Don't Call It Night

  Lupo stands up, trips on his dog, apologizes, feels his way and closes a window in the exchange. Noa turns out her light. Theo, barefoot, goes to check that the door is locked and turns to investigate the refrigerator. What is he after? Again he has no idea. Maybe just the pale light filtering through the food, or the sensation of cold inside. He gives up and goes back to his bedroom. Forgetting to switch off the radio, he goes outside to sit for a while facing the empty hills.

  AFTER the meeting Theo went out to fetch a pizza from Palermo, instead of lunch, to save time. He wanted to be able to take our visitor on a tour of Tel Kedar and also to show him the Alharizi house.

  As the door closed behind him, I said: I don't have much to contribute to an argument about the fighting in the Negev in '48. You won that war and all the wars, the few against the many, with or without Pini Finkel's flanking movement, or somebody else's. So now I'm going to bring you the correspondence, the receipts and the accounts, so that you can see what we've done with the money you insist on sending us every month.

  Avraham Orvieto said there was no need for that. First of all, for the time being almost all the investment had come from Theo. He would repay him in the coming weeks. There had been a delay in realizing the cash. And in any case it was becoming clear that there were many more obstacles ahead and you might say that the purchase of the building had been a little premature.

  But I didn't give up. I had to present to him the accounts and receipts that I had put together, it wasn't all properly sorted out yet, and show him the paperwork and the exchanges of correspondence. He was the one who had given me this job to do, and he was the one to whom I had to report. I'll just go and bring everything I can find. Or rather, I took his hand, let's go to my room, that's where the papers are, and it's cooler there because I don't open the blinds in the morning.

  The only chair in my room was occupied by the clothes and underwear that Theo had stripped off me in the night. I sat Avraham down on my bed and placed myself between the bed and the bedside table, trying to hide from him with my body what was on the chair; I put my glasses on and handed him the papers one by one. Avraham Orvieto peered at each document, his warm face radiating sympathy, curiosity and perhaps mild astonishment, and piled the papers in his lap. After a while I did sit down next to him on the bed, because I felt odd standing like that, with my shadow falling on him, almost covering his ascetic form, in this room where the noonday light filtered in softened and distorted between the slats of the blind. When I sat down I found it was even odder to be sitting knee to knee with the father of the boy on the bed where Theo and I last night had made love, lingering on every note, gently holding each other back.

  I said, as though I were speaking to an inattentive schoolchild: Are you checking those papers, Avraham? Or are you just browsing? Are you dreaming?

  Look, he said, you were the only teacher he liked, and he may have had an ear for literature. If you like I'll try to tell you a story. During the last winter, in December, after his first trip to Elat, I was here for two and a half days. I stayed at the Kedar Hotel. On the last evening after sunset he came to the hotel to take me for a walk. Every time I came on a visit we used to stroll for an hour or two, even though we didn't talk much. He was wearing warm corduroy trousers and a brown leather jacket, a stylish bomber jacket that I'd bought him on my way here, at Rome airport. I was wearing a coat, too. We walked shoulder to shoulder, because we were both about the same height. It was a cold evening and a strong wind was blowing off the hills. If I am not mistaken we went round the smart residential district, crossed the neglected little park behind the health clinic, and came out by Founders' House, whose front was lighted up by floodlights hidden in the bushes. Suddenly it started to rain. You're not comfortable, Noa. Why don't you lie back on the pillow? Yes, like that. Rain in the desert on a winter's night, you know, there is something about it that makes you feel sad. Even more than rain falling at the usual season in places that are not desert: it afflicts you like a deliberate insult. It was half past nine, and the streets were already deserted, and they seemed even more deserted because they were so wide. By the light of the street lamps we could see how the wind lashed the rain diagonally, every drop piercing like a needle, and a smell of wet dust came up from the ground. All the blinds were down everywhere. It looked like a ghost town. Two or three figures, perhaps Bedouins, with empty sacks on their heads for protection from the rain, ran across the square. And vanished. Immanuel and I sheltered under the corrugated metal awning of the box office of the Paris Cinema. The awning was groaning from the onslaught of the rain in the wind. Then we saw some distant lightning that made the slope of the desolate hills to the east flash white. The diagonal rain became heavier and turned into a thunderstorm. The square seemed to be turning into a dark river in the mist in front of our eyes, and the buildings seemed to be floating away from us. The roar of the flood came to us from the direction of the wadis, although on second thoughts it may have been just the shaking of the metal awning overhead. For some reason I found this deluge interfered with my perception of the desert. When I said this to Immanuel he gave a kind of twisted grin, though it was hard to tell in that wet yellow light that could not break free of the faint lamp over the shuttered ticket office. I don't even know if it was after he got caught up with drugs, or how deep he was in by then. That's something I'll never know. Once you said to me that he was very careful and sparing with words, and you were right, that's how he always was, and that's how he stood by my side inside that cage of cold railings under the awning that rattled and creaked in the rain. In that manly bomber jacket that I had chosen for him, with its zippers and pockets and metal buckles, he looked less like a tough airman than an emaciated refugee child who had been saved from drowning and dressed in his rescuers' clothes. So there he stood, looking frail and torpid, and as he leaned back against the emergency exit of the cinema it suddenly opened wide under his weight. Presumably they had omitted to lock it that evening. The rain was getting heavier so we took shelter inside the empty auditorium, which was quite dark apart from the emergency lighting that glowed faintly behind the word EXIT above the locked doors on either side. Below and facing us was the pale screen. In here the rain sounded dull, as though it were a long way away, and the thunder seemed to be under water. So there we were, my son and I, sitting side by side, like you and me now, in one of the back rows. And we realized how wet we were. And even though I could feel the warmth of his knee with mine, I suddenly had a strong sense of longing, as if he were not there next to me but, how should I put it, beyond the dark mountains. There used to be an expression like that. Though in fact on a rainy night all mountains are dark. Immanuel, I said to him, listen, now that we're sitting here, why don't we try to have a little chat. He grinned. And asked what about. About your schoolwork? About your mother? Or maybe we should talk about the future? A slight, indeterminate movement of the head. And so, from me, another two or three questions, and from him just a phrase or a mumble. Can you understand that, Noa? There I was, alone with my son on a winter's night in a cold, deserted auditorium, with our shoulders touching, or more accurately with our coats touching. And nothing was said. There was no verbal contact. None. Whereas I belong to a generation that is a very verbal one, if I can put it like that. Even if during my African years I've forgotten what there is to say when it isn't a matter of getting things done. Suddenly he blinked at me, as he did when he was little, took a deep breath, as if to say wait a minute, and pulled out of one of his pockets a magnetic game of checkers, a miniature set that I bought for him once in an airport somewhere. In that gloomy light we played three games, one after the other almost in silence, to the sound of the pounding rain. I won all three. Telling you the story now, I believe this was a mistake. I shouldn't have won all three games. What good were those victories? On the other hand, what use would it have been if I had let him win by lying and pretence? What do you think, Noa? As a teacher? As a sensitive person? Wouldn't it have been bette
r to let him win on our last night together?

  Instead of answering Avraham's questions I put my arm round his shoulder. I withdrew it at once because he turned and fixed his weary blue eyes on me and smiled his bright warm-room smile, a smile that flared up and at once faded away among those charming wrinkles, like a curtain being opened and then drawn shut. Then, he said, with his roughened hands moving in front of him as if he were trying to mould into a ball an object that did not want to be moulded, the rain slackened off and my son stood up and walked all the way back to the Kedar Hotel with me. Next morning I flew back to Lagos. I thought of writing him another letter. But there's Theo at the door now; let's go back to the sitting room and eat the pizza he's brought us, and then let's go and look at whatever he cares to show us, even though I have my doubts whether in the last analysis they'll let us build a refuge here. I do find it hard to believe they will, and in fact would it be so terrible if we decided to give up and commemorate him with some other good cause? I'm sorry for making you sad, Noa. It would have been better if I hadn't spoken; you were the one who told me that my son called words a trap, and that we didn't take care. Pity.

  IT will cost me six thousand shekels to repair the fence. And it would be worth having a gate put in, to prevent people wandering around there at night. I still think that there won't be a drug treatment centre here, and yet I'm forever trying to devise some sort of compromise. What am I after? I don't know. Batsheva Dinur has called twice to ask where the detailed paper I promised her is. At night I sit and read the pamphlets and books that Noa leaves scattered around, open face-downwards, on the kitchen table, in the passage, on the settee, on the armchair on the balcony, in the toilet. I have already learned a thing or two, but the heart of the matter still eludes me. And meantime I have to protect the property against neglect and against the dubious characters who apparently bivouac there at night. I am starting to like the derelict building itself. I spend half an hour or so there every day with a sketchbook and pencil. Noting possibilities: the north window could be either here or there, and it could be made three times bigger. In the centre of the building, in the hall, if the plaster ceiling were demolished, the distance from floor into roof space would be almost twenty feet and it would be possible, for example, to suspend a gallery with a platform all around, with a spiral staircase and a wooden balustrade.

  To Noa I said: Just give me a few more days.

  It's not long ago that she begged me, Don't take everything away from me, Theo, yet now she has stopped interfering. As if she's lost interest. When I suggested she come with me to Jerusalem she said, I've got a bit of a temperature, and my head ... you go and sort it out by yourself. When I got home in the evening and began to explain to her what I had achieved she said: Skip the details, Theo, I really don't care who else still remembers you from the days when you were the gleam in their eye, or what the Palmach got wrong in the War of Independence. Now that there seems to be at least a chance, she has lost that radiant joy that always seemed to well straight up from the core of life. She has lost that sparkle she had in her eye whenever she declared my judgment to be hot or cold, good or bad, or phony, or entrenched, as though she were grading the whole world. Instead of that flash of excitement there's a sort of abstraction that I've never seen in her before: she leaves home in the morning, comes back at midday, grabs something to eat standing up in front of the open refrigerator, leaves me the washing up and goes out again. Where does she have to go to now that the school is closed for the summer holidays and the staff have all vanished to their refresher courses and conferences? I take care not to ask. Or the opposite: she sits the whole morning watching children's programmes on TV, then vanishes in the evening till eleven o'clock. I might have suspected that she's got herself a lover at last, but it's just on these nights that she appears in my bedroom, smelling sweetly of honeysuckle, floating towards me barefoot and silent, in her demure nightdress that makes her look like a girl from a religious boarding school. I stand and kiss the brown birthmark beneath her hairline. My whole body strains to listen to her, like a doctor making a diagnosis, or as if she were my daughter who had suffered an unknown misfortune. I take hold of her hands that have aged ahead of her, and I am filled with a desire that is not made of desire but of a tender affection. I cup her breasts and run my fingers down the front of her thighs like a healer gently seeking to locate the pain. After the love, she falls asleep immediately, with her head in the hollow of my shoulder; the sleep of a babe, while I lie awake half the night, carefully attentive, breathing evenly so as not to disturb her. Though she sleeps deeply.

  Sometimes I have found her sitting in the kitchen, or on the balcony, or once even in the California Café, with a dark-haired girl called Tali or Tal, apparently a pupil or ex-pupil of hers. She is a slim, finely sculpted girl, who looks like a little red Indian in her patched and faded jeans. I would have dressed her in a flame-red skirt. From a distance they seem to be immersed in a lively conversation, but as I get closer they stop talking as though they are waiting for me to go away and leave them alone. But in fact I have no desire to go away and leave them. I find there is something spellbinding about that Tali, perhaps precisely because she seems a little afraid of me, retreating to the edge of her chair, looking me up and down apprehensively, like a threatened animal. This has the effect of making me insist on joining them. Their conversation instantly dries up. An unwilling silence descends. A brief interrogation elicited the information that Tal was due to be called up for military service in November. She still had to face the matriculation exam in math, and that bitch Gusta Ludmir was giving her private tuition, but what a drag, logarithms, she wouldn't be able to pass that bit in a million years. I also discovered that she is the daughter of Paula Orlev from Desert Chic, where 1 almost bought Noa a folksy dress recently. What brought her here? Nothing special. And what did she think about the situation in the Occupied Territories? Or about the future of Israel? Or about life in Tel Kedar? About permissiveness? About life in general? Her replies were wishy-washy, lukewarm. Nothing that sticks in my memory. Except that her cat has had kittens and she wants to give us one. Can I get you a cold drink? No thanks, we've just had one. Some grapes? No thanks. Then I suppose you'd like me to leave you alone? You've left your keys on the table. And take your paper. 'Bye.

  But I was in no hurry to leave them. On the contrary. What was the rush? I settled back in my chair and asked what people were saying in town about, say, the new string quartet. Or about the expansion of the parking lot in the square? And what plans did Tal have for the summer? From now till she was called up? Didn't she feel like getting away from the logarithms, getting to see something of the wide world, like the rest of them? Why not? What was wrong with the wide world? Would she be interested in some information about Latin America?

  Noa intervened: Batsheva Dinur was trying to get you on the phone.

  I caught the hint, and replied: So she was looking for me. Fine. In that case I'll just sit here with you till she calls again. Don't let me disturb you. Carry on. I'll just read my paper.

  Once, jokingly, I asked Noa over our morning coffee what exactly she was scheming about for all those hours with her Indian princess. Does she bring you her love problems? Is there another story with drugs? Is there another memorial project in the offing? Noa flushed and said: Theo. That's enough. This is going to end badly. And when she saw that I wasn't letting go, she stood up and started ironing. Even though normally the ironing is my department.

  So I decided to retreat, to effect a temporary withdrawal. I might have a chance some time to have a t£te-£-t£te with Tal. Or I might go to her mother's boutique by myself and buy Noa a surprise present of a light skirt in a colourful geometric print.

  Meanwhile I have had worries of my own. Natalia, the young Russian woman who has been cleaning the office on Fridays, sent me the keys and said she couldn't go on. This time I made up my mind not to give in. A little detective work brought me the phone number of the grocer in t
he prefab complex and they agreed, not without coaxing, to go and call her to the telephone. After a determined struggle against shyness, politeness, apprehension and language difficulties, it turned out that apparently her unemployed husband, in another fit of jealousy, had forbidden her to go on working for me. So I got into the Chevrolet and spent a good half-hour wandering around the prefabs trying to find where exactly the husband hung out. I planned to talk him round, but it transpired from what the neighbours said that Natalia had run away from him and was staying with his father, who lived in a rented room near the square, less than two minutes from my office. A couple of days later the husband also moved into the old man's miserable room. By the time I found the place, Natalia had pulled out and moved back to the prefab. The father and the husband shouted suspicious questions through the locked door for five minutes before they consented to slide the chain and let me in. It turned out I had interrupted them in the middle of a game of cards, two strong, slightly balding men, who resembled each other like brothers, both of them round-headed and big-boned, with hefty weight-lifter's arms, baring rows of sharp teeth when they smiled, both with stubble-covered faces and wearing black T-shirts. For some reason, when I tried to talk to them about Natalia they burst into wet, noisy laughter as though I had been caught in the act, slapped my back, explained something in Russian and in another language I did not recognize, and in Russian again, then they had another good laugh, revealing their predatory teeth, and begged me with enthusiastic gestures and almost violent heartiness to join them in a game of poker. I stayed an hour or so, in the course of which I drank two vodkas and lost forty shekels.