Читать книгу The Book of Israela - Rena Blumenthal - Страница 8

I picked up the forms from the now deserted reception area and stayed late to write up what I could remember of the intake, fudging the details I had neglected to ask. That evening, I plucked a cold schnitzel from Yossi’s refrigerator and, seated at his kitchen table, combed the classified ads for cheap rentals, while the twins engaged in a raucous shoot-out in the living room and Elizabeth chided me from the bedroom, insisting loudly to Yossi that I be out before the holiday.

Even in the midst of an intifada, Jerusalem apartments were obscenely overpriced. Most of the secular, middle-class population had already fled to the coastal plain. American and French foreigners had bought up and renovated the vacated apartments, which now rented for outlandish prices—never mind that any minimally habitable flat would already be engaged for the Passover week. I decided to risk infuriating Jezebel and called in sick the next day so I could roam through the city looking at one bleak apartment after another. Desperate, I finally rented the first furnished flat I found that I could move into right away. It was a dark, ground-floor apartment on the edges of Kiryat Yovel, its empty-lot view obscured by black security bars.

I transported my three garbage bags to the new flat that very evening. It was far from both work and home but had the advantage of being a month-to-month rental. It was just a temporary arrangement, I was sure.

Two days later, as I was leaving the office on Passover eve, I found a neatly folded note in my mailbox. It was written in the oversized, boxy handwriting typical of American immigrants:

Kobi,

I appreciate your completing your intake in such a timely fashion. As you can see, the paperwork is less overwhelming when you do it quickly.

Have an enjoyable and productive Passover break.

Jezebel

I crumpled the note and angrily threw it into the trash. Cheap gestures of appreciation were not going to soothe the stinging humiliation of my probation or the sheer degradation of having my intakes instantly scanned as if I were a first-year intern. She had refrained from commenting on the obvious shoddiness of my work—clearly her methods were more subtle and circuitous. But it would take more than a cloyingly friendly note to transform me into her dutiful lackey. I had no intention of having a “productive” Passover break. I had as much right to a holiday as anyone else at the goddamned clinic.

I was back in Kiryat Yovel by 3:00, with just enough time to shower and change before joining the exhaust-choked pilgrimage along the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv highway. It was an unusually cold and stormy spring, and the dark, low-hanging clouds perfectly mirrored my state of mind. I was in a petulant mood from Jezebel’s condescending note and in dread of the evening ahead. My parents had called to wish us a happy Passover and had been crisply informed by Nava that I no longer lived there. We had always spent holidays with Nava’s family, which had riled my mother for years. I would have been happy to skip the whole rigmarole, but what excuse could I possibly give now? Not that my parents believed in any of this religious stuff, but seder was seder, and without the convenient excuse of pushy in-laws, there was no way to avoid the family gathering.

The nation was on high alert for the holiday, and convoys of soldiers were making the highway even more clogged than usual. Two international peacekeepers had been killed the day before near Hebron, and a major attack thwarted at the Malha mall. After an interminable stop-and-go ride, I finally arrived, just as the first fat drops of rain began to fall, in Petah Tikva, the faceless little city east of Tel Aviv where I’d grown up. In my childhood, the town still retained remnants of its rural past, fragrant with orange groves. But the orchards had long since been paved over, and it was now a featureless suburb, a maze of white stone buildings, indistinguishable from all the other flat, crowded little towns that sprawled across the coastal plain.

Mainly due to my own reluctance, Nava and I had rarely visited the homestead, a comfortable, third-floor flat full of overstuffed furniture. I trotted up the stairs, avoiding, as I always did, the claustrophobic two-person elevator. The door to the flat was wide open, a buzzy commotion emanating from the kitchen along with the greasy smell of frying potatoes. My father sat at a corner of the already-set dining room table grating fresh horseradish, his nose a cartoonish red, tears streaming down his face.

“You can buy that stuff already grated, you know,” I said by way of greeting.

He didn’t miss a beat. “That’s how weak this generation is, even fake suffering is too much for them. A little bitterness in the food is beyond their tolerance. Prepared horseradish? As bitter as life with a bunion. What would they do with a Holocaust, I wonder.”

“Right,” I said. “That’s the problem with modern Israel, there isn’t enough suffering.” I looked around. “Is Anat here yet?”

“If Anat was here, you wouldn’t already hear her yammering?” He wiped the tears from his eyes with his handkerchief, stuffed it back in his pocket, then resumed grating. “Anat called an hour ago from the highway. The road out of Samaria is jammed. She’s not the only one with the sense to escape that self-made prison for a week. Between this freaky weather and the multiplying checkpoints, it will be amazing if she gets here before dark.”

“They’re staying the whole week?” I asked.

“She may be a religious fanatic, but she’s not crazy. You think she wants to prepare her own house for Passover when she’s got a slave of a mother who’ll do it for her?”

“How are you going to survive a week with Habakuk?”

“I survived Hitler, you think I can’t survive Habakuk?” He shot me a look. “You were no better, you know.”

“You were a bit younger then,” I said.

Before he could answer, his face convulsed into another paroxysm as the horseradish made its way back up his nose. I left him whinnying and cursing at the knobby root as I ventured into the kitchen to find my mother, aproned and mitted, bustling between bubbling pots and sizzling pans, the queen of her steamy domain.

“Kobi, you made it!” She beamed at me but never stopped moving. “And with this horrible weather. To the last minute, I told your father, I wonder if he’ll really come. He so hates being here, maybe he’d rather sit alone on seder night than be with his old parents.”

“Ima, don’t be ridiculous.” I reached over and pecked her on the cheek, the steam from the open pot fogging my glasses. “Everything smells so good. What are you cooking?”

“What, on Passover there’s a choice? Chicken soup, matzah balls, potato kugel, tzimmes, inedible pastries. Why do you ask? You don’t even remember what a Jewish family eats on Passover? What did they feed you in that sabra household?”

“Same thing. You’re right, a silly question.”

She took a sip from the soup pot, then shook her head in disapproval, scanning her spice rack for options as she spoke. “Kobi, it kills me, thinking of you living all alone in some horrible flat.”

“You haven’t even seen it.”

“You expect us to travel to Jerusalem at our age, with all that traffic? Never mind all the bombings, and the crazy haredim throwing stones at your car. I never understood why you wanted to live in that ghost-ridden city. You should move back to Petah Tikva, get your own flat a few blocks away. We’ve got plenty of crazy people here for you to cure. You could open your own practice. It’s not normal for a man to live alone like that, without a wife and family. How could she do that to you? And just a month before Yudit’s big party.” Having spiced the soup to her satisfaction, she pulled a kugel out of the oven, slamming the oven door.

“She didn’t do anything to me. It was a mutual decision,” I said. There was no point trying to explain. “Did you speak to Yudit when you called the house?”

“I never speak to Yudit; she’s always busy when I call. She already has a young, fancy-shmancy, Israeli-born savta—what does she need an old-world bubbe for?”

“Don’t be silly, Yudit loves you.”

“Yudit barely knows me, I see her so rarely. Now I’ll see her even less.” She sighed deeply, poking at the edges of the kugel. “Maybe she’s better off that way. Our generation, we only represent suffering and shame. That’s why your wife, that Nava, kept her away from us. And now we can’t even celebrate her bat mitzvah.”

“You’re being completely unfair—Nava never kept her from you. And besides, who says you can’t go to the bat mitzvah?”

She turned from the stove, brandishing her wooden spoon like an orchestra conductor. “What, you think we would go without you? So that Nava of yours can shunt us off to some distant, shadowy corner of the room? Far from her elegant, sophisticated parents? Just because their grandparents escaped the ghettos a couple of generations ahead of us, they think they can look down on us. Shtetl Jews, that’s what they call us.” I started to protest but she cut me off. “No, no, no—if you don’t go, we don’t go!”

“OK, OK, don’t get upset. Although what you’re saying about her parents . . .”

“It’s all true, and you know it.” Her face suddenly softened. “But still, that Nava was good for you. You would have never settled down without her. Kobi, what are you going to do to get her back?”

A whooping shriek saved me from having to answer. Habakuk, in a soaking yellow rain jacket, came bounding into the little kitchen, grabbing my mother’s legs in a brutal grip. She tried to shake him off, but he only dug his nails in harder.

“Habe’le,” she yelled, “you’re hurting your bubbe!”

In the living room I could hear my younger sister, Anat, lecturing my father at full tilt. I peeked out of the kitchen to see her huge form rooted in the center of the living room, her raincoat dripping audibly onto the floor tiles. She was already well into a detailed complaint about the soldiers at the checkpoints who’d caused the delay. Her skinny beard of a husband was dragging in stuffed suitcases and an odd lot of water-logged paraphernalia. Habakuk zoomed out of the kitchen, flung his soggy jacket and kipa onto the couch, and began racing figure eights around their legs, yelling wildly into the cosmos.

I followed him into the living room. “Hey, Habakuk,” I called out, grabbing him by the shoulder, wondering, as I always did, how anyone could give an innocent child such an unwieldy name. “Long time no see, buddy.” He stuck his tongue out at me, wriggled free, and continued on his dizzying course.

My father and sister were fully embroiled in their usual political argument: she trying to convince him that the settlements were the only bulwark against the erosion of the Jewish soul, he trying to convince her that it was immoral, post-Holocaust, to voluntarily choose to raise a family surrounded by barbed wire.

They were obsessed with politics, those two. What was the point? The more people argued, the more the conflict spun out of control. Arafat, Sharon, Bush—who would voluntarily watch a play with such an unappealing set of characters? From my father’s meager bar I searched for a stiff drink, but the Scotch had been packed away for the holiday. I settled for a shot of kosher-for-Passover vodka and sank into the omnivorous couch. Political arguments were worse than futile—they reminded the soldier in me of all the things he’d rather not think about. The terror of sniper fire. The hate-filled eyes. The children screaming hysterically as you cocked your weapon and handcuffed their fathers.

“Shalom, Anat,” I interjected, when they finally came to a break in the sparring. I knew she’d never say hello if I didn’t.

“Hey, Kobi. You actually have something to say about this? Some psychological insight, perhaps?” Her voice, as usual, was thick with sarcasm.

“Not really. Just thought it would be civilized to say hello.”

She stared at me for a moment. “So,” she said, “that wife of yours finally had enough of you?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I answered, avoiding her gaze.

“That’s the way it is in the secular world. Easy come, easy go.”

“Yeah, that’s just what it’s like.”

“You’ll enjoy being single. No responsibilities. You always liked the easy life.”

She unbuttoned, then peeled off her raincoat, and I marveled at the way in which she could make even the most innocent gesture seem aggressive. “Kobi, don’t you know what harm it does to a child to be raised without a father? There was a long article in Yediot last week . . .” and she was off and running on another one of her diatribes. Well, I could tolerate this more than I could stand to listen to her political views.

She rattled on for a good five minutes while my father cleared his corner of the table of horseradish scraps. Finally, he cut her off. “Enough, Anat, we have a seder to get through, and I’m not letting it go on until midnight. I’m too old for that. Besides, Kobi has to get home tonight—God forbid he should sleep one night in his parents’ house. He’d rather drive through a raging storm to an empty flat in holy Jerusalem. Habi, stop that,” he yelled. Habakuk had been tossing and catching green toy soldiers, which he now flung high in the air. One landed on the lip of the ceiling fixture and remained there, dangling precariously.

“Everyone sit down,” my father commanded. “Let’s get this thing over with.”

And so we sat, my mother refusing to remove her apron despite my father’s protests, Habakuk getting up every few minutes to race around the table like a drunken dreidel. The rain lashed at the windows as my father droned through the service, not skipping a word of the sacred text. Anat studied the Haggada intently, while her husband, Tuvya, stared off into space, humming tunelessly under his breath. Other than periodic attempts to get Habakuk to settle down, there was a merciful quiet behind the drone, everyone hoping to get through the evening with as little ill will as possible.

What was the point of it all? Maybe we’d been slaves a few thousand years ago, maybe not. Maybe we should figure out how to take care of our current problems instead of fetishizing ancient traumas. Didn’t we have enough here-and-now tsuris, what with people blowing themselves up in our cafés and malls? I’d like to see some god liberate us from this miserable, unending war—now that would be a holiday worth celebrating. I listened to the singsong hum of the cloyingly familiar words, sipped the candy-sweet wine my father insisted on using, wondered what sins I might have committed in my former lives to be tied now to the hidebound rituals of this stubborn old tribe.

After we had all consumed the ritual doses of tasteless matzah and fiery, home-grated horseradish, Anat cleared the table of Haggadas as my mother handed out the first dinner course, a grayish slab of gefilte fish crowned by thin slices of overcooked carrot. I asked if there was any news from my younger brother, Gal.

My mother sighed deeply and shook her head. “You tell him, Hayim.”

“Still no word. As far as we know, he’s still communing with the universe in that Indian ashram. For all we know, he’s merged into the Oneness and totally disappeared.”

“Stop it, Hayim,” my mother scolded him, “you’re as worried as I am. He’s such a sensitive boy, my Gali. The army was so hard on him. Remember how he moped around for months after that early discharge? Welling up with tears whenever the news came on, rescuing every little alley cat in the neighborhood? We didn’t know what to do with him.”

“That was years ago,” I said, poking at the crumbly mass on my plate.

My mother shook her head and disappeared into the kitchen. My father glanced at my untouched fish, switched his already empty plate with mine, and continued in a low tone. “Now I look back, I should have taken it more seriously. Not normal, for a grown man to act that way. But then, when he got back from Thailand, I thought he was finally settling down. He was managing that little store in Haifa, selling all that weird junk—psychedelic fabrics, ‘memory stones,’ obscene statues. He’d go on and on about their mysterious powers. It was odd, but at least it was some kind of living. Then all of a sudden, just when we think maybe he’ll have a semi-normal life, he quits his job and goes off to India. He can’t breathe in this country, he says. What can I tell you? If this ashram in India is the only place on earth he can breathe, zai gezundt.”

“It’s a sin to leave Eretz Yisrael for any reason other than to save a life,” Anat chimed in.

My father topped his second piece of fish with a thick layer of beet-red horseradish. “I’ll be sure to let him know your thoughts on the matter next time I hear from him.”

“Maybe this new intifada triggered bad memories,” I offered.

“Spoken like a true shrink,” he said. “What, any of us like this mishugas? More than fifty years we’ve had this state, there hasn’t been a day of peace. You live in this country, you learn to put up with it.” I watched him quickly down every bite of fish, even the soggy carrots. I had always been fascinated by the methodical way he polished off every plate of food, as if it were an onerous but necessary task.

My mother returned to the room with the huge pot of soup. She placed it on a trivet in the center of the table and started collecting the used plates. “Kobi, you’ve learned to eat gefilte fish! Let me get you some more.”

“No, no, Ima, it was delicious. But I know there’s a lot more food.”

“Are you sure?” She finished stacking the plates and started ladling matzah ball soup into bowls.

“Well,” I said, “I’m sorry you haven’t heard from Gal. I thought he would have at least called for Passover.”

My father swatted the comment away and dipped into his soup. “I doubt they’re celebrating Passover in the ashram. I’m sure he’s too mystically elevated to own a calendar.”

“Stop being so cynical, Hayim. What with drugs and AIDS and terrorists, and all the anti-Semitism in the world, and him such a trusting soul, you think it’s safe, my Gali, floating around the world in a dreamlike fog?”

“Ima, you talk about him like he’s five years old,” I said, annoyed. “It’s no big deal—he’s just getting the army out of his system. So it’s taking him a little longer than most. Can you blame him for hating all the violence around here? Sometimes I wish I’d spent some time abroad myself.”

“Who would have ever imagined that you’d be the success story? Such a ball of terror you were as a kid,” she said, warming up to one of her favorite topics.

“Today they’d label me hyperactive and give me lots of meds and sympathy,” I said, but she continued as if I hadn’t spoken.

“And those constant calls from the principal. What was his name? If it weren’t for the donation we gave to that big-shot rebbe, I’m sure you’d be in jail by now.”

“Ima, it had nothing to do with the rebbe.” I kicked myself for taking the bait. “Can’t I ever get a little credit for straightening myself out?”

“And Gali was just the opposite. Sweet as a bowl of tzimmes. And look what’s happened to him now.”

My father put his empty bowl aside and leaned back in his chair. “Your mother thinks he’s going to float off the edge of the planet. But he’s a bright boy; after a while he’ll get sick of all that wandering. How long can an intelligent person breathe in and breathe out without getting a little bored? Anyway, serving in the army is something to be proud of. You think ’48 was a party? We didn’t have proper ammunition, there was no training, they shoved a gun in your hand and told you to shoot. Half the time we didn’t know what we were shooting at. But after dragging ourselves out of the camps and forests of Europe, we were eager to do it. Who was going to defend this country if we didn’t?”

This launched Anat into another rant about the deficiencies of the modern Israeli army and the degradation of the Zionist dream. As she spoke, Tuvya’s tuneless humming rose several notches in volume, as did the sound of Habakuk’s imaginary sword fight in the living room. He was, as far as I could tell, the knight Moses tilting at the evil Pharaoh with a finely honed stalk of celery, holding his brightly colored, crocheted kipa to his chest like a shield, and stabbing the furniture cushions with deadly resolve. I concentrated on the greasy soup, tuning them all out as best I could.

At least Nava’s family was polite and civil, if a bit boring—normal people engaging in normal conversations. As I dug into course after course of the matzah-heavy food, I remembered Nava’s mother, the prior year, serving with great flourish some bizarre South American grain that she delightedly declared to be kosher for Passover. Nava had gushed about the dish, interrogating her mother in stultifying detail about cooking methods and nutritional values. I tried to imagine Nava and Yudit at their seder without me. Her parents had never been particularly fond of me—were they supporting her decision to finally throw the bum out or urging her to reconsider?

By the time we had all forced down the dry pastries, Habakuk had collapsed with exhaustion onto the living room couch, leaving no one to search for the hidden afikomen. Grumbling at his aching knees, my father pulled the crumbled matzah out from under the sofa, and we joylessly made our way through the rest of the Haggada, rotely singing every verse of the silly songs that were meant to keep the young children awake to the end. Only when every last song had been sung could the seder be declared complete.

But before I could get out the door and into the still-raging storm, my father pulled me aside for his yearly Passover admonition.

“Kobi, anything you do is your business. You’re a grown man; I would never intervene. You know that, right?”

“Is it about the hametz, Abba?”

“I know we didn’t raise you very religious. After the war I never had the stomach for all that ritual. But Kobi, even if you keep nothing else, you mustn’t eat hametz until the holiday is over.”

“I know how important that is to you,” I said, pulling on my coat.

But he continued, whispering earnestly, as if I had never heard the story before.

“You know what a saintly man my father was—he should rest in peace. He was kind to everyone, never judged people for ill. I’m not like him, you know that; I inherited my mother’s cynical eye and bitter tongue. But my father, he was a genuine tzaddik, a holy man. Even in Theresienstadt, the ruffians who shared his barracks wouldn’t let him empty the slop bin. He would gladly have done it! But they knew a tzaddik when they saw one. ‘Reb Yakov,’ they would say, ‘this is not work for you.’” As my father spoke, my eyes were fixed on the little green soldier hanging desperately from the ceiling fixture.

“Yes, Abba, you’ve told me.”

“By the time we got to Auschwitz, my father was so emaciated. They had shaved his beard and peyos, his face scrawny and drawn. But when the air turned balmy, he started to count out the days from the new moon, trading scraps of bread for little bits of potato. And when he decided it was the full moon of Passover, for eight days no bread passed his lips. All he’d eat were the rotting potato scraps that he’d saved up. He risked his life rather than eat hametz on Passover!” He looked at me to see if his words were sinking in.

“Yes, Abba, I know.”

“Me, I ate whatever little bit they gave me. And he insisted I eat the bread! He said that a child, under such terrible circumstances, was not obligated. It never made any sense to me—I was a teenager, and much stronger than he. I ate the bread, but I swore a solemn oath that if I survived, I would never, so long as I lived, eat hametz on Passover again.”

“I know, Abba. You tell me this every year.”

“He never made it back from that hell. It would be a disgrace to his blessed memory not to keep this one mitzvah.”

“I understand, Abba. Don’t worry,” I said, thinking about the stash of pita I had stored in the freezer to get me through the week. I had always hated the taste of matzah.

“I trust you, Kobi. You’re named after him. You even look like him—more every day. You would never desecrate his memory in that way!”

It was close to midnight before I was finally liberated for my solitary, storm-driven ride home.