Between Friends (6 page)

The bus had already left Tel Aviv and was driving jerkily from town to town, pulling up at every stop, letting passengers on and off, hard-working people who spoke Romanian, Arabic, Yiddish, Hungarian, some carrying live chickens or large bundles wrapped in tattered blankets or old suitcases tied with ropes. When shouting and pushing occasionally broke out on the bus, the driver rebuked the passengers and they cursed him. At one point, the driver stopped on the side of the road between two small villages, got off, stood with his back to the bus, and urinated in a field. When he boarded again and started the engine, a murky cloud of stinking diesel fuel filled the air. It was hot and humid, and the passengers were bathed in sweat. The trip was very long, even longer than the ride from Kibbutz Yekhat to Tel Aviv, because the bus circled through the small towns and an immigrant camp. Citrus groves and fields of thorns filled the unpopulated areas. Dusty cypress or eucalyptus trees with peeling bark lined the sides of the road. Finally, when day began to soften into evening, Moshe stood up, pulled the cord to stop the bus, and stepped off onto the fork in the dirt road that led to the hospital.

The moment he got off the bus, Moshe saw a small mongrel puppy, gray-brown with white patches on its head. It was running diagonally through the bushes toward the road, which it crossed just as the bus began to move. The front tire missed it, but the back one crushed the creature before it even had a chance to bark. There was only a light thump and the bus continued on its way. The little dog’s body lay on the cracked road, still twitching violently, raising its head again and again and banging it on the hard asphalt each time it fell back. Its legs flailed in the air and a stream of dark blood spurted from the open jaw past the small, shiny teeth, and another trickle of blood oozed from its hindquarters. Moshe ran over, kneeled on the road, and held the dog’s head gently until it stopped twitching and its eyes glazed over. Then he picked up the small, still-warm body so that no other cars would run over it and carried it in his arms to the foot of a eucalyptus tree with a whitewashed trunk near the bus stop and laid it down. He cleaned his hands with some dirt but couldn’t wipe the bloodstains off his trousers and white Sabbath shirt. He knew his father was not likely to notice them. There were very few things his father still noticed. Moshe stood there for a moment, took out a handkerchief, and wiped the moisture off his glasses; then, since night was falling, he began to walk quickly, almost running along the dirt road.

The hospital, a twenty-minute walk from the road, was surrounded by a wall of untreated cinder blocks topped with barbed wire. By the time he reached it, the blood on his clothes had congealed into rust-colored stains.

A fat, sweaty guard wearing a yarmulke stood at the hospital gate, blocking the entrance with his thick body. He told Moshe that visiting hours were over a long time ago and he should “go and come back tomorrow.” Moshe, his eyes still filled with tears for the dead dog, tried to explain that he’d come all the way from Kibbutz Yekhat to see his father, and he had to be back at school on the kibbutz by seven o’clock tomorrow morning. The fat guard, who was in a jovial mood, pointed to the black beret on Moshe’s head and said, “They don’t keep the Sabbath on the kibbutz and they eat
treyf
there, don’t they?” Moshe tried to explain, but the tears choked him. The guard softened and said, “Don’t cry, son, go in, it’s okay, go in, but next time, come between four and five, not at night. And don’t stay more than half an hour.” Moshe thanked him and, for some reason, reached out to shake the guard’s hand. The guard didn’t take the proffered hand, but tapped the black beret on the young boy’s head twice and said, “Just make sure you keep the Sabbath.”

Moshe crossed a small, neglected garden with two benches badly in need of fresh paint and walked through the iron-barred door that opened when he rang a raspy bell. In the entrance hall, some ten men and women were sitting on metal chairs that lined the walls, which were painted a sort of khaki color to halfway up. The men and women were all wearing striped hospital gowns and flat slippers. Some were speaking to each other in hesitant voices. The supervisor, a strapping fellow wearing a loud flowered shirt and army-issue trousers and boots, was standing in a corner of the room chewing gum. An older woman was knitting furiously, though she had neither needles nor wool. Her lips moved in a low mutter. A spindly, stoop-shouldered man stood with his back to the room, clutching the bars of the window and speaking to the now-darkening world outside. An old woman was sitting alone near the door, sucking hard on her thumb and mumbling prayers of supplication. His father was out on the balcony, which was covered from top to bottom with netting. He was sitting on a gray metal chair next to a small metal table, also gray, with a tin mug of tea cooling on it. Moshe sat down in a metal chair beside him and said, “Hello, Father.” He sat hunched over so that his father wouldn’t see the bloodstains on his clothes.

The father said hello without looking at his son.

“I’ve come to see you.”

The father nodded and said nothing.

“I’ve come by bus.”

The father asked, “Where did he go?”

“Who?”

“Moshe.”

“I’m Moshe.”

“You’re Moshe.”

“I’m Moshe. I’ve come to visit you.”

“You’re Moshe.”

“How are you, Father?”

The father asked again, with concern and profound sadness, in a voice trembling with pain, “Where did he go? Where?”

Moshe took his wrinkled, veiny hand, worn out by hard work building roads and planting crops, and said, “I’ve come from the kibbutz, Father. I’ve come from Kibbutz Yekhat. I’ve come to visit you. Everything is fine with me. It’s going very well.”

“You’re Moshe.”

So Moshe began to tell his father about his school. About his teacher, David Dagan. About the library. About working in the chicken coop. About the girls who sing beautiful, nostalgic songs. Then he opened his shoulder bag and took out
The Plague,
with its green cover, and read the first two paragraphs to his father. His father, a yarmulke on his slightly tilted head, listened attentively, weary eyes half closed, then suddenly picked up the tin mug, looked at the now-cool tea, shook his head sadly, put the mug down again, and asked, “Where did he go?”

Moshe said, “I’ll go to the kitchen and get you a fresh cup of tea. Hot tea.”

His father wiped his forehead with his hand and, as if awakening from sleep, said again, “You’re Moshe.”

Moshe held his father’s hand and didn’t hug him, but kept pressing the limp, brown hand. He told his father about the basketball court, the books he’d read, the debates in the current events group, and his participation in the discussions in the art club, about Joseph K. from Kafka’s book, and about David Dagan, who’d already had several wives and lovers and now lived with a seventeen-year-old girl, but always gave his full attention to his students and had defended him fiercely when the others teased and mocked him during his first few weeks on the kibbutz. David Dagan, he has a habit of saying to people, “Just give me a minute so we can set things straight.” Moshe spoke to his father for about ten minutes, and his father closed his eyes, then opened them and said sorrowfully, “All right. You can go now. You’re Moshe?”

Moshe said, “Yes, Father,” and added, “Don’t worry, Father. I’ll come to see you again in two weeks. They let me come. David Dagan lets me come.”

The father nodded and dropped his chin to his chest, as if in mourning.

Moshe said, “Goodbye, Father.” Then he said, “I’ll see you soon. Don’t worry.”

From the door, he gave a last look at his father, who was sitting utterly still, staring at the tin mug. On the way out, Moshe asked the supervisor in the army trousers, “How is he?”

The supervisor said, “He’s fine. Quiet.” Then he said, “I wish they were all like him,” and finally added, “You’re a very good son. Bless you.”

When he left, it was almost dark outside. Moshe was suddenly filled with that familiar sense of self-loathing. He took his black beret off and put it in his bag. He rolled his sleeves up to his biceps again and undid his top button. Only thorns and couch grass grew in the small front garden of the hospital. But someone had forgotten a dishtowel on the bench and someone had lost the belt to his robe among the thorns. Moshe noticed those details because he was drawn to details. He thought about Cheska Honig, who had taught him to keep an eye out for sick hens and isolate them before they infected the whole coop. And he thought about his classmates lying on one of the lawns now, the boys’ heads resting on the girls’ laps as they sang nostalgic songs. One of them, Tamir or Dror or Gideon or Arnon, was now putting his blond head on Carmela Nevo’s lap, its heat caressing his cheek. Moshe would give everything he had to be there now. Once and for all to be one of them. And yet he knew very well that it would never happen. As he walked through the gate, the jovial guard asked, “What’s this, you go in with a hat on and come out without it?”

Moshe said only good night and turned onto the dirt path that led from the hospital to the road. It was dark and empty. Not a single car drove past. Pinpoints of light shone in the distance and he could hear the braying of a donkey. The faint voices of children also came from the direction of the lights. He kneeled on the ground and sat back on his legs at the foot of the whitewashed eucalyptus tree, close to where he had laid the run-over dog, and waited. He waited for a long time. He thought he could hear sounds of jagged weeping coming from the hospital, but he wasn’t sure. He sat there motionless, and listened.

L
EAH, HIS WIFE
, had gone off to attend a ten-day course at the Kibbutzim College of Education that would train her to be a caregiver in the children’s house. Roni Shindlin was happy to have a few days without her. He showered after his shift in the metalwork shop and at four in the afternoon went to the children’s house to pick up his five-year-old son, Oded. On the days it wasn’t raining, he held Oded’s small hand and they went for a stroll around the kibbutz. Oded wore green boots, flannel trousers, a sweater, and a jacket. Roni always tied the strings of the boy’s hat under his chin because his ears were sensitive to the cold. Then he picked him up, hugged him, and took him to see the cows and the sheep. Oded was afraid of the cows, which wallowed in wet dung and mooed faintly from time to time. His father recited for him: “‘I never saw a purple cow/I never hope to see one/But I can tell you anyhow/I’d rather see than be one.’”

Oded asked, “Why is it roaring?”

Roni explained, “Cows don’t roar. Cows moo. Lions roar.”

“Why do lions roar?”

“They’re calling their friends.”

“Their friends are mean.”

“Their friends play with them.”

“They’re mean.”

Oded was a short little boy, slow and always frightened. He was often sick: he had diarrhea almost every week, and in winter he had ear infections. The children in his kindergarten tormented him constantly. He spent most of the day sitting alone on a mat in a corner, his thumb in his mouth, his back to the room, and his face to the wall, playing with wooden blocks or a rubber duck that squealed mournfully when you squeezed it, and he squeezed it all the time. He’d had it since he was a year old. The children called him Oded-pees-his-bed and when the caregiver turned her back, they pulled his hair. He cried softly for hours, snot running down to his mouth and chin. The caregivers didn’t like him either because he didn’t know how to stand up for himself, or because he wouldn’t play with the others and he cried so much. At the breakfast table, he would pick at his porridge and leave most of it in the bowl. When they scolded him, he cried. When they tried to coax him into eating, he withdrew into himself and was silent. Five years old, and he still wet his bed every night, so the caregivers had to spread a rubber sheet under the regular one. He got up wet every morning and the children made fun of him. He would sit barefoot in his wet pajamas on his wet bed, his thumb in his mouth, and instead of trying to change into dry clothes, he’d cry quietly, the snot mingling with his tears and smearing his cheeks, until the caregiver arrived and scolded him, “Oh, really, get dressed, Oded. Wipe your nose. Enough crying. Stop being such a baby.”

The Committee for Preschoolers instructed Leah, his mother, to be firm with him in order to wean him off this self-indulgent behavior. And so, during the afternoons he spent at his parents’ house, Leah saw to it that he sat with his back straight, always finished everything on his plate, and never sucked his thumb. If he cried, she punished him for being a crybaby. She was against hugging and kissing, believing that the children of our new society had to be strong and resilient. She thought Oded’s problems stemmed from the fact that his teachers and caregivers let him get away with things and forgave him his oddities. Roni, for his part, hugged and kissed Oded only when Leah wasn’t around. When she was gone, he’d take a bar of chocolate out of his pocket and break off two or three squares for Oded. Father and son kept those squares of chocolate a secret from Leah and everyone else. More than once, Roni had intended to take issue with Leah about how she treated their son, but he feared her angry outbursts, which drove Oded to crawl under the bed with his duck and cry soundlessly until his mother’s anger subsided—and even then, the boy was in no hurry to leave his hiding place.