The ornate black writing desk had thin black legs and a high back with two sloping side panels set with drawers and all sorts of little pigeonholes and secret hiding places. Shmuel dimly recalled from his childhood in Haifa that in the homes of Arab acquaintances such desks were called “secretaires.” This word suddenly aroused in him a longing for the homes of those wealthy Arab notables on Allenby Street, which he visited with his father and where he was served pomegranate juice and sickly-sweet pastries that stuck between his teeth, under his tongue, and along his palate.
Besides the secretaire and the sofa on which Atalia had made Shmuel lie with his leg raised, the room contained two high-backed black chairs, a locked, severe-looking wardrobe, and three bookshelves containing some thirty or forty old tomes, in French, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and English. From where he lay on the sofa, Shmuel had difficulty making out the writing on their spines, but he promised himself he would examine them all as soon as he had a chance. And also secretly peep into the drawers of the secretaire.
Two delicate sketches of landscapes in the Judean Desert, under glass in dark frames, hung on the wall above the sofa. One of them showed a dry, windswept hill against a background of distant mountains, while the other showed the mouth of a dark cave in a wadi where a few battered bushes grew. A large, outdated map of the eastern Mediterranean basin was pinned to the wall behind the secretaire. Above it was a title in French: Pays du Levant et leurs environs. Beneath this heading stretched Syria and Lebanon, Cyprus, Palestine, and Transjordan, Iraq, northern Egypt, and the northern part of Arabia. Across Palestine and Transjordan was written Palestine, and in brackets Terre Sainte, while Lebanon bore the legend Grand Liban. The British sphere of influence, including Cyprus, was shaded pink; the French sphere of influence was marked in pale blue. The Mediterranean and Red Seas were colored dark blue. Turkey was green, and Saudi Arabia was yellow.
The shutter on the only window was closed, and the window itself was shut and covered by a pair of thick brown double curtains. Through the crack between the curtains and between the slats of the shutters filtered the solitary beam of sunlight that fell at an angle and along whose entire length the thousands of shimmering spots of dust danced. This sunbeam mesmerized Shmuel. Despite the dull pain in his ankle and head, he felt surrounded by a sweet tranquility, as if he had finally come home—not to his parents’ home, the dark passage where he had slept as a child, but the home he had always longed for, the home where he had never been, his own home, his real home. The home toward which he had been going all his life. He had not felt such deep inner peace since he first came to this house on Rabbi Elbaz Lane in search of a job. As if from the outset he had secretly yearned, all these weeks, to earn the right to lie someday as an invalid in this room, on this sofa, by the light of the desk lamp and the wall light, facing the French map of the lands of the Levant and their environs, and at the foot of the sunbeam in which the molecules of dust glittered and whirled ceaselessly.
Atalia entered the room without a sound, leaned over him, and adjusted the cushions supporting his back. She sat down beside him on the edge of the sofa holding a bowl of thick, steaming vegetable soup. Sarah de Toledo had made the soup as usual for Mr. Wald, but this time Atalia had asked her to make an extra portion. She spread a tea towel over Shmuel’s beard and chest and fed him with a spoon, even though he was startled and said there was no need, that he could perfectly well feed himself. But Atalia insisted:
“You’ll get it all over your beard and your pajama top.”
And she added:
“During the last months I fed him, too. Here in this room. Not on the bed but at the desk. We sat close together on those two chairs and I spread a tea towel over him and fed him spoonful by spoonful. He loved thick, well-seasoned soups like this, bean soup, lentil soup, pumpkin soup. No. He was definitely not an invalid at the end of his life. He wasn’t paralyzed or senile. Only weak and apathetic and withdrawn. At first I used to bring him the hot soup—he liked it to be almost boiling—and leave the bowl on the desk, and I would come back after a quarter of an hour to fetch the empty bowl. In the last months of his life he wouldn’t eat unless I stayed in the room with him and implored him to eat, and told him a story while he ate. He loved all kinds of tales and fables. After a while, my presence and the story weren’t enough: he would sit and listen to me, but he wouldn’t touch his food. So I started feeding him with a spoon. When he’d finished, I’d wipe his mouth with the tea towel and sit with him for an hour or so, telling him about some old trip to Galilee or about a book I was reading. I’ve already told you that I didn’t love him, except maybe when I was a little girl, but toward the end, when he himself turned into a child, a belated closeness developed between us. He had always spoken with sharp logic, in short, measured sentences, in a low, persuasive voice. Even in the course of a bitter argument he never raised his voice; he couldn’t, and wouldn’t, listen to what others were saying, and he never bothered to listen to my mother or me. But in his last months he spoke very little. He may even have finally begun to listen to others. He used to sit sometimes with Wald in what had been his library until he vacated it and left it to Wald, just as in fact he left the rest of the house to us, apart from this one small room. They would sit together in the library, Wald saying almost nothing and Abravanel sitting in silence, listening to what Wald hadn’t said. He would twist a paper clip between his fingers and attempt to straighten it again. Or maybe he wasn’t listening. There was no way of telling if he was listening or just staring. Nobody entered his room except Wald and me. Ever. No visitors, no acquaintances, no workmen. Only Bella, the cleaner, flitted silently from room to room once a week, like an evil spirit. We were all a little afraid of her. Sarah de Toledo used to bring over the soup with pieces of meat in it, and the porridge, and sometimes some fruit or vegetables. No one visited him. No neighbors knocked at the door. No one ever came to see us, apart from five or six people who came to offer condolences on the first evenings after Micha was killed; they sat in the library for a while, doing their best to reduce the silence. Those people disappeared after a few days. The front door closed behind them, and after that we were alone for years. Nobody wanted to be associated with a traitor. He himself didn’t seek any company. Two or three times, a letter arrived from beyond the border, from Beirut or Ramallah, forwarded by some contact in Europe. He didn’t bother to reply to the letters. Once, a well-known French journalist got in touch by telephone, a radical figure known for his sympathy for the Arab cause, requesting permission to visit, to exchange views and put some questions. He didn’t receive an answer. I was about to write to him that Abravanel no longer gave interviews, but I was told to leave the message unanswered. He lived the last years of his life under self-imposed house arrest. He never went through the gate. Not to the shop, or to the newspaper stand, or for an afternoon walk in the field at the bottom of the lane. I thought he was punishing himself, but I was wrong: he wasn’t punishing himself, he was punishing the world. He never spoke to me or to Wald about the establishment of the state, for example. Or about our winning the war. Or the expulsion of the Arabs. Or about the hundreds of thousands of Jews who had begun to arrive from Arab lands and from Europe. Or the bloodshed on the new borders. As if all these things were happening on another planet. Only once, one evening, he broke his silence to say to me and Wald, at the kitchen table: ‘You’ll see. All this will hold for a few years at best. Two or three generations at the outside. Not more.’ And with that he shut up again. Gershom Wald looked as if he were about to burst, so eager was he to reply, but he thought better of it and chose to stay silent. In the mornings, Abravanel used to sit on the sofa and read the paper for a quarter of an hour or so, then he would silently hand it to me to read and to pass on to Wald. Then he would walk up and down his room or in the garden by the water cistern for an hour or more. When he got tired, he would take a chair outside and rest in the shade of the fig tree, in the paved area. He would shift his chair as the sun moved a
round, chasing the shade. After his midday bowl of soup he lay down for an hour or two. When he got up, he would sit at the desk and write. Or read. Or read and write alternately, until it got dark. Then he would switch on the desk lamp and go on reading, taking notes on little bits of paper. But we didn’t find any of them after he died. Not a single piece of paper. Not so much as a little note. I looked in every drawer, on every shelf in the cupboard, and between the pages of the books in the bookcase. He didn’t burn his papers: I didn’t find any trace of burning anywhere in the house or the garden. No. He must have torn everything up into tiny bits and flushed them down the toilet day by day. Both he and Wald wrote and destroyed, then wrote and destroyed again. Do you do that too? No? Everybody writes in this house except me. Your predecessors in the attic also tried to write, apparently. There must be something in the walls or under the flagstones. I’m the only one who doesn’t write anything, except for instructions to Bella. After his death I locked this room, and I kept it locked, and it was only yesterday that I decided to open it for you, because there’s no way you’ll be able to climb up to the attic for a while.”
She got up from the edge of the sofa and covered Shmuel with a light blanket, then left the room, taking the empty soup bowl with her. As she left she said:
“If you need anything, just call me. I’ll hear you from the kitchen or my room. This house may have thick walls, but my hearing is sharp.”
Shmuel lay on his back, watching the illuminated band of dust until the angle of the light changed and the indoor Milky Way, radiating sparks of brightness, vanished. A cool, calm dimness filled the room. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them, it was dark. Atalia lit the desk lamp but not the wall light. The room was full of shadows. She sat him up with the help of the three cushions behind his back and laid a tray on his stomach bearing a slice of bread and cream cheese, a finely chopped salad, a hard-boiled egg, and some black olives. This time Shmuel ate with gusto, and again Atalia sat on the edge of the sofa watching him, as if she were counting the olives as he ate them. For an instant his almond eyes met her brown-green eyes and an innocent gratitude that she found quite touching shone from his look. This time she did not feed him. He wrapped himself up in his blanket because he was afraid she would notice his rising desire. When he had finished eating, she took the tray away and left the room without a word, and a few minutes later she returned carrying a basin of soapy water, a sponge, and a towel. Shmuel protested that there was no need, that he could get out of bed and walk to the bathroom on his crutches; he had already been to the toilet two or three times on his own. But Atalia, ignoring his protestations, stroked his forehead quickly with her cool hand, told him not to interfere, and with brisk movements removed the blanket, took off the pajama top Shmuel had borrowed from Mr. Wald, and proceeded without a moment’s hesitation to strip the corduroy trousers off both legs, the good one and the one in a cast, then removed his underpants, so he was lying on his back on the sofa, naked and stunned, hiding his private parts with one hand. She set to work washing his body with circular movements, which he found very pleasant once the initial shock and embarrassment had passed. First she sponged his shoulders and his hairy chest, then she told him to sit up and washed his back and waist, then laid him flat again, firmly scrubbed his stomach, his thick pubic hair, and, pushing his hand aside without a word and without batting an eyelid, encircled his semi-erect penis, moving on swiftly to scrub his crotch, and finally washed his good leg and, one by one, the pink toes peeping out of the bottom of the cast. When the washing was done, she dried him rapidly all over, from his forehead to his toes, with a thick, rough towel, which he enjoyed a lot, as if he were just a little boy wrapped in a towel after his bath on a winter evening. He curled up and closed his eyes in embarrassment: despite his desperate efforts, his penis now stood erect in the hairy bush at the base of his stomach. Atalia picked up the basin, folded the towel, dropped the sponge into the bowl of soapy water, put everything down on the floor, and leaned over Shmuel, her lips brushing his forehead while her hand touched his penis for a moment. It was a touch that barely happened. Then she covered him with the blanket, switched off the light, and left the room silently, closing the door behind her.
45
* * *
THREE OR FOUR TIMES the next day, Shmuel got up and hobbled to the toilet on his crutches, stopping in the kitchen on the way back to drink three glasses of water and eat a thick slice of bread and jam, then limped back to bed and promptly fell asleep again. The pains were dull but persistent. He could feel them vaguely even when he was asleep, as if his body were still angry with him. And yet his pains were also pleasant, and he somehow felt he deserved them, that they were justly earned. Half awake, he waited tensely for Atalia to come back again to feed and wash him. But Atalia did not come.
At five in the afternoon, he was woken by Gershom Wald, who entered the room noisily, with a push of the door, coughs, and a clatter of crutches, and sat down expansively on one of the high-backed black chairs, propping his crutches up against the secretaire next to Shmuel’s, and joked about their change of roles: “You’re the invalid now, and I have to entertain you and keep you company.” His white hair shone in the light of the lamp and his Einstein mustache quivered as if it had a life of its own. He was large and twisted, and whatever his pose, he looked uncomfortable, as if the seat were too low or too high, forever trying to change his position, his strong, broad hands moving restlessly. He recounted at great length some story about a king who changed places with a wayfarer, then said jokingly that Shmuel’s fall was nothing but a transparent ploy to gain Atalia’s favor, but that her favor was always illusory. And he added that it was some years since his crutches had set foot here in Abravanel’s secret den, which Atalia always kept closed and locked.
Shmuel’s three predecessors, who had inhabited the attic room, had apparently, according to Gershom Wald, never set eyes on this room. Nor were they ever allowed into Atalia’s room, though all three, in their different ways, had longed for her and never ceased to hope for a miracle. Then, in an instant, Gershom Wald’s cheerful mood passed, the sarcastic sparkle in his eye gave way to a suppressed sadness, and he let Shmuel talk for a few minutes about the designation “traitor,” which ought really to be seen as a badge of honor:
“Not long ago in France, de Gaulle was elected president by the votes of the supporters of French rule in Algeria, and now it transpires that his intention was to abandon French rule and grant full independence to the Arab majority. Those who previously enthusiastically supported him now call him a traitor and even threaten to make an attempt on his life. The prophet Jeremiah was considered a traitor both by the Jerusalem rabble and by the royal court. The Talmudic rabbis ostracized Elisha ben Abuya and called him Aher, ‘the Other.’ But at least they didn’t delete his teachings and his memory from the book. Abraham Lincoln, the liberator of the slaves, was called a traitor by his opponents. The German officers who tried to assassinate Hitler were executed as traitors. Every so often in history, courageous people have appeared who were ahead of their time and were called traitors or eccentrics. Theodor Herzl was called a traitor just because he dared to entertain the thought of a Jewish state outside the Land of Israel when it became clear that Ottoman-ruled Palestine was closed to the Jewish people. Even David Ben-Gurion, when he agreed twelve years ago to the partition of the land into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab, was called a traitor by many Jews here. My parents and my sister now accuse me of betraying my family by giving up studying. Actually, they may be more right than they think, because in fact I betrayed my family long before I gave up studying. I’ve betrayed them since I was a child, when I fantasized about having different parents. Anyone willing to change,” Shmuel said, “will always be considered a traitor by those who cannot change and are scared to death of change and don’t understand it and loathe change. Shealtiel Abravanel had a beautiful dream, and because of his dream some people called him a traitor.?
??
Shmuel stopped talking. He suddenly thought of his paternal grandfather, Grandpa Antek, the one who came from Latvia in 1932 and was accepted for the British CID because of his talent for forgery. During World War II he supplied the British with dozens of forged Nazi documents that they issued to their spies and agents behind enemy lines. The real truth was that Grandpa Antek joined the CID so as to pass classified information to one of the Jewish underground groups and also forged quite a few documents for the underground. Yet it was members of his own underground group who murdered him in 1946, because they suspected him of being a double agent collaborating with the British. Shmuel’s father had spent a long time working to purge his father’s name of the taint of treachery. Shmuel added in a hushed voice, as though afraid that strangers might hear:
“After all, the kiss of Judas, the most famous kiss in history, was surely not a traitor’s kiss. The men sent by the priests from the Temple to arrest Jesus at the end of the Last Supper didn’t need Judas to point out his teacher to them. Only a few days earlier, Jesus had stormed the gates of the Temple and furiously overturned the moneychangers’ tables in front of all the people. Furthermore, when they came to arrest him, he didn’t try to escape but stood up and willingly accompanied them. Judas’ betrayal didn’t happen when he kissed Jesus as the jailers arrived. His betrayal, if betrayal it was, occurred at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross. That was the moment when Judas lost his faith. And when he lost his faith, his life lost all meaning.”
Gershom Wald leaned forward and said:
“In every language I know, and even in languages I don’t know, the name Judas has become a synonym for betrayal. And perhaps also a synonym for Jew. Millions of simple Christians think that every single Jew is infected with the virus of treachery. When I was still a student in Vilna, fifty years ago, once in a second-class railway carriage I was sitting opposite two nuns in black habits with gleaming white cowls. One of them was older and more severe, with wide hips and a protruding belly, while her companion was young and sweet-looking, with a delicate face, and she glanced at me with clear blue eyes, all innocence, compassion, and purity. She looked like a picture of the Madonna in a village church, more like a girl than a woman. When I took a Hebrew newspaper out of my pocket, opened it, and started to read, the elder nun said to me, in formal Polish, in tones of astonishment and disappointment: ‘But how can it be, sir, that you are reading a Jewish paper?’ I replied at once that I was indeed Jewish and that I was planning soon to leave Poland and settle in Jerusalem. Her young companion looked at me with her innocent eyes, which were suddenly full of tears, and rebuked me in her bell-like voice: ‘But He was so, so sweet, how could you have done that to Him?’ I made a supreme effort not to respond that at the moment of the crucifixion I happened to have had a dental appointment. You ought to sit down and finish writing your thesis, and maybe publish a book someday, or rather, two books, one on Judas and one on Jewish views of Jesus. Maybe after that it will be the turn of Jewish views of Judas?”