Death Had Two Sons Page 12

  Daniel said, ‘Aba’ (Father) and the man started crying again. He watched the man crying and something happened inside him. Suddenly, it was all over. The excitement, the expectations, the trembling, the worries. There was the small man facing him with his small eyes and exhausted expression, and he was a stranger. He could address him as Aba, he could let him kiss his cheek, but he was a little man from Poland, a ghost from an unknown past, a burden. He had a duty to fulfil, the same sense of responsibility that prompted Yoram to do volunteer work, but nothing more. There were three people in need and he was going to help them to settle and be rehabilitated but he looked into the man’s eyes, detached and aloof now, and he found nothing there which he remembered or knew. Miriam was standing nearby, suspicious and remote, and he gave her his hand which she shook politely. He touched her hair lightly and took the bundle she was carrying. She thanked him in Hebrew. Of course, he remembered, she spoke some Hebrew by now, which made the trip to Gilad or Beer-Sheba seem less terrifying. He asked them to follow and on their way they met the official.

  ‘Where will you be going?’ he asked, giving Daniel an envelope of documents for his father.

  ‘Ask my father,’ Daniel responded dully. They exchanged a few phrases in Yiddish and the official translated:

  ‘They don’t mind. He would like to be with you, see where and how you live and then go on to his new place. He did not realize Beer-Sheba was so many miles from Gilad.’

  They had five small suitcases, all their belongings. The girl had a bundle of personal things in addition and Haim carried a parcel which was square and heavy. Daniel loaded the car and asked them to wait for a moment. He went to the canteen and bought a few sandwiches and some beer and brought it back to them. He was hungry now but when his father watched him eat he felt he could not swallow and for many miles wondered how to dispose of the half-eaten sandwich he was holding in his left hand. When he left he told the secretary of Gilad he might be bringing them along for a few days and a room had been allotted to them not far from where Daniel lived. On the way Miriam did most of the talking, asking about the different places they passed and quickly translating the brief answers. Towards lunch-time he took the familiar turn to the village and he felt his father touch his arm and say with a strange accent:

  ‘Gilad!’

  It was a Thursday, not yet summer although spring was over and people were at work. The pleasant silence of midday produced a sense of emptiness and they did not meet anybody on their way to the room. The car was unloaded and as Dora did not like the idea of letting Miriam stay apart from them he went to arrange for a third bed to be brought, leaving his family to unpack and shower. When he returned he found himself smiling at the chaos created in the little room. Clothes on the bed, a fur stole airing on the window sill, cans of food on the floor, a few books, papers, some old toys of Miriam’s who surely didn’t play with dolls any more but had brought them over for sentimental reasons. It all felt like winter introduced in a summer resort.

  ‘You will need some light summer clothes,’ Daniel suggested.

  ‘We’ll see, we’ll see,’ said Kalinsky, a phrase he used very often, postponing decisions and avoiding commitments.

  Now that he took off his jacket his son realized how weak he must be. His arms were thin and white and his stomach fallen. He could see the veins on the back of the transparent hands and could not believe the same blood flowed in his. He looked at Dora now but when his eyes caught hers he turned away. He was embarrassed by his curiosity. He had no right to look into the contents of their bundles and cases. The square parcel, he discovered, had boxes of cigars, for sale Haim explained later, and one case contained kitchen utensils, some towels and sheets, a feather blanket.

  ‘They had to leave everything behind,’ said the girl. ‘They had many things, they gave them away.’ The girl, he thought, she is all right.

  ‘Shall I take you for a walk?’

  She smiled in gratitude, there was no room for her to sit down in the cramped space, and she didn’t know what to do. When she told her parents she was going out with Daniel they said they would come along too, and see Gilad.

  ‘We’ll have lunch first,’ he snapped.

  ‘Is there a restaurant here?’

  ‘There is a dining room.’

  He sat them down at a table, exposed to the kind looks of others, and went to look for someone who could speak their language. He didn’t have to go far because one of the people he had in mind had just entered and, as if a burden had been lifted off him, he enjoyed seeing his father get involved in conversation. Yaskov, the man who spoke Polish, was smiling and at times laughing, the way you laugh at a child who asks foolish but charming questions. He turned to Daniel.

  ‘He wants to know if you’ll come with him to Beer-Sheba, if you can leave Gilad?’

  ‘Tell him I will help him for a while and then return here.’

  If he were to tell the truth he would have said, ‘Tell him this is home, and there will never be another, with or without family. Tell him the foreignness will have to disappear first, the smell, the gold tooth, the whiteness, the long Polish words, the cigars, those clothes, those shoes, the suspicion in his eyes, the smallness of his eyes. Tell him I am unfair, expecting him to be twenty-five years younger, an adaptable enthusiastic young man, tell him I want to be proud of my father and I shall wait until he gives me a reason to be.’ Instead he said:

  ‘I’m proud of him. It must have been difficult to decide to leave.’

  This was translated and Haim smiled. He said:

  ‘Tell him I came because of him.’

  They wanted to go for a walk but Daniel suggested it would be too hot until the late afternoon. They should rest, he suggested, and on the way back to their house he showed them his room and a few minutes later he was left alone.

  ‘We’ll see, we’ll see’, Kalinsky said after every sentence. What was there to see? He did not feel responsible for them, yet he was. He was no longer alone, yet he felt lonelier than ever. He took a shower and lay on his back, tense and tired, wondering if Yoram would have made any difference. Perhaps he could find Rina, she might be there for the week-end, perhaps she could help him think. There was nothing to think about. The Kalinskys would have to go to Beer-Sheba, the Agency had prepared everything, and the rest is time and some understanding. A light knock on his door made him jump.

  ‘Come in,’ he said, almost shouting the welcome phrase.

  It was Miriam. She entered and immediately turned away. He noticed he was wearing only his shorts and quickly slipped into slacks and a shirt.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  She shrugged.

  ‘Nothing.’

  He asked her to sit and she obeyed looking at the books on the table. Her face lit up when she could read the name Mayakovsky on one of the volumes.

  ‘Do you know the poems?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The one about the sun.’

  She had a way of looking at him, a way she did not change for many years after that first day, and he lowered his eyes. As if she understood and accused without demanding an answer or an explanation.

  ‘Where is Yoram?’ she said. She had a photograph he had sent a long time ago. It was a snapshot of him and Yoram laughing.

  ‘They never told you?’ he asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Let’s go out,’ he said.

  They walked along the pavement, stopping to greet some people who turned back to watch them walking on, and left the village away from the river to climb the hill.

  ‘Yoram is dead,’ he said. ‘He was killed in the war.’

  She was not familiar with the word killed but dead she understood.

  ‘You have a friend now?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  They climbed the cemetery hill and looked at the valley coloured by a pastel sunset. Although the flowers were dead and the wheat turned yellow the air had softness which mellowed the colours. She drank in t
he beauty and suddenly she was crying and laughing. ‘Moledet,’ she said. She must have learned Hebrew from a very enthusiastic patriot, because her vocabulary was full of words, old-fashioned and used only cynically in the country, like homeland, promised land, the return to Sion, the conquest of the desert, melting-pot and the like.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, very moved, ‘Moledet. Here is Gilad, and there is Shimron with its red roofs reflecting the sunbeams, and that is the northern road to the Lebanese border.’

  She asked about the fish ponds and she wanted to see an orange tree, When they walked by the cemetery she insisted on going in. She had never seen a cemetery and reluctantly he guided her to Yoram’s flat tombstone. She took out the photograph and had tears in her eyes.

  ‘Do you cry often?’ he asked, almost cruelly.

  ‘Never,’ and she looked at him in a way which made him wish he hadn’t even asked the question.

  She read the letters on the marble stone and bent down to uproot a weed.

  ‘Let’s go back to your parents,’ he said.

  The room was crowded with people to his surprise. The cook had brought in a cake and Rivka brought some flowers in a vase. All the Polish speaking members of Gilad were there, five or six of them, asking about Warsaw, about families they used to know, about streets and the river and the parks and the monuments with more pride in the fact that they remembered than eagerness to obtain new information. Haim and Dora seemed comfortable and Daniel, slightly jealous and definitely an outsider in all the commotion, stretched on the square of lawn outside with Miriam next to him.

  ‘Where is the river?’ she asked.

  ‘Down there,’ he lazily pointed out a direction.

  ‘Can I go there?’

  ‘Yes, but don’t be late, we shall have supper soon.’

  She took off her shoes and socks, noticing that many of the villagers walked barefooted and stepping slowly sensing the rough soil for the first time, disappeared behind the houses. People were leaving the room, it was almost time to go to dinner and Dora changed into a light flowery dress. Haim asked for Miriam and Daniel explained she had gone to the river, to the Jordan. Awkwardly Haim pantomimed a soldier and said, ‘Arabs, boom boom,’ referring to the possibility of danger in walking alone. Daniel laughed it off, using the word Miriam had used. ‘Moledet,’ he said, ‘ours,’ and spread his arms to indicate it was all ours, safe, comfortable, home. Kalinsky nodded and mumbled something. Daniel thought he said something about Yoram but he preferred not to ask.

  When they returned from the dining room, and Miriam was awaiting them, rosy-cheeked and apparently happy, Dora insisted on opening a tin. It had pears in syrup, large and pale and sugary. She took out a spoon and made him eat one. He never liked tinned fruit and these were topped with some chocolate which his father had kept. It must have been a good piece of chocolate but for some reason it felt stale in Daniel’s mouth and he excused himself, said goodnight and went to his room.

  And in his room Rina was waiting. He had written to her some time earlier, a vague perfunctory letter mentioning the date of his family’s arrival, and she had come to see him. After Yoram’s death Rina had completed her studies and her life-long romance with the thin decorative Nabataean ceramics had begun. She lived in Jerusalem, kept a room in Beer-Sheba and came for week-ends to Shimron and Gilad, somehow taking Yoram’s place in his parents’ agonized existence. Yoram’s death had changed her face and her attitudes, but somehow isolated her from the passage of time and one had the feeling she was doomed to look forever the way she looked in the rain on cemetery hill a few years back. She was friendless and yet a friend to others and the same intensity with which she ignored the future marked her passionate attitude to the past. She took off her sandals and her hair was still wet from the shower she had taken a few minutes earlier.

  ‘Have they arrived?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘Don’t be belligerent. Would you rather I left?’

  ‘No, you can stay. Your tall blond man is a short hairless thin stranger, that’s all.’

  And silence. Rina never endured silence for long, not because she feared it but because she regarded it as a waste of time.

  ‘Did you recognize them?’

  ‘No. Someone introduced us. Very formal it was.’

  ‘Did you kiss and cry?’ There was no sarcasm in her question, nor curiosity. She wished to be told the facts, in detail. She wanted to reconstruct the scene which she had imagined for so long.

  ‘No,’ he lied to her. Perhaps he was lying to her for the first and last time in his life. ‘Forget the stories you hear or imagine. We shook hands and we couldn’t talk and I doubt if we would have had anything to talk about even if we had a language in common. The girl is nice, Kalinsky is not much to look at and as for Dora, well, you’ll see her. They should never have come here and I should never have made them take the trip.’

  ‘All this after one day? You already know him and know what is best for him? Perhaps you should try to remember that he is your father. What made you think it was going to be different, or easier? Isn’t it up to you now?’

  ‘Look, I don’t feel like being preached to. They are here, and I shall take them to Beer-Sheba and see them settled and I am not impatient or demanding. They have a peculiar smell – even the young girl.’

  Rina’s face became redder than ever, the freckles disappearing. Her long fingers clutched the arms of the chair and she looked as though she wanted to hit him.

  ‘Where do you think you came from? Perhaps you smelled the same way when you arrived in Gilad, before the sun and the dust and the river smoothed your skin and made you smell of clover and orange blossoms. What do you think Yoram died for if not to give a little Kalinsky an alternative to Ghetto life?’

  ‘My God!’ he yelled, standing up now. ‘You too! Yoram died because I was foolish. Don’t drag him into it. Kalinsky came because I was foolish. He asked if there was a restaurant here and he brought cigars to sell!’

  ‘So you want them all to arrive knowing the Kibbutz code by heart, and you want him to live off the air and the view. I hope he can sell his cigars and I wish Gilad had a restaurant. I’m going to see them now.’

  ‘When Yoram died he wrote me and said that’s the way wars are!’

  ‘You don’t have to be cruel. If you’re not coming I’ll go alone.’

  She put on her sandals and he fumbled for words of apology.

  ‘I’m sorry. I suppose I’m embarrassed and confused as they must be. Let’s go.’

  There was a light on in the little room and voices could be heard. A half-moon rested on top of the berry tree behind the house and he noticed the buds on the rose bushes. He knocked on the door and heard a foreign word in reply. They were sitting as if they were expecting someone. Dora was wearing a long dressing gown, but her hair was pulled up and freshly combed. Miriam was reading a Hebrew book and Haim had his jacket on. Rina introduced herself and shook their hands, pausing to hold Haim’s with both her hands.

  ‘What were you doing?’ she asked Miriam.

  ‘Nothing. Waiting. They wanted to talk to Daniel but didn’t want to disturb him, so we were just sitting.’

  ‘Tell them Daniel is very happy they are here. Tell them we all are.’

  Rina was getting into one of her moods. She would have liked it all to happen immediately. She was ready to give them their first Hebrew lesson, to show them the whole country that night, to read them her favourite Hebrew pieces, to dress them up as Sabras and see Miriam dance the Hora. She was talking fast and the girl did not seem to follow.

  ‘It will be difficult at the beginning. Beer-Sheba is not Gilad, it is hot and dry and sandy and colourless but when my parents immigrated this whole valley was a marshland. Tell them any effort will pay and they are young enough and healthy and they can make the effort.’

  Kalinsky wanted to know what Rina did.

  ‘I’m an archaeologist,’ she explained.

  He asked wha
t her salary was like. Daniel blushed and said curtly:

  ‘What does it matter?’

  Rina told him what she earned and smiled. ‘Not too bad,’ she added. ‘And I come to Beer-Sheba often so I’ll see you there and be your shop’s first and best customer.’

  There was nothing much to add to her enthusiastic speech.

  ‘You must be tired,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ Dora answered.

  ‘And in Warsaw, in the evening, what did you do?’

  Dora’s face lightened.

  ‘We had many friends, even some Goyim. We would sit and talk, sometimes play cards, have some tea and go to sleep quite early. Do you think we could get some tea here?’ she asked Miriam.

  Rina went out of the room to try and find an electric kettle and Daniel remained, looking at his father.

  ‘Rina is right,’ he said. ‘It’s not going to be easy, not knowing people at the beginning.’

  Kalinsky fumbled for his wallet and brought out a piece of paper.

  ‘It’s a friend of his,’ Miriam explained, ‘a rabbi. He lives in Jerusalem now, he would like to visit him if it is possible.’

  ‘Of course. We’ll all go to Beer-Sheba and when you are ready for a trip, after a few days, I’ll take you to him.’

  He didn’t recognize the address but he knew it was somewhere in the religious quarter.

  ‘Or you could write him to come and visit you.’

  ‘His child is sick, he doesn’t travel,’ Miriam volunteered.

  Rina returned triumphantly. She carried an electric kettle, some tea and sugar and cups and placed them on the table as if proving conclusively that everything was possible and obtainable in Israel. She taught them the Hebrew words for good-night, which made Kalinsky very happy, and they left the room.