Irregular Verbs (14 page)

One thing was in my favour: maybe because I had come in on my own, nobody assigned me to any one place, so I was able to move around looking for Margaret. It wasn’t easy to keep going, though. Whether I was sewing, reaping or trying to sell magazines each job had a rhythm of its own, a rhythm that would draw me in, and at each job I would start up singing a work song. If I was sewing little red swooshes on sneakers, for instance, I’d sing a song like this, passing the shoe along halfway through each line:

Take this hammer, take it to the captain
Take this hammer, take it to the captain
Take this hammer, take it to the captain
Tell him I’m gone
Tell him I’m gone.

Sooner or later when I sang somebody else would start up singing along with me, and when we got three or four singing the sound of all those voices together would lift our hearts a little, make us feel just a bit less alone, enough that each time I remembered Margaret and was able to move on in search of her.

It was hard to tell how the time passed, since you never ate or slept, never did anything but work; maybe it was a year, maybe five, maybe ten before I finally found Margaret.

I guess I expected to spot her across a crowded room or something, run into each other’s arms, but it was nothing like that: I was just singing “Haul Away, Joe” while gutting fish when I heard her voice join in. She had a good voice, thin but pretty, and even over the other people singing I knew it the moment I heard it.

I worked my way down the line until I was next to her. She didn’t recognize me at first, until I tapped her on the shoulder; then she gasped and shook her head.

“Will?”

“I’ve come to get you out.”

She looked away, back down at the red-fleshed salmon in her hands. “I can’t go,” she said.

“You have to. I came here to help you escape.”

“I’m sorry.” She shook her head twice, quickly. “This is where I’m supposed to be. But you—you should go back.”

“I can’t,” I said. When she had spoken I remembered everything I had sung to the man at the gate, realized I didn’t deserve to go. I had never planned what to do if she didn’t want to leave, never thought a second past this moment. Now I realized that all I had done was get myself to the place I was meant to be in, the life I had earned. I felt alone, then, more alone than I had felt driving solo down endless highways. We were all of us alone, kept wrapped up tight by our sins.

There didn’t seem to be anything to say after that so I just went back to gutting fish, and after a while the rhythm took over and I started up singing again. A few verses in she joined me, and then a few more people around us, and pretty soon most of us on the line were singing together.

Again my heart was lifted a little, and I guess Margaret felt the same way too, because after a while she turned to me and said, “You came here to rescue me. Isn’t that enough to show you shouldn’t be here?”

“Isn’t it enough to show
you
?”

I looked her in the eyes then, and for a minute I felt like I wasn’t alone at all. She nodded twice, quickly, and said “How do we get out?”

She shrugged. “You just go. The last time I was here I met an old man who told me he had almost gotten out once—he said if you’ve got the will to go nobody stops you. I guess they know everybody that gets out winds up back here sooner or later.”

“You said he almost got out?”

She nodded. “There was one thing he said was really important. When you get on that road, don’t look back.”

For a while it looked like it was going to be as easy as that. The road out opened itself right up for us as soon as we left the line; when I came in it had been a long, open plain, but now we were climbing up out of a valley. We climbed for hours, careful not to look behind us, until we saw the slope break about a hundred feet ahead. Margaret had been fading for the last little while, falling a bit behind, and I could only tell by the sound of her breath and her footsteps that she was still behind me.

“Almost there,” I said.

The road began to level out, and I saw in front of us a booth like the one where the truck had stopped on the way in. The gate was down, and though the way was clear on either side something told me there was no getting around it.

“I don’t think I can do this again,” Margaret said from behind me.

I didn’t dare look back at her. “Let me,” I said.

Ahead, the booth opened and the blind man in the red cap stepped out. “You two’d best turn back now,” he said. His eyeless sockets looked past me, and I knew he was staring at Margaret. “You ought to have learned your lesson.”

The urge to turn back was strong, as I felt the weight of all the things I’d done drawing me back. Even more I wanted to look back at Margaret, make sure she wasn’t wavering. I knew she had only made it this far because of me, and I had only done it because of her; I moved to stand between Margaret and the guard, started to sing.

We are standing pat together
We shall not be moved.
We will walk this road together
We shall not be moved.

As I finished that line I saw Margaret step up to stand beside me, heard her voice joining mine:

Just like a tree that’s standing by the water
We shall not be moved.

The eyeless man just stood there for a moment, his face unreadable. Finally he nodded and then stepped into the booth; a few seconds later the gate swung up, and we quickly stepped past.

For a while after that the road got steep again. Finally it levelled off and we took a break, resting on grass in a field of little red flowers.

“I never figured good intentions would be so hard on the feet,” I said, taking off my right shoe and rubbing my heel hard.

Margaret shook her head, said “That’s the way in . . .” From the way she sounded I expected her to say something else, but she just fell silent; a sinking feeling came over me and I looked over at her. Sure enough, she had turned around and was looking back the way we had come.

“Hey,” I said, careful to keep my eyes on her and not the way back. “Remember what the man told you. We’ve got to keep moving.”

“I can’t,” she said. She sounded like her heart was breaking. “I can’t go.”

“We can leave if we want to, Margaret. Please, let’s go.”

She shook her head again, twice quickly. “That’s not it,” she said. “Look. Please—you won’t understand unless you look back.”

I kept my eyes on her, trying to find the words that would make her turn around and come with me. Finally I just nodded, and turned back to see the way we had come.

I saw all the people still down there, in farms and cubicles and factories, and I realized that every one of them was there because they thought they ought to be—because they couldn’t believe they deserved any better. The only difference between us and them was that we had someone to tell us different.

“There’s so many of them,” she said. “If we just go, and leave them here . . . all alone . . .”

As much as I wanted to get angry, to curse her for not listening to me and for looking back, I couldn’t help agreeing with her. “If we left them here, we wouldn’t deserve to leave,” I finished for her.

Margaret nodded.

We sat there for a long time then, not saying anything, and after a while for lack of anything better to do I started to hum. Margaret smiled at me, and I smiled back, and a moment later a thought occurred to me. “I guess we made it this far because we weren’t alone,” I said. “Maybe that’s all those people need, not to feel alone.”

Her shoulders slumped. “It took us everything we had to convince each other to go,” she said. “How can we get through to all of those people? We don’t even know who they are.”

“I know,” I said. “If they all just thought they deserved something better than what they’ve got—if they all knew they weren’t alone . . .” I shrugged.

Margaret rose to her feet, started walking back down to the valley. After a few steps she paused, turned to look back at me. “Well, we’d better get started,” she said. She took a few more steps. “Aren’t you coming?”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Like you said.”

I held up my hands. “I’m not a leader,” I said. “I could never get anyone to follow me. I was just thinking out loud.”

She shook her head impatiently. “Save your breath,” she said. “We have to get every voice in this place singing together, and I don’t want you going hoarse before you’ve taught them all.”

I opened my mouth to speak, shut it and nodded. Then I got to my feet and followed her, back down to the valley.

I know we’ll climb back out again, though it likely will take a while: we don’t mean to leave till everyone is ready to come out with us, and when we do we’ll do it singing.

Now the final battle rages;
We’ll win our union yet somehow.
Though we struggle on for ages
Onward, men! All Hell can’t stop us now!

Doctor Yonah Ben-Ezra sat up, his hand on the receiver almost before the phone had started to ring.

“Yes?” he said.

“It’s Benjamin Cohen,” the voice said. “From Embryology.”

“What is it?”

“The boy,” Benjamin said. “The first one. It’s eight days now.”

“And is he—”

“Yes.”

Yonah nodded, speechless for nearly the first time in his life. He took a long breath, exhaled. “All right, then,” he said. “Thank you.”

He had the phone halfway to the cradle before he heard Benjamin’s voice still talking. “There’s—there’s one more thing.”

Frowning, Yonah nudged his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. “Yes?”

“The boy. He—it’s time for his bris.”

“So I’m a mohel now?”

There was a brief silence. “Doctor . . . ?”

“A joke, Benjamin.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. But I was serious—we have a mohel, but thought you could be the sandak . . .”

“He hasn’t a grandfather? An uncle?”

“We thought . . . the mother agreed, you would be the most appropriate.”

After a moment Yonah said, “All right. When is it planned for?”

“In about ten minutes.” Yonah could sense him flinching on the other end of the line. “Sorry for the short notice—the mohel’s double-booked, he was just able to clear a half-hour.”

“Fine. I’ll be there.” Yonah paused for a second. “Make sure your mohel has steady hands. I don’t want anything going wrong.”

Yonah hung up, not wanting to have to explain to Benjamin that he was joking, and pushed himself up out of his chair. It was time to go, if he wanted to be sure of being on time, but instead he went over to his office window, looked out at the sea outside. The number of strings I had to pull for this view, he thought, the number of favours I had to do . . . but it was worth it. When he looked out the window he could imagine he was still in Israel—Israel as it had been when he was young, when it had still belonged to the Jews.

“Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you,” the voice said.

Yonah glanced at the face reflected in the glass, turned away. A stranger might think the face was his, it looked so much like him: but he knew better.

“Go away, ghost,” he said. “I settled matters with you a long time ago.”

“And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger,” the voice said. “All the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession.”

Yonah turned back to the glass. “Don’t start. And don’t go quoting Torah at me. My mind is made up in this.” He turned away from the window and headed out into the hall, not looking back to the face in the glass.

The words stung: he was just old enough to remember 1967 and all the promise that year had brought. Such pride in that victory, all that new territory, and Jerusalem whole again. How many Jews still walked the streets of Jerusalem today? None but those determined to be martyrs. He couldn’t blame the young ones, though, for taking shelter here in Tel Aviv or in Haifa, even for leaving the country. His own sons had gone to the four winds: to New York, Canada, Singapore. . . .

“And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession.”

Yonah turned to see the ghost standing in the glass door that led to Genetics. Seen in full it no longer looked much like him—the tillim cast over the shoulders instead of a lab coat, the yarmulke where his head was bare and bald—but the family resemblance was still clear.

“Nothing is everlasting,” Yonah said, glancing over his shoulder to see if anyone could hear him. “Not in this world.”

“By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land. And I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river.”

“And what if we don’t increase? What if they do?” He glared at the ghost, waiting for a reply, and then started walking again.

After 1967 it had seemed like anything was possible: like the world—or Israel, at least—belonged to the Jews, now and forevermore. And to be sure there was no fear of invasion, not after that spanking, and the rock-throwers and even the bomb-throwers that followed them were never a serious threat to anything but peace of mind. That was the problem, Yonah thought: we had been watching the men and the boys, when it was the women and babies we should have kept our eyes on. They had attacked with fire, and we replied with fire; they had encircled us, surrounded us, and still we stood. But in the end there were simply too many: the sons of Japhet would always outnumber those of Shem, the sons of Ishmael those of Isaac.

There it was, Embryology: white and sterile, not much cheered by the plastic border of blue and pink balloons that ran along the top of the wall. Another glass door stood before him, blocking his way, and as he’d feared the ghost was there as well. He slowed, steeled himself for it to start quoting Torah at him again, but instead it simply stood there, gazing at him with those eyes so much like his.

“We have to survive,” he said quietly. “Don’t you see that? Whatever else we do, whatever commandments we keep, if we don’t survive it’s for nothing.” He took a breath, tried to slow his heart’s racing. “What good is the Promised Land if there are no Jews to live in it?”

“What good is the People if they are not Jews?”

Yonah took a breath: the ghost had never responded to him before, never done anything but quote Torah. He fought for breath, struggling to bring up the words he had held inside for so long. “Nobody told you,” he said. “Dammit, David, nobody told you to be a martyr. You could have stayed here, worked with me—gone somewhere safe, like your brothers—”

The ghost was silent again, only shaking his head sadly. Yonah took a breath, readying himself to speak again, but instead shouldered the door open and walked into the room.

He was late, as he’d feared: the kvatter—the mother, he supposed, or the grandmother; at his age it was hard to tell how old people were if they were younger than him—had already brought the boy into the room, put him in the chair the mohel had declared the Throne of Elijah. Yonah did not recognize the mohel but he did know Benjamin Cohen, who was masked and gowned like a surgeon.

“Sorry I’m late,” Yonah said as he held out his arms for a nurse to put on his smock and gloves.

“Doctor Ben-Ezra?” Benjamin said. “Are you all right?”

Yonah nodded. He went over to the eight-day-old boy, who was swaddled up to the ears, and lifted him up out of the Throne. Then Yonah sat down in another chair, a hard plastic one big enough for his rather more generous seat: as sandak, the bris would be done with the child sitting on his lap.

“Will the father allow me to perform this mitzvah?” the mohel asked.

Yonah looked over at Benjamin, who looked back at him. Neither had thought of this issue: these children had all been conceived by artificial insemination, and while the sperm donor’s name was surely recorded somewhere no-one had thought to track him down and invite him.

“Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee,” the ghost whispered in his ear.

Yonah shook his head, as though to clear water from his ears, turned to the mohel and said, “Yes.”

“Good,” the mohel said. “Why don’t you take off his blankets so we can begin.”

Nodding, Yonah lifted the boy gently from his lap and began to unwrap the swaddling clothes; he gasped as he uncovered the boy’s neck, turned to Benjamin. “It breeds true?”

Benjamin nodded. “On the X.” The female line. That was key: to be born of a Jewish mother was to be a Jew. If this passed from mother to son, it meant that even if they lost Israel the children of Isaac would always have a home.

“And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you.”

Be quiet, David, Yonah said silently. This is your fault, anyway. If you hadn’t gotten yourself killed fighting over a strip of dust and rock, I never would have started this.

The mohel cleared his throat, and Yonah finished unwrapping the boy, held him under his arms as the mohel cut the foreskin and the nurse clamped the penis and suctioned off the blood.

It had been almost forty years since Yonah had last been to a bris, but he remembered what came next: “Blessed be our Lord, the ruler of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, and has commanded us to bring him into the covenant of Avraham, our Patriarch.”

As one, Benjamin, the mohel and the nurse said, “Just as he has been brought into the covenant, so too he should enter Torah, canopy, and good deeds.”

“Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.”

Benjamin reached for the boy, to hold him for the rest of the ceremony, but Yonah held up his hand: before he could let the child go he had to reach down to his neck, stroke the tiny gills until he saw them open and close.

Do you see, David? he asked. They killed you, made your mother die of sorrow, drove your brothers a thousand miles away. They said they would drive us into the sea. Well, let them: let the goyim have that dry, unwelcoming third of the Earth. The rest will belong to the Chosen.