Death Had Two Sons Read online

  At the age of fourteen he was found masturbating and had to face a talk with the local doctor who for some reason attributed it to Daniel’s background rather than to his age. He was a year older than the rest of his class, and in school he met youngsters from other villages in the valley to discover how proud of and attached to Gilad he was. Were it not for a slight accent he could pass for a Sabra, and even this was not a goal but rather a fact in his life, and the surprise on faces caused by discovering he was an ‘adopted child’ gave him neither satisfaction nor did it start him thinking. Several other adopted children grew very attached to one family or another and for them the adoption process was complete, but Daniel did not feel the lack of a family other than the large family of the Kibbutz as a whole, which satisfied his needs and left him alone. Once or twice a Jewish Agency woman came to visit Gilad to find out more about the children’s background and once they had to go through the unpleasant process of looking at a collection of photographs trying, perhaps, to identify other members of their families.

  Daniel claimed he knew his parents were dead and was excused from this session but he never indulged in self-pity about being an orphan. If he needed advice there was always the literature teacher in school, who encouraged and shared his enthusiasm for the Russian classics, or Yoram, who was not always there but still the closest person to Daniel – now in a more reserved shy way as the gap between them was no more that between a child and an adult but rather an adolescent and a young man.

  Yoram was a captain in the army, and although the war did not affect Gilad’s children much, Yoram’s participation in it involved Daniel in the way that the absence of most fathers involved their children.

  Whenever Yoram came back – always hungry and tired and for a short hour – it was Daniel who shared his stories and, with a mixture of anxiety and envy, watched him mount the jeep and disappear behind a cloud of dust along the field track leading to the area’s headquarters. Yoram’s parents would have preferred to see a girl next to their son, but it was always Daniel – who was taller than Yoram now – walking the Kibbutz pavements with him, drinking in thirstily the vivid descriptions of battles and victories.

  The war was over and Daniel was fifteen – the question marks in the file were forgotten by then – and Yoram decided, with the Kibbutz’ permission after a long debate, to stay in the army for a few years. Daniel resumed his studies and the fact that he was now a citizen of the independent state of Israel did not change his routine – the trip on the tractor to school, studies, the walk back through the fields along the river and farm work alternating with library supervision in the afternoons, homework in the evening. He still shared a room with the same three boys, though Rivka was no longer in charge of them, and he still enjoyed the comfort of friendly books about distant worlds before going to sleep. The insolent penetrating smell of jasmin and the touch of dew-covered golden oranges had their effect and if Daniel were to ask himself where his home was – which he never did – he would naturally point to the silhouette of the water-tower of Gilad and to the little house covered with purple bougain-villaea where he had a bed, a desk and a cupboard.

  In school he met Rina who lived in a neighbouring village. Other girls attracted him and he watched them with wondering eyes. He wondered whether their brassières hurt them. He knew their hair felt different and softer and he was frightened by their secret giggles. Two girls from town attended lessons and he liked their frilly blouses and flowery summer dresses and when he occasionally came across young lovers on the river banks he blushed with the knowledge that one day he would be doing the same.

  Rina liked the same books. She saw him walking to Gilad one day with a book in his hand, a Gorky, and her laughter made him turn.

  ‘You look like a drunkard from the back walking in zig-zags,’ she said. He gave her books from the library and during breaks in the lessons they dreamt aloud about what was written in them.

  ‘Do you remember when Sonia … Who is your favourite, Alexei or Pierre?’ It never occurred to him to talk to her about anything else, and with youthful haste they crossed together the Volga sunsets and Russian battle fields discovering with breathless speed more and more and over again.

  One afternoon, walking together a part of the way – to the crossroad where he turned left to Gilad and she took the road to Shimron, she talked less.

  ‘Anything the matter?’ Her freckled face lit now.

  ‘Yes, I have to ask you something. I think of you and I see Grisha and the Dnieper and I hear your voice talking about books and you are not really there – you are here, in Gilad, and you are not really here either.’

  ‘You sound confused,’ he evaded.

  ‘Well, it’s just that I don’t know anything about you, Daniel, the person. Nobody does.’

  ‘What’s there to know? You see me, we talk, we laugh, we study, what more?’

  ‘I mean you. Who are you and what do you feel and what do you want? It’s as if everybody has three dimensions and you have two – two neat and graceful and polite dimensions.’ They had reached the crossroad now.

  ‘It will rain,’ he muttered, ‘you’d better hurry.’

  ‘I’ll ask you again and again,’ she said and walked away.

  A truck driver going to Gilad gave him a lift and he found himself talking about grapefruit orchards just when the first drops of rain tapped on the tin cab of the truck. The smell of wet black soil filled his nostrils as winter clouds gathered above the valley in their welcome dark gray.

  She did ask him again. He avoided her for a few days making sure he was in company of other Gilad students whenever walking home. The next time they were alone there was silence and she started.

  ‘I’m not just curious, I have to know.’

  He shrugged. The flame in her face joined the red hair.

  ‘How many years have you been here?’

  ‘Five, almost.’

  ‘Tell me what it was like.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Before.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  Was it aggression or impatience or disbelief in her voice?

  ‘That’s impossible,’ she said. ‘I remember things that happened when I was four and six and eight, you want to hide them.’

  Did he want to hide anything? he thought. Not really.

  ‘Do you remember your mother?’

  ‘She was beautiful.’

  ‘Were you an only child?’

  ‘I had a brother, two years older.’

  The road was muddy and the rubber boots felt heavy but the air was clean and fresh, making its way into the lungs effortlessly.

  ‘What was he like, your brother?’

  ‘He played the piano.’

  ‘Tell me about your house.’

  ‘I don’t remember. It had a wooden floor and we could see the snow through the window. I remember the snow. Why do you have to know all this?’

  ‘Was your father nice?’

  ‘My father. His name was Haim, I don’t remember him well at all.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Tall I think. Well-dressed.’

  ‘My God,’ she exclaimed. ‘Don’t you lie at night awake and imagine them? Invent them? Try and reconstruct? Don’t you care?’

  ‘Rina, they all died when I was six. What do you want me to do, go back and give myself a family I don’t have?’

  ‘Do you think he was blond? Your father, like you?’ There was a spark in her eyes now, she was almost playing a game.

  ‘He could have been. He wore a hat most of the time, I think.’

  There were flowers in the barley field – red spotting the young green grass.

  ‘I think he was tall and blond, and had your gray eyes. He must have been very elegant and cultured and soft-spoken and he loved you very much.’

  ‘All right,’ Daniel accepted. ‘So he was. If you read some more novels you’ll be able to tell me more about him.’

  The blessed c
rossroad appeared.

  ‘I’ll come over tomorrow. You said I should meet Yoram,’ she mentioned.

  ‘Sometimes he doesn’t come home on Saturday.’

  ‘I’ll come over anyway.’

  So she will, he thought, noticing her funny walk as she struggled with the sticky mud.

  Rina had scratched the surface and reached the soft flesh he cared not to expose, or to admit was there at all. He was a tall blond elegant man, his father, she told him and Daniel could hear the piano notes played by Shmuel. It was Friday afternoon and Yoram’s jeep came to a halt just behind him which made him jerk, then smile and climb up.

  ‘So you’ve chosen a red-head,’ Yoram said.

  ‘Just a friend from school. She lives in Shimron.’

  ‘Good-looking, too.’

  ‘I don’t think so. She’s coming tomorrow, you’ll see. She talks too much.’

  On Friday nights the Kibbutz was turned into a large family. The tables in the dining room were covered with white table-cloths and two candles were lit to welcome the sabbath. The men wore clean white shirts which emphasized the ruggedness of their skin and after dinner, when the smallest children were put to bed, Yoram played the accordion and a few couples perspired dancing a polka. Daniel could dance but seldom did, because he would rather sit and watch Yoram’s stubby fingers tapping the keys. It was raining outside and he figured Rina would not come if the mud was deep. Somewhere between the feet dancing the Horah and the sound of thunder a tall fair man was taking shape, subtle and permanent.

  Rina arrived towards noon, holding an enormous bouquet of narcissus, drunk with their aroma. She was all laughter and joy and red hair and mud and chatter and, ignoring curious looks from several people, he took her to Yoram’s room.

  ‘Yoram, this is Rina.’

  ‘At last,’ she exclaimed. ‘I didn’t believe you really existed to judge by the way Daniel talks about you.’

  Their laughter matched and for a moment Daniel was left out of it, but they went together to watch the river, which was strong and muddy now.

  ‘Like the Vistula in Warsaw,’ she said, looking at Daniel.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ he answered and Yoram smiled and added, ‘Just like the Jordan in winter, genuine and unique.’ He took in Daniel’s look of gratitude.

  Yoram drove Rina to Shimron and Daniel saw him later that night in the dining room. They walked together along the pavement and Daniel sensed Yoram wanted to ask him something.

  ‘She told me about your father,’ he said.

  ‘She doesn’t know anything about my father. Neither do I.’

  ‘She said, “supposing he was alive”.’

  ‘He’s dead. My mother and brother are dead. What’s it all about? What are you trying to do?’

  ‘Nothing, don’t get excited. People who were thought dead show up sometimes. After all there were no name-lists in the gas chambers. Perhaps one should never lose hope.’

  ‘And go around stopping people asking, “say, did you happen to have a son called Daniel who thought you were dead for the last ten years?”.’

  ‘You know what I’m talking about. She finds it strange that you don’t even try to find out, the way most people do.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he try and find out about me if he is alive?’

  ‘Perhaps he is trying. I’m sorry, I would never have talked about it if it weren’t for Rina. Sensitive girl, very affectionate.’

  ‘She has no right to be so inquisitive. I met you in Bari and you brought me here. I’m happy with things as they are and what I don’t remember I don’t want to imagine.’

  They never mentioned it again, neither did Rina, except once when Daniel graduated from school she said, ‘If your father were alive he would have been very proud of you.’

  Chapter Three

  She insisted she would be the one to use the sleeping-bag and knowing how stubborn she was there was no choice but to give in.

  ‘Do you mind if I move it to the bedroom?’

  He was lying on the bed and next to the bed on the floor Rina was sitting talking about the Nabataeans. She described Petra, their capital, as if she had been there often and talked about their king – Harithath – as if she were in the habit of lunching with him daily. Petra was in Jordan, inaccessible, and Harithath ruled in the first century after Christ and he envied her imagination turning every piece of pottery into a usable dish and every ancient stone into a complete untouched castle. Rina was a graduate of the Faculty of Archaeology in Jerusalem but there was nothing scholarly in her approach to excavation or to history. Anything that was dated chalcolithic must have been used personally by Abraham, and in Iron Age sites King David camped – in all of them. She would have displayed very little surprise if at night an ancient figure were to emerge from the ruins on a site, and if this sense of continuity did not make her a better archaeologist, it added to the enthusiasm with which she joined any mission that set out for field work. Before she fell asleep she asked him if he wanted to talk about his father and when he said no she mumbled something about the Euphrates Valley and he could sense her soft breath across the room.

  His thoughts wandered from Rina to Kalinsky across the road, to Lipsky downstairs and the doctor in the bar. Rina was now walking in Petra, the red rock city, or along a street in Avdat. She was conquering Damascus and Coele-Syria with Harithath or writing love letters in Aramaic. Kalinsky was in Jerusalem Avenue or wandering along Cracow Boulevard – did he stop at the Holy Cross Church to see Chopin’s heart or did he not enter churches? And Lipsky with his wife clad in fur – she often mourned this famous fur coat – necking on the banks of the Dimbovita, shopping in the Calea Victoriei or Balescu Avenue. Is that what they dreamed of? Did Wadi Beer Sheba enter their dreams, and Herzel Street and Minarets? Did the doctor dream of amputated limbs dancing alone or did he too have streets with foreign names forming a labyrinth in his subconscious? Daniel never dreamed, and if he did he never remembered his dreams, and again he thought of the child whose name he forgot who would stay with him the following day. He should ask Miriam what the child liked to eat and was there a date on which the death of Kalinsky was to be expected.

  When he woke up he noticed a sheet covering his body. The sleeping-bag had disappeared and unfamiliar voices reached him from the empty room. He slipped into his shorts and tiptoed to the bathroom. Standing in the doorway he could see Rina squatting next to the piled sherds and Miriam’s boy building a strange tower made of jar handles. The boy looked up and without so much as smiling resumed his game. Rina went to make coffee and since there was nowhere to sit and he did not feel up to straining his muscles and bending down, he remained there standing and from his height the boy looked tiny and distant.

  ‘What are you building?’

  ‘Can’t you see?’ The boy answered without looking up.

  Daniel went to the kitchen to ask Rina for the boy’s name.

  ‘Shmuel, didn’t you know? They call him Shmulik.’ She laughed. ‘He’s four. The son of your step-sister and the grandson of your father. Isn’t he adorable?’

  ‘Shmuel. Of course. Yes, he is adorable I suppose, aren’t all children?’

  ‘He calls you Uncle Daniel, which is hilarious. I promised him you’d take him for a walk, and to a restaurant to eat.’

  ‘You did? Is he moving in?’

  ‘Don’t be horrible. You’re to take him to the hospital around five.’

  ‘I see, so my day is fully planned. Thank you.’

  ‘Hostile today, my God. Have some coffee and a Lipsky cake. I hope you have your nephew’s taste, he adored it.’

  ‘Where does one take little boys for a walk in Beer-Sheba?’

  ‘Anywhere. I have to go to the Museum and do some work, maybe he would like to ride a camel?’

  ‘You’re crazy. When will you be back?’

  ‘After lunch. I’m late now. Be a good boy Shmulik.’ She addressed the boy in the empty room and taking her rucksack full of Nabataean dre
ams she disappeared. In complete contrast to her stormy manner she shut the door in an unexpectedly gentle way.

  He told the boy they were going out and when they reached the street Shmulik pushed his hand into Daniel’s.

  ‘You’re a big boy. You don’t have to hold my hand.’

  ‘Mother said to,’ he insisted. His hand was sticky with the remains of Lipsky’s cake.

  ‘Where would you like to go?’

  ‘She said you’ll take me to the camels.’ ‘She’ must have been Rina.

  ‘Mother doesn’t let me ride a camel,’ the boy volunteered.

  ‘If mother doesn’t let you, you cannot. We’ll go on a walk and I’ll buy you an ice-cream.’

  Daniel found it difficult to adjust to the boy’s steps, but carrying him in his arms would have looked silly he decided. He looked at the boy, who had his mother’s features, and he thought he was too thin. He was dressed in blue and his thin hands were lost in the short sleeves. After a few blocks Shmulik stopped abruptly.

  ‘I forgot my hat,’ he declared.

  ‘We’ll be back before it gets too hot.’

  ‘Mother said never to go out without a hat.’