Scenes from Village Life Read online

  4

  ARIEH ZELNIK STOOD UP. He was a much taller and larger man than Wolff Maftsir and he had broader, stronger shoulders, even if they both had the same long arms that reached almost to their knees. He took two steps toward his visitor and towered over him as he said:

  "So what is it you want."

  He said these words without a question mark, and as he spoke he undid the top button of his shirt, revealing a glimpse of a gray, hairy chest.

  "What's the hurry, sir," Wolff Maftsir said in a conciliatory tone. "Our business needs to be discussed carefully and patiently, from every angle, so as not to leave any chink or opening. We must not get our details wrong."

  To Arieh Zelnik the visitor looked limp or sagging. As though his skin were too big for him. His shirt hung loosely from his shoulders, like an overcoat on a scarecrow. And his eyes were watery and rather murky. At the same time there was something scared about him, as though he feared a sudden insult.

  "Our business?"

  "I mean to say, the problem of the old lady. I mean your dear mother. Our property is still registered in her name, and it will be until her dying day—and who can say what she has taken it into her head to write in her will—or until the two of us manage to get ourselves appointed her guardians."

  "The two of us?"

  "This house could be knocked down and replaced by a sanatorium. A health farm. We could develop a place here that would be unequaled anywhere in the country: pure air, bucolic calm, rural scenery that's up there with Provence or Tuscany. Herbal treatments, massage, meditation, spiritual guidance. People would pay good money for what our place could offer them."

  "Excuse me, how long have we known each other exactly?"

  "But we are old friends. More than that, we are relatives. Partners, even."

  By standing up Arieh Zelnik may have intended to make his visitor stand up too and take his leave. But the latter remained seated, and he reached out to pour some more water with lemon and mint into the glass that had been Arieh Zelnik's until he had appropriated it. He leaned back in his chair. Now, with the sweat marks in the armpits of his shirt, without his jacket and tie, Wolff Maftsir looked like a leisurely cattle dealer who had come to town to negotiate a deal, patiently and craftily, with the farmers, a deal from which, he was convinced, both sides would benefit. There was a hidden malicious glee in him that was not entirely unfamiliar to his host.

  "I have to go indoors now," Arieh Zelnik lied. "I have something to see to. Excuse me."

  "I'm in no hurry." Wolff Maftsir smiled. "If you have no objection I'll just sit and wait for you here. Or should I go inside with you and make the lady's acquaintance? After all, I don't have much time to gain her trust."

  "The lady," Arieh Zelnik said, "does not receive visitors."

  "I am not exactly a visitor," Wolff Maftsir insisted, standing up, ready to accompany his host indoors. "After all, aren't we, so to speak, almost related? And even partners?"

  Arieh Zelnik suddenly recalled his daughter Hilla's advice to give up her mother, not to strive to bring her back to him, and to try to start a new life. And surely the truth was that he had not fought very hard to bring Na'ama back: when she had gone off after a furious quarrel to visit her best friend Thelma Grant, Arieh Zelnik had packed up all her clothes and belongings and sent them off to Thelma's address in San Diego. When his son Eldad severed all ties with him, he had packed up Eldad's books and even his childhood toys and sent them to him. He had cleared out every reminder of him, as one clears out an enemy position when the fighting is over. After a few more months, he had packed up his own belongings, given up the flat in Haifa, and moved in with his mother here in Tel Ilan. More than anything, he desired total peace and quiet: a succession of identical days and nothing but free time.

  Sometimes he went for long walks around the village and beyond, among the hills that surrounded the little valley, through the fruit orchards and dusky pine woods. And sometimes he wandered for half an hour among the remains of his father's long-abandoned farm. There were still a few dilapidated buildings, chicken coops, corrugated-iron huts, a barn, the deserted shed where they had once fattened calves. The stables had become a storeroom for the furniture from his old flat on Mount Carmel, in Haifa. Here in the former stables, the armchairs, sofa, rugs, sideboard and table gathered dust, all bound together with cobwebs. Even the old double bed he had shared with Na'ama was standing there on its side in a corner. And the mattress was buried under piles of dusty quilts.

  Arieh Zelnik said: "Excuse me. I'm busy."

  Wolff Maftsir said:

  "Of course. I'm sorry. I won't disturb you, my dear fellow. On the contrary. From now on I won't make a sound."

  He stood up and followed his host inside the house, which was dark and cool and smelled faintly of sweat and old age.

  Arieh Zelnik said firmly:

  "Please wait for me outside."

  Although what he had meant to say, and with a degree of rudeness, was that the visit was now over and that the stranger should get going.

  5

  BUT IT NEVER occurred to the visitor to leave. He floated indoors on Arieh Zelnik's heels, and on the way, along the passageway, he opened each door in turn and calmly inspected the kitchen, the library and the workroom where Arieh Zelnik pursued his hobby and where model aircraft made of balsa wood hung from the ceiling, stirring slightly with each draft as though preparing for some ruthless aerial combat. He reminded Arieh Zelnik of the habit he himself had had, since childhood, of opening every closed door to see what lurked behind it.

  When they reached the end of the passage, Arieh Zelnik stood and blocked the entrance to his bedroom, which had once been his father's. But Wolff Maftsir had no intention of invading his host's bedroom; instead he tapped gently on the deaf old lady's door, and as there was no reply, he laid his hand caressingly on the handle and, opening the door gently, saw Rosalia lying on the big double bed, covered up to her chin with a blanket, her hair in a hairnet, eyes closed, and her angular, toothless jaw moving as if she were chewing.

  "Just like in our dream." Wolff Maftsir chuckled. "Greetings, dear lady. We missed you so much and we were so longing to come to you, you must be very pleased to see us?"

  So saying, he bent over and kissed her twice, a long kiss on either cheek, and then kissed her again on the forehead. The old lady opened her cloudy eyes, drew a skeletal hand out from under the blanket and stroked Wolff Maftsir's head, murmuring something or other and pulling his head toward her with both hands. In response, he bent closer, took off his shoes, kissed her toothless mouth and lay down at her side, pulling at the blanket to cover them both.

  "There," he said. "Hello, my very dear lady."

  Arieh Zelnik hesitated for a moment or two, and looked out of the open window at a tumbledown farm shed and a dusty cypress tree up which an orange bougainvillea climbed with flaming fingers. Walking around the double bed, he closed the shutters and the window and drew the curtains, and as he did so he unbuttoned his shirt, then undid his belt, removed his shoes, undressed and got into bed next to his old mother. And so the three of them lay, the woman whose house it was, her silent son and the stranger who kept stroking and kissing her while he murmured softly, "Everything is going to be all right, dear lady. It's all going to be lovely. We'll take care of everything."

  Relations

  1

  THE VILLAGE WAS swathed in the premature darkness of a February evening. Apart from Gili Steiner, there was no one else at the bus stop, which was lit by a pale streetlamp. The council offices were closed and shuttered. Sounds of television came through the shutters of the nearby houses. A stray cat padded on velvet paws past the trash cans, tail erect, belly slightly rounded. Slowly it crossed the road and vanished in the shade of the cypress trees.

  The last bus from Tel Aviv reached Tel Ilan every evening at seven o'clock. Dr. Gili Steiner had come to the bus stop in front of the council offices at twenty to seven. She worked as a family doctor at the M
edical Fund clinic in the village. She was waiting for her nephew, Gideon Gat, her sister's son, who was in the army. He had been studying at the Armored Corps training school when he was discovered to have a kidney problem that required hospitalization. Now that he was out of the hospital, his mother had sent him to convalesce for a few days with her sister in the country.

  Dr. Steiner was a thin, desiccated, angular-looking woman with short gray hair, severe features and square rimless glasses. She was energetic yet looked older than her forty-five years. In Tel Ilan she was considered an excellent diagnostician—hardly ever wrong in her diagnoses—but people said she had a dry, abrasive manner and showed no sympathy for her patients; she was simply an attentive listener. She had never married, but people her age in the village remembered that when she was young she had had a love affair with a married man who was killed in the Lebanon War.

  She sat on her own on the bench at the bus stop, waiting for her nephew and peering at her watch from time to time. In the faint glow of the streetlight it was hard to make out the hands, and she could not tell how much time she had left to wait. She hoped the bus would not be late and that Gideon would be on board. He was an absent-minded young man who was perfectly capable of getting on the wrong bus. Presumably, now that he was recovering from a serious illness, he was more absent-minded than ever.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Steiner inhaled the cool night air at the end of this cold, dry winter's day. Dogs were barking, and above the roof of the council offices hung an almost full moon that shed a skeletal white light on the street, the cypresses and the hedges. The tops of the bare trees were wrapped in mist. In recent years Gili Steiner had joined a couple of classes run by Dalia Levin at the Village Hall, but she had not found what she was looking for. What she was looking for she didn't really know. Perhaps her nephew's visit would help her to make some sense of things. For a few days the two of them would be alone together, sitting by the electric heater. She would look after him as she used to do when he was small. A conversation might start up, and she might be able to help this boy, whom she had loved all these years as though he were her own son, to recover his strength. She had filled the fridge with goodies and made his bed, and she had spread a throw rug at the foot of the bed, in the room that had always been his, next to her own bedroom. On the bedside table she had placed some newspapers and magazines, and three or four books that she liked and that she hoped Gideon would like too. She had switched the boiler on so that there would be hot water for him, left a soft light and the heater on in the living room and put out a bowl of fruit and some nuts, so he would feel at home as soon as they got in.

  At ten past seven the rumble of the bus could be heard from the direction of Founders Street. Dr. Steiner stood up in front of the bus stop, wiry and determined, with a dark sweater over her angular shoulders and a dark woolen scarf around her neck. First, two older women alighted from the back door; Gili Steiner knew them slightly. She greeted them, and they greeted her in return. Arieh Zelnik got off slowly, from the front door of the bus, wearing fatigues that were a little too big for him and a cap that came down over his forehead and hid his eyes. He said good evening to Gili Steiner and asked her jokingly if she was waiting for him. No, she said, she was waiting for her nephew who was in the army, but Arieh Zelnik had not seen any soldier on the bus. Gili Steiner said she was referring to a soldier in civilian clothes. In the meantime, another three or four passengers had alighted but Gideon was not among them. The bus was almost empty now, and Gili asked Mirkin, the driver, if he hadn't noticed among the people who got on in Tel Aviv a tall, slim young man with glasses, a soldier on leave, quite good-looking but rather absent-minded and perhaps not in the best of health. Mirkin could not recall anyone answering to that description, but said with a laugh:

  "Don't you worry, Dr. Steiner, whoever didn't arrive this evening will certainly turn up tomorrow morning, and whoever doesn't arrive tomorrow morning will come tomorrow lunchtime. Everyone gets here sooner or later."

  Gili Steiner asked the last passenger, Avraham Levin, as he got off, if there mightn't have been a young man on the bus who got off at the wrong stop by mistake.

  "There may have been. And then again there may not have been," said Avraham Levin. "I wasn't paying attention. I was deep in thought."

  And after a moment's hesitation he added:

  "There are a lot of stops along the way. And a lot of people got on and off."

  Mirkin, the driver, offered to drop Dr. Steiner off on his way home. The bus spent every night parked outside Mirkin's house and left for Tel Aviv at seven o'clock in the morning. Gili thanked him and said she preferred to walk home; she enjoyed the winter air, and now that it was clear her nephew hadn't come, she had no reason to hurry back.

  After Mirkin had said good night and closed the door of the bus with a sigh of compressed air and was on his way home, Gili Steiner had second thoughts: it was quite possible that Gideon had fallen asleep lying on the back seat without anyone noticing, and now that Mirkin was parking the bus in front of his house, turning off the lights and locking the door, he would be a prisoner till the next morning. So she turned toward Founders Street and strode energetically after the bus, with a view to cutting across the Memorial Garden, which stood cloaked in darkness touched by the pale silver light of the moon.

  2

  WITHIN TWENTY OR thirty paces Gili Steiner had made up her mind that, in fact, she should go straight home and phone Mirkin, the driver, to ask him to go outside and check if anyone had fallen asleep on the back seat of the bus. She could also phone her sister to find out whether Gideon had actually set off for Tel Ilan or if the trip had been canceled at the last moment. On the other hand, what was the point of causing her sister unnecessary anxiety? It was enough that she herself was worried. If the boy had indeed got off at the wrong stop, he must be trying to call her from one of the other villages. Another reason to go straight home and not run after the bus all the way to Mirkin's house. She would tell Gideon to take a taxi from wherever he was, and if he did not have enough money, she would of course pay the fare. She could see the boy in her mind's eye, arriving at her home by taxi in another half hour or so, smiling his usual shy smile and apologizing in his soft voice for getting muddled, and she would pay the taxi driver and hold Gideon's hand the way she used to when he was a child and calm him down and forgive him, and take him indoors to have a shower and to eat the supper she had prepared for them both, baked fish with baked potatoes. While he finished showering, she would take a quick look at his medical records, which she had asked Gideon to bring with him. When it came to diagnosis, she trusted only herself. And not necessarily even herself. Or not entirely.

  Though she had made up her mind that she should definitely go straight home, Dr. Steiner continued walking with small, firm steps up Founders Street toward the Village Hall, turning off to take a shortcut through the Memorial Garden. The damp winter air made her glasses mist up. She took them off, rubbed them hard with the end of her scarf and thrust them back on her nose. For an instant, without the glasses, her face had looked less severe, taking on a gentle, offended look, like a little girl who had been scolded unfairly. But there was no one around in the Memorial Garden to see her. We all knew Dr. Steiner only through the cold sheen of her square, rimless glasses.

  The garden lay peaceful, silent and empty. Beyond the lawn and the bougainvillea bushes a clump of pines formed a dense, dark mass. Gili Steiner breathed deeply and quickened her pace. Her shoes grated on the gravel path as though they had picked up some tiny creature that was letting out truncated shrieks. When Gideon was four or five years old his mother had brought him to stay with his aunt, who had recently started working as a family doctor in Tel Ilan. He was a dozy, dreamy child who could entertain himself for hours on end with a game that he played with three or four simple objects: a cup, an ashtray, a pair of shoelaces. Sometimes he would sit on the steps in front of the house, in his shorts and grubby shirt, staring into space, motionless exce
pt for his lips, which moved as if they were telling him a story. Aunt Gili was worried by his solitude and tried to find playmates for him, but the neighbors' children found him boring and after a quarter of an hour he would be on his own again. He made no attempt to make friends with them, but sprawled on the swing chair on the veranda, staring into space. Or lining up nails. She bought him some games and toys but the child did not play with them for long before returning to his regular pastime: two cups, an ashtray, a vase, a few paper clips and spoons that he arranged on the rug according to some logic that only he knew, then shuffled and rearranged them, his lips moving the whole time as though telling himself the stories that he never shared with his aunt. At night he fell asleep clutching a faded toy kangaroo.

  Occasionally she attempted to break through the child's solitude by suggesting a walk in the countryside, a visit to Victor Ezra's shop to buy sweets or a climb up the water tower that stood on three concrete legs, but he simply shrugged his shoulders, as though surprised at her sudden and inexplicable access of activity.

  On another occasion, when Gideon was five or six and his mother brought him to stay with his aunt, Gili had taken a few days off work. But when she was called out urgently to visit a patient on the outskirts of the village, the child insisted on staying in alone, to play on the rug with a toothbrush, a hairbrush and some empty matchboxes. She refused to let him stay at home alone, and insisted that he should either go with her or wait at the clinic under the supervision of the receptionist, Cilla. But he stood his ground: he wanted to stay at home. He was not afraid of being alone. His kangaroo would look after him. He promised not to open the door to strangers. Gili Steiner suddenly flew into a rage, not only at the child's stubborn insistence on staying on his own and playing his lonely games on the rug, but at his constant strangeness, his phlegmatic manner, his kangaroo and his detachment from the world. "You're coming with me right now," she shouted, "and that's that." "No, Aunt Gili, I'm staying," the child replied, gently and patiently, as though surprised she was so slow on the uptake. She raised her hand and slapped him hard on the cheek and then, to her own amazement, she continued to hit him with both hands, on his head, his shoulders, his back, with fury, as though in a fight with a bitter enemy or teaching a lesson to a recalcitrant mule. Gideon curled up silently under the hail of blows, with his head hunched between his shoulders, waiting for the onslaught to end. Then he looked up at her with wide eyes and asked, "Why do you hate me?" Startled, she hugged him with tears in her eyes, kissed his head and allowed him to stay at home on his own with his kangaroo, and on her return, less than an hour later, she said she was sorry. "It's all right," the child said, "people get angry sometimes." But he redoubled his silence and hardly spoke a word until his mother came to collect him a couple of days later. Neither he nor Gili told her about their quarrel. Before he left, he picked up the rubber bands, the bookend, the salt shaker and the prescription pad from the rug and put them away. He put the kangaroo in its drawer. Gili leaned over and kissed him lovingly on both cheeks; he kissed her politely on her shoulder, with clenched lips.