge for the way she treated me in that lesson, because she kept me asking permission to speak for a quarter of an hour and because she didn’t realize that there was another possibility aside from Zionism.
We met downtown and I was a bit late, not really my fault. Tali suddenly appeared at the house to do some homework with me, I had to persuade her to wait in my room till I came back. Mommy asked me solemnly which shop I’d like to go to, to avoid arguments from the start. And I said softly, “I don’t mind going to the shop you use.” And this was just a trap. But she said, “Really?” and I said, “Yes, I’ve seen a few things in their window that aren’t bad.” And there really were some nice things there. Those old women have opened out a bit lately, they’ve realized that everything doesn’t have to be the same dull colour and not everything in life is symmetrical. And we really did find a nice skirt there and they were all excited. Mommy was very pleased, and then I said, “No.” And there was a great fuss and an hour went by, and the old women were already falling off their feet from so much effort. And we left the shop with both of us nearly in tears and went to another shop, a new one, with red lights in the window like a whorehouse, and there I found something very expensive and said, “This one,” though it was very long and made for a woman not a girl. And then she dug her heels in, and when at last she agreed and took out her wallet I decided I didn’t want it after all, and she wanted to go home but then I started to whine, right there in the street, saying I was the only one in the class who could never go to parties. So we went down to Hadar and spent ages looking for a place to park, she’s always afraid of getting a parking ticket. Then we walked along one of the streets in silence, going in and out of maybe a dozen shops. She stood to one side, grey and glowering, while I went and examined the dresses and skirts, not really looking at anything, just fingering the material like a blind woman. It was evening already, we’d wasted hours for nothing. The streetlamps were coming on. Exhausted and silent, we returned to the car and there was a parking ticket on the windscreen and she went raving mad, nearly in tears, she tore up the ticket first, then picked up the pieces and started running after the traffic cop to argue about the twenty-pound fine. And I stood there feeling miserable and suddenly Daddy came past in the tow truck with Tali sitting beside him. Looks like Tali got bored with waiting and as Daddy was driving downtown he brought her with him. Tali jumped down and Daddy parked the truck, he always parks just wherever he feels like it.