The Rainy Day Man: Contemporary Romance

  The knowledge of days to come became even more painful. I rose.

  "You wanted to talk..." Hannah said in surprise.

  "I'm tired, I must sleep."

  The door to Jonathan's room was closed. I tapped on it lightly. There was no reply. I went into the bedroom next door. A set of bedclothes was folded on the double bed, on Hannah's side. I pulled a pillow and a blanket over from there to the empty side and sank into a bad sleep.

  ***

  A little after midnight I awoke and looked in amazement at the creased sheets drenched in the light of the bedside lamp. Hannah was lying on her back, reading a book. In the kitchen the motor of the fridge went on with a rattle. I closed my eyes again. Beyond the closed shutter the first autumn leaves rustled in the wind. Was it the same wind which was blowing there too? Suddenly it all seemed painfully near, no longer in other worlds, not even beyond a sea or a river, but on this very soil, 200 miles north, a negligible distance by fighter plane, six or seven hours' drive by car, a fraction of a second in the life of a light wave or a radio signal.

  I clenched my teeth silently, trying to banish the vision. It eluded my grasp, like smoke through a closed fist, and reorganized itself, more colorful and real. I saw Yvonne in her white robe on the mattress in the middle of the swept floor. She came towards me with that flowing, arching movement I loved. Every pore in my skin prepared itself to accept it. My hands went out to hold her face, descend slowly to her neck along the delicate line of her jaw. But the moment never arrived. Rather, a stream of hard objects rained down upon my body. I could identify the rim of an empty plate, a comb, the pits of fruit. I wondered whether they all existed or if that was what longing looked like when it was hopeless.

  My body followed my mind all the way. My lips were dry, my ears burning. In bed, beside me, Hannah propped herself on her elbow to look at the clock. Would her sleepy body be able to bring me some kind of consolation? At some point we would have to begin. The light went out. Hannah leaned back, becoming a hillock at the edge of the bed. I put my hand out beneath the blanket and touched her soft flesh, damp with sweat. She groaned. As I scrambled out of my clothes, across the path of hurtful objects, she put out a maternal hand to assist me. "I didn't want to wake you up."

  I touched her hair, then her face. Her jawline was lost beneath a puffy layer.

  "Touch me," I pulled her hands to me.

  There was still the practical dexterity in the hands which had skinned the chicken for dinner. Her touch made my flesh rebel, as if a fine mechanism were being abused. What was it in Yvonne's touch that had woven the magic - an affection which could not be mentioned, or simply the exciting strangeness which had drawn generations of men to gypsy women, women of the forest, sirens?

  The vision released a burst of energy in me. I pressed myself to her beneath the blanket and held her tight. I bit her shoulder, her back, her thighs. I mingled the tepidness of her white flesh with the tang of Dura, which still lingered between my teeth. I waited for takeoff, for the miracle which would emerge from within me. It could be done without Yvonne. I had been there. I had done everything, I had made things happen at my command, even by my ingenuity. No woman would come between me and my inner miracle.

  She escaped from my grip and turned on the light. Then she sat up, leaning against the backboard and looked at me from above. "You're completely deranged," she said in the icy tone she kept for the most inveterate bed-wetters. "I don't know what's happened to you, but you seem to be more disturbed than ever."

  Naked, I got up and tottered over to the cupboard. There was an old shirt there. I put it on but only managed to do up the lower buttons.

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "You can't leave me here on my own for a lifetime and then turn up one day with all your problems."

  I sat down at the edge of the bed. I could see my reflection in her make-up mirror: a tired, crumpled face. Beyond it was her face, omniscient, challenging.

  "Touch me…" she imitated me mockingly. "You're pitiful with your childish demands..."

  My eyes looked back at me from the depths of the mirror. She was right, now I could see age and helplessness in them. A sour wave of anger welled up inside me, anger at the years that had been lost and would be lost, at the loneliness that room cast upon me and at the knowledge that I would have to grow old in it with Hannah. I knew that I would never see Yvonne again and that I would never forget her either. All that I could think of doing was to pull out the ornamental bedpost and smash the mirror with it or turn round and hit her in the face.

  In the end I just pulled the shirttail around my loins and said: "There's another woman."

  The corners of her mouth pulled down in a doubting smile.

  "She lives there, where I was."

  She smiled. "With you I’d believe anything, even that you'd bought the beauty queen of the village, a twelve-year old girl with a tattoo on her forehead and copper bangles round her ankles."

  I rubbed my open hand against the bedpost. "She's about your age, maybe a bit older."

  "In that case," her neck stiffened with contempt, "you'll agree with me that something's wrong with you. It's pathetic, at your age, to start with that sort of thing."

  "It's not the first time," I said softly. "Always, almost everywhere I've been stationed..."

  Surprisingly, she did not explode, just wet her lips thoughtfully and lit a cigarette. A few minutes later she asked in a practical voice, "This affair, do they know about it at the office?"

  "I plan to resign." The word was a rehearsal for 'separate'.

  She looked at me in disbelief. "You're mixed up in something..."

  "No. I've just realized I'm not right for it anymore."

  "You need help," she said rapidly, "you've got to be saved from yourself..." The smoke poured out of her quick puffs. "Father's in hospital, but we can find out, maybe there's someone who can intervene, and if there isn't, then Father will write a few words to your superiors..."

  "I don't need an intervention. I want to resign."

  "What work will you do?"

  "I haven't thought about it yet. At any rate, it won't be anything connected with your father..."

  "Now you're a hero," the scorn had returned to her voice. "If it hadn't been for him, what would you be today?"

  "I never asked for favors..."

  "But you certainly knew how to take them."

  "I was wrong. I was a different person."

  She stubbed the cigarette out on the empty plate. "When he's not around you're very brave."

  "I'll go to him tomorrow, on my way to the office."

  She examined me, assessing the amount of harm I could inflict. "The last few days have made him vulnerable," she said softly.

  "I've got to speak to him," I remembered the copy of the letter in alarm, and found my trousers between the blankets. It was in its place, in the pocket. I pulled it out and got up from the bed, which responded with a creak of springs. Hannah bent her head, lying on her weakness as if on a pillow. When I went out of the room her chin was trembling.

  The door to Jonathan's room was half-open. His head, on the sheet, was freshly washed. His mouth was open. I bent over and kissed his forehead. He emitted a little snort and went back to sleep. I stood there for another moment, capturing for myself the sight of him in the faint light that came from Hannah's room. I covered him and turned to go out. In the doorway lay his gym shorts. I forced myself into them. He turned over and mumbled, "Dad…" I held his hand until his breathing became regular again.

  I continued into the living room, where I dozed in the alien green armchair. Towards dawn the strip of light beneath Hannah's door widened. The hinges creaked. She came to me barefoot, with gentle steps, and put her face next to mine.

  "Just agree to change a little," she whispered. "Not to be so complicated, not to see everything only from your point of view..."

  I moved my face away.

  "I want to make a confession," she said in the voice of a
little girl who has torn a curtain or dirtied the carpet. "I realize that it was a mistake to bring you back to Israel." Her voice was warm. "You were nicer when you worked abroad. You wrote to us, sometimes you even phoned, and when you came for holidays I prepared the house and cooked your favorite foods, and you were grateful for everything..."

  "Those were years of escape," I said dryly. "I don't want to go back to them."

  "You never complained."

  "They suited me. But not anymore."

  You're a bit old for great changes."

  "The changes are already made and there's no point fighting them. I'll find myself a different job and..." I gently removed her hand from my head, "a place to stay..."

  She did not take it seriously. "You won't go. You never went. Inside, you love me."

  "We should have separated long ago."

  She passed her hand along my face. "We'll try again..."

  "No."

  "Why not? Do you hate me, after everything that's happened, after all the things that have been done to you in all kinds of place, is it me of all people that you hate?"

  “Those who hurt me were only doing a job. They needed cooperation or information or even to kill me. You want my soul, want me to think like you, be happy with your values."

  "If you had ever listened you'd be a successful man today."

  "If I'd listened to you I'd be miserable."

  "And in your new life, after you've abandoned the family, deserted me, broken Father's heart, will you find happiness?" She stroked my face again, this time with obvious pity. "My silly billy," her voice still had its patronizing tone. "You believe everything you read in those books of yours. Look at real life. There's no happiness. It's an illusion which exists so that people can kid themselves that there's something worth living for..."

  "Leave me alone," I pleaded. "I want to be alone."

  "Just promise that you'll stop your fantasies," she put her legs over the sides of the chair and clung to me tightly. "I can be as good as your Arab woman, even better maybe. She's only a dream but I'm a real woman, your wife."

  With a clumsy movement she shifted position and took off the shorts. Her gaze, fixed on my face, embarrassed me. In another second my life would return to her will. The moment would be lost, missed, like a train which had passed through the station and vanished. All the misunderstanding of our lives together was enclosed in that moment, within my submission to the approaching orgasm and the censure which emanated from her serious face as she took my penis into her mouth, looking away from it all the while as if it were something the wind had inadvertently stuck onto her lips.

  ***

  The morning flowed around me, enveloped in the aroma of toast and the low murmurs of Hannah and Jonathan in the kitchen. I waited under the blanket until I heard the door shut and the engine of the car whine into life. Then I rolled out of the armchair and embarked on the series of actions leading to departure.

  Outside, the customary Friday bustle was already under way. I took a crowded bus to the geriatric hospital, an ugly building in a suburb of the city. Next to the gray wall young boys were selling the weekend papers. There were sweet sounds in the air and I envisioned a flock of old people listening to a morning concert with closed eyes while a battalion of white nurses fluttered industriously around them.

  At the reception desk I gave the old man's name.

  "Is he expecting you?" the nurse asked.

  "He'll be glad to see me."

  She pointed doubtfully at a red notice above her head which read: 'Only close relatives may visit the patients without special permission.'

  "I'm his son-in-law."

  She peered closely at me again and pressed a button. A wide door opened, to a long corridor with walls scarred by generations of wheelchairs. I walked to the end into a room heavy with attention: blown-up photographs of scenery, naive paintings, handicrafts. The womb-like warmth of a nursery enveloped the air. But the smell of babies had been replaced by the sour smell of compressed exhaustion and decline.

  The morning concert I had seen in my mind's eye was only a children's television program. A happy cucumber was playing a violin. A tomato dancing on tiny, stalk-like legs. Facing the set, about twenty people were sitting in wheelchairs at square café tables. Some of them were engaged in handwork, others were staring into space, groaning or slurping cold porridge from unbreakable plates. To each wheelchair was attached a transparent bag into which a catheter dripped. The silence could almost be ascribed to a concentrated effort to produce as much high-grade urine as possible.

  I spotted the old man immediately. His gaze was clear and his urine bag empty. He sat at a corner table, away from the rest, in a wheelchair padded with a cushion I remembered from his flat at the kibbutz. The clothes he was wearing did not belong to the hospital either, and his knitted red scarf constituted a last, defiant choice.

  "You've come," he said.

  His voice, which was cracked and had lost its old thunder, had the tone of an expectation fulfilled. It also explained the nurse's doubtfulness.

  "Hannah's already been here," I guessed.

  "Early this morning."

  I dragged the only chair in the room over to his table and sat down. A nurse came in pushing a trolley with tea in cups with spouts. The old man pushed his cup over to me. "Do you want to drink?"

  "It's for you."

  He shook his head. "I don't want to fill the bag." In the same breath he added, "So, you had some business with an Arab woman..."

  "Yes."

  "And Hannah?"

  I did not answer.

  He turned the cup angrily on its base.

  "You're angry."

  "No," he gave me a clear look. "Just jealous."

  "There's no reason to be jealous. From here I'm going on to the office and in another few hours I won't have a job and maybe not a home either."

  "You'll have everything," he said drily. "Hannah and the office. Neither of them will let you go."

  "I don't intend to argue with them."

  "You won't have to. Hannah won't agree and the office won't give up either..."

  "They don't need me," I said with growing bitterness. "If they chose to take their oldest and best explosives officer and dump him without any cover in the middle of nowhere, in a place where everything happens the wrong way round..."

  "You're an idiot. I'm sure that everything is going according to plan and that right now you're being extremely helpful..."

  "Right now?"

  He turned the cup round again. Near the spout was a long crack.

  "Where will this cup start leaking from?"

  "From here?" I touched the crack.

  He nodded. "Precisely. That's what makes it a good vessel. Now one knows what one has to be careful of." Grinning, he reviewed the people around him as they bent to their cups of tea. "Lots of vessels are more useful after they have been broken. They can be used for something special and final that no other vessel can. If you want to seal a hole in the wall, what will you mix the plaster in if not a cup for which there is no other use? And what is better fitted to serve as a flower pot than a kettle with a hole in its bottom? That's the law of broken vessels. Some people waste their lives seeking recognition, trying to be something special and defined. When they've finished rubbing up against all the protuberances of life, are full of cracks and breaks, only then do they begin to be of value..."

  "Are you trying to say that...?"

  "They doubtless know everything and are in control of what's happening." He took a sip from the cup through dry, cracked lips. "If they didn't do anything about the Arab woman - well, that's a sign of tacit assent. It might even fit some plan..."

  At one of the tables someone called out in Yiddish, "Nurse, nurse!"

  The old man looked at me through his very wise eyes. "I told Hannah. I explained to her that one has to see it as part of the job. They let you start, likewise, they'll also make you quit..."

  I looked at him mistr
ustfully. "How can you be so certain?"

  He smiled. "Experience, and a lot of free time to think. Plus Hannah's stories..."

  As usual, he was convincing. And I, also as usual, asked, "What would you do in my place?"

  "It's hard to give you advice. A lot of information is missing."

  For a moment I thought of telling him everything, all the things that seemed important to me. I even thought of showing him the copy of the letter. But his face grew dark with the usual anger.

  "Make an effort," he declaimed, wagging his finger at me as he had in the past. "You'll have to be clever, alert. Now they need you for just one thing. Settle the price before you do it. Afterwards it'll be too late. They'll get you because of the woman, make you resign immediately or, at best, go back to the mail room..."

  The musical vegetables had been replaced by a news bulletin. Fighter planes came and went on long runways. In Beirut a sports stadium was burning. "One hundred and fifty persons were killed," the newscaster announced.

  The old man had dozed off. "One more question…" I touched his arm.

  "I hear you," he opened one eye, amazingly alert.

  "You've never been this kind to me..."

  He sat up straight and changed the position of the cushion behind his back. His look had that dismissive strength which I knew so well from his daughter's face.

  "I didn't like you. You were weak, not ambitious enough and perhaps not so smart either. You didn't have the things I liked: no initiative, no vision, no courage, no hope..."

  "What have you found in me now, when I'm only good for one, last bit of work and I intend to leave your daughter?"

  "From where I sit things look different," his face reflected sadness. "You look back and realize that only some initiatives get implemented, only part of the vision is fulfilled, that there's no logic in courage and even hope has no value since everything happens by chance anyway." He grimaced and leaned towards me. "So what's left?" he asked in a conspiratorial tone. "What's left after so few of the promises are kept?"