Don't Call It Night (8 page)

Friday. Noa is at school till twelve thirty. Then they've agreed to meet here and go to the shops together to try to choose her a skirt. He skipped his shower this morning, to hang on to the odour of her love that he can smell now, not with his nostrils but with his pores. Her laughter, her spontaneity, her body, the speck of light that capers rapidly in the pupils of her eyes—even her wrinkled hands, dappled with patches of brown pigment, so many years older than the rest of her, as though the forces of withering are patiently assembling there, waiting for a sign of vulnerability so as to spread all over her body—all seem to him to be joined to the very core of life itself. Like an electrical current she conducts life to him, too. Even if it was thinking of Natalia that aroused his desire, the flicker came from Noa and returns to her. There is no way of explaining this to her. Instead he will buy her a skirt and maybe a dress as well. And since Natalia has not come to clean the office and may not come today, there is time to stand at the window and watch the square by the traffic lights. What was the mistake that the male world made about Alma Mahler? What was Alma Mahler really like? Both questions are empty. Once, in Mexico City, during a festival of modern music, he happened to hear on successive evenings two performances of the
Kindertotenlieder,
one sung by a baritone with piano accompaniment, the other by a woman with a deep voice, perhaps a contralto, full of longing and yet pure and calm as though in resignation. Theo remembers that the latter was so poignantly sad that he had to get up and leave the auditorium. The second song in the cycle is called "Ah, now I know why oft I caught you gazing", and the fourth, "I think oft they've only gone a journey". These names cause him a dull ache like a single low note on the cello. The names of the other songs he cannot remember, even though he tries very hard. He must ask Noa tonight.

Under his window a woman in a headscarf passes carrying in each hand a chicken freshly killed for the Sabbath. As the woman is short and the square is dusty, the dead combs leave a trail behind them on the sidewalk. Theo smiles for a moment under his moustache and almost winks shrewdly, like an avaricious peasant who, vaguely suspecting that the man he is bargaining with has adopted a cunning ruse, starts to plot a way of eluding the trap. The woman has already vanished.

In front of the Sephardi synagogue an improvised table has been erected, a wooden door resting on two barrels. It is covered in open books, presumably sacred books that have been brought out of the closets on account of the damp and the worm to take the air in the sunshine. Half past ten and Natalia still isn't here: she won't come today. Has her husband locked her up again? Does he beat her with his belt? He must find their address right away, this morning. Go round, see if he can help, break down the door if necessary, to prevent a disaster. There's still time: Noa won't be here for another two hours. But here is the tax{i from Beersheba with the weekend papers. Limor Gilboa, Giltboa's pretty daughter, arranges them adeptly, inserting into the outer pages that have just arrived the supplements that were sent on yesterday's taxi. Gilboa himself, a tubby teddy bear of a mail full of energy, reminiscent of a trade-union hack, with his wavy grey hair, his protruding paunch, always looking as if he is about to embark on a speech, has already started selling
Yediot
and
Ma'ariv
to the crowds of people elbowing their way towards him and extending their hands. Theo jots down a little list of things that are needed for the office and decides to go down to Gilboa's to buy them when the crowd has thinned out, and perhaps also the weekend
Ma'ariv
before they have all been snatched up. As for the sketch he has been asked to do for Mizpe Ramon, it's not urgent, in the course of next week he may have a brainstorm. Let them wait. They certainly won't build their leisure complex over the weekend, in fact they never will. If only everything that had been done there so far could be wiped out and a fresh start made, without the hideous housing schemes, but in a low-key architectural rhythm, in a relation of proper humility to the silence of the crater and the lines of the mountain ranges. He locks the office and goes downstairs.

Pini Bozo has adorned the walls of his shoe shop with a display of portraits: Maimonides, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Holy Rabbi Baba Baruch. It may not help, but it can't do any harm. Even though he is not a practising Jew, he has some fear of God in his heart, and also some respect for the religion that has protected us from all manner of evil for two thousand years. Besides these rabbis Bozo has hung up a photograph of the previous President of Israel, Navon, who is popular because he was a man of the people. On either side of him he has stuck up Shamir and Peres, who in his opinion ought to make their peace for the public good and work together again, against internecine strife: we have enough to do combating the external enemies who want to destroy us, the whole nation ought to unite against them and march forward together. Bozo's wife and baby son were killed in a tragic event here four years ago, when a young love-crossed soldier barricaded himself in the shoe shop, started shooting with a submachine gun and hit nine people. Bozo himself was saved only because he happened to go to the Social Security that morning to appeal against his assessment. To commemorate his wife and child he has donated an ark made of Scandinavian wood to the synagogue, and he is about to give an air conditioner in their memory to the changing room at the soccer field, so that the players can get some air at half-time.

At the end of the sidewalk next to Bozo Shoes there are some municipal benches, and a plastic slide with a sandbox at the bottom. In stylish concrete containers among the Indian beech trees a few petunias struggle to survive. Blind Lupo is resting on one of the benches, his face to the strong sun. He is surrounded by pigeons, some of which are perching on his shoulders. His pointed stick is secured like an anchor in a crack between two paving stones. Back in Bulgaria, they say, he had a high-ranking post in the secret service. Here in Tel Kedar he works nights in the telephone exchange, seeing the keys and switches with his fingertips. Every morning he sits in this little park, harnessed to his grey dog, staring straight at the sun and scattering maize for the pigeons that flock around him even before he reaches the bench. Sometimes one of them trusts him enough to settle on his knees and let him stroke its feathers. When he stands up he occasionally bumps into his dog and mumbles politely, Sorry.

An engaged couple, Anat and Ohad, are standing in Mr. Bialkin's furniture shop. They are looking for an upholstery fabric that will suit the three-piece suite and co-exist with the curtains, but their tastes differ: whatever he likes she finds repulsive, and whatever she likes reminds him of a whorehouse for Polish officers. She asks venomously where he has acquired his experience, and he beats a hasty retreat, Look what a state we're in, quarrelling over nothing. Anat replies that it is not a quarrel but a difference of opinion, and that's perfectly normal. Ohad suggests a compromise: Let's go to Beersheba after the weekend, there's a much better choice there. But that's exactly what I said in the first place, she crows triumphantly, and you wouldn't hear of it. Mr. Bialkin intervenes gently: Maybe the lady would like to take a look through the catalogue, and if there is anything that meets with her favour I shall fetch it on Tuesday from Tel Aviv, God willing. Ohad, for his part, corrects her: I don't deny that you suggested it, but you were the one who said let's try Bialkin first, and if we don't find it there ... His fiancée cuts in: I don't deny that I said it, but don't you deny that you agreed. The young man concedes her point, but asks her to remember that he had certain reservations. Reservations, she says, have you become a lawyer all of a sudden? Next thing you'll be filing an appeal.

When they have left the shop Bialkin says: That's how it is these days. They eat their hearts out and they die. And what can I do for you, Mr. Théo? A rocking chair? A wooden one? No, I haven't got anything like that. I've got a TV chair that can rock. Nobody makes the old rocking chairs any more. Theo thanks him and leaves. He had an idea the opening song of the
Kindertotenlieder
was called "Once More the Sun", but he is not certain. Might as well ask Noa to check it in the school library, she spends such hours there.

At the Entebbe falafel stand a Bedouin in his fifties is buying shawarma in pitta. The shawarma is a new venture, and Avram is happily explaining to the Bedouin that it's still trying out. If it goes well, in a couple of weeks' time we'll try grilled shish kebab. Meanwhile a haughty white cat with tail erect prances past Kushner's bitch, who had a litter of pups a couple of days ago. The bitch chooses to feign sleep, but opens one eye a slit to observe the extent of the insolence. Cat and bitch alike behave as though the whole situation were beneath their dignity. Old Kushner says to Theo: What's up, we never see you these days. Theo's left eye shrinks as though peering through a microscope and he replies that nothing's changed. If you'd like to have one of the puppies, Kushner says, but Theo interrupts him sharply from under his authoritative moustache: No thanks. Quite unnecessary.

At a quarter past eleven a small funeral cortège passes by the lights, only a handful of mourners, mainly elderly Ashkenazim. From his invariable stool in the doorway of Bozo Shoes, Pini Bozo asks who has died and how, and Kushner the bookbinder replies that it is old Elijah, Schatzberg the pharmacist's senile uncle, the doting old fool who kept escaping and sitting in the post office all day long; every five minutes he used to join the queue and when he got to the counter he'd ask, When's Elijah coming, and however often they chased him away he always came back.

The cortège is in a hurry. The pallbearers are almost running because the Sabbath is approaching and they still have a lot of preparations to take care of before sunset. The elderly mourners are panting with the effort, and even so a gap has opened up between the bier and the mourners and another one between the leading mourners and the ones at the back. With all the commotion the corpse, covered in a yellowing tallit, looks as though it is writhing in agony. A fair-haired, sparsely bearded religious youth hurries at the head, rattling a tin can and promising that almsgiving saves you from death. Theo reflects for a moment and concludes that it is a moot point.

In the Champs-Elysées Hairdressing Salon a noisy argument has broken out between Violette and Madeleine, the two stylists, who are sisters-in-law. Their shouts can be heard on the other side of the square. One wails, You don't even know yourself any more when you're telling the truth and when it's a filthy lie. And the other shrieks back at her, You tampon, you, don't you dare call me filthy. They have both visited Muki Peleg's bed, and perhaps still do. Muki Peleg himself is sitting over a beer in the California Café with a group of taxi drivers, and at the sound of the shouting he embarks on a detailed comparison that has his audience in gales of raucous laughter. Muki clasps the beer glass that is perspiring with cold in the six fingers of his left hand. Then they light up and talk about index-linked shares. Meanwhile, the funeral cortège has disappeared behind the Tel Kedar Local Council building, while at Gilboa's the crowd has dispersed and there are still plenty of papers for sale. Pretty Limor Gilboa is standing at the counter staring after Anat and Ohad, who have left the furniture shop and entered the Electronics Boutique. Kushner points to her with his chin and says to Bozo, Look how that one takes care of herself: she's a regular Princess Diana. Bozo remarks sadly, Until the Russian immigrants arrived, she was considered to be a national-class cello player. Now that thousands like her have come from Russia, she's become no bigger than that. That's celebrity for you: it's like water. Yesterday there wasn't any, today it's running, tomorrow there'll be none again. Do you remember a minister called Yoram Meridor? He was a household name? Always on TV? They say now he's opened a shopping mall at Netanya Junction. That's celebrity.

Theo buys
Ma'ariv
and a local paper, sits down in the California, and orders a grapefruit juice. Muki Peleg invites him over to his table, which he calls the Council of Torah Sages. Theo hesitates and answers, Thanks, later maybe, and Muki adds, As the condemned man said to the hangman who offered him a cigarette while he was knotting the rope.

Theo skims the headlines. Risk of renewed hostilities. Deaf-mute divorcee from Acre burns ex-husband's mistress alive. Transport Minister walks out of ceremony in protest. Gasoline prices to rise from midnight on Saturday. Security forces prevent ... In his mind's eye he follows the hasty Ashkenazi Sabbath-eve funeral cortège, which must have passed the car dump by now and reached the cemetery. First they lay the stretcher on the gravel path: like it or not, they'll have to wait for the stragglers to catch up. All the hurry was in vain: they can't begin until the last mourner gets here. The lugubrious Hungarian cantor fills his lungs with air, his face turns a furious red, and he starts to trill the prayer "O Lord Full of Compassion". He draws out the phrase, "May he repose in Paradise", he bows at, "he will face his destiny at the end of days", and the mourners say Amen. Now they push Schatzberg the pharmacist forward and tell him to repeat word for word the phrases the cantor mumbles, Magnified and sanctified, in Aramaic with an Ashkenazi accent, speedily and in our own times. Every day he disappeared but they never worried about him because he always turned up on the dot of eight o'clock at the post office, with a shy smile shining in his childlike blue eyes, the smile of a shy man who has forgotten what it was that has made him happy. The cantor begs pardon and forgiveness from the dead man if any offence has inadvertently been committed against him in the course of the preparations for the burial or the burial itself, and formally releases him from membership of any association to which he may have belonged in his lifetime. He used to come up to you in the street sometimes and bow politely, his blue eyes glowing with warmth and feeling, and address you in that soft voice of his: Forgive me, sir, would you be so kind as to inform me when Elijah is coming? That is why he was known in the town as Elijah, or sometimes as Schatzberg-the-pharmacist's Elijah.