“Nothing. I’ve been waiting for Tali but she hasn’t come.”
“She’ll be there soon …”
“Don’t be late, Daddy.”
A childish plea, it doesn’t become her.
It’s already dark. The air growing cold. I pay the bill and we’re on the road again. I don’t know where to drive to, just wandering about in the darkness. Still meaning to turn and drive home, but I’m trapped in something stronger than myself. Something in the surroundings looks familiar. I drive on a few more kilometres down a narrow road. From a distance I recognize the old people’s home, the old hospital where the old lady was kept. I drive around the building, park some distance away. I leave the girl in the car and go into the hospital. I ask for the matron. They tell me she may still be about and I find her locking the door of her office. She recognizes me at once, her face lights up, she almost leaps at me.
“Did you hear about the miracle?”
“Of course.”
She’s so sorry I refused to leave my name, or an address. She wanted to give me the news herself. Just a few days after I was there.
“I know.”
“And how is she? I haven’t had time to contact her.”
“She’s fine.”
She starts telling me what she’s done with the money I gave her. After a lot of thought she decided to buy some pictures by a young, very promising Israeli artist. She takes me around the wards to show me the pictures hanging there, hoping I approve of them, even though I told her to do exactly as she liked with the money.
“Of course.”
I walk beside her, tired, worn-out, distracted, looking at the grey, surrealistic pictures, listening to her explanations with half an ear.
At last she falls silent. I explain my request. A room for the night, or for a short rest. I’m doing some work not far from here.
The request seems a little strange to her but how can she refuse me? She’ll give instructions to the Arab watchman. No problem. They’ll give me supper too.
“No need.” I walk with her to her car. She shakes my hand. Only one request, that I reveal my identity.
“Never …” I smile. “I intend to make you another donation in the future.”
She laughs, moved, shakes my hand again.
I go back to the car and find that Tali has disappeared. I start searching for her. After a few minutes I see her emerge from behind a stone wall, walking slowly back.
We wait in the car until the hospital grows a little quieter, until the evening meal is over. The lights go out. My head is bent over the wheel, sweaty, sticky. Outside a cool breeze. She still sits quiet beside me, not moving. Nothing gets through to her. An hour passes. We leave the car. The Arab watchman opens the main door, doesn’t even look at Tali. He leads us down long corridors past dimly lit wards, the old people dozing after their supper, some of them moving about in their striped dressing gowns, like twisted slow-moving monsters.
The girl shudders.
At last something has got through to her. He shows us into a room, not large, an operating room or intensive-care unit. In the centre a big iron bed fitted with little pulleys, beside it a big cylinder of oxygen, some surgical instruments. A sink on one wall. He doesn’t even ask if I want another bed. I thrust ten pounds into his hand but he refuses to accept it.
She stands in the corner like a trapped animal, terrified, not moving. But I can’t stop myself, not now, one thought only in my heart. I go to her, draw her to me, suddenly she tries to resist. I lift her, she’s very light, sand falls from her hair. I kiss her face, her neck, gently at first, softly, fearing the violence overtaking me. I lay her on the bed. A voice tells me to stop but I can’t. I’ve gone too far. I take off her sandals, the soles of her feet are dirty. I go to the sink, dip a towel in water and wash her feet, her thighs, wipe her face. Then I strip her, and lie on the little naked body. She doesn’t understand, she starts to cry, I kiss her until she stops. I make love to her. She begins to understand, folding her arms around my neck, closing her eyes, starting to kiss me slowly. Lying still at her side. Beginning to hear the sounds of the world around me. The voices of the old people in the nearby wards. Somebody is praying, reciting psalms. An old woman laughs. Someone groans, starts weeping. She’s already asleep.
After a while I rouse her and while she still dozes I dress her, wrap her in a blanket and carry her in my arms like an invalid. The watchman opens the gate for me, I put her on the back seat. Just before midnight I arrive at her house.
Will it be possible to deny all this? I want to tell her to say nothing, but I can’t. What I’ve lost I’ve lost. I watch as she disappears through the door of her house.
A small car passes me slowly. I turn to look at it, my habit these last few months. Perhaps it’s him. And I too have become a lover, a lover in search of a lover.
PART FIVE
ASYA
I can’t remember the beginning, the three of us are in another country, somewhere in the East, in Asia, near Afghanistan, I don’t know how I know that it’s near Afghanistan. An afternoon sort of country, the sun strong and low in the sky, but not a desert country, just a dry country, thousands of kilometres from the sea. Fields all around, growing corn, yellow-green, short fat stalks. What we’re doing here I don’t know, we’re not here for a holiday but for a short stay, Adam has work to do here, but he hasn’t actually started working yet, all the time he paces around the house.
We are in trouble. Dafi is pregnant. She was walking in the fields and a seed entered her. She touched nobody, nobody touched her. Not the seed of man but a seed of corn. She sat among the corn stalks and a seed entered her, something like that, vague, frightening … but she is pregnant. We already have the results of the tests, and now she sits before me in a wicker chair, small and pale, and I am filled with despair.
It’s impossible to tell if Dafi knows the condition she’s in. But I stare at her fearfully and I see that her belly is already swelling a little. It’s amazing, she conceived only a short while ago, but they explained to us that this is a childhood pregnancy, very quick, and it isn’t the first time this has happened to foreigners here on a visit.
Adam comes into the room with a doctor. A dark man, swarthy skinned, not black but very dark, with a little wispy beard. He’s come to take Dafi away because she needs urgent treatment, an operation, an abortion, not exactly an abortion, something like that, similar, they are going to take that thing out of her womb, and they will send it to us, a field mouse perhaps, something frightful. A nightmare. Adam has settled the whole business without consulting me.
The man, the doctor, God knows what he is, comes close to Dafi and takes her by the hand, and she obeys him, rising from her seat, so miserable. And I thought I was losing my mind, I could kill Adam for submitting to this doctor, I draw him aside and plead with him, “Let’s go home at once, we can take her to doctors there,” and Adam listens but isn’t convinced, the doctor leads Dafi to the door, stands there waiting. I talk hurriedly to Adam, and the doctor listens as if he understands Hebrew, and Adam refuses, shakes his head — “No, only they know how to do this, they will save the mouse.” I’m streaming with sweat, shaking, frantic — “What mouse?” And suddenly Dafi breaks loose from the doctor, runs to me, howling, clutches at me, starts shaking both of us.
ADAM
Dafi shakes me roughly, climbing onto the bed, switching on the light, tugging wildly at my pyjama jacket. “Mommy, Daddy, Shwartzy’s on the phone.” The light hurts my eyes, Dafi’s hair is in a mess, she’s all excited. “Shwartzy’s on the phone, he’s had an accident.”