She doesn’t have the energy to argue or explain. He’s right, but she really wasn’t in a state to think about anything. How can he not understand her? She just wasn’t thinking. A white fog had filled her mind from the moment he told her that instead of going on the trip to the Galilee with her he was going off to some kasbah or mukataa. That was at six a.m. She had woken to hear his voice whispering into the phone in the other room, and hurried in there. Seeing his guilty look she had tensed and asked, “Did they call?”
“They say I have to go.”
“But when?”
“ASAP.”
She asked if it couldn’t wait a little while, so they could at least do the trip for two or three days, because she realized immediately that a whole week with him was a dream now. She added with a pathetic smile, “Didn’t we say we’d have a few puffs of family-together time?”
He laughed and said, “Mom, it’s not a game, it’s war,” and because of his arrogance—his, and his father’s, and his brother’s, their patronizing dance around her most sensitive trigger points—she spat back at him that she still wasn’t convinced that the male brain could tell the difference between war and games. For a moment she allowed herself some modest satisfaction with the debating skills she’d displayed even before her morning coffee, but Ofer shrugged and went to his room to pack, and precisely because he did not respond with a witty answer, as he usually did, she grew suspicious.
She followed him and asked, “But did they call to let you know?” Because she remembered that she hadn’t heard the phone ring.
Ofer took his military shirts from the closet, and pairs of gray socks, and shoved them into his backpack. From behind the door he grumbled, “What difference does it make who called? There’s an operation, and there’s an emergency call-up, and half the country’s reporting for duty.”
Ora wouldn’t give in—Me? Pass up getting pricked with such a perfect thorn? she asked herself later—and she leaned weakly against the doorway, crossed her arms over her chest, and demanded that he tell her exactly how things had progressed to that phone call. She would not let up until he admitted that he had called them that morning, even before six he had called the battalion and begged them to take him, even though today, at nine-zero-zero, he was supposed to be at the induction center for his discharge, and from there to drive to the Galilee with her. As he lowered his gaze and mumbled on, she discovered, to her horror, that the army hadn’t even considered asking him to prolong his service. As far as they were concerned he was a civilian, deep into his discharge leave. It was he, Ofer admitted defiantly, his forehead turning red, who wasn’t willing to give up. “No way! After eating shit for three years so I’d be ready for exactly this kind of operation?” Three years of checkpoints and patrols, little kids in Palestinian villages and settlements throwing stones at him, not to mention the fact that he hadn’t even been within spitting distance of a tank for six months, and now, at last, with his lousy luck, this kind of kick-ass operation, three armored units together—there were tears in his eyes, and for a moment you might have thought he was haggling with her to be allowed to come back late from a class Purim party—how could he sit at home or go hiking in the Galilee when all his guys would be there? In short, she discovered that he, on his own initiative, had convinced them to enlist him on a voluntary basis for another twenty-eight days.
“Oh,” she said, when he finished his speech, and it was a hollow, muffled Oh. And I dragged my corpse into the kitchen, she thought to herself. It was an expression of Ilan’s, her ex, the man who had shared her life and, in their good years, enriched the goodness. The fullness of life, the old Ilan used to say and blush with gratitude, with reserved, awkward enthusiasm, which propelled Ora toward him on a wave of love. She always thought that deep in his heart he was amazed at having been granted this fullness of life at all. She remembers when the kids were little and they lived in Tzur Hadassah, in the house they bought from Avram, how they liked to hang the laundry out to dry at night, together, one last domestic chore at the end of a long, exhausting day. Together they would carry the large tub out to the garden facing the dark fields and the valley, and the Arab village of Hussan. The great fig tree and the grevillea rustled softly with their own mysterious, rich lives, and the laundry lines filled up with dozens of tiny articles of clothing like miniature hieroglyphics: little socks and undershirts and cloth shoes and pants with suspenders and colorful OshKosh overalls. Was there someone from Hussan who had gone out in the last light of day and was watching them now? Aiming a gun at them? Ora wondered sometimes, and a chill would flutter down her spine. Or was there a general, human immunity for people hanging laundry—especially this kind of laundry?
Her thoughts flit as she remembers how Ofer presented her and Ilan with his new “tankist” overalls. They had already sold the Tzur Hadassah house by then and moved north to Ein Karem, closer to the city. Ofer came out of his room wrapped in the big, fireproof overalls, approached them with little hops and skips, swayed this way and that, flapped his arms, and shouted sweetly: “Mommy! Daddy! Teletubbies!” Two decades earlier, in the garden at night, in the middle of hanging up the boys’ clothes, Ilan had walked through the crowded lines and hugged her, and they had both rocked together, entangled in the damp laundry, laughing softly, sighing lovingly, and Ilan had whispered in her ear, “Isn’t it, Orinkah? Isn’t it the fullness of life?” She had hugged him as hard as she could, with a salty happiness pulsing in her throat, and had felt that for one fleeting moment she had caught it as it rushed through her, the secret of the fruitful years, their tidal motion, and their blessing in her body and his, and in their two little children and in the house they had built for themselves, and in their love, which finally, after years of wandering and hesitating, and after the blow of Avram’s tragedy, was now, it seemed, standing up on its own two feet.
Ofer finished packing in his room, and she stood motionless, dropsical, in the kitchen, and thought that Ilan had won again without any effort: she would not go on the trip with Ofer, she would not have even one week with him. Ofer must have sensed what she was going through, as he always did, even if he sometimes denied it, and he came and stood behind her and said, “Come on, Mom, it’s okay …” He said it tenderly, in a voice that only he knew how to use. But she hardened her heart and did not turn to him. They had planned the Galilee trip for a whole month. It was her gift to him for finishing the army, and it was a gift for herself too, of course, for her release from his army. Together they’d gone out and bought two little tents that folded up into small squares and elaborate backpacks and sleeping bags and hiking boots, but only for her: Ofer wouldn’t give up his dingy pair. In her spare time she’d bought thermal underwear and hats and fanny packs and Band-Aids for blisters and canteens and waterproof matches and a camping stove and dried fruit and crackers and canned food. Every so often, Ofer would pick up the swelling backpacks in her bedroom, gauge their weight in astonishment, and comment, “They’re coming along well, really growing nicely.” He joked that she’d have to find a Galilean Sherpa to carry all the gear she was packing. She laughed heartily, responding to his good spirits, to the light in his face. In the last few weeks, as his discharge date approached, she could feel the tastes and smells slowly returning from exile. Even the sounds sharpened, as they do when you get your ears flushed. Little surprises awaited her, wild crossbreeds of sensations: she would open a water bill and feel as if she had unwrapped a package of fresh parsley. Sometimes she would say to herself out loud, so she could believe it: “One week alone, the two of us, in the Galilee.” And mostly she proclaimed to no one: “Ofer is being released from the army. Ofer is getting out. He’s getting out of it in one piece.”
During the last week she played the words over and over again to the walls of the house, growing bolder and bolder. “The nightmare is over,” she would say. “No more nights of sleeping pills,” she whispered defiantly, and knew she was tempting fate. But Ofer had been on his discharge leave fo
r two weeks by then, and there was no immediate threat. The general, almost eternal conflict from which she had disconnected herself years ago kept on making its dark circles, here a terrorist attack, there a targeted assassination, hurdles that the soul leaped over with an expressionless face and without ever looking back. And perhaps she was emboldened to hope because she felt that Ofer himself was starting to believe that this was it, that it was over. A few days earlier, when he stopped sleeping for eighteen hours straight every day, she noticed the change in him, the slight civilianness that diluted his military speak, and his expressions, which softened day by day, and even the way he moved around the house once he allowed himself to grasp that he had apparently escaped his three years of lousy military service unharmed. “My boy is coming back,” she reported cautiously to the fridge and the dishwasher, to the computer mouse and the flower arrangement she put out in a vase. She knew full well from her experience with Adam, who had been out of the army for three years, that they don’t really come back. Not like they were before. And that the boy he used to be had been lost to her forever the moment he was nationalized—lost to himself, too. But who said that what happened to Adam would happen to Ofer? They were so different, and what mattered now was that Ofer was coming out of the Armored Corps—and out of his armor, she thought, waxing poetic. These were the sweet drops she had been pouring into herself just the night before, when she took the remote control out of his hand and covered him with a thin blanket, and sat watching him sleep. His full, wide lips were slightly parted in a hint of an ironic smile, as if he knew she was watching him. His rounded forehead gave him, even in his sleep, a slightly severe expression, and his open face, with the bronzed crown shaved down to a stubble, looked, more than ever before, strong and ready for life. A man, she thought in amazement. A total man. Everything in him looked possible and open and propelled. The future itself lit up his face, from inside and out. And now this operation suddenly comes along, and I could really do without it, Ora sighed the next morning as she stood in the kitchen and made herself a particularly noxious cup of coffee. Had she been able to, she would have turned around and gone back to bed and slept until the whole thing was over. How many days could a campaign like this last? A week? Two? A lifetime? But she didn’t even have the strength to go back to bed, incapable of taking a single step, and from one moment to the next everything became decided, inevitable. Her body already knew, and her stomach, and her gut, which was melting away.
• • •
At seven-thirty that evening she stands cooking in the kitchen, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and, for lyric effect, the floral apron of a real, hardworking, eager housewife: a chef. Piping-hot pots and pans dance on the stove top, steam curls up to the ceiling and thickens into aromatic clouds, and Ora suddenly knows that everything will work out.
As befitting the adversary she faces, she plunges into battle with her winning combination: Ariela’s Chinese chicken strips with vegetables, Ariela’s mother-in-law’s Persian rice with raisins and pine nuts, her own variation on her mother’s sweet eggplant with garlic and tomatoes, and mushroom and onion pies. If she only had a proper oven in this house she could make at least one more pie, but Ofer would be licking his fingers anyway. She moves between the oven and the stove top with unexpected gaiety, and for the first time since Ilan left, since they locked up their house in Ein Karem and dispersed to separate rental houses, she feels a sense of affection and belonging toward a kitchen, toward the whole idea of a kitchen, even this old-fashioned, grubby kitchen, which now approaches her tentatively and rubs up against her with its damp snouts of serving spoons and ladles. Piled on the table behind her are covered bowls of eggplant salad, cabbage salad, and a large, colorful chopped vegetable salad, into which she snuck slices of apple and mango, which Ofer may or may not notice, if he even gets to eat this meal. Another bowl contains her version of tabbouleh, which Ofer thinks is to die for—that is to say, which he really, really likes, she corrects herself quickly for the record.
She has arrived at the moment when all the dishes have been sent on their way: cooking on the stove top, baking in the oven, bubbling in pans. They don’t need her any longer. But she still needs to cook, because surely Ofer will come home at some point and want fresh food. Her fingers flutter restlessly in the air. Where was I? She grabs a knife and a few vegetables that survived her salad assault, and starts chopping and humming quickly, The tankists set off with screeching chains, / Their bodies painted the color of earth—She stops herself. How in the world did she come up with that old song? Perhaps she should make a steak the way he likes it, braised in red wine, in case he gets home tonight? And the people who come to make the announcement, she wonders, are they convening in some office now, at the local army center, undergoing training or a refresher course—but what is there to refresh? When would they have had time to forget their job? When have we had even one single day here without an announcement to a family? It’s strange to think that the notifiers were enlisted at the same time as the soldiers who take part in the operation, all orchestrated together. She giggles with a high-pitched squeak, and there is Ada again, with her large eyes, resurfacing, always there to observe how Ora acts, and Ora realizes that for several minutes she’s been staring at the semitransparent lower half of the front door. There is a problem there that requires a solution, but she does not understand what it is, and she hurries back to the pots on the stove, stirs and seasons generously—he likes his food spicy—and holds her face over the steam to inhale the pots’ thick breath. She doesn’t taste the food. She has no appetite tonight—if she puts a crumb in her mouth she’ll throw up. She watches her hand move wildly over a pot, showering its contents with paprika. There are particular movements that always make the phone ring. She noticed this odd conjunction a long time ago: when she seasons food, for example, or when she wipes a pot or pan dry after washing it, the phone almost always rings. Something in these circular motions seems to bring it to life, and also—how interesting—when she adds water to the flowers in the delicate glass vase. But only that vase! She laughs warmly at the secretive whims of her telephone, empties the pot of rice with raisins and pine nuts into the trash can, and carefully washes and dries the pot slowly, seductively. But nothing happens. The phone is dead (meaning, silent). Ofer is probably terribly busy. It will be hours until anything even starts, and they may not leave until tomorrow or the next day. And when his tank was hit with two rockets, she hums, He was inside the burning fire—She cuts herself off. She needs to find something to do tomorrow. But tomorrow is one of those days when she has nothing much to do. Tomorrow she was supposed to be skipping among the Galilee rocks with her young son, but there was a slight hitch in the plans. Maybe she should call the new clinic in Rehavia and offer to start working right away, even as a volunteer, even doing secretarial work if necessary. They could call it her adjustment period. But they have already explained, twice, that they won’t need her until the middle of May, when their regular physiotherapist is scheduled to give birth. A new person will come into the world, Ora thinks and swallows bitter saliva. How silly of her not to have made any plans until May. She’d been so preoccupied with planning the trip with Ofer that she’d thought of nothing else, but she’d had the feeling that there would be a turning point in the Galilee. The start of a real, full recovery for her and Ofer. So much for her feelings.
She tosses the eggplant into the trash can, scrubs the pan, wipes it devotedly, and gives a sideways glance at the treacherous phone. What now? Where was I? The door. The lower part of the door. Four short bars over thick frosted glass. She takes three sheets of A4 paper from the printer and tapes them over the glass. That way she won’t see their military boots. And now what? The fridge is practically empty. In the pantry she finds a few potatoes and onions. Perhaps a quick soup? Tomorrow morning she’ll go shopping and fill the house again. It occurs to her that they could arrive in the middle of all sorts of things. Like when she’s unpacking the groceries and puttin
g things in the fridge. Or when she sits down and watches television. Or when she sleeps, or when she’s in the bathroom, or when she’s chopping vegetables for soup.
Her breath pauses for a moment, and she quickly turns on the radio like someone opening a window. She finds the Voice of Music and listens for a couple of minutes to something from the Middle Ages. But no, she needs talk, a human voice. On the local station a young reporter is talking on the phone to an older women with a deep Mizrahi Jerusalem accent. Ora stops abusing the vegetables, leans against the cracked marble counter, wipes the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand, and listens to the woman talk about her older son who fought in the Gaza battle this week. “Seven soldiers were killed,” she says. “All of them were his friends from the battalion.” Yesterday they’d let him come home for a few hours, and this morning he was already back in the army.
“And while he was at home, did you give him your breast food?” the reporter asks, to Ora’s astonishment.
“My breast food?!” repeats the woman, also surprised.
The reporter laughs. “No, I asked if you gave him the best food.”
“Of course,” the woman says, laughing softly. “I thought you asked … Of course I cooked all my best dishes for him, and I pampered him.”
“Tell us how you pampered him,” the reporter urges.
And the mother, with a generosity that envelops Ora in its warmth, recounts: “I pampered him just like he deserves, with his favorite treats, and a nice warm bath and a really soft towel, and the shampoo he likes, which I bought special for him.” Then her voice turns grave. “But I want to say that, you know, I have two more sons, twins, and they also followed the way my oldest showed them, and they’re in the same battalion, Tzabar, the three of them in the same battalion I have, and I want to make a request from our army over the radio, can I?”