About the Night (49 page)

“What a guest!” exclaimed Rita, the first to squelch her surprise. “Come in.” She removed the box clumsily from his arms and exclaimed, “Wow! He brought a samovar!”

But Monsieur Hubert had already made his way theatrically to Mrs. Westfried, whose gloved hand he kissed, and said, “Had I known you would be here, Mrs. Westfried, I would have brought you a white orchid.”

Mrs. Westfried pursed her lips into a tight smile.

“Very well,” Monsieur Hubert said, barely concealing his bitterness, “I’ll be on my way back.
Someone
has to keep the salon running.”

“Monsieur Hubert,” Rita called after him. He turned around. “You’re an angel,” she said, and she stepped up to give him a hug. “You just don’t know it.”

“What?” she said, scolding her astonished friends after he left. “He’s been on his own since he was fifteen. Someone has to hug him sometime, don’t you think?”

The renovations were completed later that week. Well-organized Mrs. Westfried insisted on signing a contract with Lila that stated that Mrs. Westfried would pay the rent on the house in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem as well as the maintenance expenses during the course of the first year of operation. Lila, for her part, would run the house and look after the girls, the staff, and the volunteers. No more than twenty girls would be in residence at a given time.

Five bedrooms and a common room had already been prepared and furnished. Judging by the beautiful mosaic-tiled floor, the large windows, and the arched ceilings, there was no doubt that this house had been built and occupied by Arabs. The cook told Lila everything was lovely and perfect except for one thing: mint would not grow in the garden. Mrs. Westfried chalked it up to the harsh Jerusalem winters. In the end, only red geraniums seemed to thrive. Mrs. Westfried refused to allow the house to be named for her—“Good deeds should be done modestly,” she said—but some things happen without a guiding hand, and the place became known as Westfried House to one and all.

For Lila, the move from Salon Hubert to Westfried House happened in the most natural fashion imaginable. The sky did not fall, even though Lila thought it might. Mrs. Westfried paid her a modest salary, and Elias, who had encouraged her to make the move, served as the accountant, lawyer, consultant, and driver. After several months, Lila felt she had found her calling, like a bird that lost its way as it flew over water only to land in the most obvious and natural place, in a small, sun-drenched village. That is what Westfried House felt like to her.

During the first weeks, two girls were the only occupants, but within no time word got out and passed from clients of Lila’s to psychologists and gynecologists, and quite soon girls arrived from all around the country.

Westfried House was unique and pioneering in Jerusalem, and it began to catch on among the people in Lila’s life as well. Rosa came to take measurements for maternity clothes and to extend the waistbands of the girls’ trousers with white strips of elastic. Ezra insulated drafty windows and opened clogged drains. Elias kept the place supplied with tea, sugar, rice, and oil, the necessary basics. Rita baked a heart-shaped torte every Friday and placed it on the kitchen table. Hava from the salon waxed the girls’ legs and plucked their eyebrows.

Nomi spent every moment she could there. She drew and read; she listened to music and sat on the carpet at the girls’ feet. She held her hands in the air when they needed her to help them make skeins of wool for knitting. She was there to run for produce at the greengrocer’s, plant flowers, or draw up a weekly chore rotation for the girls. In the warmth of this home, this nest of compassion and solace, she found something she had been lacking, a magnetic force that rooted her there.

Only Margo feigned disinterest and even protested Nomi’s visits there. “It’s not a place for a little girl,” she told Lila, as if they were talking about a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. Every time Lila spoke of Westfried House, Margo grew angry, and her frown revealed her loathing. Elias gathered that unlike Salon Hubert, which was attractive to Margo, the home for unwed mothers was a boring stock that should not even be invested in.

Lila, on the other hand, thought that the home represented an opportunity that had not existed when Margo could have used it. Perhaps she would have wanted to be one of those girls, able to have her baby and give it up so she could get on with her life instead of being handcuffed to the husband she wished to get away from. Margo’s life could have been very different if such a home had been established in her day, and she could have sent her baby away with a single signature on a document.

Every morning a cohort of teachers came to Westfried House to teach the girls English, literature, history, math, and the Bible. Mrs. Westfield provided books, a record player and records, heaters, and a washing machine. She made no fuss whatsoever at giving the girls special lessons in art, ceramics, and cooking. A psychologist paid them a weekly visit to make sure they would be able to give up their children for adoption or perhaps opt to raise the child themselves, though no one ever chose that option.

Lila was there all day every day and was perceived by everyone as the housemother. The mother of a house: if not a mother of someone, then a mother of something, the mother of an idea and its actualization, the mother of these abandoned girls at least during the months they would spend at Westfried House. She discovered that she was bound to them heart and soul; she felt their pain as she did their joy.

At night, the gate was locked, and the iron rule of the house prevailed: no visitors. This was not a clubhouse. This was the safe harbor for these girls, the warm home that would prepare them for their dramatic parting from childhood. In the evenings, they would drink Earl Grey tea, bake cookies, and learn to dance to the Beatles, the Platters, and Cliff Richard.

Frustratingly, the municipality refused to recognize or finance Westfried House, stymied by pressure from the religious parties and different groups of varying piousness and sanctimoniousness. Closing the place down became a bigger and bigger issue the more the home filled up with pregnant girls. Mrs. Westfried noted that if they had failed, nobody would bother them, but since, instead, the home had turned out to be a minor revolution, its demise was being actively sought. She claimed that petty bureaucrats did not like to be shown how truly impotent they were. But the controversy brought out the fighter in her. She told the hallowed mayor of Jerusalem that “our home for girls has broken a taboo in spite of the fanatics.”

One evening, when the home was quiet and the lights had been turned off, the windows were shattered. The girls ran from their rooms in their pajamas as flaming torches were hurled in from the street, and the curtains caught fire. The walls were spray painted in red with the words “House of Shame.”

The staff gathered the girls together and drove them to Mrs. Westfried’s house, where the bedrooms and sitting rooms filled with life, and it seemed the place had been waiting for just such a thing for years.

The damage was extensive, but the home was renovated. It took weeks before the electricity could be restored and the building could be repainted, and longer still to get rid of the sooty stench. Money came in from the United States that covered all the equipment destroyed by the flames.

Mano volunteered to patrol in the evenings. “The Jewish religion,” he told Lila, “doesn’t encourage fanaticism and violence. On the contrary, Judaism advocates moderation and tolerance. It’s people who interpret it in a twisted way.”

He would circle the house every evening, looking for suspicious objects and people and testing the locks. He paid Lila a compliment: “I didn’t believe you’d ever leave the salon.”

Westfried House settled down to its business, and Lila gave herself over entirely to this place where new life was developing. It was a house of tears and joy.

At the end of every day, a twenty-year-old Mercedes chauffeured by Elias parked outside Westfried House. He did not kiss his beloved when she entered the car, but warmth passed between them as they gazed at each other, the fire of restraint. From there, he would drive her to her home.

He brought meat and fresh vegetables, halvah and coffee and tea. They would cook together, usually well-seasoned one-pot meals downed with wine, and dance to music. He would bury his nose in her neck to get her to stop stirring, and she would turn to him, absorbed in his embrace, and their bodies would press together as if they had never been apart. Those were the hours of the day during which he was exactly where he wanted to be—no compromises, no contortions: in a tiny apartment with the woman of his life, now forty-eight and beautiful and ripe, warm and feminine.

At times, when he was not with her, he would look at people in the street and notice their sadness, their boredom, the fatigue on their faces. They looked extinguished. How many of them, he wondered, were lucky enough to enjoy a portion of happiness every evening? How many of them were loved? How many would give up what they had in order to be where he and Lila were, a place where they had removed their clothes and remained naked? No, they had not stripped off their clothing. They had stepped out of pretense and the opinions and bitterness of others. He knew the answer: precious few. All the others were the walking dead.