Black Box (20 page)

He himself stooped as we went through the doorway. The inside of the house was cool and dark, with a smell of coffee and sardines. I raised my eyes toward him, startled by the thought that this magnificent man had come out of my body and fallen asleep at my breast. I remembered the diphtheria that almost killed him when he was four, and the complications with his kidneys just before our divorce, Alec. The kidney you were intending to donate to him. I couldn’t explain to myself what demon had brought me here. I couldn’t find a word to say to him. And there was your son, saying nothing, watching my embarrassment, inspecting me without embarrassment, patiently, with a faint curiosity, resting like a sated wild beast.

Eventually I muttered stupidly: “You look very well.”

“But you don’t, Ilana. You look offensed [
sic!
]. But then, you always do. Sit down here for a moment. Have a rest. I’ll make some coffee on the camp stove.”

So I sat down on a packing box that your son cleared for me with a kick of his bare foot (there were cucumbers, onions, and a screwdriver on it). In the midst of the disorder, on the filthy, sunken flagstones, I could discern the signs of the strange bridgehead Boaz was gradually establishing there: a blackened frying pan, some oilcloth, a bag of cement, a couple of pots and a battered coffee pot, cans of paint and brushes, some old mattresses on which the girls’ backpacks and his kit-bag were scattered among a muddle of building equipment, ropes, and cans of food and jeans of his and theirs and a bra and a transistor radio. In a corner of the room lay a tent or a folded tarpaulin. There was also an improvised table: an old wooden door, with peeling paint, propped up on a couple of drums. On this table I could see dark rolls of metal, and among them a pot of jam, candles with matches, cans of beer, some empty, some full, a large book entitled
Light and the Lens,
a kerosene lamp, and half a loaf of brown bread.

I asked him if everything was all right, if he was short of anything. And at once, without waiting for his reply, I heard myself bursting out and asking if he was still angry or bitter.

A secretive, regal smile gave his sunburned face an air of suffering and forgiveness, an expression that for a brief instant reminded me of his grandfather.

“No, not bitter. Anyway, I’m against being bitter at fucked-up people.”

I asked him whether he hated you. And at once I regretted it.

He said nothing. Scratched himself as though in his sleep. Went on fiddling with the sooty coffeepot on the gas burner.

“Answer me.”

He said nothing. Made a broad gesture with his hand, palm facing upward. Clucked twice.

“Why should I hate him? I don’t hate him. I’m against hating. What I think is like this: I have nothing to do with him. It’s a pity he left the country. I’m against people leaving the country while it’s got troubles. Even though I quite fancy traveling myself—and I will as soon as the country gets out of trouble.”

“And why did you agree to accept this house from him?”

“Why should I care about taking money from him? Or from Michel? Or from both of them? Either way nobody ever earned that money by hard work. It just grew on trees. So they might as well give some of it to me. No problem. I happen to have something to do with the money, what’s more. Here, the water’s boiling. Let’s have a cup of coffee. Drink this—you’ll feel better. It’s sugared and stirred. What are you looking at me like that for?”

What was it that provoked me to reply that I was superfluous? That I wouldn’t mind dying. That they’d all be better off that way.

“Yallah.
Cool it. That’s enough of that bullshit. Yifat is barely three years and a month old. What’s all this about dying? Have you been hit on the head? You oughta take up voluntary work. Looking after new immigrants. Knitting hats for the troops. Are you short of things to do? What’s your trouble?”

“It’s . . . it’s just that everything I’ve touched has gone horribly wrong. Can you understand that, Boaz?”

“You want the truth? No, I don’t. But that don’t signify much, ’cause I’m a bit soft in the head. But what I do understand is that you’re not busy enough. You don’t do anything, Ilana.”

“How about you?”

“It’s like this. Right now I’m here with these two chicks, making them work and giving them a good time, eating, working a little, fucking, looking after his house for him in return for monthly wages, and doing the odd repair job too. In another month or two there’s going to be one less ruin in this country. Why don’t you move in too? It’s better than dying. There are too many people dying in this country anyway. Killing and dying the whole time instead of living it up. Whichever way you look, the whole place is full of wise guys riding tanks. Today we’re starting on a vegetable garden. You can stay. You won’t be in my way at all and I won’t get in yours. You can do whatever you want to here, you can bring Yifat, you can bring whoever you want to. I’ll give you work and food. Crying again? Life is not handling you gently enough? Stay as long as you want. There’s no shortage of work here, and Cindy plays the guitar to us in the evenings. You can do the cooking. Or how about taking care of the goats? There’s going to be a shed for them soon. I’ll show you how.”

“May I ask you something?”

“Ask ahead—it don’t cost anything.”

“Tell me this: Have you ever loved anybody? I don’t mean . . . sex. You don’t have to answer.”

He said nothing. Shook his head from right to left, in the negative, as though in despair at my stupidity. And then, sadly and gently: “Of course I have. Do you mean to say you’ve never even noticed?”

“Who?”

“You, Ilana. And him. When I was just so big and I thought of you as parents. Your shouting and fighting used to drive me crazy. I thought it was all because of me. How could I know? Every time you committed suicide and they took you away to the hospital I wanted to murder him. When you screwed with his friends I wanted to poison them. Instead I used to beat up anyone who came within range. I was an idiot. Now I’m against beating people up unless they do it to me first. Then I just hit back a little. Now I’m only in favor of working and taking it easy. I only care about myself and the country.”

“The country?”

“Sure. Are you blind or something? Can’t you see what’s going on? These wars and all the bullshit? Quarreling and killing all the time, instead of living it up? Eating their hearts out and then shooting and planting bombs. I’m against the situation. I happen to be quite a Zionist, if you must know.”

“You’re
what?”

“A Zionist. Wanting everyone to be okay. And for everyone to do just a little for the country, even something really tiny, just half an hour a day so they can feel good and know that they’re still needed. If you don’t do anything, very soon you start getting into trouble. Take you and your husbands for instance. Not one of the three of you knows what it means to really live. You just fuss all the time instead of doing something. Including that saint and his mates from the territories. They’re living off the Bible, living off politics, living off speeches and arguments, instead of living off life. It’s the same thing with the Arabs. They’ve learned from the Jews how to eat their hearts out and how to eat each other and how to eat people instead of ordinary food. I’m not saying the Arabs aren’t bastards. They are, and worse. So what? Bastards are still human beings. Not shit. It’s a shame for them to die. In the end the Jews will finish them off or they’ll finish the Jews off or they’ll finish each other off and there’ll be nothing left in this country again except the Bible and the Koran and the foxes and burned ruins.”

“What’ll you do when they call you up?”

“Oh, they’ll manage without someone like me. Substandard and all that. So what? I don’t give a damn. Even without the army I’m going to do something with my life: at sea, perhaps, or maybe in optics. Or else I’ll start a commune here in Zikhron for the loonies. They can make things grow instead of making trouble. So there’ll be food for the state. A commune of nut cases. The first thing I did was burn the shit those chicks brought with them. I’m against getting stoned. Better to work all day and live it up at night. Crying again? Did I say something wrong? I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to get on your nerves. Sorry. Don’t forget you’re not the first mother who’s had a nut case for a child. At least you’ve got Yifat. Only don’t let Sommo fill her head with his Bible and his bullshit.”

“Boaz.”

“What?”

“Have you got some time now? A couple of hours?”

“What for?”

“Come to Haifa with me. Let’s go and visit your grandfather. You remember you’ve got a sick grandfather in Haifa? The one who built this house for you?”

He said nothing. Suddenly he moved his massive hand like lightning, and landed a gorilla blow on his naked chest, brushing the squashed horse fly to the ground.

“Boaz?”

“Yes. I remember. Just. But what’s all this about going to visit him all of a sudden? What do I need from him? Anyway, whenever I go out, even just here in Zikhron to buy building stuff, either I get on people’s nerves or they get on mine or a fight starts. Tell you what: You tell him from me that if he’s got anything saved up he can send me some money too. Tell him the idiot takes from anyone who’s giving. I fancy building a really serious telescope. Something straight out of the movies. So at night from here you’d be able to watch the spaceships flying over the country. And the sea with no water that’s up there on the moon; maybe you’ve heard about it. If only people took a little more notice of the stars and that, they’d take less notice of the hassle they get the whole time. And after that, we’ll see. Perhaps a yacht. We’re not short of a plank or two. We’ll be able to cruise on the sea. It clears all the bullshit out of your head.

“Right, food’s ready. Look, over there behind the window; there’s the tap I fixed yesterday. Go and wash your face and let’s forget about all the soul-searching. Your make-up’s got all smudged. I had Cindy crying last night too. Never mind, it rinses out the soul.
Sandra. Put food for my mother, also.
No? Leaving? Had enough of me? Because I said ‘fuck’ and all that? That’s the way it is, Ilana. There’s a bus stop two hundred yards from the back gate. So go out that way. Maybe it might have been better for you if you’d never come—you were okay when you arrived and now you’re leaving in tears. Wait. I found these coins down in the cellar. Underneath the old man’s boiler. Give them to Yifat and tell her they’re from me, Bozaz [
sic!
], and I’m going to eat her little nose. Don’t forget you can come back whenever you want to and stay as long as you like. Free as air.”

Why did you do it, Alec? Why did you plant him in that ghost-ridden house? Was it really just because you were dying to beat Michel at his own game? To tear the fine web of affection that was beginning to join my little man and that overgrown savage? To push your son back into the jungle? Like a prison guard separating a pair of convicts who strike up a friendship in their cell and putting them in solitary confinement. “As after a plane crash,” you wrote in your neon light letter, “we analyzed together, by correspondence, the black box of our lives.”

We deciphered nothing, Alec. We only exchanged poisoned arrows. My lust for revenge is slowly ebbing. Dead and done for. I’ll give up. Just let me be in your arms. Resting my fingers on the nape of your neck. Smoothing your tousled grey hair. Squeezing a little blackhead occasionally on your shoulder or in the corner of your chin. Sitting beside you in the wind-lashed jeep, careering along a remote mountain road, getting a thrill from your driving, which is as aggressive as a sword thrust yet as careful and precise as a good tennis shot. Sneaking up behind you with bare feet and sinking my fingers in your hair as you sit bent over your desk in the early hours of the morning, glowing in the electric aura of your desk lamp, decoding with surgical precision some savage mystical text or other. I’ll be your wife and servant.
La commedia è finita.
From now on, thy will be done. I’m waiting.

Ilana

Notes made by Prof. A. A. Gideon on little cards.

185. Faith out of loss of faith: the more his faith in himself is destroyed, the stronger grows his feverish faith in salvation, the more powerful his urgent need to be saved. The redeemer is as mighty as you are tiny, worthless, of no account. Henri Bergson says: It is not true that faith moves mountains. On the contrary, the essence of faith is the ability no longer to notice anything, not even mountains moving in front of your eyes. A kind of hermetic screen, absolutely fact-proof.

186. In proportion as he loses his self-esteem, his raison d’être, the very significance of his life, so there is magnified, exalted, glorified, and sanctified the justification of his religion, his people, his race, the ideal he has clung to or the movement to which he has sworn allegiance.

186a. To assimilate entirely, therefore, the
I
within the
We.
To shrink to a blind cell within a gigantic, timeless, omnipotent, sublime organism. To blend to the point of self-denial, to the utmost limit, in the nation, the movement, the race, like a drop in the ocean of the faithful. Hence: the various kinds of uniform.