THEY WENT LOOKING FOR HER first memory, snow on the beach in Jerusalem. Tomorrow he would turn her in, but at that moment they were still riding the 480 bus together, second seat from the back. Lilian had fallen asleep, and Sammy was looking out the window, stroking his frayed leather satchel. There was only one thing he could say with absolute certainty—the world had changed since he last went out in it. She hadn’t left their small apartment in Ramat Gan for years, and he wouldn’t leave without her. He gazed at the forested hills along the way, remembered them more jagged, and told himself that time ate into everything.
“Remember the big fire?” he asked her, and her neck moved stiffly, clinching to her sleep.
Three boys in the back row burst into roaring laughter, interrupting his yearning thoughts. One of them was playing music from his cell phone, which gradually took over the rear of the bus. Sammy tried to parse the words but failed. He wasn’t keen on confrontations, but fearing the noise would wake Lilian, he turned and shot them a look.
“How about being quiet?” he asked, hoping they didn’t notice the slight tremor in his voice. The boy with the cell phone turned off the music, then broke into a defiant hum. Sammy went back to gazing out the window, but couldn’t calm down.
The bus weaved into the city that used to be their home and passed by the white bridge. Sammy, who had prepared himself for this moment, took a yellow disposable camera out of his pocket and tried to capture the large structure in its lens. But only three days later, when the photos were finally developed, would he discover that the bridge had eluded him, and in its place appeared the congested intersection at the entrance of the city, and the reflection of a yawning man who sat in front of them.
The bus entered the central station; the passengers began to pile out, among them the teenagers who patted Sammy on the back and wished him a good day. The bustle of passengers woke Lilian and she opened her eyes slowly. Her eyes were a chestnut brown, and Sammy often wondered if they hadn’t grown bigger over the years. Her hair and dark skin were also painted shades of brown, and he once told her that it was only because of her that he learned how much depth could be found in one color.
“Where are we, Sammy?” she asked; he didn’t answer. She rose slowly, revealing a small bald patch in the middle of her scalp. Sammy quickly tousled her hair and hoped no one on the emptying bus had noticed.
Only when she asked again did he tell her they had reached Jerusalem, adding in an undertone that he couldn’t keep reminding her over and over.
They hobbled off the bus. A young woman in a Bnei Akiva shirt offered assistance, but Sammy waved her away. Sammy and Lilian had shrunk over the years and were now nearly swallowed up by the masses. Pressed against each other they traversed the station, overcoming stairs, elevators, and slippery tiles until they reached the entrance to Jaffa Road. They inched toward the door and all at once the early August sun caught Lilian off guard.
“I’m cold, Sammy,” she said, and sidled up against him. “The snow must be coming.”
“It’s summer now,” he insisted, but Lilian wouldn’t relent. She wrapped her arms around her body and started trembling. Even the hottest day couldn’t stifle her snowy memory. Sammy let out a sigh and placed his satchel on the floor. He sluggishly reached into the satchel and took out the white coat he had once bought her. By now it was two sizes too big, but she insisted on wearing it with pride. She raised her hands like a girl waiting to be wrapped after a shower, and wouldn’t move until Sammy also tied a scarf around her neck. Only then did she take her first step out of the station and followed him toward the light-rail.
Sammy grabbed Lilian’s hand and demanded: “Don’t let go,” even though he wasn’t sure whether she heard him over the clamor of the street. “Where are we?” she asked over and over; he didn’t answer. He turned his gaze toward the steel-gray tracks, his ears anticipating the gravelly sound of the engine. For years he had been following the newspaper reports about the miraculous train that crosses the city streets, and was now eager to see it with his own eyes. Once again he pulled out his camera, but immediately placed it back in the satchel, deciding not to waste film.
Slow and heavy, the train pulled into the station. It was as big and silvery as Sammy had imagined, like the steel beast from Daniel’s prophecy. He took a step forward to stand on the platform ledge. Lilian remained hidden behind him.
“Would you believe it, Lilian? A train in Jerusalem again,” he said.
The doors opened. Sammy pulled Lilian forward. He wanted them to step into the car together, but he was assailed by an incessant stream of people. Sammy and Lilian’s shriveled hands detached from each other, and for long moments the two elderly orphans ambled like a torn page, until they finally reunited and melded (became one). Only on their third attempt did they manage to board, pressing against each other and fighting for their place. A young man with a yarmulke whispered loudly to his wife, “Her coat alone takes up all the space.” Sammy didn’t say a word. He was too busy struggling to keep himself steady. Lilian didn’t notice anything going on around her. The train set off and she stared at the city’s buildings; Sammy thought to himself that she was looking at them as if at an old acquaintance she hadn’t seen for many years—she knew they were familiar, but couldn’t remember from where.
They stepped off the train at the Machane Yehuda Station.
“Are we at the beach yet?” Lilian asked. He didn’t answer. The Jaffa Road he once knew had disappeared along with the train tracks, leaving him lost in time and space.
They wandered back and forth under the rays of the Jerusalem sun, which were hotter than those etched in his memory. How he wanted her to stop him as she had done so many times in the past. To tell him to quit fooling around, and then solve their predicament herself by asking a passerby for directions. But she didn’t say anything, only wiped the sweat trickling down her forehead and struggled to keep up with him as he picked up his pace. They were utterly exhausted by the time Sammy noticed the flow of people coming in and out of one of the alleyways. He dragged Lilian after him, and they found themselves standing in front of stalls laden with vegetables, breads, and nuts. Sammy smiled contentedly and quickly looked at her with anticipation. After a few moments, as he had hoped, Lilian closed her eyes without knowing why.
When they were young, she had remarked that the market-goers let their senses deceive them. They think the experience boils down to a few colors and smells and don’t know that it’s all about finding a sense of quiet within the great noise. Afterward, to illustrate her point, she would take him to the most crowded spot in the market, next to the spice seller with the painted eyebrows, and make him close his eyes; to try to feel the motion of the people passing by, through, and over them like living water. Now he tried to close his eyes again, but just as back then, he was still too afraid.
He hadn’t visited the market in over sixty years. On his twenty-third birthday, they left Jerusalem, and he hadn’t been back since. He couldn’t imagine himself wandering the market like a tourist, like a foreigner. As a child he had worked every summer at Dudu’s bakery, and vividly remembered those florid, sweaty tourists who passed by the stalls with their wide straw hats and fancy Italian shirts, their anthropological gazes announcing the brevity of their visit. Sammy wondered whether they had made the long, winding journey to Jerusalem only to remind themselves who they were not. Lilian, on the other hand, had returned to the market several times as a teacher, chaperoning field trips. On those occasions, he would close the welding shop earlier than usual and dart home, eagerly awaiting her return by the wooden kitchen table. When she walked in, even before managing to put down her bag, he would bombard her with questions about the prices of tomatoes and eggplant and potatoes and cauliflower, and about Dudu’s stall, although Dudu had long since passed away, and about the new goods that had appeared and those that were gone. She would answer slowly; words upon words upon words, knowing he needed to hear about the market like a man of faith hankering after a prayer’s melody.
When did she tell him about the snow on the beach? He wasn’t sure. But it happened here, during one of their first encounters, when she arrived to buy challah at the bakery and then slipped away with him into the nearby alley. That was where she told him about her very first memory. About children playing in the snow, digging with bare hands in search of the sand that had disappeared. About older men and elegant women sitting on green beach chairs in thick robes, trying to tan in the unbearable chill; about seashells that poked out from the white snowflakes, and about mothers shouting at their children not to go barefoot lest they catch a cold. She also told him about herself, the only one who dared to go into the freezing water. She described slowly walking into the sea while chunks of ice floated around her. She told him how she closed her eyes and went deep into the water; she opened them only for a second and saw before her the purest blue she had ever seen in her life.
To this day Sammy still regrets what he said to her back then. “It was probably just a dream,” he determined, and then added with some certainty, “There hasn’t been snow here in years, not to mention a beach.” Since then, she no longer shared the chronicles of her first memory. At first he believed it was only a matter of time before he convinced her to talk about the beach again, but over the years he learned how stubborn she could be. It made no difference how many times he apologized and begged, she persevered in her silence. Even after they came to know each other’s bodies, even after they married, and even decades later, when they moved into a retirement home on the other side of town, she claimed such a memory was too precious to place in the hands of another, even of a loved one.
Then came the Alzheimer’s and ripped out her memories one by one. Their honeymoon in Rome; their evening at the Chinese restaurant; the traffic ticket she received on Highway 2; their son’s death, the taste of pistachio ice cream; Abbott and Costello; the first cigarette they smoked together; the war and the one that followed; her father’s voice; the dog they adopted for three days only to discover it belonged to the neighbors; the trip to David’s Stream in Ein Gedi and the moment she slipped and fell; their two years in Boston; the run-down bathrooms in the Hebrew University dorms; her fear of death; the very specific way she liked her coffee; the opening line of Anna Karenina; the day she met Sammy.
All her memories were swallowed into the void. All but the memory of the snowy beach in Jerusalem. The only one she wouldn’t let go of. She kept asking over and over when they would go back to visit, and hinted at its existence in muted ramblings that escaped her in her sleep. And still, whenever Sammy asked her to tell him again about her first memory or explain where exactly the beach was, she refused and withdrew into her silence. He reminded himself that it wasn’t a real memory, but it did little to alleviate his frustration. How painful was her refusal to share with him the last testament to the woman she had once been. Even now, as they stood in the market. Even when he asked her to simply hint at the direction—she remained silent.
“Ask her,” Lilian said, and pointed at a vendor behind one of the stalls. Sammy approached the woman, and with a slight stutter asked if she knew where the Jerusalem beach was. The vendor looked down at him from the stool she was standing on, a contemptuous gaze; she didn’t even consider answering, merely continued to stack the sweet potatoes as if they were books on a shelf. “He asked you a question,” Lilian’s voice suddenly emerged from within her clouded soul to defend her husband’s honor. “He asked you a question, why aren’t you answering? He asked you, he asked.” She approached the stall, and the vendor leaped in panic, hiding behind a wall of zucchini and admitting in a whisper: “I really don’t know what to tell you.”
Sammy rushed to apologize and dragged Lilian behind him. They stopped in one of the side alleys, and she continued to mumble for long moments, “Why didn’t she answer you? Why didn’t she answer?”
He stroked her hair patiently with his thick fingers, once again straightening it out. He bought her Turkish delight with almonds and reminded her that he used to bring her such sweets every Friday. She silently nibbled on a piece. Then they passed through the stalls and Lilian handed some of her candy to a beggar they stumbled across. They walked out from the other side of the market, stepped onto the faded crosswalk, and slipped into the Nachlaot neighborhood, leaving the noise behind them. The narrow streets felt spacious compared to the market’s crowded alleyways. Sammy looked at the small houses. When he was young, he had felt they were perfectly suited to his size. He grabbed Lilian’s hand and guided her gently past a manhole and a gas tank, safeguarding her the way children protect their first pet. After a brief stroll, they stopped by their old synagogue. Four young Haredi men passed them by and entered the building. How he wished that someone would erect a monument in places like this. He would have even settled for a small wooden sign that said: “Here Lilian and Sammy passed notes during the Maariv service.”
Lilian was tired. She bent her knees demonstratively, and Sammy quickly led her to the bench opposite the nearby playing field. Four large trees surrounded the field, serving as goalposts for a few boys and girls playing on the paved surface, padded with sand. Sammy sat Lilian on the bench; she gazed at the children and smiled, clapped her hands at them until they waved back. Removing an orange in a green plastic bag from his satchel, he sat down beside her, took the orange out of the bag, and peeled it with the kitchen knife he had brought. He then removed Lilian’s coat and scarf to keep them from getting dirty, and served her small orange segments one by one. Juice dripped from his fingers. “Thank you,” she said after receiving each piece. Perhaps with every bite she experienced the fruit’s taste for the first time, he thought, and almost found comfort in it.
The football struck Lilian just as she was about to bite into the last piece. It collided with her face and knocked the orange segment to the ground. Lilian shrieked, closed her eyes, and rushed to shield her head with her frail hands. Sammy wrapped her in the coat, as if it possessed the power to protect her from all evils of the world. One of the girls, in a jean skirt and blue school shirt, approached them hesitantly, while the rest of the children formed a crooked line behind her. “Sorry, can I have the ball back?” she asked, and Sammy didn’t know if the “sorry” was an apology or the only word she could think to address him with.
“Have you gone completely mad?” he yelled, and the girl retreated a few steps. “What’s wrong with you? You’re crazy, you almost murdered a person.” The girl folded her hands behind her back and remained silent, which only vexed him more. “Don’t you have eyes? Do you know how dangerous that was?” he lashed out at her, unleashing his rage.
“Sorry,” the girl said again. “If we could just get the ball back.”
The football was lodged between him and Lilian, a white and sooty patchwork of pentagons and hexagons. He picked up the ball in his trembling hands and intended to return it to the girl, but then looked at Lilian’s face again, more fearful and frozen than he had ever seen it before. Without thinking twice, he took the knife and, with what little strength he had left in him, punctured the ball.
It slowly deflated, fell, and rolled on the ground, stopping at the girl’s feet. She covered her eyes with her hands, but spread her fingers wide enough to peek at the disaster. She began sobbing and a few moments later, turned and ran along the path that surrounded the synagogue. One of the boys yelled, “He’s a murderer!” and then ran away with the rest of the frightened children.
The playing field had emptied. Sammy looked at Lilian. The small bald patch was exposed again. Once more he tried to rearrange her hair, but Lilian refused to lower her hands from her head. She remained folded inside herself, and he no longer had the energy to fight her. They sat like that for some time, until the sun disappeared behind the synagogue. Hugging his satchel in both arms again, he tried to count the leaves on the tree and failed. He took out his camera, gently lifted Lilian’s left hand, and photographed her tired face, telling himself that these moments should be documented too. He then slowly bent down, lifted the fallen orange segment from the ground, took a handkerchief out of his pocket, and started wiping off the grains of sand that clung to the fruit.
“Tomorrow they’ll come take you,” he said.
“To the beach?”
“There are people who can take care of you better than I can.”
“Where’s the snow, Sammy?”
“I’ll come visit every day.”
She leaned forward. Her eyes remained closed.
“I can smell the sea, can you?”
Sammy reached out to her with both hands, pressed his head against hers, and gently stroked the lines on her face. Then he whispered to her, “What’s left for you there?” without expecting an answer. He closed his eyes, tried to imagine the two of them alone on her beach. Standing naked and wrinkled on the shoreline, she with her saggy brown breasts, he with his hunched back and pallid face. He imagined the horrible cold, and her convincing him to go into the water even though he wouldn’t want to. Stepping in slowly and feeling the cold sand between his toes. And after they were already in up to their waist, he imagined Lilian turning to face the beach, resting on the waves. He would rush to grab her, while she floated on the cold water.
He opened his eyes, saw the synagogue in front of him, and looked at the small sandy field again. He quickly rose from the bench and helped Lilian up.
“Are we going home?” she asked; he didn’t reply. He guided her slowly across the field, kicking the small pebbles out of their way.
“Where are we?” she wondered, and he stopped in the middle of the field, bent slightly, and kissed her left hand. Then he pulled away from her and heavily knelt on one knee. He remained in the same position for a few minutes, trying to catch his breath. With enormous effort, he bent his other knee and finally lay on his back on the thin sand. He remained still for several moments and then reached his hand up to her. She took it, placed her other hand on the ground, and leaned back. They lay side by side, panting. Only a small distance separated them. Sammy gazed at the darkening sky.
“It’s the beach,” he announced. “This is Jerusalem’s beach.”
She didn’t say a word. Sammy stretched his arms and started moving them clumsily up and down.
“Soon the snow will be here,” he said. “We need to practice.”
She didn’t understand, but immediately joined him, moving her arms back and forth.
“Now your legs too,” he said, once she caught the hang of it, and she complied. She spread her legs and immediately pulled them back together, over and over again, with wider and gentler strokes than Sammy’s.
Worshippers exiting the synagogue stared at them in confusion, but they kept at it—Lilian maintaining a steady rhythm with her arms and Sammy listening to her breaths. They didn’t smile or look at each other; they simply moved their arms and legs slowly across the sand, fashioning elderly angels on the snow of Jerusalem’s beach.