Authors: Orly Castel-Bloom
While Lirit was remembering all the above, Bahat was trying to call her, but Lirit didn’t hear the ring because she was playing a tape very loudly to herself. The radio had been tuned to a station playing Hebrew songs, but Lirit had soon put a stop to that.
Accordingly, Bahat was obliged to remain with the facts seething inside her, without an outlet in Israel.
She wanted to complain to Lirit, or anyone, about the phenomenon of Gruber, and she wanted to demand that Lirit come and get him. No, enough was enough, she couldn’t stand him anymore.
It was the little things that broke her. Gruber left the bathroom in a disgusting state, even if he only went in to brush his teeth and comb his hair. He behaved as if seven chambermaids were following him around wherever he went. And in the toilet, the way he urinated annoyed her. It was many years since she had had to clean leftover urine from the toilet bowl. And now that she had to do it again, she felt great annoyance.
The man, it turned out, raised the toilet seat, but failed to lower it again, and sometimes, albeit rarely, he didn’t even take the trouble to raise it, and this, in her opinion, was the height of chutzpah. Who did he think he was, an animal? He finished the toilet paper and didn’t change the roll. And he still had the nerve to argue that Mandy had allowed him not to change it, because he had trouble with the spring. What kind of an argument was that? Was that the way he behaved with his wife, or did he think that his wife’s laws were valid for her as well?
She began to detest the guest more and more, and he, for his part, grew more and more demanding and dependent, and was convinced
that everything he did stemmed from his outburst of feelings for Bahat. All this was not at all what the enthusiastic Reform rabbi had in mind. The prayer shawl, and the big skullcap, which she hadn’t yet decided whether to wear or not, were in a drawer in her closet, folded up.
For three nights now she had been sleeping in the rarely used guest room, while he lay sprawled on her comfortable bed. He sweated so much at night, because of the objective situation, that she was obliged to change his sheets every day. He asked to be involved in the choice of sheets, because he claimed that Bahat’s bed linen was depressing.
She was also repelled by his negligence, by his failure to return to Israel with the information she had given him in order to continue his experiments with the requisite urgency. Every day that passed claimed more victims who could have been saved if he hadn’t thought only of himself, and she patted herself on the shoulder, noting that her thoughts were becoming more and more moral.
From time to time he said to her, “I love you,” in English. And also “I love you very much.” It was impossible to tell anything from these declarations because they were in blatant contradiction to his behavior. It was clear to her that he had completely freaked out, and she only hoped that his love would be short-lived, like that of the Hispanic Salazar: two weeks of sensual intoxication, and after that as if nothing had happened, coolness lacking in tension, but empathy and outstanding efficiency.
Bahat had a theory that her latest discoveries about the silk protein were made possible by spare libido, at least on her part. As for Salazar, she had no idea what motivated him, but his ideas were brilliant.
In the end she despaired of her attempts to contact Lirit and she decided to take things into her own hands. As long as the seven days of mourning for his wife lasted (Gruber began the shivah from the moment he was informed of her death), she would show restraint. After that she would assert herself.
ON THE NIGHT BETWEEN THE SIXTH AND SEVENTH DAY of mourning, Gruber wet the bed. Since Bahat was sleeping in the guest room she was spared the direct experience, although he did call her in the middle of the night to change the sheets.
As far as Bahat was concerned this was a sign to phone a psychiatrist and request an urgent home visit. The effort of persuading the squatter to leave the house and go to the psychiatrist’s office seemed to her an investment of energy that she needed for herself and which she wasn’t about to put at Gruber’s disposal, not even out of philanthropy.
She opened the Ithaca Yellow Pages and looked up the number of the well-known medical center of the town. There she obtained the name of a psychiatrist who she assumed, like every other psychiatrist in the world, received private patients as well. She spoke to his secretary at his official place of work and found a pretext for getting his home and cell phone numbers out of her.
The man’s name was Bill Stanton. A healthy instinct led her to the conclusion that Gruber should on no account be seen by a female psychiatrist. Stanton said that he would drop in on his way to work. No, he didn’t take money for the first consultation, only for the second. She asked if a home visit had to be paid for anyway, and he said that in this case too he only took money for the second visit. This was his conception, he said and laughed, he believed that it was enough for a person to have to see a psychiatrist, he didn’t have to pay for it as well.
But McPhee was suspicious of this argument because she had heard of the new community founded by one thousand of the twenty thousand whites (20,893 white citizens, who constituted 71.3 percent of the population of the town). Anyone in Ithaca could be a member of the new community, even if he was one of the 460 Puerto Ricans in the town, or one of the 125 Vietnamese. Whether he was man over eighteen of any race and color (13,433), or a woman over eighteen of any race and color (13,149).
This community had set itself the goal of increasing the goodness inherent in all human beings, of all sectors and genders, and it was called the Goodwill Community. All the members happened to be whites who lived on the outskirts of the town and provided themselves with all the services they required not for money, but through a system of barter. And as for the rest of the inhabitants of Ithaca, whether they belonged to the 1,555 Hispanics (or Latino-Americans, according to the accepted usage of the day), or the 1,965 Afro-Americans, or Chinese by origin (1,659), or of any other race (356), they were all entitled to significant reductions. They enjoyed the services of the Goodwill Community for a symbolic fee, which was itself donated to charity.
The fact that Dr. Bill Stanton turned out to be a member of the Goodwill Community bothered Bahat, because she was afraid she would hesitate to ask him for all kinds of extras on his home visit.
McPhee wasn’t prepared for charitable freebies. She wanted an accurate diagnosis, but at the same time as comprehensive as possible.
DR. BILL STANTON arrived the same day. He spoke to Gruber in his room for a long time, and afterward he came out to Bahat, who was waiting in suspense in the hallway.
He told her that he was hesitating between a diagnosis of recurrent major depression with symptoms of compulsive behavior (including the symptom of his falling in love with her), and post-traumatic stress disorder, in which case his depression, and all his
bizarre behavior, including the falling in love, were only a side effect of the disorder.
He had no doubt that Gruber was a borderline case, and in view of his other doubts regarding the diagnosis, he asked for permission to use the telephone in order to consult a colleague, since the medication for the two conditions was different.
“Medication?” asked Bahat.
“Yes.”
He spoke for about five minutes on the phone and then he explained:
“We try one kind of medication, and if it works, we continue, and if it doesn’t, it’s a sign that it’s the second possibility, and in this way we arrive at the right medication, in the hope that it is indeed right. In any case, it will take two or three weeks, or even more, to see what works, and judging by what works we’ll know what’s wrong with him.”
“Dr. Stanton,” said Bahat with all the restraint at her command, “this man is an Israeli. He isn’t an American citizen. He has no visa to stay here. Who knows if he even has medical insurance. His presence here is actually illegal. He came here to give me information. I received the information. He can go back to his own country. And as for the trauma, it’s simple: his wife died a little over a week ago, and that’s the whole trauma.”
“The trauma predates the death of his wife,” said Stanton. “This isn’t a fresh trauma. I can recognize a fresh trauma when I see one.”
“I can recognize a fresh trauma too,” said Bahat, red in the face with rage, “this person simply went crazy in front of my eyes and he needs to be committed to an institution! He has two children waiting for him in Israel. Two motherless children. They don’t understand what’s going on. Give him an injection and we’ll send him back to where he came from.”
Stanton laughed.
“Mrs. McPhee, we don’t use those methods here. And speaking
personally I don’t think I could do it either,” he added. And then he said quietly, “As far as I’m concerned, as soon as I turn my back you can throw him into the street. Where he’ll be arrested for vagrancy. There are policemen everywhere now. There was fighting among the Natives (there are 289 Native Americans in Ithaca) and the police are patrolling all the streets. I’m sure he’ll be arrested for vagrancy, and I have no doubt that in his condition he doesn’t really remember your address . . .”
At this point he raised his voice again,
“So what do we have here, Mrs. McPhee? We have denial of reality—what it stems from has yet to be ascertained.”
“And if the pills don’t take effect in three weeks?”
“Then we’ll try the post-traumatic treatment.”
“Because of the death of his wife?” Bahat insisted.
“No,” said Stanton. “He reacted to his wife’s death by falling obsessively in love with you.”
“I understand,” said Bahat. “In other words, six weeks maximum?”
“More or less,” said the doctor.
“I don’t believe it,” said Bahat, with tears in her eyes. “I don’t understand.”
Stanton decided to invest a little more in this woman; he laid his hand on her shoulder and said:
“My bet is that he’s post-traumatic, but I want to eliminate the depression first. And then get him onto a post-traumatic protocol. The medication for depression works faster than the post-trauma medication, and we should try to shorten the period of uncertainty as much as possible.”
“Interesting,” murmured McPhee.
Stanton continued, “He told me that they recently moved into a new neighborhood. That’s the trauma. There’s a certain tree there, a type of palm, that he detests. He prefers their old house, but he and his wife, the one who died, have already sold it.”
“So what do we do now?” she asked. “On the twentieth of next
month I have an ordination. It’s a very serious ceremony. I have to prepare. I have to write a speech. He makes so much noise. I can’t put up with it.”
“I’ve already told you what I can suggest. Now I must go. There’s no lack of trouble in the world.”
He left.
BAHAT TRIED Lirit again, without success. She toyed with the idea of sending him out to buy bread in the hope that he would get lost. But on second thoughts she decided that she didn’t want to endanger the special status she had gained in the eyes of Schlesinger, the Albany Reform rabbi. If this man wandered round outside, she was almost sure that with his extroversion, even Schlesinger would hear that he was still in America and understand that the Israelis had not yet made any use of the classified information, and then the whole loneliness-alleviating project would go down the drain.
She dropped onto the living-room sofa in despair. From Gruber’s room on the second floor she heard Edith Bunker’s voice screeching “Ar-chie!”—and the intruder’s hoarse wheezing laugh.
She switched on the television and stared at the National Geographic channel. Yes, she would be better off letting the anarchy rage around her, and watching something more organized, such as the nesting of the condor.
She fell asleep for a few minutes, and when she woke up she saw Irad standing and looking at her. He was unshaven and even from a distance reeked of every possible kind of odor, perhaps he had even brought some of them with him from Israel. He said, this time without a hint of demand,
“I’m hungry.”
“Eat something.”
“I don’t know how to cook for myself, but I’ll keep you company while you cook. That’s what I used to do in the old house. Sit in the kitchen and talk to Mandy. There was room in the kitchen there.”
“And in the new house there isn’t any?”
“There isn’t any room, and Mandy isn’t there either,” he said and sank into despair.
“Omelet or scrambled egg?” asked Bahat with forced brightness and made for the kitchen.
“Scrambled,” said Irad.
LIRIT TRIED ON HER MOTHER’S BURGUNDY BRA. SHE wanted to see if Mandy was right when she said in the Ramat Aviv mall that from the point of view of gravity they were both equal. Mandy’s bra was too big for her. Her mother was mistaken. She had only had a breast lift, not a breast reduction.
Now she was about to set out for a very important meeting on Kibbutz Kissufim, and she dressed with an elegance suitable to Israel, without too much joie de vivre. After exhaustive inquiries, in the course of which she had encountered the usual wall of silence encountered by people trying to clarify something (it being human nature to retreat when faced by the possibility of clarification, for all kinds of reasons of survival), she had reached a certain Oron de Bouton, who for some years had been growing organic cotton of the Pima variety on Kibbutz Kissufim, by sub-surface drip irrigation.