Ivria died on the sixteenth of February, on a day of driving rain in Jerusalem. At 8:30 in the morning, while she was sitting with her coffee cup at the desk facing the window, in her little cell, the electricity suddenly failed. Yoel had purchased this room for her some two years previously from the next-door neighbor and annexed it to their apartment in Talbiyeh. An opening had been cut in the back wall of the kitchen and a heavy brown door had been fitted in it. This door Ivria had been in the habit of locking when she was working, and also when she was sleeping. The old door that had formerly joined this cubbyhole to the neighbor's living room had been bricked up, plastered, and whitewashed twice, but its outline could still be made out on the wall behind Ivria's bed. She had chosen to furnish her new room with monastic austerity. She called it her study. Besides the narrow iron bedstead, it contained her wardrobe and the deep, heavy armchair that had belonged to her late father, who was born, lived, and died in the northern town of Metullah. Ivria too had been born and raised in Metullah.
Between the armchair and the bed she had a wrought-iron standard lamp. On the wall that separated her from the kitchen she had hung a map of Yorkshire. The floor was bare. There was also an office desk made of metal, two metal chairs, and some metal bookshelves. Above the desk she had hung some small black-and-white photographs of ruined Romanesque abbeys of the ninth or tenth century. On the desk stood a framed photograph of her father, Shealtiel Lublin, a thickset man with a walrus mustache, in the uniform of a British policeman. It was here that she had decided to dig herself in against the household chores and finally complete her thesis for an MA in English Literature. The topic she had selected was "The Shame in the Attic: Sex, Love, and Money in the Work of the Brontë Sisters." Every morning, when Netta had gone off to school, Ivria used to put a quiet jazz or ragtime record on the record player, put on her square frameless eyeglasses, which made her look like a stern family doctor of an earlier generation, switch on the desk lamp, and, with a coffee cup in front of her, burrow among her books and notes. Since her childhood she had been used to writing with a pen that had to be dipped in the inkwell every ten words or so. She was a slim, gentle woman, with paper-thin skin and clear eyes with long lashes. Her fair hair cascaded over her shoulders, though half of it had turned gray by then. She almost always wore a plain white blouse and white long pants. She wore no makeup and no jewelry apart from her wedding ring, which for some reason she wore on the little finger of her right hand. Her childlike fingers were always cold, summer and winter alike, and Yoel loved their cold touch on his naked back. He also loved enfolding them within his broad, ugly hands as though he were warming frozen chicks. Even from three rooms away and through three closed doors he sometimes imagined his ears could pick up the rustle of her papers. At times she would get up and stand for a while at her window, which overlooked only a neglected back garden and a high wall of Jerusalem stone. In the evenings she would sit at her desk with the door locked, crossing out and rewriting what she had written in the morning, scrabbling in various dictionaries to establish the meaning of an English word of a century or more ago. Most of the time Yoel was away from home. On the nights when he was not, they used to meet in the kitchen and drink tea with ice cubes in it in the summer or a mug of cocoa in the winter before separating to sleep in their respective bedrooms. She had a tacit agreement with him and with Netta: there was no entry to her room unless it was strictly necessary. Here, beyond the kitchen, in the eastern extension of their home, was her territory. Always defended by its heavy brown door.
The bedroom with its wide double bed, with the chest of drawers and the two identical mirrors, was inherited by Netta, who adorned the walls with photographs of her favorite Hebrew poets: Alterman, Lea Goldberg, Steinberg, and Amir Gilboa. On the tables on either side of what had been her parents' bed she placed vases containing dried thistles she had gathered at the end of the summer in the empty field on the slope beside the leper hospital. On the shelf she had a collection of sheet music that she liked to read, even though she did not play an instrument.
As for Yoel, he settled into his daughter's nursery, its little window overlooking the German Colony and the Hill of Evil Counsel. He hardly took the trouble to change anything in the room. In any case, most days he was away traveling. A dozen dolls of different sizes kept watch over his sleep when he was home for the night. And a large colored poster of a sleeping kitten snuggling up to an Alsatian dog, which wore the reliable expression of a middle-aged banker. The only change was that Yoel removed eight tiles from a corner of the floor in the girl's room and installed his safe there, embedded in concrete. In this safe he kept two handguns, a collection of detailed plans of capital cities and provincial towns, six passports and five driving licenses, a yellowing English booklet entitled Bangkok by Night, a small case containing an assortment of simple medicines, a couple of wigs, several toilet kits for his journeys, a few hats, a folding umbrella and a raincoat, two fake mustaches, stationery from various hotels and institutions, a pocket calculator, a tiny alarm clock, plane and train timetables, and notebooks containing telephone numbers with their last three digits reversed.
Ever since the changes, it was the kitchen that served all three as their meeting place. This was where they held their summit conferences. Especially on weekends. The living room, which Ivria had furnished in quiet colors, in the style of early 1960s Jerusalem, served mainly as their television room. When Yoel was at home, sometimes the three of them would converge on the living room at nine o'clock in the evening to watch the news and occasionally also a British drama in the "Armchair Theatre" series.
Only when the grandmothers came to visit, always together, did the living room fulfill its intended role. Lemon tea was served in tall glasses on a tray with fruit, and they ate the cake that the grandmothers brought. Once every few weeks Ivria and Yoel made dinner for the two mothers-in-law. Yoel's contribution was the rich, finely shredded, highly seasoned mixed salad that had been his specialty long ago, when he was still a young man on the kibbutz. They would chat about the news and other matters. The grandmothers' favorite subjects of conversation were literature and art. Family affairs were never discussed.
Ivria's mother, Avigail, and Yoel's mother, Lisa, were both straight-backed, elegant women, with similar hairstyles reminiscent of a Japanese flower arrangement. Over the years they had grown more alike, at least at first glance. Lisa wore delicate earrings and a fine silver chain around her neck, and was made up with restraint. Avigail liked to tie a young-looking silk scarf around her neck, which enlivened her gray suits like a border of flowers beside a concrete path. On her breast she wore a little ivory brooch in the shape of an inverted flask. At a second glance one could see the first signs in Avigail of a tendency to rotundity and a Slavic ruddiness, whereas Lisa looked as though she might shrivel away. For six years they had lived together in Lisa's two-room apartment in Radak Street on the respectable slopes of Rehavia. Lisa was active in a branch of the Soldiers' Aid Association, whereas Avigail did voluntary work with the Committee for Retarded Children.
Other visitors arrived infrequently. Netta, because of her condition, had no close girlfriends. When she was not at school, she went to the city library. Or lay in her bedroom reading. She would lie and read for half the night. Occasionally she went out with her mother to the cinema or the theater. The two grandmothers took her to concerts at the National Auditorium or the YMCA. Sometimes she went out on her own to gather thistles in the field by the leper hospital. Sometimes she went to musical soirees or literary discussions. Ivria hardly ever left the house. Her delayed thesis occupied most of her time. Yoel arranged for a cleaner to come in once a week, which was sufficient to ensure that the apartment was always clean and tidy. Twice a week Ivria took the car and went on a comprehensive shopping expedition. They did not purchase many clothes. Yoel was not in the habit of bringing booty back with him from his travels. But he never forgot a birthday, or their wedding anniversary on the first of March. He had a discerning eye, and always managed to select, in Paris, New York, or Stockholm, sweaters of excellent quality at a reasonable price, a blouse in exquisite taste for his daughter, white pants for his wife, a scarf or a belt or a kerchief for his mother-in-law and his mother.
Sometimes after lunch an acquaintance of Ivria's would drop in for a cup of coffee and a quiet chat. Sometimes their neighbor, Itamar Vitkin, came in "looking for signs of life" or "to take a look at my old storeroom." He would stay to talk to Ivria about what life had been like in the days of the British Mandate. Not a voice had been raised in the apartment for several years. Father, mother, and daughter were always attentively careful not to disturb one another. Whenever they talked, they did so politely. They all knew their boundaries. When they met together on weekends in the kitchen, they talked of remote matters of common interest, such as theories about the existence of intelligent life in space, or whether there was some way of safeguarding the ecological balance without forfeiting the benefits of technology. On subjects such as these they conversed with animation, although without ever interrupting one another. Sometimes there was a brief conference about some practical matter, such as buying new shoes for the winter, getting the dishwasher repaired, the relative cost of different forms of heating, or whether to replace the medicine cabinet in the bathroom with a newer type. They rarely talked about music, because of their discrepant tastes. Politics, Netta's condition, Ivria's thesis, and Yoel's work were never mentioned.
Although Yoel was absent a good deal, he was careful so far as possible always to give notice of his return. Beyond the single word "abroad" he never gave any particulars. Except for weekends, they ate separately, at the time that suited each of them best. Their neighbors in the small block of apartments in Talbiyeh understood, thanks to some rumor or other, that Yoel dealt with overseas investors, which explained the suitcase, and the winter coat that could be seen draped over his arm in summer, and the comings and goings by taxi to the airport in the early hours. His mother-in-law and his mother believed, or affected to believe, that Yoel traveled on behalf of the government to procure military equipment. They rarely asked questions like Where did you catch that cold? or, Where did you get that tan? because they knew well that the only answer they would get would be something offhand, such as "In Europe" or "In the sun."
Ivria knew. Details did not interest her.
What Netta understood or guessed was impossible to tell.
There were three stereo systems in the apartment, one in Ivria's study, one in Yoel's nursery, and the third at the head of Netta's double bed. Hence the doors in the apartment were almost always closed, and the different types of music, out of constant consideration, were played at low volume. So as not to disturb.
Only in the living room was there sometimes a strange mixture of sounds. But there was no one in the living room. For several years it had been tidy, clean, and empty. Except when the grandmothers came to visit, when they all assembled there from their various rooms.