SATURDAY?

This is the first time, only lately

Time has not behaved sedately.

Uri Bernstein

 

Saturday? Saturday? Suddenly, halfway through the story, I’m stuck and can’t go on. What happened on Saturday three years ago? I hadn’t even remembered that there was such a day. It vanished without a trace, without even leaving behind its own phantom pain. Saturday? Somehow I lost it—I, who tended each one of those days like a priestess at the altar; who stubbornly salvaged them, forever frozen in clarity, from the passage of time; who zealously assembled and preserved their story person by person and day by day down to its last detail, color, smell, fragment of conversation, article of clothing, shift of mood and of weather—those last, horrible days of his beamed on a screen in their impossible, in their inevitable unfolding to the distant soundtrack of a faint yet persistent score; who, though none of you ever noticed, have gone on to this day collecting snatches of memories like the last feathers from a tom quilt: from you, Kedmi, from mother, from Tsvi, from Asi, from Dina ... even poking up the last embers in Gaddi and asking whoever was in the hospital that last dreadful night over and over about it (yes, if only I could find him I would ask the dog too, I would beg him to talk, to join me in my exact, relentless search for those days in their impossible, in their inevitable unfolding from that first moment in the airport when he stepped out to greet us on the rainy, floodlit pavement to the last one on that final night when we arrived too late at the hospital gate to find him already taken away and the whimpering dog pawing madly at the ground ... yes, for me that was the end); who have not forgotten—who will never forget—who will remember for all of you; who was the only one to love him unconditionally; who was neither for him nor against him but simply quietly there with whatever warmth and assistance I could give. You can do what you want, Kedmi; all of you can; I’ll always be with you. And instead of thinking ... yes, instead of thinking, Kedmi, I’ll remember. I’ll leave the thinking to you, to Asi, to all of you, but you leave the remembering to me, because there is no one else to do it. Only what happened to that Saturday? My God, can I have lost a whole day without having been aware of it, can my stubborn, insatiable memory have run right over it on its way to the accident? But how? Like a fool I sat here this morning and told her about each day, all in its slow, orderly sequence, in its impossible, its inevitable unfolding, as though listening to that faint score bring back each minute of it, as if all the stubborn remembering of the past years had been solely for this moment and I had known all along that one day some stranger would walk in out of the blue and demand it all back from me: someone with a hunger for the tiniest facts and the need to know everything, so that, if at first I wasn’t sure what to tell her and what not to, not only could I keep back nothing once I began to talk, I was in an absolute frenzy to cough it all up. Things came back to me that I had never dreamed I still remembered. At last there was someone to milk me dry, to turn me over like a bottle and empty me of every word, sound and movement, to plumb our thoughts and motives, to keep track of even the most minor characters in my account, refusing to part from them, clinging to them for dear life. For a while I was actually alarmed by her passion to know. A small woman in a bonnet with a big feather, holding a long pencil and a notebook on her knee, chain-smoking, hanging on every word, jotting down each new expression, nodding incessantly at a fever pitch, in a primitive Hebrew, while I gave it back to her day by day: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday ... following him from place to place and from person to person ... from Haifa to Jerusalem and back again, from there to Tel Aviv ... morning, afternoon and night ... everything I knew, whatever I had garnered from him, from you all ... wherever I had been myself and wherever my imagination had gone for me ... and yet as soon as I reached Saturday I drew a blank, I blacked out completely, the music stopped, and I stood there saying idiotically, “Saturday? Saturday? I don’t remember there being a Saturday at all.” My mind wouldn’t work. “Are you sure that there was one?” I kept asking. “Maybe that was the first day of Passover, it sometimes happens that way. We’ll have to look it up in an old calendar.” But she just looked at me with a momentary smile of bewilderment before blushing offendedly, as though I were trying to hide something from her. Where were we on that Saturday? What happened on it? Could I really have forgotten—I, who tended each one of those days like a priestess at the altar, who salvaged them, forever frozen in stubborn clarity, from the passage of time? I almost called you at the office, Kedmi, or else Tsvi. But you, what do you still remember? Why, even what you think you remember is a shadow of the memory itself.

 

I rose and walked about the room. “Saturday?” I murmured to her with a reassuring smile. “Of course. It will come back to me in a minute. On Sunday he was divorced. He went to the hospital that morning by himself. We never understood how he had convinced the rabbis to perform the ceremony on the day of the seder until weeks later there arrived a receipt from some unknown little yeshiva for a contribution he had given it. What didn’t he do to see the thing through! But that still leaves Saturday. Saturday ... of course. There had to be one.” I smiled at her. “We’ll find it in a minute. But first let’s have some more coffee.”

I went to the kitchen, passing through an apartment suspended in time since her coming. Everything was a mess. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink, open pots of food stood on the cold stove, the chairs were up on the tables, a rag lay by a bucket on the filthy floor, the beds were unmade, a record went on spinning silently on the turntable. It wasn’t nine o’clock yet when she arrived, and since then everything had come to a stop.

I came back with the coffee and, while she went to the bathroom, her comical notebook left open on the table with its short, heavily underlined sentences in a vexed hand, on each page a date as though she were hunting for something, I slipped off to the children’s room to have another look at him in Rakefet’s crib. I re-covered his little body with the blanket and touched his face. A mystery, I whispered to myself, feeling ready to cry again, because I had started to when they came and never finished, nor do I think I ever will. Brace yourself, Kedmi: it needn’t surprise you that I want to cry each time I see the child. And she was so happy when I did. It made her feel better at once, her face glowed. At first she was in such a panic, poor thing, standing there in the doorway with all her suitcases, blushing and stammering, driven to despair by my determined refusal to realize who she was. Until all of a sudden it dawned on me and I hurried them into the house and bent to take the child, bursting into tears when I lifted him. What else could one have done? Could I have done, I mean, not you, of course, Kedmi. What makes me cry makes you laugh, which is all to the good, because that way we’re sure to get along. But I mean laughter, Kedmi, not that insufferably aggressive bile of yours. Irony, yes, laughter, as much as you want—as long as it’s like this afternoon when, coming home from work, you ran into all her suitcases by the door and turned your surprise so quickly into an amused smile: you knew at once whose they were—you had figured it out in a flash—no, no one will ever pull a fast one on you. And you were so friendly shaking hands with her—yes, really friendly and warm, you needn’t deny it. I swear you were—and you can be cold and nasty enough when you come home and find strangers in the house. You went straight to the kitchen, where the child was sitting with the bib I had tied around his neck, all smeared with cereal, banging on the table with a soup spoon and singing in English, and how sweetly you said with a mischievous twinkle to Gaddi and Rakefet, who were watching him dumbfounded, “Well, kids, how do you like your new uncle from America?” You don’t know how relieved I was that you didn’t go into one of your sulks, that you were ready to share this incredible experience that’s come our way, that you’ll have the patience to put up with them. Because I know you will. Please, I beg of you: don’t already start planning ways to get rid of them during the few days they’ll be here. Give me time to hold the child before he’s taken away again. My sweetheart, how I love you, how I thank you, how I love you and thank you for the way that you, who have so little use for strange children, went right over to him and fondled him with such a gentle, marvelous smile. You even kissed him, didn’t you? Of course you did. And stroked his hair. Admit it, Kedmi, you needn’t be ashamed. There’s nothing wrong with it. Even you were touched by the mystery.

 

But I cried and that made her happy. It made her feel so much better, her face glowed. So tense and miserable she was, her first time in Israel and straight from the airport after the long flight from America, having taken a taxi to our house without phoning for fear we would tell her not to come. I ran to answer the doorbell, the whole house in a shambles, still in a fog from the record I’d put on, hypnotized by the soft rain that was falling like gold in the rays of an orange-peel sun, staring at her for what seemed forever, refusing to let it register, sure that there was some mistake and that this bizarre middle-aged woman with a baby in her arms and three rain-spattered valises at her feet—that this flushed, agitated woman who was beseeching me in a rapid-fire English that I didn’t even try to understand—that this woman who kept hopelessly repeating a last name that meant nothing to me was someone I didn’t know, no, not even when she introduced herself as Connie. And yet gradually I felt myself looking at the child and a shiver ran down my spine. He was a three-year-old Tsvi, perhaps even a three-year-old father ... not that it had sunk in yet, only now something made me want to fling myself on them and drag them into the house. And still she kept up an incomprehensible stream of English, uncertain whether to come in. Perhaps she’d caught a glimpse of the state of the apartment ... but the child was already inside, so curious and earnest. And you should have seen how he looked, all in red from tip to toe, as though out of the pages of a fairy tale. He darted from one thing to another and ran off to listen to the music, talking softly to himself, while I tried to catch him with a hot lump in my throat. Why, he was as light as a baby chick, a mere slip of warm air. Already there were tears on my cheeks. And she was so happy to see them. It made her feel better, her face glowed. “That’s him?” I whispered. She nodded. “That’s him,” she repeated in Hebrew, shutting her eyes with a sudden, ceremonious toss of her head.

 

A strange, peculiar woman, isn’t she? You should have seen how she had dressed the child, all in red.... Come, let me show you his things: red coat, red jacket and pants—a matching suit, in fact—red socks, even red underpants and red undershirt, all in the exact same shade. And he wore a red velvet skullcap on his head, which she made him put on especially for the trip to Israel, because she thought that everyone here ... that you had to ... really weird! The sheer redness of him was too much. And she herself standing next to him in that white bonnet with its long stiff red feather waving back and forth.... Come, I’ll show you that too, she’s left it here. What kind of animal or bird does it come from? Or is it synthetic? Yes, I suppose it must be.... She sat across from me for two whole hours with that feather sticking up in the air, an odd, tense, terribly nervous woman. How could we have forgotten about her existence? We must simply have blocked it out. There was a time when I still said to you all that we had to find out what happened to her, that we should write her, but you, Kedmi, were against it, and Tsvi and Asi didn’t think much of the idea either. Don’t you have enough problems already, you said to me, without asking for more from America? You were afraid of his case being opened again, of raising the issue of the child’s paternity and having to re-probate the will. And Tsvi promised us that that little man who followed him around in those days ... that banker ... Calderon ... yes, Refa’el Calderon ... that he would telephone her in America and tell her the whole story. And he did: she told me today of her talks with him back then and said he behaved like a gentleman and kept in touch with her for a long time, even after Tsvi had broken off with him completely. Would you believe that he even sent her a present in our name when the child was born? She was sure that we knew about it—she, who had been so afraid of us and so certain that we blamed her for what happened, for having driven him to divorce mother so that the child could have his name. And afterwards she felt certain that she would hear from us. She couldn’t believe that we wouldn’t want to see the child, and she was waiting for him to be old enough to be taken here on a visit. How could we not have an interest in him? Half a year ago she even signed up for an intensive Hebrew course—you can see for yourself that she can really talk. She must be quite gifted, I suppose. I tell you, she sat facing me all the time with that pencil and that notebook, writing down every new word. That’s how father had begun to teach her, she said: very thoroughly. An awfully odd woman ... and not so young anymore, either. She’s at least forty-five and has a married son. In fact, she confided in me that she’s about to become a grandmother. She ran a real risk to have a child at her age, she could have given birth to a monster. And yet she’s not a bad-looking woman, is she? A bit tired and lined in the face, and her hair is dyed a bad color ... she told me that being alone with a baby these past three years has been very hard on her ... but her body is still full of life. It’s a lovely body, I saw it when I went in to help her with the shower: a young one, with very nice breasts—I can imagine how happy she must have made father.... It’s hard to sec all that just from looking at her, though. You’re not used to all that makeup and those loud colors. And she does dress a bit ridiculously, with those big hom-rimmed glasses and that feather waving like a red arrow when she walked in. And yet she has a toughness about her too ... a dreamy sort of toughness, inside. To have come straight like that to a strange house, with that little boy all dressed in red ... I’m sure those clothes were supposed to mean something, though I haven’t figured out what yet ... why, even his shoes were red ... I don’t believe she didn’t have something in mind. And the way she sat grilling me about each detail ... and then, without even a by-your-leave, went to change and wash the child, and to take a shower herself, after which she left him with us and disappeared ... suddenly it frightens me, Kedmi. Where has she gone off to? What does she want? The one thing that reassures me is how totally unexpectedly, how almost peculiarly calm you are. Do you hear me, Kedmi? I trust you to have thought it all out, to be in charge here. I’m telling you again that she’s a very odd woman: it’s no accident that father was attracted to her. And she’s come here for some hidden reason, not just to find out what happened. You should have seen how patiently she questioned me, taking her time, getting details out of me that I never even thought were still there. And I told her everything, even though it scared me to: about you, about mother, about father ... there was nothing she didn’t want to hear. And she’ll go see everyone, she’ll go to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem too, she’ll follow his tracks everywhere, even to the hospital. How could we have forgotten her, she sobbed; had we forgotten him too? I told her everything, she heard things from me I never thought I still knew, I let her milk me dry. Until suddenly I got stuck on that Saturday. What happened on it? I remember that Sunday was the day of the seder, and that father took a bus by himself to the hospital to get the divorce. He returned that afternoon, and toward evening Tsvi arrived. But there was a Saturday before it that I can’t for the life of me recall. What happened then, Kedmi? Were we home? I’m trying to think logically about it. What could I have done that day? I suppose I cooked for the seder ... I must have cooked for it sometime. If only I remembered what I made, I could reconstruct the whole day. What did we eat at the seder, Kedmi? No, don’t be annoyed—just tell me if you remember anything. Saturday ... there must have been something! I’m sure it was nothing ... I mean, nothing important, just a kind of interlude ... but still ... I can’t stand not remembering a single thing. That’s why I said to her in the end, “Excuse me, are you sure that there was one?” Which got her goat. “I suppose there must have been one,” I said, “it will come back to me in a minute.” But she wouldn’t drop the subject, she kept pursuing it, giving me the third degree. “Of course there was a Saturday,” she said. “I even called you on it.” “You called us? How did you call us?” “I phoned you,” she said. “Early that Saturday morning. I was trying to get hold of him, don’t you remember?” “That’s impossible,” I said. “This time you’re wrong. You never phoned. If you did, I’d have remembered. I’m sure of it.”

“But it’s you who are wrong. She really did phone.”

“She phoned when father was here?”

“Yes. In the middle of the night. Now I remember. She told you it was in the morning? Funny lady. She was looking for him in the middle of the night.”

“That Saturday?”

“Do you think I can remember now if it was that Saturday or not? Believe me, I have better things to do with myself. I tried to forget that nightmare as quickly as I could, not to arrange it in chronological order.”

“But you never said a word to me about any phone call.”

“Why should I have? She was looking for him, not for you. I told her that he was in Tel Aviv and gave her the number there. What was I supposed to have told you? You, all of you, were completely freaked out at the time. I had to be careful to keep my distance from you. And you were happy to leave me on the sidelines anyway. You were afraid that my sanity would ruin your lunatic pleasures ...”

 

Your sanity? Insufferable insufferable insufferable is how you were then. You tortured us. From the moment that father tore up your agreement and went to see another lawyer in Tel Aviv. You were so insulted ... so hurt to the quick ... you raged around the house like a tornado. Insufferable. Insufferable. You tormented everyone, Gaddi too. Yes, you even took it out on Gaddi. You behaved like a barbarian, slamming doors around the house, suddenly disappearing for no good reason. The nightmare was you! It began that Wednesday in the hospital the moment you walked into the library and found your agreement in pieces on the floor. The way you collected them one by one with that caustic smile of yours ... oh, I could see right away how hurt you were. No, don’t deny it. You had a right to be, and it was all so long ago anyway. I should have grabbed it from father when he started tearing it, but everything was happening so fast ... Asi was screaming and hitting himself in order to goad father on ... and then suddenly, there you were in the doorway ... and that document you had worked on for so many days ... all those times you had run to mother with it, all the telephone calls, all the drafts ... there it was, in shreds at our feet, with father announcing that he would see some other lawyer whom he knew. I knew we should never have involved you in the whole business. But you insisted on it. You wanted to be involved. You wanted to prove to him, to us all, that you were capable of handling it, and I’m to blame for not having stopped you. It’s just that you went into one of your manias that leave us all paralyzed, and me most of all. Not that I’m blaming you. Your intentions were good. You wanted to help, to save father money. And perhaps you thought that he would pay you something for it in the end. No, don’t be annoyed at me. Listen. It wasn’t your fault that you needed work then. You had just opened that little office of yours, with that moronic secretary who kept messing up. And father didn’t help any, either. He certainly shouldn’t have fired you in the middle like that and gone to someone else. But the violence of your reaction, the blow to your pride ... the minute we got back to the car, with that radio blasting away, I could feel your spiteful silence. The way you revved up the engine ... and do you remember what you did to that dog? No, don’t innocently ask me what dog. Our dog. Horatio! The way you cleverly lured him behind you on the main road to make him lose his way and get run over. You played him along, slowing down and speeding up again ... What do you mean, you don’t remember? Mother’s friends in the hospital spent five days looking for him in the fields. That little old man searched for him everywhere. At least let’s be honest. I’m not blaming you now. We all made mistakes then, and together they kept adding up. It was a mistake to bring Gaddi along too. Yes, I know, father wanted him to come. But I brought him for mother’s sake, and in the end he had to bear the brunt of it. Only you didn’t spare him any, either. You were merciless with him. You were brutal. You wanted to punish the whole world for your tom agreement and for father’s loss of faith in you. And you yourself lost control, like a child having a tantrum. But completely, which is something that seldom happens to you, because control is the one thing that you always manage to keep. In every situation, in all your gags, in the cynical jokes you play on people, in all your loose talk and your brainstorms that you can’t keep to yourself, I always know I can be sure that you won’t go too far. Calm down, I tell myself, it’s just a game, he’ll know when to stop and apologize with a smile. Bear with him, I think, you may as well enjoy his shenanigans. And you do know that I secretly enjoy them, don’t you, because I know that I can always wait for you to collapse into bed in the evening and curl up exhausted there ... that I needn’t mind your tongue-lashings or be hurt by them, because I know another you too: heavy, quiet, sleepy and warm.... But then you were savage with desperation, you’d been cut to the very quick. No, don’t put a brave face on it now: you simply weren’t talking to us then, that’s why you never told me about that phone call. And you had stopped talking because that was the worst punishment you could give us and the worst punishment you could give yourself. What could be more terrible for you than silence? It exasperates you and makes you mean. Not that I myself would have minded, my thoughts were elsewhere at the time. But you stopped talking to Gaddi then too. Now you may not remember. Then you didn’t say a word to him for days, though, as though he were to blame for it too ... Gaddi, who’s so used to your being involved in all he does, and who so admires you ... no, I don’t mean admires ... but depends on you and is attached to you. I’m not saying that explains what happened. But it was hard on him. Although of course it wasn’t only that: it was his being left to cope by himself in all that confusion, all that anger and grief that helped bring on the attack. I told her all about it this morning, because I wanted her to understand what we went through that week, how we would have lost the boy too if not for you. Yes, if not for you: I told her in so many words. Only Kedmi, I said. He was the one, I won’t forget it as long as I live. If he hadn’t kept those marvelously quick wits of his about him and insisted on rushing the boy to the hospital in time ... if he hadn’t read the symptoms correctly as soon as he hit the floor ... I told her so this morning ... if it hadn’t been for Kedmi ... because I too hadn’t been paying Gaddi enough attention, I was too terrified by what happened to father even to think. And who would have dreamed that a seven-and-a-half-year-old could go and have a heart attack like that? In the middle of all the horror it was Kedmi who saved the boy for us. Who gave him to me again, a second time ... so that since then I’m willing to be his slave ... since then I’ve forgiven you everything. I didn’t tell her that, but I’m telling you now. Are you listening?

 

“Listening to what?”

“To what I’ve been saying.”

“You haven’t been saying anything. You’ve been quiet.”

“I’ve been quiet?”

“You may have been talking to yourself, but as far as I’m concerned you’ve been quiet.”

“I was talking to myself?”

“How should I know? Ask yourself.”

“You must have fallen asleep.’’

“You always seem to think that if I’m not talking I must be asleep, because there is no other possibility. But amazingly enough, Ya’eli, there are times when I do think silently. I wasted so many good thoughts at the office today that I have to stock up again for tomorrow.”

“What time is it?”

“Past ten.”

“How can you expect to fall asleep so early?”

“I can fall asleep anytime. Haven’t I told you the title of my latest book? Falling Asleep in Ten Easy Lessons. How does that grab you?”

“I’ll be the first to read it, Kedmi.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind of you. The first lesson will be called, ‘Silencing Your Spouse.’ ”

“She hasn’t come back yet, Kedmi. What can she be up to? She hasn’t phoned, either. I can’t imagine where she is. She’s been gone since four o’clock. I’m beginning to worry.”

“Worry all you like if you enjoy it, but I don’t know what your hurry is. Let it wait until tomorrow. By then you can worry for real.’’

“Until tomorrow? What are you talking about?”

“A little bird tells me that she’s left town. And you know that my little birds are always right.”

“Why on earth should she have left town? When? She said that she wanted to look up some acquaintances ... that she had something to bring them...”

“She asked me to drop her off at the central bus station. I rather doubt that she’s already made acquaintances there.”

“You mean to say you left her off at the central station? You didn’t tell me that.”

“There are lots of things I didn’t tell you. Such as that she bought herself a map of Israel and asked me to show her on it where the hospital was and how to get there ...”

“She didn’t go to the hospital ... she couldn’t have. But where is she? I don’t get it. And the child is here ... what can she be thinking of? I...”

“I don’t know what she’s thinking of, but I do know what you’re thinking of, and I’m afraid that it’s something silly once again. You’re worried that she may have left you the child as a present and absconded ... but that’s really a bit much, Ya’el. A handsome, healthy, light-skinned boy like that, with a religious education to boot, is worth a few thousand dollars in today’s market even without his fine clothes. I can’t believe she’d pass all that money up...”

“How can you talk like that!”

“She’ll be back, Ya’el. And if she isn’t, we’ll give the child to Asi and Dina. I’ve already told you that we’ll never get back from the Christians the Holy Ghost that they stole from us two thousand years ago.”

“Will you tell me what’s gotten into you? What kind of way is that to talk?”

“A logical way, Ya’el. A cold, quiet, logical way. I leave the fine emotions to you.”

“You don’t understand ... you don’t see it ... you’ve hardly talked to her, but she and I spent a whole morning together. She’s an odd, peculiar woman. She came here with some ulterior motive. It’s beyond me how you can lie there so calmly. You’re beginning to seem peculiar to me too...”

“Thank you.”

“No, really. How can you be so nonchalant? It isn’t like you. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you see, to turn up suddenly like that without warning ... with the suitcases and the child ... and you should have seen how she dressed him...”

“Give me three guesses. All in red?”

“Stop that! Just leave me alone. I won’t say another word.”

“If you expect me to jump out of bed and start running frantically around the room with you ... I mean if it will help calm you down, I’ll be only too happy to do it. Because there is nothing that I wouldn’t do for you, my dearest wife. But I do think that it was presumptuous of me to plan on writing Falling Asleep in Ten Easy Lessons. ”

“That’s enough, Kedmi! Cut it out. If you could possibly avoid that tone of yours tonight ... because I’ve had enough...”

“But what are you getting so worked up about? Do tell me. If somebody brought me a sweet little English-speaking thing like that one fine day I’d be too thrilled for words. The trouble with you is that you take things too much for granted. If you were an only child like me, you’d appreciate what you were given today...”

“Leave me alone.”

“Maybe you’d like to have a cry now? I think your problem may be that you haven’t cried enough today. Let yourself go ... if you don’t, you’ll fall apart again the way you did three years ago. Only this time I won’t let you. It took me a long time to put you back together, and to this day I’m not sure that a few parts aren’t missing.”

“Kedmi, please. Not now. I’m nervous as hell.”

“She’ll come back. She really will, Ya’el. You needn’t be so tense.”

“Are you sure?”

“The only thing I’m sure of is our great and terrible love. If you weren’t so preoccupied, in fact, I’d make you a proposal that more than one lady would be happy to get from me at this hour of the night. But I won’t put you to any more trouble. I really did like, though, what you said about my keeping control and about your secretly enjoying my jokes. I wish you’d put it in writing, as we say, so that your admirers would stop accusing me of tormenting you all the time ...”

“But you are tormenting me. What’s happened to put you in such a wonderful mood? I’m all pins and needles, and you’re flat on your back without a care. What happened, Kedmi, did you close some big deal at the office today?”

“I may be about to, but that isn’t it. I like the deal we’ve already closed even better. Why, we’ve enlarged our family today with practically no effort. I’ve gained a new brother-in-law in diapers and a dynamic, young American mother-in-law. There’s a sense in the air of going places. I feel that we’ve become younger today. You know I think the world of your family ...”

“All right, I’m leaving. You’re out of control for real now.”

“You know I’m not. You said yourself that...”

“I think the child is crying.”

“He isn’t. But if you’d like him to, I can arrange it.”

“Where did you really take her? Now you’re going to tell me the truth!”

“I told you. To the bus station. I didn’t ask her, but she must have gone up north to see the hospital. All I did was change some dollars for her. I had no time, I was in a hurry to get to work. I agree with you that she’s a rather odd woman. Like a sleepwalker—all there in a dreamlike sort of way. It’s hard to believe that your father went all the way to America just to find the same type that he was running away from here...”

“Leave my father out of this. Do you hear me? Don’t start on him now. That’s enough. Just tell me what, happened on Saturday.”

“On Saturday?”

“Then ... when my father was here three years ago ...”

“Oh, no. Now you’re really going off the deep end. Don’t tell me you’re still looking for that day ...”

“Yes. It matters to me that I’ve forgotten it.”

“God save us all, she’s beginning again. What exactly is it that matters?”

“It just does, a great deal. And I feel that you remember what happened and won’t tell me.”

“I remember? That’s a good one! Do you think I have nothing else to do than remember what happened three years ago? I hate to imagine where all this will end. I had thought there was a division of labor in this house whereby you were responsible for the past and I took care of the present, so that when the present became the past there would be something for you to remember. You’ve gone far enough, my dearest: it’s time to get over this obsession of yours.... And she won’t vanish into thin air. Nobody does in this country. Before you can finish jumping off a cliff five helicopters are on their way to save you.... Come on, calm down. I still feel like making you a proposal that more than one lady would be happy to get from me at this hour of the night.... Hey, where are you going?”

 

But what did happen on that Saturday? If only I had a clue: a patch of light, a shape of cloud, the way someone looked, a sentence, a few words, a tone of voice, the motion of a child, an item on the radio, one of Kedmi’s jokes, the mood I was in, my own face, a single thought. Where are you, day? Where did you get lost? Who made off with you? Somehow I muffed it. And yet there must be a starting point somewhere. Why, that Sunday morning is so hauntingly, so unforgettably, so forever clear in my mind: breakfast in the kitchen ... a fierce blue sky outside ... father drinking coffee in a dark suit, his reading glasses perched on his nose, leafing quickly through some papers in front of him, throwing me a worried glance. But when did he return to Haifa? On Friday afternoon he called from Tel Aviv. Kedmi picked up the receiver, said something rude into it, and threw it down again, signaling me to come. It was raining outside. Father’s warm, deep voice sounded far away. “Father,” I asked, “is it raining in Tel Aviv too?” And he answered, “The sky is blue here. Tel Aviv has never been lovelier.” He told me that he was letting her have the apartment, that he had signed it away at the lawyer’s a few hours ago. And then he started in on Tsvi. “Watch out for him. He’ll take everything. From you too. For those old pederasts of his”—he repeated the phrase several times—“for those old pederasts who hang around him all the time...” But between those two memories a whole day is gone, wrapped in white shrouds deep inside me, a missing montage of quick frames, a blank leaven of time between two fixed points. That Saturday. Something has to strike a spark, if only his coming to Haifa. When did he arrive? When could he have arrived? What happened when he did? To think that I’ve forgotten. If only I could make myself hear the ring of her phone call that morning. Because she really did call, and I must have heard it, even if I didn’t know that I did. If only I could hear the phone ring, or remember myself having heard it, I’d have something to latch on to.... But no answer. Nothing. A gray void, hollow flecks of foam, unreal hours, a page tom from a calendar. Nothing. And yet that can’t be. There must be a way to remember. Right now, deep in this armchair. Turn out the light then, Ya’el. I must find that Saturday. If I let it get away from me now, I’ll never retrieve it again.

 

—What is it, Gaddi? What’s wrong? Can’t you fall asleep?

—No. I’m not sleeping here. I’m just sitting up a while.

—No special reason. I turned off the light to help me think. No, please don’t sprawl on the sofa now ... go back to bed, it’s late...

—What hurts? Your foot? That’s nothing. It’s because you’re growing. It’s nothing. Your father’s gone again and...

—I don’t know. What do you need him for? I don’t think he’s asleep yet. He’s just thinking in bed.

—You’re hungry? But how could you be! All right, tell me what you want to eat. But make it quick.

—Bread? In the middle of the night you have to have bread? All right, I’ll slice you a piece. What do you want on it?

—Plain bread?

—No. Your dad won’t be angry. He’s exaggerating. You needn’t worry about it.

—But you’re not getting fat again at all.

—Never mind him. He forgets that you have to grow too.

—Ever since the two of you went on that diet together, he thinks that you have to watch every bite. You mustn’t pay him any attention.

—That’s perfectly all right.

—I know very well what you’re allowed to eat and what you aren’t. Come, let me spread some butter on it for you. Just a bit, so it won’t be so dry in your mouth.

 

—His mother? She’ll be back soon.

—No. He won’t stay with us. Just for a few days.

—She wanted us to see him. He’s a sweet little boy, isn’t he?

—No. She made him wear a skullcap because she didn’t know any better. She thought that everyone in Israel wears them.

—All right, I’ll tell her. But he is a lovely child, isn’t he?

—That doesn’t matter. You and Rakefet can teach him some Hebrew words.

—No, don’t call him Moshe. He won’t know who you’re talking to. Call him Moses. That’s what he’s used to being called.

—Yes, my love. Moses is his real name.

—What makes you think he stutters? You’re just imagining it.

—I didn’t notice. That’s how Americans talk.

—Well, not all of them. But the children.

—Maybe not all the children either. But don’t forget that he’s really very small. And he’s in a strange house now, after a long trip.

—Like who?

—Like Tsvi, yes. He does look an awful lot like him. Sometime I’ll show you a picture of Tsvi when he was a baby and you’ll see how alike they look.

 

—Exactly.

—Right. Because he’s grandpa’s child, even though grandpa never knew him.

—Yes. He died before he was born.

—Here in Israel.

—No. He wasn’t that old. He had an accident ... something ran into him ... it knocked him down ... we don’t know exactly what...

—Something.

—It was a kind of an accident.

—Yes. Like an automobile accident.

—No. He’s not a real uncle of yours like Asi or Tsvi. Your dad was just trying to be funny. But he is a half uncle, even though he’s very small.

—Exactly.

—That’s right. He’s grandpa’s son.

—Yes. Like me. Like Asi.

—Yes. A kind of uncle. You could say that he was one.

—That’s right. Only grandma wasn’t his mother.

 

—Do you still remember grandpa?

—You do? Really? Do you remember him well?

—I’m so glad that you had a chance to meet him. Don’t ever forget him.

—You’ll remember if you want to. But only if you want to.

—Yes. Rakefet won’t remember even if she does want to. But what do you remember?

—Yes, that’s right. He slept all day long...

—That was the Sunday he arrived.

—That’s right. You were left alone with him.

—Right, right. I remember your bathing Rakefet. He was so impressed by how you helped him.

—He cut his hand? No, I don’t remember that. But maybe he did.

—It was before you got sick.

—No. Not so fat. You were very sweet. Sometimes I miss how sweet you were then.

—And afterwards? Do you remember the seder with grandpa?

—You don’t? But how can that be? Try to remember it...

—Then you don’t. But you do remember going to visit grandma in the hospital with Asi, don’t you?

—Not that either?!

—You were seven and a half. How could you not remember?

—Not even how we all went there together and grandma gave you cake to eat? How did you ever forget...?

—And that locomotive that you got ... you don’t remember that either?

—A big locomotive that grandpa brought you ... how can that be ... not even that huge man who tried taking it away from you?

—He was a little crazy. You don’t remember him?

—Only that day that grandpa slept here? That’s all?

—It was right before Passover. And the Saturday before the seder ... do you remember anything about that Saturday?

—Never mind.

—Well, if you’ve finished eating, you’d better go to sleep. It’s late already. Come, I’ll cover you...

 

The child is standing up without a sound, bathed in moonlight, leaning on the bars of the crib, rubbing his eyes. In a minute he’ll cry and ask for his mother. The look of him staggers me: fl perfect replica, down to the cut of the jaw, a signed copy. How long has he been standing there so quietly? The room is awfully stuffy, I’d better open a window. Rakefet, all ruddy-faced, has slipped off her mattress onto the floor. If Connie is planning to stay with us, I’ll have to look for a folding bed in the morning. There’s a strong smell of pee in the air. How sweetly the children filled the crib for him with toys...

—Go to sleep, Gaddi. I’ll take care of him. Don’t worry about it.

Only I can’t lift him. The stubborn little thing clings to the bed, regarding me curiously, primed to cry, wondering where in the world he is. My brother. The absurdity of it. Yesterday he spent long hours in the sky. And where has she disappeared to? How can she have done such a thing? Everything is soaking wet: the sheets, the blanket, the whole bed. A copy of father. Incredible. Damned scary too. The identical profile ... And then, as though over some distant mountain peak, a sudden flash of memory: where on earth has it come from, so stormy-sweet? A moonlit winter night in our old apartment in Tel Aviv. A warm rain falling, a huge moon in the sky. Tsvi, a small child in father and mother’s big gilded four-postered bed, wearing those heavy pink pajamas that later were handed down to Asi ... Tsvi, standing behind the pile of quilts ... I remember so clearly now ... his face, the look of him ... it must have been the middle of the night. They had called me in the middle of the night, or else it was a morning they slept late. Mother was naked beneath a white nightgown, and pregnant. Yes, I’m sure she was. And then father emerged from beneath the quilts too, laughing. They had called me to take Tsvi back to bed. How old could I have been then, ten? The same age as Gaddi. “He’ll only go with you,” they said. Mother had shut her eyes against the light of the bed lamp. Her hair was loose and she was too absorbed in her own burgeoning self to notice me. I felt that there was some secret pact between them, some deep equilibrium that allowed them to think the same thoughts. They gave Tsvi to me. His long, thin face. And then father kissed mother’s feet, and a deep burst of fear took me by storm. When was it? A distant memory. The trees of the avenue in the rain, their large wet leaves glistening in the moonlight. Tsvi’s face.

 

Gaddi curls up beneath his blanket, watching me with his intelligent look. So somber, so serious, a little Kedmi but without the sense of humor, with only that stubbornly logical mind of his. Always having to defend himself from being crushed by Kedmi’s attentions. And here is this sweet addition to our family today standing so seriously too, gripping the bars of the crib, his large eyes looking quietly at the clouds adrift in the winter sky, drenched in his pee. How can she have gone and left him like this? It’s too much for me even to think about. “Come, let me pick you up,” I say. He points to something, speaking in an English that I can’t begin to understand.

“Say boy nice to him,” says Gaddi from under his blanket.

“All right, you go to sleep already.... Come,” I say to the child. “Come, good boy ”

My ridiculously meager English. I take a blanket and wrap him in it to keep him from getting chilled. Absurdly, though, I can’t lift him. Suddenly he’s dug his little feet into the mattress.

“Come.” I pluck him up by force and carry him to the living room, where I stand him in the darkness on the rug. “One moment, ” I say, going to look for a pair of Rakefet’s pajamas. He starts to whimper. Dear God, what should I say to him? “I change you.” Lord, was that right? Kedmi, come. “There there. Nice boy. Good boy. Kedmi! Are you up?”

All at once the telephone rings. It has to be her.

“Kedmi!” I shout. “Answer it! I’ll be there in a minute.”

 

“Are you already done talking? Who was it? Was it her?”

“Hello, Moses. How do you do?’’

“I’m asking you something! Answer me. Was that Connie?”

“Hello, Moses. Bring him over to the bed here. He really does look like your father. It’s amazing...”

“Kedmi! Who was that on the telephone? Was it her?”

“Yes.”

“Then why the hell did you hang up so fast?”

“Let me have him.... You know, your family has this strong, really violent gene in its bloodline. I’m sure glad that Gaddi didn’t get it.”

“Kedmi, none of that now. What did she say? Why did you hang up on her?”

“I didn’t. She finished talking. Will you hand me that child now?”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing special.”

“Did she ask about the child?”

“Yes. I told her you were changing him and talking to him in English.”

“When is she coming back?”

“She didn’t say.”

“What do you mean, she didn’t say? Didn’t you ask?”

“It doesn’t look like she’ll be back before tomorrow.”

“Not before tomorrow? But why...?”

“Why not? Would you prefer her to stay away a whole week?”

“Why didn’t you let me talk to her?”

“She didn’t ask to talk to you.”

“Goddamn you! What are you two up to? Where was she talking from? Did she leave a number?”

“Hello, Moses. Would you hand him to me already? I can’t get over how much he looks like your father. Come on, let me have him. Since when does he belong only to you? You know, he stutters a little ...”

“Kedmi, answer me. Where was she talking from?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know? Suddenly you’re the picture of innocence. What’s gotten into you tonight? How can you go on lying passively in bed at a time like this? What did she say to you? Where has she disappeared to?”

“What time is it?”

“Nearly eleven.”

“You don’t say. It really is late. And you want to get me up and into a chair at this hour? What did we buy a bed for? Hello, Moses! Be a sport, let me have him. I want to play with him too.”

“Kedmi!”

“Come on now, calm down. She’ll be back tomorrow, I promise you. Instead of running around the house like a nervous wreck you should take a look at yourself in the mirror. You’re still wearing the apron that you put on this morning ... you really are a sight. Let me have the child. Why don’t you change his bed, and change yourself too while you’re at it...’’

 

He’s hiding something. That smile of his. What’s come over him? There’s something between them. There has to be. He’d never be so calm otherwise. What is he up to? Can it be ... is she really capable of running off and leaving us the... but what face superimposes itself? I can hear the ring of a telephone in the distance ... how strongly the memory of it flickers on ... of course! How did I ever forget it? Was it that morning? A call from the prison. That man—that prisoner—that murderer of his—had escaped. I have it! They called that morning. It was raining. It was Saturday. That man—that prisoner—that murderer of his—had escaped. They called from the prison. Of course they did. And it was raining. Now I remember. Saturday. I have it!

 

All of a sudden the curtain goes up, is lifted, tom asunder. And Saturday shines through. Yes, that Saturday, breaking through just as it was, down to its last color and smell. That morning it rained ... seize the day, Ya’el! And in the afternoon the sun came out ... Saturday, the day before the seder, the veil has been rent ... it can stand on its own feet now, every hour of it ... and what pandemonium there was. I was cooking in the kitchen for the seder. Rakefet had woken up and was crying. A sour fear churned inside me. Father would soon be leaving, making his getaway: if anything happened to her from now on, I could never turn to him for help. Kedmi had surrounded himself with a pile of weekend papers and still was not talking to me. Tomorrow, at the seder, he was sure to find a way of taking his revenge on father. And just then they called from the prison. I happened to answer. “Something’s happened to your murderer,” I said, because that’s how we called him, that’s how he referred to him with us. “I’ve been to see my murderer.” “My murderer said...” “My murderer thinks ...” Kedmi grabbed the phone from me savagely and stood listening to the news. I could tell at once from the look on his face what an awful blow it was.

 

The children’s room is dark. The pungent smell is everywhere. I have to let in some air. To open a window and let the pleasant winter breeze in. Everything is soaked in his pee. You’d think some geyser had erupted inside him. The sheets. The mattress. Rakefet sighs in her sleep, a little flower. Gaddi sucks his thumb, his eyes aflutter. I go over and gently remove the finger from his mouth. He opens his eyes.

“Where is he?”

“With your dad.”

“Will he sleep with you?”

“No. I’m just changing his bed.”

“Did he only pee, or did he...?”

“He only peed ... don’t worry about it ... go back to sleep now ...”

 

The day of remembrance. The dam has burst. Saturday? Yes, that was it! How strongly, how full of light, it gushes forth now. The tears sting my eyes. How did I ever forget it? And yet I did. In its hurry to get to the accident my memory simply erased it, hectic interlude that it was: the phone calls from the prison, the mess in the kitchen, Kedmi’s search for his poor murderer, Kedmi’s mother, Rakefet’s constant crying, father’s arrival that afternoon—an onion shedding its skins one by one, the day shows through on different planes, in different places, unrolling like a sheet of bright tinsel ... With what should I begin? With Kedmi. In a state of shock, swearing a blue streak, as though his prisoner had escaped for the sole purpose of ruining his career. “Why am I wasting my time being a lawyer? If I were a jailer I could free all the defendants I want.” He dressed quickly and rushed to the prison, leaving me—do I hear that faint musical score now?—in the kitchen with a mountain of vegetables and a bloody hunk of raw meat in a bowl, while Gaddi began to complain again of chest pains and Rakefet went on crying. The telephone didn’t stop ringing: Kedmi’s mother, Tsvi, Asi, the police. The hospital called to ask about the dog and then mother got on the phone to ask too. And soon father was due in the midst of all this madness, and already I could see how the seder night I had had such high hopes for was falling apart before my eyes.... Kedmi returned in a vile mood, still cursing like a trooper. “Please tell me what the big tragedy is,” I begged him. “You know they’ll find him in the end. You yourself said that he just ran away to be with his parents for the seder. When it’s through he’ll turn himself in.” But Kedmi’s great fear was that the police would catch him and worm out of him the confession that he had refused to give them so far ... that Kedmi had desperately been trying to keep from them ... because the murderer really was one ... Kedmi didn’t believe in him himself...

 

Saturday. Of course. That was it. I have it now with all its colors and smells, down to that light, last morning rain, after which the clouds broke up and a warm wind began to blow. I stood on the terrace hanging up wash, clean sheets and tablecloths, while Kedmi heartrendingly stalked the house like a caged lion, phoning the police every few minutes to advise them, to berate them, to warn them of something new. In the end he decided to drive down to where the prisoner’s parents lived and to catch him himself, so that he could return him to jail and go on defending him. What a weird, wild, wacky day it was! I’m still reeling from the force with which the memory of it has hit me ... to think of me sitting there and idiotically repeating to her, “Saturday, Saturday, are you sure there was a Saturday?” until she was certain that I was trying to hide something crucial from her! Time passed. I waited for father. And then suddenly that afternoon Kedmi called from the office, whispering in a conspiratorial voice. “Come quick, I need your help. My mother’s on her way over to baby-sit. I found him but he got away. Come quick, I need you! We’ll pick up your father at the taxi stand downtown. I’ve already spoken to Tsvi.”

 

Saturday afternoon in an empty, drowsy downtown already under the influence of the approaching holiday.... Kedmi’s mother had come to stay with the children, in a fit over the vanished murderer, terribly piqued by him. How could he have done such a thing after all Kedmi had sacrificed for him? The sheer ingratitude of it!...I raced to that dreary office of his that he kept in those days when he was trying to make a go of private practice. The corridors were deserted. A musty smell hung over the stairs. He was waiting for me in the doorway in a white heat, his mind working furiously. He had spotted his murderer in his old neighborhood—where, it turned out, the police hadn’t even bothered to search. They had, Kedmi said, spent all day looking in the forests of the Carmel, apparently convinced that the escaped man had gone to pick flowers. But Kedmi had seen him in the street, from an ambush he had set for him not far from his home. Only the murderer took off as soon as he saw Kedmi—the nincompoop must have thought that it was a trap set by the police and all Kedmi’s shouting that he was there by himself couldn’t keep him from running away. Kedmi was sure he would come back, though. The man simply missed his parents. My job, since he didn’t know me, was to wait for him by his house and tell him when he appeared, “Mr. Kedmi wants to talk to you. He has an idea that might help you.”

A crazy Saturday, how did I ever forget it? Spring had broken out, the sky lifted quickly. A Saturday of different places, of different people coming and going, of doors opening and shutting, of telephones ringing, of everything happening at once—presiding over all of which was Kedmi, unshaven, disheveled, red in the face, looking like an escaped criminal himself, explaining to me how after the seder he would turn his murderer over to the police at an official press conference. Let them see what a real lawyer was. How his clients obeyed him unquestioningly. How they had perfect faith in him.

 

Saturday afternoon. Such soft, sweet, sabbathy light, and I utterly exhausted, my head in a whirl. Nothing was ready yet for the seder, and father was getting divorced the next morning and flying back to America two days later, leaving mother to me. I could see myself running through the fields around the hospital in search of her dog, trapped in Kedmi’s childish games, having to take Gaddi to the doctor—and meanwhile the hours were going by and nothing had been done. And soon it would be time for the long, deep goodbye to father....By a felafel stand near the station where some teenagers were hanging out we watched him get out of the taxi. Once again I was greeting him—all week long I’d kept dispatching him and welcoming him back. It’s all so clear: how did I forget it? The first thing that struck me was the haircut he had gotten in Tel Aviv, which made him look older and grayer. His clothes were rumpled and he walked with a stoop, pulled down by his valise. How it all shoots through me now: his coming that Saturday, his standing there on the sidewalk while I kissed him and hugged him hard, his marveling at the puddles left at the base of the trees by the morning’s rain. “With us in Tel Aviv,” he said, “it’s spring, even summer. The weather has been so hot and dry that people are flocking to the beaches.” With us, he said, as though he had never left, as though it were I who soon would depart again for who knew how long, as though he had not signed away his home the day before and was about to fly far away. How nice it was of Kedmi, he said, surprised, to relieve him of his bag right away. “There’s some dirty laundry in it, Ya’eli. It would be good of you to help me wash it. I haven’t any underwear left.’’ Kedmi put a hand on his shoulder, steering him to the car, while we told him all about our murderer. He listened carefully, with a bemused smile, and proposed at once that he come with me, it being unthinkable to send me by myself after an escaped killer, even if Kedmi swore he was a gentle one.

Kedmi drove us to a working-class quarter outside of town, on the road to Tivon, near the big quarry cut by the cement works into the mountainside. He pointed out the house to us, handed me a photograph of the escapee that he had found in his office, and vanished into some side street. And so we found ourselves, father and I, walking at the drop of dusk down a narrow working-class street to meet Kedmi’s murderer and talk him into going back to jail. Near the house was a bus stop with a bench on which we sat while keeping a lookout on the entranceway. How could I have forgotten? We might as well have been on another planet, just the two of us sitting there alone. Father spoke and I listened. He was troubled and needed to talk, full of impressions from his days in Tel Aviv and aghast how little time was left him, jumping from one thing to another while the twilight thickened and an occasional passerby stopped to stare at us.... “I’ve signed away my home,” he kept saying. “I never want to hear about it again. You’ll collect my things there and keep them for me. But don’t let Tsvi have the apartment all for himself. He’s a degenerate. And he’s getting worse. He’ll sell it in order to play the market. And you’d better warn mother about him, because she’ll never listen to me...” His eyes filled with tears. He was on the subject of mother now. “So she’s finally driven me away. At last she’s managed to uproot me. I’m being punished by her for not being crazy too, for not having gone over the brink with her. She thinks that because we once thought the same way I owe her eternal fealty...” All at once he made me get up and stroll in the street with him, holding my hand while he told me again of that morning she had tried killing him and of how Tsvi could not have cared less. I walked by his side, listening in anguish, returning an occasional stare, glancing now and then at the photograph I held so as not to miss our man when he appeared. He was getting emotional, talking with great intensity. We turned and headed back the other way. Children raced by us toward a bonfire of leavened bread that had been lit at the end of the street. Suddenly he gripped me hard. “And you—what do you think? You’re the only one who’s never expressed an opinion. You just agree with everyone ... with me, with mother, with us all. How can you be so passive?” And I answered, “You’re right. I really have no opinion. I never have had one.’’ “But I don’t understand how that’s possible,” he protested. “Opinions are too much for me,” I said. “I can only feel you. I’ve never been able to think you. It’s as though you both were my babies.” Those were my words. It was an odd thing to say and he stood there perplexed while the sun set in the distant bay. But did he really say what comes next or did I imagine it? Yes, he must have said it: “It’s you who will kill me in the end.” “Me?” I whispered, thunderstruck. “Yes, you. You more than anyone with your silence.” Did he say it or did I imagine it? Yes, and then he said, “You’ve taken my home from me and now you won’t let me go.” How could I have forgotten? Why? I kept silent then too. Silent as usual. I didn’t answer, and then he smiled and hugged me. In its insatiable rush to the accident my memory ran over it all ... and in the end night came with still no sign of the murderer. We went to look for Kedmi and found him back on the main road, asleep at the wheel.

We came home. Kedmi’s mother was gray from the strain and the tension. Father took out his laundry and began to do a wash. Kedmi paced the room again like a beaten dog until he phoned the police and was told to his great joy that the search had been called off. Then he began tidying up around the house and helped me put the children to bed, after which he talked gently to father and even made him some coffee. He couldn’t do enough for us now, he was all sweetness and light.... And then he suddenly disappeared, only to return an hour later in a state of high excitement. He had, it turned out, paid a call on his murderer’s parents—who, though insisting they had no knowledge of their son’s escape, seemed definitely to Kedmi to be waiting for him. And poor Kedmi, unable to bear the thought of all his efforts going down the drain, cornered me and begged me to accompany him there again and to wait while he tried one more time.

 

That Saturday dragged on and on, it seemed to have no end. Who was it who threw a gray blanket over it afterwards? It was almost midnight when Kedmi finally persuaded father and me to go with him again to that working-class quarter, whose streets were deserted now. He sat us on the same unearthly bench, beneath a yellowish streetlight, and drove off to wait around the corner. Father was amused by it all. He was wide awake and kept joking while he toyed with the murderer’s photograph in his hand, relating old memories, telling me of his plans for the future, to which I listened drowsily, silently, passively, half dead from exhaustion, smelling his sweat as I leaned on him, forgetting immediately what he said like a bottle that hasn’t room for one more drop, letting my glance wander slowly over the tall chimneys of the cement works that glowed with an unnatural, ochroid smoke, over the small, empty street, over the entrance to one of its houses, where I saw Kedmi’s murderer detach himself from a wall as though it were the wall itself that had moved: a short, wiry young man, gliding along the housefronts with slow, catlike strides, keeping away from the light. I rose at once. Head down, hands in his pockets, he didn’t even look up at me. I stood peering into his unshaven face, into his beady eyes, while father jumped up to join me. “Just a minute,” I said. “I’m Mr. Kedmi’s wife. He’s around the corner, and he wants to talk to you. That’s all he wants. It’s for your own good. There are no policemen with him.”

He froze where he was and studied me and father. He didn’t seem frightened. “I have nothing to say to him,” he said drily, in a cold voice. “All he ever wants to do is talk. But he doesn’t believe what I say. Let him find a real criminal to play with. I’ve had it with him.”

He turned to go with hesitant steps, no longer knowing where to. And then, like a teacher lightly grasping a pupil, father laid a hand on his shoulder and began to talk to him, gesturing broadly with his other hand while the listening man kept walking with his eyes on the ground. They disappeared into the next street and I ran to get Kedmi, who had dozed off again at the wheel. “Kedmi,” I said, waking him, “father is talking to him right now.” He jumped groggily out of the car and started to run, shouting in the empty street, but the murderer took off again as soon as he saw him, scaling the fence of the cement works and vanishing among its tall chimneys. Father reached for a cigarette and lit it coolly, wide awake and collected. “He promised to come to you after the seder,” he told Kedmi, who was in total despair. “He swore he’d turn himself in then. He gave me his word and I believe him. So can you.” And Kedmi, perhaps for the first time in all the years I’d known him, stood speechless as a statue, unable to get out a single word.

 

Now he’s fallen asleep, a newspaper over his face, the child looking down on him among the pillows and blankets. He has a funny way of standing, the child, almost hunched, toes dug in, his eyes searching for the moon behind the curtain flapping in the breeze. A tall, skinny little boy who still hasn’t spoken to me, who regards me with a suspicious look. I try out my broken English on him again while he cocks his head in wonder.

“That’s enough of your Shakespearian diction,” grunts Kedmi in his sleep. “Would you kindly put Moses to bed now? He’s taking a walk on my head.”

I pick him up, carry him to the freshly made but still wet crib, lay him down in it, and cover him up, his sweetness rubbing off on my fingers. And again I try talking to him. Rakefet rolls over on her back, entering a new, more relaxed stage of sleep. Gaddi stirs in bed too, still not sleeping deeply. The room is dark except for the small night light. I’m already on my way out the door when the child stands up again, gripping the crib bars tightly, eyeing me. What does he want? Such a strange, quiet, inward creature. I try laying him down again but he clings defiantly to the bars, grimacing with determination. Where can she be? Has she really gone and left him with us? Can it be, are such aberrations possible too? A portrait of father as a small child.

All at once something makes me recoil, as if father himself had just entered the room from the hallway and left it again via the window. I’m shaking all over, my heart skips a beat and then pounds even faster. How could we have let him go back there? What possessed him to do it? Why did I forget that Saturday, what was I trying to repress? Perhaps meeting that escaped prisoner had some meaning for me ... only how did we fail to sense it, to know it, to prevent it? What made us leave him like that, looking like he did that Saturday when he stepped out of the taxi, so old, his hair sheared beneath his hat, his valise full of dirty underwear. We had it in for him. Asi despised him. Tsvi wanted vengeance. And I had no opinion. “And you—what do you think?” And I—I didn’t answer. “The one person who was genuinely happy to see me was Dina. The rest of you have been hostile, even Gaddi.” And still I passively said nothing—I, who identify vicariously with everyone, I, who always will. Indiscriminately I go from one of them to another: Kedmi, Gaddi, mother, even the dog, even that murderer, even Connie the minute she walked in the door. Yes, I identify with whoever comes close to me, I adopt them without thinking, without judging. And so drive them away from me too. And yet did I really drive him away then with my silence ... with my refusal to say the one thing he wanted to hear ... back into the horror of that final night?

 

Saturday. That was it. Slowly it’s slipped back into place among those nine days stubbornly salvaged from the passage of time, frozen in hard clarity, beamed by themselves upon a bright screen. At last I’ve retrieved the lost day. Kedmi didn’t want to help me. It was painful for him to remember, I realize that now. Because that murderer of his was not really a murderer after all. Because after we had finally persuaded him to go back to jail the real murderer was found elsewhere, and he was released without the trial that Kedmi had so enthusiastically prepared for. It was that that made him admit failure, close down his practice, and take a job with the district attorney. At no point had he really believed father that the man would turn himself in. And yet all the way back up the mountain, while we sat tiredly in the car, father had to listen to him telling about his murderer and about all his plans for the trial. After which we walked into a house that was a shambles and I had to take father’s underwear and hang it on the terrace in the night that had turned to real spring.

 

When I think of father now I still feel the same pain. The awful sorrow of it stabs me all over again. What did we do wrong? We couldn’t get them back together and we couldn’t pry them apart. Perhaps all we managed to do was to turn them against one another.... Yes, I must take the child to see mother. I’ll dress him in his red clothes and bring him to her, maybe he can put some life into her...

I take one last peek into the children’s room. He’s still standing there without a sound, looking for someone. For his mother. Wondering where she’s been shanghaied. Suddenly I feel more anxious than ever. Where is she? Kedmi must tell me. I go to our bedroom and undress.

“Kedmi? Yisra’el? Yisra’el, are you sleeping?”

“How can I sleep,” he mumbles without opening his eyes, “when I’m already writing my new book, Staying Awake in Ten Easy Lessons? Tell me something, must you purposely drive me batty all night long? Why do you keep running circles around me like some big mouse?”

“Are you in a state to hear me, or must you sleep?”

“You’ve already filled your quota of words for the day. If you’re thinking of kisses, though...”

“I remembered. Do you hear me? I found that lost Saturday.”

“I’m overjoyed. Maybe you can also find someone to buy it from you now.”

“Do you know what happened on it? It was the day that poor murderer of yours escaped and we went in the evening to look for him.”

He opens his eyes.

“What murderer?”

“The one who escaped. Who turned out in the end not to ...”

“Stop, stop, don’t remind me of him! All the energy I wasted on him ... it was he who made me close my private practice. Stop ... when I think of your father chasing him down the street...”

“Do you remember how he helped you?”

“Of course I do. Well, you can relax now, you’ve got all your days back again. And if your mind is at rest, you might let mine get some too...”

“Come,” I say to him, lying down naked beside him. Startled he throws off the blanket excitedly and begins to embrace me, to kiss me, to fondle my breasts. I hug him back. He wants to come into me. The child starts to cry. I push him away.

“Forget about him!”

“Where has she gone? Tell me the truth now!”

He catches his breath. “Afterwards. I promise.”

The child’s cries gather strength, piercing the night. Kedmi grows more and more passionate, entering me like a young buck. But I am not with him. My mind is still on that Saturday. Everyone was asleep. I stood on the terrace in the winy, fierce spring night, the starry sky above me, hanging father’s laundry on the line and thinking of the days ahead with no idea yet of what lay in store for me. And so the day came to an end. Yes, it did exist after all. Of course it did. At last it has joined all the others, stubbornly salvaged from the passage of time, forever frozen in clarity, beamed with them on that one bright screen down to the last detail.