Authors: Anat Talshir
1967
Rabbi Reis leafed through the prayer book with a dampened finger, his head bobbing as he read the holy words. He sat still, draped in black, blind to all that was happening around him. War was threatening the city, but the rabbi was immersed in his world. Next to him sat his wife, in a short wig and a severe buttoned skirt. Nomi noticed that she had cookies hidden in her handbag, which she fished out one by one and placed whole in her mouth.
Mr. Handler, the widower, who had no one to take care of his clothing, sat in a moldy corner, dozing off and waking up, all the while depending on the transistor radio he kept glued to his ear.
“That man is such a miser,” Margo said with open loathing, “that he can’t even share his radio, as if someone might steal the news.”
Nomi tried her best not to look at him, but for some reason she was fascinated by the dandruff on his shoulders, flakes of white on a black background. She told herself she would wait for just one more flake to fall, and then she would look away.
It was hot and stifling without a window or a fan, without electricity or air. They were breathing in the combined scents of the neighbors, people familiar to look at but alien in their smells. Nomi tried to identify the aromas of the foods emitted from their apartments, the heavy, oily, European cooking suited to cold climates. Her parents were the youngest people in the building and the only parents of small children. Quite naturally, most of the building’s noise came from their apartment, and the neighbors, angry most of the year, could now regard from up close the noisy people from the top floor.
On occasion, someone opened the heavy wooden door of the shelter. Even then, Rabbi Reis did not stop studying and praying to look at what was going on. The building’s shelter was used as a storeroom by the nearby greengrocer until the day the city came under fire, and he had not managed to clear everything out, so there were enormous tins of pickles and olives, vats of salted herring, and glass bottles of juice concentrate. The walls held the smells of mold and mildew because the pickling water had leaked. The entire shelter was scarcely large enough to hold twelve chairs pressed to the walls. If a guest were to come to the shelter, he would have to stand or sit on the dusty cement floor that repulsed Lila. She thought it looked more dangerous than the bombs falling outside.
“Margo,” Lila said, “how are we supposed to continue sitting here in this filth? There is dirt here left over from the Mandate period.”
The baby was sleeping in Lila’s arms, his cheeks chubby and his mouth open as if begging for more air. His skin was pale, so very nearly transparent that Nomi could see the blood vessels in his eyelids and thought they looked like a river winding its way through hills, like on a map. Margo still called him “the baby” even though he was nearly two years old.
“Shhh,” Margo said, addressing Lila’s horror of filth, “you’ll wake up the baby, and then he’ll have an asthma attack. We’ll clean this disgusting shelter when it’s all over. In the meantime, we’re stuck here.”
Margo looked exhausted, her eyes tired and heavy. Imprisoned in the stifling June weather in an airless shelter wearing a summer robe now wrinkled from so much sitting, she made lists for herself of all the things she would have accomplished had she not been stuck underground: green beans, rice, sautéed chicken, leek patties, a cheesecake, peanut crescent cookies, two loads of laundry, the dusting.
A man in uniform entered the shelter and waited until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. At first, Nomi did not recognize him, but then a smile rose on her face, and she ran to him. She had never seen him in uniform before. He picked her up and pulled her small face to his own bronzed one and hugged her. After a moment that was too short for Nomi, he put her down and made his way to the two women.
“How’s the baby?” he asked.
“He only just fell asleep,” Margo said. “He drove us crazy with his wheezing.”
Menash said, “They’re dropping shells on the city like rain. Never seen anything like it before. The streets are empty; nobody’s leaving the shelters. There’s a lull right now.”
“Did you bring anything to eat?” Margo asked.
“Yes,” he said with a start. He walked back toward the stairs and picked up a bag he had placed there with a bottle of milk, a container of chocolate spread, sugar cubes, and a loaf of white bread.
“That’s it?” Margo asked.
“That’s all I could get my hands on,” he said. “Everything’s closed; even the dogs aren’t out. I’ve got to get back to the army. I’ll bring more as soon as I can.”
“I’m sure he managed to find cigarettes for himself,” Margo muttered.
Menash was their link to the world. To Nomi he looked different from usual: happier, free. Uncle Mano said that he was war-crazy. “That father of yours is at his best under fire, under siege, maneuvering in convoys, going on dangerous missions.”
Menash was in a hurry to be on his way, but Lila stopped him with an entreating glance. If only he could tell her what was happening in the outside world; what they were saying; what, among everything being broadcast on the widower’s transistor radio, was true; and what she could do in this pit, this place where she had lost her ability to move and act, being stuck in this dungeon with a Hungarian rabbi, a radio-addicted widower, a Czech cosmetician and her philandering husband, and a German-born engineer and his silent wife. Only a short drive from their hole in the ground, battles were being waged, and no one could tell her who was winning and who was losing, whose home would be razed, and who would bury his children. She was terrified on behalf of the Israeli soldiers but also on behalf of the man who had disappeared from her life many years earlier without a further trace.
The entreaty in her eyes took hold of Menash. His small son was sleeping in her arms, and her expression was saying to him,
You know I’ve never asked a thing of you.
She walked him to the door and whispered four short words without explaining: “Riani family, Sheikh Jarrah.”
“I’ll look into it,” Menash promised, and asked nothing further.
Lila thanked him with a blink of her eyes, and the whole exchange passed without Margo catching the moment that her friend exposed this tiny slice of her secret to Menash. She did not kiss her husband on his way out to the war raging outside in the same way that she did not rise to greet him when he entered.
Nomi stayed close to him as he left the shelter, wishing him not to leave her there, to take her with him; she would not disturb him, just let him take her along. “No, sweetie,” he said, bending down to look her in the eye, “it’s dangerous out there, but in here it’s safe, and Mother and Lila will protect you.” Nomi let go and allowed him to leave. His slightly sour scent, like that of chickpeas soaked in water, stayed with her after he’d gone. Like them, he had not been able to shower in the days that had passed since both he and his van had been called into service.
The baby woke up with a series of adorable sneezes that made his fleshy cheeks quiver. Margo, the concerned mother, poured fresh milk into his bottle, added sugar cubes, and put it into his thirsty mouth. He shook the bottle and laughed at the unfamiliar rattle of the cubes smacking against the inside of the bottle. After that, she gave him the heel of the loaf of bread, which he ate down to the last crumb. He sat in his mother’s lap, sated and bored. Lila spread her fan and waved it, sharing the royal breeze with Margo and the baby.
Lila looked so different from the other occupants of the shelter, like some Italian countess caught in a ruined city. Her only concession was not reapplying red lipstick. She took off her red beaded necklace and gave it to the baby to keep him quiet and occupied. Indeed, it worked; he moved the beads back and forth and gnawed on them, and his saliva made them shiny.
This worried Margo, but Lila said, “That is the purest spittle in the world. I prayed in front of the Holy Ark for God to bring this baby to you.”
Lila entertained the baby with a tickling story in which his left hand argued with his right hand, and then they made up. Some time passed before Nomi was finally handed three slices of bread spread with chocolate, and a little milk. It seemed to her that night had already fallen, and it was the hour at which her stomach began to send up protests—at first a small reminder, a little murmur every few minutes—which intensified to convulsive pains on her right side.
Lila remarked that Nomi had an internal clock. “If she isn’t fed by six in the evening, her stomach presses all the way through to her back.” And she pressed on Nomi’s already concave stomach.
The widower was fussing with the radio antenna, but the batteries were dying.
Lila said, “I’m going up to your apartment to wash my hands and face, and I’ll bring Nomi something to eat.”
“Absolutely not,” Margo said. “It’s dangerous.”
Lila said, “I’m going crazy here and I need the bathroom and there’s no air. I’ll be back in five minutes. What do you have in the pantry?”
Nomi sat up and said, “There’s ravioli in a tin. You don’t even have to warm it up, just open the lid.”
Lila said, “I’ll be right back.”
Nomi stood up. “I’m coming with you. I need the bathroom, too; my tummy hurts.”
For a moment, Margo looked like someone who had lost her ability to make a decision. She looked from one to the other and said, “All right, but only for a few minutes. Lila, keep an eye on her. Don’t let her eat the entire pantry.”
The neighbors watched as they passed by on their way out. No one else dared to stand up or even think about leaving their hole in the ground. They all only went as far as the bathroom in the rabbi’s apartment on the ground floor. Lila took a firm grasp of Nomi’s hand in a way that was clear to one and all she would look after the girl. The baby understood he was being abandoned and wailed, but they kept on walking and left the shelter.
They were accosted by the natural light, the perfumed June air, the blue evening, and the silent street. Nomi stayed close to Lila, feeling the temptation to take just two more steps outside into unprotected space. Lila hesitated a moment but steeled herself and led the girl up the stairs. Quickly, they climbed, nearly running, Lila pleased that her body was obeying her, her legs light. Her hand fumbled with the lock, and Nomi showed her how to do it. The door opened.
Nomi felt as though she hadn’t been in her home for years.
Lila said, “Go to the bathroom first, and then I’ll go after you. And make it fast.” In the meantime, she went into the kitchen, put water in the kettle, and lit the burner. In the pantry, she found tins of ravioli and beans in sauce. Lila took her turn in the bathroom and called out to Nomi: “Did you wash your hands from all that filth in the shelter?”
Nomi did not have a chance to answer. A loud whistle pierced the air. A shell and then another fell, and for the first time the war felt very near and very real. Lila raced from the bathroom, and Nomi lay on the floor, a serious expression on her face, waiting for an explanation.
“Heavens!” Lila said as she lay down next to Nomi. “Were you frightened?”
“A little,” Nomi said, and she laid her cheek on the cool tiles. The quiet returned after only a few moments.
Lila went to the window to see what the war looked like from up above. She peeled back the brown contact paper that had been plastered onto the windows and saw the street looked deserted but undamaged; the shells had not hit here but somewhere else. She helped Nomi rise. “Are you still hungry?” she asked.
“Starved,” Nomi said.
Lila dunked the canned goods into a dish of boiling water. She made two mugs of instant coffee with milk, found some cookies in a sealed jar, and prepared a tray. She moved with astonishing speed, vivaciously, discovering the power of hunger and survival. Her hands stirred sweet porridge for the baby.
In the meantime, she hurried to the living room and turned on the radio. It took a moment before the faint voice of the broadcaster could be heard as it faded in and out: “Paratroops . . . heavy fighting at the gates to the Old City . . . brave fighting by our troops . . . fresh battles on the Syrian front . . .” Lila sat on the sofa like someone unable to stand on her feet anymore.
“The porridge nearly boiled over,” Nomi said from the kitchen. “I turned off the gas.”
Lila suddenly appeared defeated, powerless, pale, stricken. Her movements were slow. Nomi spooned the porridge into a bowl, something she had done dozens of times for her baby brother. Sometimes she added cocoa or cream, but this time she had to hurry. They had already been aboveground for longer than they had promised.
Before they left the apartment, Nomi said, “Wash your face in cold water.”
Lila returned, white-lipped, from the sink. They went back down the stairs, Lila holding the tray, and the girl holding the tattered atlas she was never without and a toy ambulance for the baby and, she had remembered at the last moment, his patchwork blanket, without which he would sleep too lightly.
Just as much as the trip upstairs had seemed promising and uplifting, the change from dark to light, from despair to relief, from suffocation to clean air, so the trip back downstairs created its opposite. Nomi sensed that something Lila heard on the radio had weakened her, at the exact moment at which Nomi had not been watching out for her. There was very little light left, and the stairwell was oppressive. Soon, the city would wrap itself in the darkness of wartime and would extinguish its lights until it was pitch-black. Nomi grabbed hold of the banister so as not to fall, and Lila descended slowly, both hands grasping the tray.
“Let’s not tell them about the noise we heard,” Lila said, and Nomi nodded in agreement.
On the ground floor, in the moment before they descended to the cellar, Lila breathed deeply and told Nomi to draw in several deep breaths of fresh air. They disappeared into the gloom toward two lit flashlights. The baby was happy to see them.
“Because you brought him the ambulance, he won’t eat the porridge when it’s hot,” Margo complained.
Lila grimaced at her and said, “He’ll eat soon enough; it’s no problem.”