About the Night (2 page)

That evening, when she came to visit, he was bathed and tranquil and wearing ironed pajamas, and the corridor was quiet and dark. The nurses were at their station, peeling clementines and discussing an event that had been celebrated the night before. Nomi found a microwave, wiped down the insides with a paper towel, and let the pillow turn slowly inside until she could smell the buckwheat. She put it under his feet.

“Nice that you came in the evening, when it’s quiet,” he said with a smile. She could see the gratitude in his eyes.

At the sight of the book, he cried for joy and settled in to listen. She began to read a short story about a couple whose baby died at birth.

“Don’t tire yourself out,” Elias told Nomi. “I’ll carry on after you’ve gone. I’ve got a lot of hours on my own.”

She pushed the reading lamp above his head aside so it would not blind him. The light was dim, the bulb facing the wall.

Elias said, “I know I can count on you. I’ve felt that way about you ever since you were a girl and we placed this wondrous thing we shared in your hands. I have blind trust in you. Nobody will ever know what I’ve asked of you. Only God. And now you must trust me. You know why?” Elias asked. “This is what I want: I have only one final privilege in life, and that is to choose how and when. I feel comfortable talking about it. I hope it’s all right with you. Why thwart what’s coming anyway? I’ve been thinking a lot about why I’m in such pain, where this pain comes from, and how no one can make it go away. I believe—and maybe that’s because of what my mother put in my head years ago—that every bodily pain has its source in the soul, every pain is an expression of distress. With me,” he said, placing his hand on his chest for emphasis, “something wants to depart from my body. My soul wishes to reach her and merge with her, to make its way from this body that for some reason is sturdy and resistant. No specialist in the world will be able to explain or make sense of this pain, which is because my body is here but my soul is there.”

The buckwheat pillow rustled under his feet, as if the hot husks had a life of their own. “You’ll help me,” he said, taking encouragement from her silence. “I know you will. All I’m asking is that you’ll help make the wait shorter.”

As he spoke, Nomi grew frightened. She wondered why he had chosen her and how she could refuse him even though it was clear she could not carry out his wish.

Impressions of him were etched onto her memory from childhood. His hands—she would steal glances at them, how manly but delicate they were. The scent of talc and lavender that rose from him. The full head of hair combed to the back, exposing his brow. The light footfalls of a man who knew exactly where he was headed. The regal bearing. The smile—it lit up the moment—and the heart-stirring laugh lines that came with it. The quietude that contained enormous power, and the eyes that held warmth and sincerity. He was a soft-spoken man of few words who was nonetheless authoritative, a man who refrained from elaborate gestures but whose presence was always felt. He moved about thoughtfully and harmoniously, and he conducted his life this way as well.

His suits were gray wool or tweed, his shoes of choice leather. Round silver cuff links, monogrammed shirts. Back then, she thought of him as tall, with a prominent nose, but with the passing of the years, she grew to understand that he was a man of average height who had a nose with character. Small, upturned noses give their owners a childish look; she had never had a man with one of those. When Nomi considered the man of her dreams, he would sport the same contours as Elias.

“Tomorrow,” she said after a prolonged silence, “it won’t rain.”

“Tomorrow,” he answered, with no regard for the encroaching nightfall, “is a long time off. An eternity.”

“I understand you’re planning for eternal life,” said a nurse who entered the room carrying a plastic cup.

“I’m working on it.” He turned his smile on her and nodded.

When the nurse left, he handed the cup of pills to Nomi and asked her to throw them in the toilet. “I’m not going to touch that stuff,” he told her. “It’s poison.”

Nomi laughed, and her laughter caught him as well, though in his case the laughter came from his belly and brought coughing with it. He waved his hand in the air to let her know that it would soon pass.

“You’re not willing to take ‘poisonous’ medicines,” Nomi said, a note of sarcasm in her voice, “but you have no problem asking me for that potion concocted by some pharmacist in Jaffa?”

“I’m not willing to die from their medications. I’m not willing for it to take time; I’m not willing to let it come whenever it wants. I want to go to it. When I know it’s time, when I’m ready. When you request death like you would the check,” he said, pantomiming asking a waiter for the bill, “you decide when your meal is over. And when does that happen? When you lift your eyes to the door that leads you out. When you aspire more to there than to here.”

He balled one hand into a fist and covered it with the palm of the other. “There is something I know,” Elias said as if gently prodding a secret and delicate subject. “I feel something about what comes next. It’s inconceivable that this is the end, that this great love has no continuation. It’s inconceivable that this is over and done with. A voice tells me there’s something to aspire to, a small bridge over flowing water that will lead me there. To some sort of encounter.

“What? A man of my age, after everything he’s gone through, shouldn’t be able to decide that it’s enough? That it’s all over? You’ll see. One day, people will be able to decide when their time has come without any complications. Like sending a fax, like ordering airline tickets, like getting married in a spaceship. I’ll be able to book a flight straight to her. Companies will offer such services. ‘Hello, Death by Choice, Natalie speaking. How may I help you?’”

Elias was amusing only himself. “I can’t do it,” she said, her gaze on his hands.

“Wait,” he said. “Think about it. It’s not urgent.”

“You don’t know what’s there.”

“I don’t need to.”

“It’s a long way away,” she told him, “and no one has ever come back.”

“Most people don’t believe they’ll die,” Elias said. “They’re sure they’ll live forever.”

“Nobody knows,” Nomi said, “what exists beyond the moment we close our eyes.”

“It’s late,” Elias said. “Go home so that you can come back tomorrow.”

The next day, without even thinking about it, Nomi went to see him.

“Did you take a day off? Tell them you’re sick?” Elias asked.

Nomi smiled. “My job is flexible. I can plan my days however I like.”

“What a luxury,” Elias said. “And I’m the beneficiary, since you can be here with me.”

Nomi told him all about Adoption Services, the place that had been keeping her life full and busy for nearly thirty years. He knew her job had something to do with orphaned or abandoned children, but he was surprised to learn that she had settled in there and held her own, thanks to her diligence and her desire to save children at risk and bring them to a loving home.

She poured them each a glass of tea from the thermos and served him cookies with nuts.

She thought about offering tea as well to the old man slumbering in the bed next to Elias. He had been there since her first visit, but she only really saw him for the first time today. It was hard for her to look at the gaunt, pallid body under the sheet. The old man opened his eyes.

“Would you like to drink some tea?” she asked in a loud voice.

“My hearing’s just fine,” he said, “and my sight is even better. Tea? No thanks.”

“He’s an espresso freak,” Elias said with a chuckle. “If you want to kill him, just give him a cup of tea.”

“What, am I a young guy like you?” asked the old man. His voice was bitter, but his eyes sparkled. “If I had another ten years, I would drink tea, too, but my time is short. Only good, strong espresso for me.”

Nomi noticed that his eyes were gray. A shock of white hair complemented the strong contours of his face.

An Arab nurse came to wheel the old man into the courtyard, bed and all. Elias and Nomi could hear her singing as it faded down the corridor, along with the squeak of the bed wheels and the pinging of the elevator. Elias called her the Songstress of Abu Dis for her trilling melodies.

“No one comes to visit him,” Elias said. “Just once, a very busy woman in a suit. She saw he was sleeping, made a sound like she was perturbed, and left. Some distant relation, it seems. Ever since then, he tries not to sleep in case someone shows up for a visit.”

Nomi stood up and walked over to read the man’s chart. “Yehoyachin,” she said. “That’s his name.”

“You don’t say,” Elias said. “I’ve never heard that name before. The doctors call him Mr. Herschlag. He’s ninety years old, you know. At first we were embarrassed by the intimacy forced upon us, but after seeing each other’s nakedness and weaknesses, there’s nothing left to hide.”

There was something Nomi wished to clarify with Elias before Herschlag was returned to their room from his morning visit to the courtyard. “Why me?” she asked. “Why not your children? Your nieces and nephews, your cousins?”

“You really want to know?” He gazed steadily into her eyes. “Because you’re a person who could do it and keep it a secret. Just like you kept our secret. A nine-year-old girl who is told not to tell and doesn’t, who understands the meaning and the risk of it, who rises above the temptation to share what she knows and gain power from that knowledge. My own children are not capable of this. If I could, I would do it myself. Look, I can’t jump from the window, it would traumatize my family too much, and I can’t lie down in front of a train. But here, in the hospital, just a handful of sleeping pills, and it will look like a natural death. People will say, ‘He lay down to sleep at night and didn’t wake up in the morning; at least he didn’t suffer.’”

“You’ll get better,” she said. “You’ll grow strong and healthy. You’ll see many days of sunshine, and you’ll be sorry you ever even had such thoughts.”

“No, my dear, only people who wish to be healthy can do so. What I wish for is to be with her. It is perhaps the only thing in my life for me to decide. So many other decisions were made for me.”

“It’s drastic,” she said. “Final and absolute and irreversible.”

“I’m at peace with it. And you? You were the good luck charm of our love. Maybe one day you’ll see it like I do.”

“Aren’t you afraid?” she asked.

“I haven’t been afraid for a long time,” he told her. “I see it as something natural. We are born and we die. We just don’t know when. People go crazy from fear because they don’t know when it’ll happen. It’s the most certain uncertainty in the world. But I
do
know. I know when and why, and my heart is at peace.”

“There must be some way to make things easier for you,” Nomi said.

“I’ll never forget her,” he said. “Even after I’m dead.”

1947

The street below had preened and adorned itself in honor of the holiday. The sovereign ruler—the British Mandate for Palestine—determined when its subjects would celebrate. Lila leaned over the metal reviewing stand erected especially for the festivities. Her fingerprints remained in the fresh paint and left a scent of turpentine and a thin film of white on her hand. Something of her remained there, and something of the place remained with her. Perhaps one day, she laughed to herself, her presence there that day could be determined by the fingerprints she had left behind.

The sun was warm, not yet oppressive, and most of the diplomats’ wives wore summer hats. But not Lila. She wore a pale dress with coffee-colored polka dots and a wide belt that showed off her narrow waist. Her hair, a shade of chestnut, was cut in an elegant style and nearly reached her shoulders. She was not overadorned like the other women on the reviewing stand, and there was something restrained and refined about her look that was not immediately obvious at first glance.

She had been invited by the wife of the British attaché.

“Why not?” the woman had said. “It’ll be a nice day. Take the day off and rub elbows with the gentry of Jerusalem. Come on. I’ll meet you there.”

The diplomats’ wives liked her, especially appreciative of the professional manner in which she took care of them and her discreet silence as they chattered. When summoned for a house call, she appeared with the tools of a trade that could restore a dry, neglected hand to its former elegance and refinement. Gloves, she told them, were meant to conceal wonderful hands until just the right moment, not hide fingers that look like they belong to a butcher.

Calls to boycott the parade of the “British occupier” had been posted throughout the city, but in any event, Lila was a member of no organization or protest group. No flame burned in her; no subversive agitation could set her ablaze. She was an independent woman who looked after herself and protected the interests of her small lot in life. She was aware of the gap between her simple life and these events, as well as of the distance between her and the privileged people with whom she was now sharing this reviewing stand. As long as she did not wish to cross the class boundary, as long as she did not pine for a rich husband, she was safe. Her apathy to all the opulence and abundance would protect her.

A waiter in white gloves and a black bow tie offered her champagne. She sipped a little—the first of her life—and the taste of the cool drink was so surprising that she let out a small sigh of pleasure and said to herself, “Here’s to you, King George. May you live a long life.”

Down below, people gathered on both sides of the street. British flags billowed in the breeze, and military marches resounded from the loudspeakers. This was a show of strength by the English to the city’s Jews and Arabs, not just some insignificant event but a charged celebration of a sovereign power right in the backyard of the population it was ruling. The scene on the reviewing stand, however, seemed like a separate reality: an English garden party.

A mixture of languages could be heard, but the British, Lila thought, could put any conversation to sleep, even the most fascinating. They were so inhibited and stodgy and predictable in their answers that they never laughed aloud or broadly.

Not far from where she was standing, at the edge of the reviewing stand, a group of foreigners had formed. They raised a glass to the king’s health and sounded particularly jolly, as if they had already downed a few rounds. They were all awaiting the annual official parade marking the anniversary of the coronation of King George VI. She could hear as she drew near that they were speaking English and French. One of them, a man with a German accent, said that his research showed that cats scratch themselves and become agitated due to stress. The others laughed.

“I thought stress was a trait unique to humans,” said a man with a Russian accent, adding that such theories were “quite modern.” He presented his secretary, who had “a collection of antique samovars she had managed to spirit out of Russia.”

Everyone expressed interest in the collection, but the Russian secretary spoke in the direction of a certain young man whenever she answered their questions. He looked European, in his light-colored, high-quality summer suit, his hair combed to the back. His eyes indicated that he was slightly interested in her, and amused.

The Frenchman said, “The woman collects samovars, and this gentleman here imports tea.”

Someone asked from where, and the man in the light-colored suit said, “Ceylon. China. India.”

“How exotic,” said the French ambassador. “He travels to those places and actually returns as well.”

“It sounds fascinating,” said the Russian woman. “Did you always know that was what you would do?”

“It’s work,” the young man answered, ignoring her interruption. “One cannot buy tea without tasting it in the place where the blend was made.” He said
blend
as though the word itself contained all its magic.

His voice was soft and pleasant, neither deep nor hoarse, a voice that moved Lila from where she was standing and brought her near.

An Englishman was teasing him. “We brought tea to the West,” he said. “Until then, only Asians drank it, albeit quite a number of Asians. Still, only Asians.”

“You English did indeed bring tea to the West,” said the young man, “but you have no real idea how to drink it.”

“Oh ho!” said another Englishman. “Would the gentleman be bringing British hegemony into question?”

“Not at all,” said the young man. The conversation perked up; he had succeeded in blowing some fresh air into the staid diplomat prattle, and had done so in impeccable English.

A Belgian man said, “He’s quite right. What tidings can one expect from a nation that adds milk to its tea?”

The Russian said, “In Russia we drink tea to keep warm, and, for your information, we were drinking it three hundred years ago—long before the English.”

The young man seemed amused at the bonfire he had lit and had the confidence to enjoy the conflagration. His smile broadened, revealing strong, beautifully white teeth.

The Frenchman said, “
Allez-y
, Monsieur Riani. Show them what you know.”

She heard his name.

At that moment, she felt as though she had heard the name sometime in the past, though she had never met him, or had seen those eyes and those laugh lines—a feeling of déjà vu. He was charming, but he did not slather his charm around in great quantities. He merely drizzled it. In order to demonstrate the way in which the English drink tea, he passed his champagne glass to the Frenchman.

In a refined pantomime, he lifted a cup of tea to his lips with a severe, utterly British expression on his face. “This is how the English hold the cup,” he said. “By the handle. And then you place it, with a cold slap of ceramic, on the saucer. You drink it tight-lipped, full of self-importance, while you nibble biscuits that only God knows what they have to do with tea.”

The Englishmen were dumbstruck.

“The Chinese, on the other hand,” continued Mr. Riani, exploiting his momentum, “hold the mug between their palms. They embrace it. They feel its heat, aware of its temperature, tasting its special flavor. There is something sensuous and simple in this method. And something distant and cold in the British way.”

“Well, that’s a rather tendentious approach, don’t you think?” asked one of the Englishmen.

“But precise,” said the tea man before the Englishmen had a chance to recover. “The Chinese are very exacting with their infusions. They have a pouring ceremony and examine the tea’s color. It’s a tradition going back a thousand years or more. And the English? You drink it with sugar and milk and cucumber sandwiches. Why, you don’t even grow it yourselves; the Indians and the Kenyans do it for you.”

The French ambassador’s wife applauded. “Such a sensual description,” she raved.

The other women in the circle gazed at him as well, and smiled. They were his captives now; he would likely retain their attention even if he began counting the number of mortars in the Swiss army.

“We brought coffee to the West as well,” boasted one of the Englishmen.

“That’s not exactly true,” said the tea man. “The first café in England was opened in the seventeenth century by an immigrant from Lebanon.”

“An Arab?” asked one of the women, surprised.

“A Jew,” said the tea man with a mysterious smile. “The Jews are pioneers; they are always the ones to change the face of the world.”

All the while, Lila stood in her polka-dot dress, nearly unnoticed, at the edge of the cluster of people, hidden behind the men in suits and trying to catch as many of the words that came from his mouth as she could, as many notes from his intonation. She was sorry for the background noises that swallowed half of the sentences and created disrupted stories pierced by loud bursts of laughter. He related that cafés flourished in England because people detested the crowded pubs. She heard him talking about a strong protest by Englishwomen against cafés that had turned into men’s clubs.

“When they came home in the evenings,” he said, “the men did not desire their wives, and the women assumed this wave of impotence in London was due to the coffee beans. They believed that coffee was making their men weak. But then, the truth came out.”

“For heaven’s sake, man,” the Belgian cried out, quite affected by the champagne, “spare us our misery and pray tell!”

“The truth,” said the tea man, his expression blank, “is that on the second floor of those English cafés, in modest rooms, were women in lace lingerie. So the men were returning home quite satisfied and spent.”

She had no idea whether he was speaking the truth or had fabricated the story to further humiliate the Englishmen in the crowd.

Then, suddenly, as if responding to her thoughts, the tea man said, “It is a true story, lest you think I made it up. And that is how teahouses for women came into existence. But that is another story.”

The men had just signaled to the waiter that they were ready for another round when it was announced that the parade was approaching the King David Hotel. Indeed, beating drums could be heard from afar, the cymbals and horns of a military march. The cluster of people surrounding the tea man moved to the railing of the reviewing stand as the drums drew ever closer.

And that is when he saw her.

With only one glance, he took in quite a few details, trapping in his mind the contours of her face, and he turned away so that she would not see that he was lingering longer than was proper. The first thing he noticed was her lips, then her Venus-like neck. She did not smile at him like the other women did as they watched his performance. She merely regarded him with the knowledge that in a moment’s time she would meet his eyes. To him, it seemed as though no one else was there with them, that the whole showy celebration of marching drums had disappeared and all that existed was the spark ignited between two people.

“I heard you abusing the Englishmen,” she said. “It was funny.”

“They deserved it,” he said.

“Do you travel the world in search of tea?”

“I do.”

“And how do you know what’s good?”

“I rub it between my fingers and sniff the leaves,” he said.

“And you taste it as well?”

“You won’t believe it,” he said, pausing for a moment. “You take a sip—a noisy, strong one, inhaling air with the tea so that you can feel the taste in every corner of your mouth.”

“And do you swallow?”

“No. You taste and spit it out. Like wine. I can talk to you about tea for the next twenty years or so, so don’t let me do it.”

She gazed at him at length.

“I’m sorry if I sounded arrogant back there,” he said.

“I liked it,” she said. “Most of the people here are so deferential toward the English.”

“And what are you doing here, in this place?”

“I’m looking down at the city from above,” she said. Her voice was low and feminine, her speech direct.

“Looking down in the panoramic or the poetic sense?” he asked.

“Being on this reviewing stand,” she said, “is like being on a different planet, disconnected from everything that’s happening here. These people are nicely dressed, and they stand here clinking glasses, but the city is torn apart and suffering.”