About the Night (39 page)

“Who’s it about?” Nomi asked.

“That Italian, what’s her name? Gigliola Cinquetti,” he said.

Nomi caught sight of Lila on the dance floor and waved to her with the scarf. Lila moved toward her to the sounds of the music and, with a nearly imperceptible gesture, took it from her hands and tied it around her hips, dancing like no other woman at the wedding.

A circle of admiring men and envious women gathered around her, clapping hands. Lila danced frenetically, song after song, and the band followed her lead. The men in the room stared at her beauty, and the women smiled sourly at the sight of her lissome moves.

Nomi thought, They think she’s dancing for them, but she’s really dancing for the man with the nice smell.

Lila’s face was deeply flushed and a film of perspiration covered her face. Her lipstick was nearly gone, and she had been dancing for almost an hour when suddenly she fell into Menash’s arms. Menash, sensing her impending collapse, had drawn near and was now carrying her outside like a groom carrying his bride over the threshold, except in this case the bridal gown was black.

In stealth, Nomi took off after them. Lila’s body was shivering, and sobs were rising from her father’s shoulder.

“You’re exhausted,” Menash told her. “You danced up a storm in there. Let’s get you home.”

Nomi ran back into the hall, collected Lila’s evening bag, and dashed outside. Lila was lying crumpled on the backseat of the Volkswagen and was breathing heavily. Nomi was startled, but Menash told her to sit beside her while they took her home.

Nomi had wanted to stay to the very end of the wedding as was customary for family members, when the band played slow dances and the bride took off her heels and melted into her husband and desserts stood on trays for the taking and could be wrapped up and brought home. The gossips had hurried outside to catch sight of Lila’s downfall, but Nomi had been faster; she took Lila’s scarf and used it to cover the windows of their mini ambulance, like the government vehicles she saw on the streets transporting VIPs.

Menash went back inside to collect Margo and the baby, whom he placed sleeping on Nomi’s lap.

“What a lousy, shabby wedding that was,” Margo said as she plunged into the Beetle. “What food! I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies.”

When the car pulled away and the engine was rumbling and clattering, Lila let loose with a terrible sobbing that was trapped inside the tiny car, a wailing such as Nomi had never heard. She had never guessed that strong Lila could ever fall apart like this.

“Should I pull over?” Menash asked.

Margo said, “Keep driving. She wants to get home already.”

Menash pleaded with Lila. “Please don’t cry like that. You’re breaking my heart.”

But the crying only grew louder, the wailing more intense. Her head bobbed with her sobs, and words could be heard between crying jags: “He’s married. He’s married. He’s married. He’s married. He’s married. He’s married. He’s married. He’s married.”

Margo was angry and impatient. “What’s she saying there?” she asked Nomi. “I can’t understand a word . . . what does she mean,
deezmary
?”

The Beetle stopped at the entrance to Lila’s building. Nomi whispered, “We’re home, Lila.”

Lila’s face was wet and stained with smeared makeup. Her hair was a mess, and her dress was rumpled. For a moment, she reminded Nomi of the neighbor whose apartment had gone up in flames, and the firemen had rescued her, sooty and choking and wet from the hoses.

“I’ll go up with her,” Nomi said, and it seemed to her that her parents were relieved to be exempt from this late-night mission.

In the stairwell, Nomi went to switch on the light, but Lila said, “In the dark.” Silver moonlight filtered in through the windows, but Lila called it “evil, despicable light.” Anyone looking out a peephole would have seen a girl in a white dress pulling a barefooted woman in a black dress up the stairs, her body weak and broken. In her other hand, Nomi was carrying Lila’s shoes, evening bag, and scarf. Every once in a while, Lila stifled a sob that threatened to escape into the stairwell and behind the doors of the sleeping neighbors.

After the long climb up the stairs, Lila threw herself onto her bed as if a single moment longer on her feet would have been impossible. Nomi lit a table lamp on the cabinet and put Lila’s scarf, evening bag, and shoes on it, all of which now seemed empty and meaningless; without the glamour and elegance of the woman to whom they belonged, they ceased to exist.

“Go on,” Lila moaned. “They’re waiting for you downstairs.”

Nomi wanted to go, but she stopped and looked at Lila as if asking for permission to abandon her. Lila turned her face to the wall, giving her the sign she needed. She left quietly, closed the door, and pressed her ear to the door. As expected, Lila’s crying intensified. And there was nothing Nomi could do for her.

Menash turned his head to the backseat and said, “So? How is she? A little calmer?”

Nomi said, “She’s very tired.”

“Did you understand anything she was saying?” Margo asked.

“Nothing,” Nomi said. “Not a word.”

Margo said, “She hates weddings. She always says she’s glad she never married, and she’s free and nothing ties her down. No husband or children. She doesn’t enjoy weddings at all.”

“At Rachelle’s wedding,” Nomi said, her face to the window, “Lila had a good time, and she danced. At Miko’s wedding, too.”

“That girl,” Margo said, as if Nomi were not in the car, “will always stick up for Lila.”

“Can I skip school tomorrow?” Nomi asked, even though the timing was bad. “I’m really, really tired.”

“No,” Margo said quickly. “People who don’t go to school end up sweeping hair from the beauty salon floor.”

Nomi did not understand what was so bad about sweeping up hair, but she kept quiet because she knew her father would not go against Margo’s decision.

The metal blinds were shuttered. The light that filtered through the slats indicated that the sun had risen. The lamp on the cabinet was lit. Her body was still wrapped in the stockings and black dress she had worn the night before. Her mouth was dry, her head as heavy as a lead ball. She opened her eyes again, and her first waking thought hit with a thud, cruel and stealthy and deceitful and malicious, a continuation of last night’s nightmare. But this was reality, though it took her a moment to realize it. It had really and truly happened.

Her man belonged to another woman. He would be waking up beside her now, this faceless, nameless woman, but she was present in his life, she was real, she existed, the mother of his children, his beloved wife, the one he would protect from hunger and disease, and when their house would be bombarded, he would dive onto her in order to die in her place. This faceless woman lived her life alongside him, falling asleep in the crook of his arm, cooking the rice he loved, watching him while he put on aftershave cologne, listening as he sang, unknotting his tie, enjoying the fact that he was comfortable, arguing with him, making up with him, sleeping with him.

She tried moving, but her head seemed rooted in the pillow. The clock said it was five twenty in the morning. She thought she would either vomit or go out to the roof for some fresh air. She dragged herself to the sink but did not look in the mirror. On such a day, a day when everything has been destroyed, she did not wish to see her own reflection. She left makeup stains on the towels. On her way to the roof, she grew faint and dizzy, and she sat on the edge of the bed to rest, then fell over, curled into a ball, and pulled the blanket over herself. She saw no good reason to wake up into this gloom.

For hours she lay that way in her black dress and smeared makeup, her crying echoing in the apartment walls. Sometimes she beat the mattress and called out his name to come and rescue her and take her to a place where such disasters did not befall people. She derided his weakness and hated his faithlessness and more than anything wished for him to disappear. And for herself to die: such stupidity deserved the death penalty, she wailed. Such blindness! Such naïveté! She cried for the lost years, for every day she had believed they would one day be reunited, and for the terrible years yet to come—empty, barren, and bitter. She was a woman deceived, someone who had been misled, and not for a year or two but for twenty. Instead of a heart, a blood pump would beat inside her; suspicion and mistrust and repulsion would take the place of the feelings that had filled her all these years.

Without sleep or water, she remained confined to her bed until the following evening. Her thoughts shattered in the darkening room, ranging from desperate longing for his warm eyes to fury and insult and a desire to return to the days of hope.

The previous evening, he had come at the appointed hour and picked her up from the parking lot for “a little drive around,” as he had put it.

Now she was disgusted by every minute she had sat next to him, not sensing what it was he was going to say, every minute he had gazed at her with his honeyed eyes, every minute that she had not fathomed the impending disaster. He had shifted in his seat, coughing and clearly agitated, but nothing in the small, contained space of the car had hinted that the sky was about to fall and a flood would engulf everything. His cough had seemed to her like nervousness about their reunification, but nothing more.

She thought about their short drive in all its details. Every once in a while, she would look over at him to catch another aspect of him: his hair had grayed, and two lines creased his cheeks from next to his nose to the edges of his lips. He looked tired, nearly extinguished. He did not smile or joke or touch her, except perhaps with his eyes. No, not even with his eyes. He drove, and she did not ask where they were going. He asked whose wedding it was, and when she answered, she felt that his thoughts were elsewhere. That had always been a sign of tension or stress with him,

Then, by the Yasson Tomb, he stopped, and they got out of the car. He led her past the oleander bushes that hid a bench. In her eyes, the way he had aged made him more handsome than ever.

But something had already come between them. A tremor passed through her, as if she were feeling the distant wind that was carrying an oncoming storm.

“I tried to find you,” she said.

“When?” he asked.

“Right after the war.”

He remained silent.

“And you?”

“I needed some time to know what to do,” he said.

“Elias’s pace,” she said, bringing up something from the past in order to reduce the distance between them.

He still had a serious look on his face when he said, “Yes, it takes me time. You remember that.” He said, “I wanted to ask . . .” Then he fell silent.

“Ask,” she said. She was only too willing to chop the head off doubt wherever and whenever it appeared.

“I don’t know where to begin,” he said, his voice low. His fingers hovered over the cleft on his chin. “What’s happened with you all these years?” he asked at last.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, opened them, and gazed at him at length. Finally, she said, “I got through them.”

“But how?” he asked, his eyes on the thicket surrounding the tomb.

“One day, then another,” she said. “And you?”

“I survived,” he said. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and then he sat up, stood slowly, walked several steps away. “It was difficult,” he said, his back to her. “Sometimes impossible.”

He sounded like a man who had been exiled from his country for many long years and was trying to rediscover the language and customs that were once familiar. She felt a foreignness, a metallic strangeness between them, for the first time since she had met him.

“My family,” he continued, “they put terrible pressure on me. It was very difficult.” He looked at her. “And as for us, I thought it was over, that we’d never meet again.”

At these words, she felt prickles course through her body.

He was still standing. His eyes did not meet hers. Or perhaps she was not looking at him at that moment.

“I married,” he said. “And I have three children.”