The Tunnel, page 9
“A beautiful name,” says Luria, “the Hebrew name of the planet Venus.”
“Like Ma’adim and Shabbetai,” adds Noam.
“Yes, Mars and Saturn,” the grandfather confirms. “And before you go and watch television, and I go for a little nap in my bedroom, finish up the shakshuka, Nevo, so your mother Noga won’t be angry with me for not feeding you.”
“Imma won’t be angry,” declares the child, by now back to normal, “because Imma wants me to eat only what I like.”
The man of the house has no choice but to clear the table and throw away the leftovers, and make his two guests wash their hands again and sit close to the television, because the volume must be kept down. All agree on a children’s channel that specializes in puppet monsters, and after they promise to wake him when Nevo’s mother arrives, he allows himself the luxury of unplugging the telephone.
But before he dozes off, he wonders if he was too quick to affirm the existence of a father who never was. Nevertheless, he rationalizes, if the boy himself insisted he has a father, maybe he knows something others don’t. As the host of an unfamiliar child, he is obligated not only to feed, but to calm and console. Lively laughter drifts from the living room to the bedroom, as the boys enjoy the pranks of adorable monsters. If so, the promised father is already doing a good job. Darkness descends on him slowly. Is the dementia dozing along with him, or is it sneaking into his sleep to scramble his dreams? Here he is, walking on sunlit soil, clearly not in Israel, perhaps in an African country, where a road is being paved. Are the workers African, or is the tar they are pouring turning them black? The ancient green steamroller, the big, dumb old steamroller from a children’s song, moves back and forth to smooth the road, but who’s that driver in the wide colonial hat that’s hiding his face? Isn’t that Divon, who declined to head a division at Israel Roads in favour of driving an antique steamroller in Africa? No, no, this is someone else, with a hard, sad face, and Luria, fearful of dementia, recognizes the father he himself has sent to a faraway land. I promised your son you would come back, screams the dreamer bitterly, but the driver just speeds up the noisy steamroller, while the two boys shake Luria hard. Sabba, Sabba, shouts Noam. Sabba, yells Nevo, who by virtue of the father he received from Luria over lunch considers himself a new grandson. Get up, Sabba, Imma’s here, she’s here.
And in the fog of his dream, in the rectangle of light from the living room that fills the bedroom doorway, stands the image of his wife, though much younger, in a pair of high heels not worn in years, and the ponytail she chopped off a while ago. With the same bright, happy smile in her eyes, but of a different colour. Yes, now he understands why her son captured his heart at the kindergarten. I asked, she apologizes softly, that they let you rest, but they both insisted you wanted us to wake you. Luria casts off his light blanket and sits up with a pang of guilt, facing the wondrous figure who has appeared at his bedroom door. Yes, he says, a mischievous glint in his eye, I wanted to be woken up so I could be sure that you would take the right child. And yes, her sparkling laughter is just like his wife’s. Has the dementia blended the two women, or are they actually similar?
“Don’t be upset about what happened two weeks ago,” Noga reassures the old man, “it’s not the first time Nevo tried to cling to a stranger, especially if he’s like you, I mean, a bit on the older side. My father died before I even thought I wanted to be a mother, and a grandpa from the other side is only theoretical. So he’s a child in search of not only a father but a grandfather too.”
Luria quickly changes the subject, lest the child mention the father newly discovered over the shakshuka. “Yes,” he mumbles, “I understand, I liked it that he tagged along with me. But tell me, what’s with the vegetarian thing? Does it come from you?”
“The vegetarian thing?” She appreciates the change of subject. “I have no idea how he got into it. He’s not a child who’s attracted to animals, the opposite, he’s frightened of them.”
“So maybe, who knows,” says Luria, offering a new hypothesis, “maybe he imagines the animals will take revenge if he eats them.”
“Take revenge?” She recoils from the sleepy pensioner’s wild speculation and sends her son to fetch his cap and backpack. But Luria refuses to part from his wife’s youthful self.
“Wait, one more little question, if I may. I’ve never come across Nevo as a first name, only a family name.”
“Yes, it’s rare as a first name, but since I had him without a partner, I had a monopoly on picking a name.”
“You were thinking of the mountain?”
“Har Nevo?”
“Exactly.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“In the Sinai Desert, no?”
“No, many make that mistake. Mount Nevo is in Jordan, a few kilometres east of Jericho. When he gets older, for his bar mitzvah, the two of us will climb to the top, where there is a little church, and look out over this land, to establish if this is the right land for us or if we made a mistake.”
“Like Joshua,” whispers Luria with admiration.
“Joshua?” says the harpist. “Why Joshua? It’s Moses. I gave birth to this child at the very last moment I could, so he will need to look at the world independently when I’m no longer with him. Maybe the symbolism of his name will enable him to see from afar.”
“To see from afar,” repeats Nevo merrily, ready to go, knapsack on his back and cap on his head.
insomnia
Much to his surprise, the mother takes his grandson with her too, as requested by Avigail, who apparently still doubts her father’s ability to control his dementia. True, he is now free to float back into his afternoon nap, but he knows that now that he’s met the harpist, not only will the imaginary father soon pop up in his dream, but the harpist will too, who will berate him. Therefore it’s best not to sleep, so he moves to the living room and sits in front of the television, which is still showing the cuddly monsters tormenting one another. Since he has no way of knowing which ones are good and which bad, the suspense of watching them subsides and he dozes off again, until a gentle hand strokes his hand and turns off the TV.
“You sleep too much in the afternoon,” scolds his wife, “no wonder you suffer from insomnia at night.”
“It’s the opposite—because I can’t sleep at night, I’m exhausted during the day.”
“You need to break that vicious circle. Besides, it’s unhealthy for anyone, especially you, to fall asleep in front of a TV crawling with surrealistic characters.”
“They’re immoral, too.”
“So try to stay awake till I get home from the clinic, and after we eat you can nap with me like any normal person.”
“If that’s the definition of a normal person—”
“Enough,” she interrupts, “do what you want. But why did Avigail hurry to pick up Noam?”
“It wasn’t Avigail who came to get him, it was the mother of the kid who had latched on to me two weeks ago, and today they handed him to me officially.”
“So today you had two boys?”
“The second one was a vegetarian.”
“Don’t tell me you tried to feed him one of your shakshukas.”
“Why should I tell you what you already know?”
Now she gets serious: “Don’t be such a smart aleck all the time. Speak, talk, tell me, not just what I don’t know, but also what I do know. Be careful, Zvi,” she warns, “don’t avoid the issue. I need to know and understand everything that is happening to you before you fall into the abyss.”
He turns pale, bites his lip, as though “abyss,” a new word in this house, came out of his mouth and not hers. She understands that she went too far, but her pride won’t let her retract it, so she stands before him in anguished silence, and all he can do is hold her close to his chest, inhaling the smells of her paediatric clinic. “Yes, you’re right, you are, there’s no avoiding it. So you stay on guard and don’t let go, because I have no one else by my side. And now you must admit that some dubious project in the desert doesn’t need me.”
“Wait … wait …”
“Wait for what? It’s obvious that this handsome young man has guessed by now that there’s something fishy about the old pensioner you offered him for free, because he’s backing off from his promise to invite me to visit his father. Maybe he’s afraid that a man on the verge of the abyss will only harm his father, who faces an abyss of his own.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, he’ll call you. And don’t get stuck on a word that’s just a word. Give him time.”
“Okay, I’ll give him time.”
And as she watches her husband enjoy his stroll around the abyss that slipped from her lips, she shifts to the woman who picked up Noam along with her own son.
“Her son is called Nevo,” says Luria.
“No, the woman, what’s her name?”
“Something like Noa or Yona, a single mother, not so young. Avigail didn’t mention her?”
“Never.”
“She’s a musician, she plays the harp. She seems like a strong person, reminds me a little of … never mind … I asked her the meaning of the odd name she stuck her son with, and if it’s connected with the mountain in the Bible, and it turned out I was right, it is connected, and she intends, can you believe it, before his bar mitzvah, to take the boy to his mountaintop, Har Nevo, in Jordan, not far from Jericho, to look out onto Israel like … Josh—”
“Moses—”
“Exactly, to see if the land where he’s lived until his bar mitzvah will also suit him after his bar mitzvah, or whether he should hurry up and move to Berlin.”
“She told you all that?”
“Berlin is my little addendum. Anyway, what a presumptuous thought, to double-check this land from across the Jordan, from the beginning of time, as it were. So after she took Noam too, I panicked that she took him without asking, maybe to take him, too, up some mountain. But who knows what the truth is, because Avigail is in a meeting and her phone is turned off.”
“Right.”
“Then what?”
“Nothing. She wouldn’t have taken Noam without coordinating with Avigail. So why worry?”
“I don’t know. I felt a little like worrying …”
“So, what’s her first name?”
“Noa or Yona, something like that. Seems like the strong type.”
“Pretty?”
“Not really … maybe nice-looking … and a bit, just a bit, she reminds me of you when you were young.”
“If she reminds you of me, what are you worried about?”
That evening, watching the news on the bedroom TV, she is half asleep as the broadcast nears its end. But because she is convinced she can follow the day’s events while sleeping, and even analyse them in her dreams, she won’t let him turn off the television, just lower the sound. So he waits for her to lose consciousness before turning off the set completely and drifting off slowly beside her. Awarding a father to his afternoon guest still bothers him. Sooner or later the little boy will demand that his mother produce the promised father, and when his daughter learns of this, it will further diminish her trust in him. Thinking of the reprimand that awaits him, he gets out of bed and continues to churn his obsession in the dark apartment. Should he defend himself with the help of his incipient dementia, or rely on the human kindness aroused in him by the suffering child? He pours himself a cognac to dull his distress. Beyond the glass door of his big balcony the city dims its lights. A thin crescent from the east flirts with a flock of stars in the clear, open sky. The rain was welcome, but it’s good to have a respite. The stars provide Luria enough light to start the dishwasher. Also to switch on the computer, to check his paltry crop of emails. Before leaving the screen, he prowls the internet for landscapes and animals of Uganda, where Divon toured with his family. Why did he have to burden Nevo’s mother with a man she didn’t need? For a moment he thinks he ought to call her and explain his foolish act of kindness before the boy demands what she can’t give him. But he doesn’t know her family name, and what’s her first name again? If he asks Avigail, he’ll have to explain why. He goes back to bed and tries to fall asleep, unsuccessfully. So take a pill, mumbles Dina in her sleep, it will help relax you. He gets up and swallows the pill, certified as kosher by the neurologist, and lies immobile in bed, paving the way for the drug to do its work, but the distress of the imaginary father only gets stronger and won’t let go.
It’s past midnight now. No big deal, as a pensioner he can handle two sleepless nights. He wraps himself in a blanket and goes out on the balcony to enjoy the stars. The neurologist did mention the possibility that the difference between day and night would get fuzzy as the dementia progressed, but that’s a problem for those who still work and not for demented pensioners. In the park surrounding his apartment tower walks a solitary man with a little dog running around him. Before he takes on a cheerless Filipino to prevent him from getting lost, he’ll try to train a clever dog who will sense when he wants to go home and lead him there. Luria smiles: There’s no doubt that a dog would be not only less expensive than a Filipino but less humiliating. But until that time comes, better to lift his eyes to the sky, to the swarm of stars that grows brighter as the darkness of the city deepens. Before his son Yoav immersed himself in his successful business, he was an avid amateur astronomer. In his youth he belonged to a science club at Tel Aviv University, and visited the observatory near the Ramon Crater in the desert. His parents gave him an expensive telescope as a bar mitzvah present, and he would report to them and his friends the latest news from the solar system. If this were a more reasonable hour, he would no doubt be happy to guide his father through the galaxies of stars in the sky. But at this hour he will not bother his son, who sometimes lingers at his plant past midnight. All the same, says Luria to himself, so he’ll know I’m thinking of him and his stars even at this hour, I’ll send him a quick text: Yoav dear, if you happen to be awake, I have a question about the stars I happen to be looking at now.
The ringtone of a quick reply. Yoav, driving home from the plant, is eager to guide his father. Are the skies this bright in the North? I didn’t notice, answers the son, but I’ll pull over and look. What do you want to know, Abba?
“First, remind me of the names of the planets.” Yoav recites them one by one, and Luria remembers the name he is looking for.
“So I could, for example, see Mars?”
Yoav explains how to locate Mars, to the east of the moon.
“And Jupiter?”
Yoav doesn’t think his father can find Jupiter right now.
“And what about Noga,” says Luria, “where do I find her now?”
“You can only see Venus close to sunrise or sunset, because she is very close to the sun.”
“Okay, habibi, that’s enough. I’m sorry I’m delaying you, drive home safely, it’s late.”
“And how are you, Abba?”
“Fine for now.”
“Hard to fall asleep?”
“So what? I can sleep as much as I want during the day.”
“Imma told me you gave a very nice speech at Divon’s party.”
“‘Very nice’ is her embellishment.”
“What did you say?”
“Not now, habibi,” says Luria, his mind already foggy with Xanax. “You’re overdoing your diligence. The time has come to make less money and use the time to sleep more, because when you get to my age, you won’t always persuade sleep to get into bed with you.”
As the sunlight strikes his eyes and a radio plays in the distance, his wife stands over him, dressed and ready to leave. Why so early? It turns out that the doctor is not hurrying to her clinic today, but to the operating room, to attend a long and complicated operation on a girl of five, in order to bolster her parents’ faith in the necessity of the surgery. Good for you, her husband says lovingly.
“And you? What’s wrong with you? You dropped off like a dead man. Next time, please take half a pill and not a whole.”
Half would not be enough for his anxiety.
“Anxiety over what?”
Nothing. He’ll explain this evening, not when she’s in a hurry.
Tell it quickly anyway.
“I got carried away yesterday with that boy with no father, after Noam quite maliciously started teasing him, and this Nevo, apparently a black belt in hysteria, threw himself on the floor and started having a fit, like an epileptic. To calm him down I invented a father for him, who for the time being is far away, in Africa, for example.”
“You invented him a father?”
“Only out of pity, not from dementia. I couldn’t do anything after I saw the evil erupt from a child who is otherwise sweet and innocent. Who knows if the source of his evil is only his parents and not the previous generation, meaning you and me. By the way, his mother’s name is Noga, like the planet Venus, not Noa or Yona. In the middle of the night I remembered the right name.”
“So what?”
“What do you mean, so what?”
“What do you want from her?”
“I thought of asking Avigail for her phone number so I could explain—”
“No, no, don’t call and don’t explain. Your explanations will only make it worse. Drop it, your imaginary father will be forgotten if you don’t dwell on him. In the future, in your condition, try to invent a simpler solution.”
guarding his father’s bed
Even if this young man is afraid to include me in his desert project, even without pay—Luria grumbles—he can’t prevent me from visiting his father. It’s precisely now, when I myself am beginning to decline, that I need to encourage others, but also be glad I’m not worse.
He doesn’t have to go via any switchboard to get directly through to his old office whose number, Luria is convinced, no atrophy could ever erase. But it seems that in the daytime the young man is out in the field, or running from office to office, so Luria catches him late at night.
Of course, Maimoni exclaims, of course he remembers, and his father was excited to hear that his old division chief was concerned for his welfare. Especially since it seemed, when they met by chance on the street, that Luria barely recognized him because of his worsening condition.
