Every House Needs a Balcony (9 page)

His sister arrived with the French boyfriend she had met at the Hebrew University, and together they took their father's car and set out for a two-week tour, which covered the length and breadth of southern Spain. She was happy to be able to speak Hebrew all day long. His sister was very pleasant and modest, not at all the person she had heard screaming at him in French on the phone. They loved touring with her and watching her excitement at every new town and township they visited; it was, after all, the first time for her in the big wide world, whereas the man, his sister, and her boyfriend had been born there. She was like a small child discovering a wonderful world for the first time, and she infected them all with her enthusiasm.

The first time she walked into a church, her breath caught. They took photographs beside each and every town square, and she posed alongside every statue they saw of the Virgin
Mary or any of the many other Spanish saints; she pulled all kinds of funny faces to amuse her parents when she got home and showed them the pictures, so they could experience with her the wonderful time she had in Spain. In Toledo she was moved to tears at the sight of the old Jewish synagogue, which has remained in all its former glory; she was overcome with emotion and started crying, as if it were a place she had already been to in the past.

After a fairy-tale two-week trip, they returned to Barcelona, right in time for the Jewish New Year. She and his sister helped Luna a little in the kitchen, and more in laying the table. They were given precise instructions as to how to place the napkins and the best silver cutlery and, of course, the Rosenthal dinner service from the dresser, which was removed from the dresser for traditional holy days.

It was the most impressive meal she had ever participated in, and the food, naturally, was traditionally Jewish. The chicken soup was served with thin noodles or soup almonds that his mother always bought in Israel, since soup almonds are a purely Israeli invention. The second course was an excellent dish of gefilte fish, prepared by Luna with sharp horseradish that she bought in Perpignan. They used to go to Perpignan every four months to fill up their refrigerator with various French foods, such as fine salamis, mustards, cheeses, and of course, butter. His parents still missed French food, even though they had been living in Barcelona for nigh on thirty years. Thus, three times a year
they traveled to Perpignan on the French border, and from there they often skipped over to Andora to pick up some duty-free electrical goods, and sometimes went on to Paris to visit Luna's brother and his delightful wife.

On Yom Kippur, they went to synagogue. Because the man fasted, she did too, to keep him company; in the Diaspora it would not have been possible to feel the day of atonement without fasting, since on that day life goes as on any other day of the year, as if we don't need to atone for our transgressions, and she loved him for it.

In the synagogue she was introduced to the entire distinguished congregation, and they all took an interest in the new Israeli visitor. Suddenly she noticed a glamorous woman showing more interest in her than were the others. Paula whispered to her that she was the man's former fiancée. She wanted to approach her and apologize for stealing his heart, but the woman turned her back as soon as she noticed her making a move toward her. And she thought to herself that in any case she would never have known to express her feelings in the sparse Spanish she had at her command. Moreover, she didn't really regret having stolen his heart. She was overjoyed.

But when the holy season was over and his sister returned to Israel and she didn't hear him mentioning anything about sharing his future with her, and she had done her part by learning Spanish and was even able to understand some of the news on TV and at conversation at the family dinner table, she told him that she was returning to Israel to start a
new job, since she had run out of money after a stay that had lasted three weeks. He told her that he would be in touch, as if to say, Give me a little more time before I propose marriage to you, if at all.

She went back to Israel feeling a tad frustrated, and when her parents asked her, “Nu?” she showed them the pictures of her smiling all over Spain. They smiled and asked again, “Nu…,” and she showed them the new glasses he had bought her with the black frames and diamonds at the sides and all the European clothes that suited her so well. Her mother told her she had expected to see a diamond on her finger; she didn't respond, but found a job right away with a well-known Haifa architect.

On Friday afternoon we get dressed in our best and climb all the stairs and slopes from our home up to the Upper Hadar neighborhood. My sister and I skip and jump in anticipation, with joy in our hearts and some anxiety—what clothes are we getting this time? Mom and Dad walk behind us with a heaviness typical of people who are no longer expecting anything.

Mom had cousins, Sammy and Fima, who had two daughters. They were considered middle class and lived in the Hadar HaCarmel neighborhood. Not only were Sammy and Fima in permanent employment, Fima as a school nurse and Sammy as a senior supervisor with the Port Authority, they also had relatives in far-off America; and it's a well-known fact that anyone who has relatives in America is one lucky person.

Nothing was superior to that secret address in America
from which you receive parcels of clothes and tins of preserves so the children in Israel will have something to eat in times of austerity. After removing the choice articles for themselves, they allowed us to choose what we wanted. Apart from the food, which they kept for themselves, naturally.

Fima checks Sefi's and my ears, nails, and of course, hair in a scrupulous search for lice; not for nothing is she a school nurse. And after we are found to be squeaky clean by her standards, Fima brings out the latest shipment, newly arrived from America. We fall on the pile, and I quickly pull out a brown blouse that looks good quality and tell my sister that I touched it first. My sister retorts that she doesn't want this particular blouse and pulls out the most beautiful blouse I have ever seen in my life. The blouse, which is made of a shiny deep blue fabric, is a wraparound style that ties at the back and has a stylized loop in a shade of red. And I can't understand how my sister's eagle eye always manages to spot the prettiest and fanciest item in the entire pile of used clothes. My sister, who sees that I envy her her blue blouse, pulls out a red vest from the pile that is getting steadily smaller and tells me that if I wear it under the brown blouse that I picked out, with the dark skirt, it'll look funny. I ask her why I should dress funny, and she tells me that if you wear funny clothes, people think you planned it in order to be funny, and that it's better to look planned than poor.

We look at Mom, who is standing in the middle of the room in an ugly beige suit, which hangs on her body and is several sizes too large for her. Fima says that it looks very nice, fits her perfectly. Mom says she'll take in the suit at the sides, and it'll be all right, trying to persuade herself and Dad that the suit looks pretty on her. Dad wrinkles his face and says nothing, and Fima says again, “It's a new shipment from America, arrived just this week.” In all truth, she says, she had wanted the suit for herself, but it's absolutely huge on her, because Fima is petite and quite slim, even more so than Mom. And I think that in America there is plenty of tasty food to eat and everyone there is well built, and that is why clothes from America don't fit people in Israel.

Dad tries on a fairly hideous sweater, and Sammy signals with his hand that it looks “so-so,” and I don't know why men are always more honest than women and have the courage to say, or signal, the truth when their wife isn't looking, and Dad takes off the sweater and returns it to the pile.

Fima tells Dad to take the sweater, at least for work, and Dad says that he doesn't go to work in a sweater like that, and in his line of business a man has to be dressed respectably.

Mom says to Dad that to hand out coffee off three-tiered coned trays in downtown Haifa a man doesn't need to be well dressed, and Dad tells her angrily that no one is going to see him in a thirdhand sweater.

Sammy asks Dad why he isn't talking to Niku, his brother-
in-law from Hedera, who holds a very senior position in the local labor federation, and Dad doesn't understand how Niku in Hedera can arrange a job for him in Haifa. Sammy explains that the labor federation has connections all over the country. Mom asks Sammy if he can't arrange a job for Dad in the port, a job with tenure like she's always dreamed of, and Sammy says that he can arrange it easily, but only as a dockworker.

Fima asks Mom if she's done what they talked about last time on the matter of lice, and Mom says that she did exactly as she was told. Fact, she didn't find any nits, did she?

Fima tests Mom's memory with regard to destroying the lice while they are still in nit stage, and Mom replies expertly, one and a half cups of paraffin, half a cup of vinegar, a little salt and pepper, smeared on the head with a brush, combed into the hair in order to spread the mixture, wrap the head with a towel and wait for two hours. Fima tells Mom that she can laugh as much as she likes. There's no other way to kill them when they're small.

Mom asks Fima if she doesn't think that the paraffin and vinegar can seep into the brain and cause irreparable brain damage. After all, they are all pinning their hopes on Yosefa growing up to be a lawyer or a doctor. Fima the nurse dismisses Mom's question with a wave of her hand. We go into the girls' room to play with their dolls. Not only do they have a room to themselves, but they also have dolls.

I ask them when their mother is going to call us to supper.
I'm starving. Also, she makes the best omelets in the world. My sister says that anything except the
mamaliga
that we are fed every evening would taste good to us.

At long last, Fima calls us to come eat, and I pounce first but don't see any omelet on the plate. I look at Fima as she emerges from the kitchen, carrying a steaming saucepan; maybe now the wonderful omelets will arrive. But Fima says that she always makes us omelets, so this time she's decided to do something different and surprise us with some hot
mamaliga
.

She asks us if we like
mamaliga
. I don't reply, looking at my sister, waiting for her to tell Fima that we eat
mamaliga
every day. I know that Mom and Dad would never in their lives say something like that, but there are things that only children are allowed to say, because it's not polite to show dissatisfaction when you are getting free food, but Yosefa says only that of course we love
mamaliga
, except that today we're not all that hungry.

At night we leave Sammy and Fima's home and start the steep climb down Haifa's streets all the way to 40 Stanton. Mom, Yosefa, and I are carrying bags, and only Dad's hands are empty. In spite of everything, he never gave in and accepted the hideous sweater.

Dad grumbles to Mom about the dockworker's job he was offered by her cousin. Just like to see him working on the docks. And Mom replies that she didn't see anyone in Dad's family offering him anything better to work at.

“What's wrong, don't I go out cleaning houses?” she says, “Don't you think that that's the same as working on the docks? And who am I working for? So you can go out and buy yourself a new sweater to wear to your fancy business. A big genius who wastes his daughters' money, and let's just see how far it'll take them.”

“Don't worry about them. They'll get on fine in life. I'm quite sure of that.” Dad replies, picking us up in his arms, one girl to each arm, and galloping off down the town's slopes. Dad feels sorry for us because in the end we didn't get the omelet we had been looking forward to so much, and I am sulking at the fact that only because he had taught us not to hurt people, we didn't want to offend Fima by saying that we really didn't want to eat
mamaliga
.

That's it. The big shopping day was over. And with the joyous hearts that preceded such a day, we returned home happy with the thirdhand clothes we had received, and that were later rinsed out in Thursday's dirty bathwater. And all this was before we knew anything about the hole in the ozone and that everything had to be recycled. In fact, we, who recycled ourselves, our clothes, and even our water, could have become rich only from this.

She worked for the architect from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, and at five o'clock she turned up at Duchovny's bakery to sell high-quality rye bread to anyone who wanted bread other than the government-subsidized uniform bread.

She worked for Duchovny not because she needed the extra income, which never did any harm, but because he had called and almost begged her to come back to work for him because he couldn't find any salesperson he could trust not to steal from his cash register.

Duchovny was a lonely, childless old man who owned and ran a flourishing bakery business from home and had no one to leave it to. She felt obligated to him because of all the money she had pilfered from his cash register; even though she knew that he knew that she had pilfered and was therefore not obligated to him, still she felt obligated.
And maybe she just liked him and wanted to help him out.

She had started working for Duchovny when she was seventeen, during her final year at high school. He had been part of her life during all the upheavals of her move to Jerusalem. He loved her so much that he concluded with her that whenever she wanted, whenever she had an hour to spare, she would come to sell bread, but never for less than two hours. When she turned up for work, he was able to go up to his apartment for a break from his work, which began every morning at four o'clock. He trusted no one except her, even though she had no doubt that he was fully aware of the fact that she was nicking ten liroth from the cash register whenever she felt like going to the movies. On two occasions he even asked her the following day if she'd enjoyed the movie. And sometimes she would even tell him herself, as if to inform him that the cash register lacked ten liroth. She always took ten—exactly ten—liroth to cover the cost of two movie tickets, never a single lira more, not even for popcorn. After all, she had been brought up by her parents to love the cinema, and she took the money only so that she and her poverty-stricken friend who went to Haifa's Reali High School could soak up some culture. But if she'd pinched some money for popcorn too, that would be proper theft.

Duchovny was happy to have her back, after she'd left him for Jerusalem after finishing her studies, and then for
Tel Aviv, and lately, for Barcelona, even if it was only for two hours a day, and he wasn't upset on her behalf that she hadn't received a proposal of marriage, which as far as he was concerned would have meant final desertion. To each his own.

When she went back to work for him after a two-year absence, he told her that he'd had an acquaintance who used to steal from the cash register between one and two hundred liroth a day, as if to say that her ten liroth were peanuts.

He said this and went up to take a rest, feeling that his bakery store was in good hands. And she, who now worked for her living as a draftswoman, was fully able to fund her own movie tickets and didn't nick another agora off him. Duchovny was so moved by the fact that his money remained intact that later, when she got married, he gave her a check for three thousand liroth, the same sum that would have accumulated to her credit if she'd helped herself to ten liroth every day, and even more. He always told her that he would have adopted her if, God forbid, she hadn't had parents of her own, and she always replied that she had the best parents in the world.

When she started working for Duchovny at the age of seventeen, her loser of a boyfriend Israel used to come sometimes to pick her up, and Duchovny would look at him in disapproval. She could see that he hated the youth, just as her parents and sister thought that nothing good would ever come of him. And even when she went back to him
with her tail between her legs after Israel had deliberately got her pregnant so she wouldn't have to go into the army, Duchovny didn't say, I told you so, just as her parents and sister didn't say anything, only sighed in relief that the affair between her and Israel was well and truly over.

Whenever irritating customers complained about her hurrying them along to decide whether to buy rye bread or three onion rolls instead of wasting hours of her time and taking up valuable space in the small shop as if it was the most fateful decision of their lives, he would nod his head and explain to them that she's just a kid, and when they left, he would pat her head and say, “Don't pay any attention. They probably have hard lives, and the decision over which loaf of bread to buy is not an easy one for them.” But one day a particularly grumpy women came in straight from the hairdressing salon—with an elaborate hairdo piled on her head like a tower, held together stiffly with tons of hair spray—and shouted at her in Yiddish that the bread she had given her was apparently not fresh. She explained to the woman that she didn't speak Yiddish, and the woman threw the loaf of bread down on the counter and asked, apparently, for it to be changed. She changed it and wrapped the bread in brown paper, and when the woman bent below the counter to place the loaf in her shopping bag, she gathered up all the bread crumbs on the counter and flung them at the grumpy woman's hair-sprayed tower hairdo. There's a limit, after all, to the amount of other people's hard lives
she can put up with without answering back. Her life too was hard—what with her man in Barcelona and her selling bread in Haifa.

He used to call her at least twice a week and talk about his yearnings, and she said nothing, not understanding why, if he missed her so much, he only called her on the phone. She missed him terribly, even though she was having an affair—nothing stormy or wonderful, but enough to soften her longing—with her boss, the architect.

“I've got a boyfriend, and I love him,” she told her boss when he started showing interest in her beyond the bounds of their working relationship.

“And where is he?” he asked.

“In Barcelona!” she replied.

“Barcelona is a long way off,” he said, and she thought, Out of sight, out of mind, and it wasn't as if she had left Barcelona with any kind of commitment or even any talk in that direction, so she didn't feel that she was cheating on him, unlike her boss, who was cheating on his wife with her.

“How can you cheat on your wife like that?” she asked, with the naïveté of a twenty-three-year-old.

“When you are in my place, you'll be doing the same thing,” he told her with the assurance of a forty-year-old.

“I would rather get a divorce than cheat on my husband,” she said, and he explained that he got married at a very young age, and by the time he was twenty-five he already had three children, and that life erodes and routine gnaws
away at everything good and we are only passing through this world, and blah, blah, blah.

She decided that she had to do what was good for her and she wasn't employed by her bosses to be the guardian of their morality, and anyway, if he wasn't having it off with her, he'd be cheating on his wife with some other woman. And at that point in time, the affair suited her. It was close by, it was available, it was noncommittal, and it was pleasant to while away the time. Although she had suitors who were her own age and unattached, she was genuinely in love with the man in Barcelona, and her heart was not free for courting. Her married boss wasn't really courting her, and he wanted only one thing, sex; and since he was extremely handsome, she was happy to go along with it. But when he told her about the Distinguished Service Medal he had been awarded in the Six-Day War and the way his best subordinate had been killed, he wept like a child and touched her heart that was full of yearnings for afar. She admitted to him that she was in the east while her heart was in the west, and it was pain that connected between them.

After a three-month separation, the man called and asked her to arrange their wedding for the following March. She asked if this was a proposal of marriage, and he said that it was. When she went, full of joy, to announce to her boss that she was getting married in March, she was certain that he would share her happiness, but he was obviously too depressed.

“You'll soon find someone else for a fling,” she tried to console him, but he looked at her with even more pain and asked her, was that all he was to her, a fling?

“Yes,” she replied. “Wasn't it?”

“Who knows where it could have led to?” he replied, and she looked at him in astonishment.

“Lead to what?” she asked. “I'm getting married in three months' time to the man of my dreams.”

“I have feelings for you, don't you understand?” he said, and she didn't understand, and resigned from his office without understanding.

Old Duchovny took her on gladly for an eight-hour working day at the same salary she had received in the architect's office. She didn't want to work for longer than eight hours, so as to leave her time for her wedding arrangements.

Since her sister was living in Tel Aviv, she was helped by Johnny and Rosi's daughter, Batya, who had already been married for two years and most probably had plenty of experience in weddings and even had a little girl who went with her to all the function halls in Haifa until they chose one that she considered the most suitable.

When she told the man over the phone that she had found a lovely function hall, he immediately said that he and his parents would settle only for “Carmel Halls.”

“It's expensive,” she said.”

“So what,” he replied over the phone, “you only get married once in your life.”

Over the phone, they decided that they would invite two hundred and fifty guests: one hundred from her side and a hundred and fifty from his, since he had a large family in Israel too, and it seemed quite logical to her, considering the fact that his parents would most probably pay for this wedding, in the fanciest hall in Haifa, just as, two years before, her brother-in-law's father had paid for the wedding of her sister and his son with a hundred guests at a prestigious restaurant in Tel Aviv. Her sister and brother-in-law had refused to get married in a hall and insisted that only close relatives should participate in the event.

When the groom's parents came to meet her parents a fortnight before the wedding, her father told them that he would pay for his own guests. He said this out of politeness, and also out of self-respect. Perhaps he hoped that they would dismiss the proposal out of hand, since it was not he who had suggested holding the wedding in the most expensive function hall in Haifa. But they didn't refuse, and her parents rushed off to take a second mortgage on their apartment in order to pay for the wedding of their younger daughter in a venue that was far beyond their means.

It was lucky for them that only a hundred guests had been invited from their side. They flatly refused to accept from her the small sum she had managed to save over the last six months; better it should stay in her bank account, for any eventuality.

Later, they all took the Carmelit to the Carmel Halls to choose the menu, and when his parents chose an open buffet, which made the wedding even more expensive, her parents looked at her in vague desperation, too embarrassed to say that they were unable to pay that kind of money. Happiness is an expensive business, she thought suddenly. Sadness is a much cheaper commodity; for this only homemade tears are needed.

The groom's family, including the groom, went to Jerusalem, and the future bride and her parents stayed in Haifa and gnawed their nails.

She canceled the dress she had wanted to buy because of the price, caught a lift from her father's work at Autocars in one of the vehicles that went to Tel Aviv, and landed at the home of her cousin Yael, whose wedding had taken place six months earlier. Two months before, Yael had kindly offered her the use of her wedding dress, but she thanked her and said that she wanted a dress of her own. All hers, not shared.

She took Yael's dress, which was two sizes too big for her, and returned to Haifa, straight to the dressmaker, to take in the dress.

When she came back from the dressmaker, Fima and Sammy were at her parents' to hear how the first meeting with the in-laws had gone and to relate excitedly that they had taken the train from Tel Aviv to Haifa, after their weekly visit to their granddaughter and daughter, and struck up a
conversation in Yiddish with a very nice couple of tourists, and what a small world—it turned out that they were from Barcelona, and here a relative of theirs was also getting married to a young man from Barcelona. Maybe you know him? they asked Ruth and Nahum Lilienblum, who told them happily that not only did they know the groom, who is the son of their friends, but that they were visiting Israel this time especially for the wedding.

“She's a beautiful woman, the bride,” said Nahum to Sammy, who explained that even as a child she had been beautiful, “but she's too willful,” he added.

“What do you mean by willful?” asked Ruth. “I found her to be a very gentle girl.”

“She's charming, and she has a good heart, but she's rebellious,” Fima explained, “She does only what she wants to do.”

“That's what is so nice about her,” concluded Nahum, the Pole from Barcelona, who had been captivated by the future bride the first time he met her. “She seems a strong woman, and I am sure she'll make an excellent
balabusta
and housewife.”

“He loves her, and that's all that matters,” added Ruth.

Fima and Sammy told her all this in her her parents' home, adding that when they got off the train, excited by the chance meeting, they agreed between them that this was a Cinderella-style love story.

When the man called her in the evening from Jerusalem and asked if the dress she had bought was ready, she didn't
tell him that in the end she'd be getting married in a secondhand dress, lent to her at the last moment by her cousin, and only said that the dress fit her figure perfectly.

She told her sister about the exorbitant price of the meal that her parents had committed themselves to, and said she felt like calling off this whole wedding, which had become unbearably expensive, and instead getting married as her sister had, by the rabbinate, with only close family present.