I’m in the street again, pacing about nervously, and suddenly I decide to climb up the drain pipe, like that night when we broke in the first time. I look at the people around me but nobody’s interested. I get a grip on the stones, on the drain pipe, and start climbing, exactly the same route as before, looking down all the time to see if anybody’s shouting at me, raising the alarm, but people aren’t interested, they don’t care about me breaking into a house in broad daylight, and I’m already at the window, jumping inside. I find her sitting in the chair, very white, she really is smiling a bit, a frozen sort of smile, like she’s been crying. Dead, I think and I tremble. I take a sheet and put it over her like I’ve seen them do in movies. I go to the kitchen, drink some water to steady myself, decide to take another look, pull away the sheet, touch her hand, it’s very cold. But something moves in her eyes, the pupils. She gives a little groan. I talk to her but she doesn’t answer.
She’s lost the consciousness that she found –
I’m getting really desperate, sometimes I forget I’m only fifteen years old. Putting me here to look after a dying old woman a hundred years old. What is this? Where’s the justice in it? Going off to Jerusalem like that. I must get away from all this. I’m getting out. I’ve been thinking about this all day but nobody listens. I go to my room, almost running, start to pack my things, stuffing the suitcase with the clothes she gave me. I go to the kitchen, something’s cooking on the stove, burned to a cinder. I try a bit of it, because it’s burned it tastes good. I scrape it out of the pan and eat the lot, burning my mouth. I go back to the old woman and she really is looking at me, watching me, I try talking to her again, in Arabic this time, she moves her head a bit like she understands but she doesn’t say anything … she’s lost her voice.
I phone the garage and ask about Adam. They don’t know anything. I phone his house, no answer. I go to my room and close the door. I’m afraid. God, I must get out of here but where can I go? I’m so tired, a final nap at least. I close the shutters, get into bed with my clothes on and go right to sleep. I wake up and it’s night already, eleven o’clock. I’ve slept ten hours straight.
I go into the living room. She’s still sitting there, looking just the same. Somebody’s pushed today’s Ma’ariv under the door. I’m off, I’m going. There’s a poem I learned once, I can’t remember how it goes, just the first line — “Son of man, go flee.” I’ve forgotten the poet’s name.
I phone Adam’s house. His wife answers. He isn’t back from Jerusalem yet. She’s expecting a call too. I tell her about the old woman and she says, “Don’t leave her” — she’s handing out orders too — “when Adam arrives we’ll come over right away… we may have found her grandson …”
I go back to the old woman, sit beside her, talk to her, pick up Ma’ariv and read her something about a terrorist attack, maybe that’ll revive her.
This is crazy. All night I stay awake. She’s breathing, alive, even smiling at me, understanding what I’m reading, looking at me, watching me. I go to the kitchen and bring some bread, stuff it into her mouth so she won’t die of hunger. But the bread won’t go into her mouth.
In the end she’ll choke and they’ll say I strangled her … It’s light outside, morning. I must escape from here. I’m leaving, that’s what I’ve been trying to say all day but nobody listens.
DAFI
“Dafi, my dear, it’s you, you’re still awake, be so good as to wake your father. I must speak to him. My car is embracing a tree … ha … ha …” I’m in the school playground, in the morning, with a bunch of children from my class and other classes, standing there imitating the old fox with his soft, oily voice. And they’re all delighted to hear about the accident, they don’t get any free time out of it, because he doesn’t teach anyway, but if he’s out of the way for a while it’ll add to the general freedom, go nicely with the disorder of the school year’s end.
So everybody’s surprised to see him arriving in a taxi during the second break, his head bandaged it’s true, his face scratched, limping a bit but quite lucid, bossy as usual and giving out orders, coming in at the main gate, walking slowly and painfully, collaring children on the way and telling them to pick up shells, paper, chalk, clearing the path in front of him. Sure that the school will collapse if he doesn’t turn up.
But the silly fool was too embarrassed to walk around the corridors during the break or to go pestering the teachers in the staff room, he shut himself up in his room, and because after his adventure during the night all he could think about was me, he sent his secretary to fetch me in the middle of the third class.
It was a literature lesson, one of the last of the year. We were reading Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. We weren’t studying it, or interpreting it, just reading it around the class, each of us taking a part. It was great. I was reading the part of Solveig. Not a very big part but very significant. It was quiet in the classroom, we were really enjoying the reading even though we didn’t understand it all. And suddenly the poor unfortunate secretary came into the room and spoiled it all. I was just in the middle of reading:
Winter shall surely turn and spring shall follow
And summer shall pass away too and autumn in turn
But I know, one day you will return to your home
And I shall wait for you.
And suddenly she came in.
“The headmaster wants to see Dafna.”
The literature teacher was annoyed and asked if it couldn’t wait till after the lesson.
But the secretary said, “I think not …”
She knows her boss –
And I understood — the time of departure has come.
Today of all days, the morning after Daddy went to his rescue in the night, just now when Daddy’s repairing his car. Just a few days before the end of the school year. I closed the book.
The secretary said, “Bring your satchel with you, please.”
The teacher was surprised. “Why?”
He knew nothing.
I felt suddenly desperate, alone. There was a murmur in the class, they realized what was going to happen to me. But nobody moved.
I walk down the empty corridors following the little secretary, knocking at his door, going in, standing at a safe distance from him, the satchel lying at my feet. He’s bent over his papers, his head wrapped in a white turban. A strange man. Why did he have to come to school today?
Silence –
I stand there in front of him but he ignores me, rummaging among his papers, reading something, screwing up a piece of paper into a little ball and throwing it into the basket.
“How are you?” I say almost inaudibly.
After all we were in contact during the night –
He’s startled by the question, looks up at me, his eyes bright, smiling a thin smile, the bastard, nodding his head slowly, somehow he can’t believe I’m really concerned about his health.
“We were sure you wouldn’t be coming to school today,” I add boldly. What do I care?
“Perhaps you hoped I wouldn’t be coming …”
“No … what an idea …”
He lets out a quiet little laugh. It looks like it really amuses him to think how unpopular he is here.
Silence –
Oh hell, what does he want? I notice they’ve sprinkled a sort of disgusting yellowish powder on the cuts on his cheek.
And then quietly, in that soft sickly voice of his, he starts lecturing me about my crime. A public insult to a young teacher who ought to be respected all the more … saying to him “Why weren’t you killed?” A disgrace … in a land where people are being killed all the time … an unnecessary, unprovoked attack … the teaching committee is shocked (what teaching committee?) … quite out of the question for me to remain in this group … especially seeing that my achievements so far have been so poor … no alternative but to transfer me to another school … a technical school … cooking or needlework … there’s no need for everybody to be a professor in this land …