At Night's End, page 3
Yonatan’s legs were shaking. He struggled to steady them and pressed his shoes against the floor. “We want to talk about it first,” Yoel said, “we might not want to get back at them anymore.”
Shimon and his friends looked at him, surprised that he was under the impression that anything was up to him. Yoel glanced at Yonatan, who gave an encouraging glance back, wanting to wink but afraid of getting caught. Neither of them wanted this battle, they’d always been afraid of fights that had no rules and ended in someone’s surrender. They’d seen Shimon kicking Itai in the face, and David Tzivony riding Amir while he writhed and screamed, “I can’t see, I can’t see,” a line that every boy on the block kept mimicking for months. These were not the loser kids from his class, who loathed him but were scared of him and would only fight him if they were sure someone in the crowd would break it up after a minute. Besides, they were working on a plan that was going to stun the kids from the towers.
The older boys’ smiles were gone. “Talk as much as you want, as long as you show up for the fight on time,” said Shimon, who was wearing his usual ironed jeans and a black belt with a shiny silver triangular buckle. Tomer Fainaru, who was known as Bentz because his head was rectangular like Bert’s Israeli counterpart, and who always got mad when anyone hummed the Sesame Street theme song, took off his glasses, as he always did before issuing a threat. “We’ll bust up whoever doesn’t show up,” he said. “And if no one shows up,” David Tzivony added, “we’ll kill you all.”
There was a knock on the basement door. Yonatan knew it was the girls—no one else knocked on that door. There were rumors that at night girls and boys made out in the basement and even had sex, and Yoel swore he’d found a condom there once. Shimon opened the heavy white door, and to Yonatan’s surprise he saw Tali with a girl he didn’t know; she was wearing a wool coat over a colorful dress that fluttered above shiny red boots; no girl in his class had boots like those. “Get the hell out of here, Tali!” he yelled.
Shimon slapped him. “You don’t swear at girls.”
They didn’t like Tali Meltzer. She’d lived at number 8 since her family had moved to the neighborhood from Haifa, when she was in second grade and they were in third, and she used to monitor them from her balcony that looked onto the wadi. Once she snitched to Yonatan’s parents that they were throwing mud balls at people, and another time she squealed on him because he’d called her “a peeping whore,” although she insisted she’d only been standing on the balcony, doing nothing. Her father was a therapist and her mother an architect, both friendly people who made a point of saying hello to everyone, and they spoke a clearly accentuated Hebrew. They talked to kids and grown-ups in the same tone, because in their view—which they took the trouble to elucidate for his parents—“the child’s position must be respected.”
No one had any doubt that the Meltzers were different from all the other residents on the block, and it was also clear that, having despaired of educating their neighbors, they had decided not to befriend them. Yonatan’s father viewed the Meltzers as an annoyance, the way he viewed everyone on the street who insisted on voicing his opinion on any matter, while his mother secretly might have envied how they lived, and the polite, cheerful way they and their two children spoke. “Life is one big party, I see,” she hissed when she spotted them loading bags and a surfboard into their car on a Saturday morning.
After their altercations with Tali, Mr. Meltzer asked to visit them for a meeting, and for Yoel and his parents to be invited as well. (Only Yoel’s mother came, and she sat there saying nothing, pulling out bits of her short hair.) Mr. Meltzer sat with a straight back, asked Yonatan’s parents how they were and what they did for a living, and after twenty minutes laid out his arguments: firstly, Tali came back from the wadi saying ugly words that he would not repeat, and even if she was saying them jokingly, these things did seep in; secondly, they shouted and horsed around between two and four in the afternoon, and now Tali didn’t respect the siesta hours either; and thirdly, it seemed they were treating her disrespectfully and failed to appreciate her virtues—she was a smart girl with integrity and a good sense of humor.
“Well, we could see that as soon as you moved here,” Yonatan’s father pointed out, though he wouldn’t have recognized Tali if he’d run into her. Yoel tapped Yonatan’s black shoe with his white sneaker, and he tapped Yoel back. The two of them muffled a giggle when his father gave them a cautionary look.
“But we’re not your daughter’s friends,” Yoel said finally.
Meltzer stared at him until Yoel looked down. He was a broad-shouldered man, with piercing if friendly brown eyes. His expression was always polite, and it was only his pale pink lips and sharp chin that disclosed anything malicious. He’d recently joined forces with two fathers who were pillars of the community to establish an “exercise club,” whose members gathered every Saturday to run at the stadium on the Givat Ram campus. (One boy who was invited said they made their kids run ten thousand meters on the track, and it was a wonder no one had dropped dead yet. “They’re total Nazis, they’re animals,” he whined.)
Meltzer sipped his tea and seemed surprised by Yoel’s remark. Yonatan looked at him, then at Yoel, and it finally dawned on him how credulous Meltzer was. “If you’re not her friends,” Meltzer finally said in a dry tone, “then there’s no reason for you not to cut off ties with her. Sometimes good children don’t get along, it’s disappointing but not a rare thing.”
“But there’s nothing to cut off,” Yoel insisted, while his mother put her hand on his knee and he put his hand on top of hers.
Meltzer had apparently expected her to restrain her son; he didn’t know that Yoel and his mother sometimes acted like friends, that she knew all the kids in class, and was the type of mother who would ask if two girls who weren’t talking to each other had made up yet. He cleared his throat and, in a slightly comical tone, said that in the interest of fairness he would now say something in their defense—was that acceptable to them?
Yoel and Yonatan both nodded.
“Truly acceptable?” he insisted with a meaningful smile and looked back and forth between them, searching for signs of admiration or at the very least surprise.
“Go on, they said yes,” Yonatan’s father snapped, and Yoel’s mother lit a cigarette.
Of course he would never put words in their mouths, Meltzer explained, but perhaps Tali did not respect their games? Was that a fair point?
Yonatan proudly replied that he didn’t want to say bad things about Tali when she wasn’t there, and Yoel quietly waved his mother’s cigarette smoke away.
“So can we,” Meltzer asked warmly, “agree in genuine friendship to cut off ties?”
They all nodded.
Yonatan’s father said, “Thank you for a successful visit,” and stood up abruptly, held out his hand, and walked Meltzer to the door, slapping his back but in fact shoving him out the door. Once he’d left, his father laughed. “If you’re going to suck up to someone before giving them bad news, make sure they really will think it’s bad news, otherwise you’ve wasted everyone’s time.”
His mother added: “Mr. Meltzer is outflanking you to reach a goal that’s already been achieved,” and all the adults laughed.
His parents ignored Meltzer’s visit, perhaps because they found his behavior peculiar: it was acceptable on the block that if someone beat up your kid or insulted him more than was necessary, you didn’t sit down in their living room for a friendly talk and expect to be served tea, but you yelled at his parents like Shimon’s mother had yelled at his mother after Shaul, Yonatan’s big brother, had strangled Shimon with a garden hose: “Aren’t you ashamed? Your husband is a respectable man!” Or the way Yoel’s father had threatened Bentz after he poured glue on his son’s hair: “I’ll wring your neck with my bare hands!”
“Do anything you want, as long as he doesn’t come back here,” his father told them after Meltzer had left. But the truth was that Tali had defeated them, and after the visit they ignored her completely. Even when she was bold enough to follow them into the wadi and ask what they were doing, they didn’t curse or threaten her, but sat there doing nothing until she gave up.
“Well, hello, ladies!” Shimon greeted the two girls who walked into the basement with impressive synchronization. It was clear to everyone that only in the inaccessible kingdom of girls was such precision possible. Yonatan wondered if the uninhibited closeness he sometimes longed for (even to hug Yoel or someone else really tight), but was always careful to suppress, existed only in the girls’ world.
Tali took off her wool hat and shook out her brown hair, and for the first time it occurred to him that she might be not ugly. She ignored him and the other boys and turned to Yoel, toward whom she was obliged to demonstrate loathing simply because he hated her, and asked if they were doing something in the wadi. She said they’d found a strange mound of earth, “and it’s obviously you.” Yoel just stared at the cobwebs clustered above the girls’ heads.
“A mound of earth?” he snorted, hoping Yoel would keep quiet and let him speak. “Do you know how many people hang around in the wadi?”
“We almost tripped on your stupid mound,” Tali grumbled without looking at him, “it’s dangerous.”
“Where’s the mound?” asked one of the older boys without much interest.
“We’ll be there whenever you say!” Yonatan shouted. “But we want it to be clear that there’s no sticks and stones, and that Shimon will be umpire.” He was pleased with that last part (he didn’t really care who was umpire), which immediately created a stir among the big kids, who exchanged looks.
“Fine, you little fucker,” Bentz said with a giggle, “you want Shimon, you get Shimon.” He delivered a slap on the back to Shimon, who maintained a blank expression, like a man acknowledging the weight of responsibility he bore.
Before Tali could say anything else, her friend, who seemed bored with the recent exchange, started doing cartwheels like they do in the Olympics. Every time she stood on her hands her dress fell down to her white underwear dotted with orange teddy bears or pink hearts—he couldn’t tell—and everyone saw it and they also saw her thighs, which were whiter than her tanned shins. The boys spent a moment yearning, then started complimenting her and asking how many times a week she did ballet and what kind of things she learned in class. She answered tersely in a deep, languid voice that enchanted them, and when they asked her not to stop she shrugged and did some more cartwheels.
The basement was silent, and he wondered if he and Yoel could leave yet, but the older kids were blocking the door. David Tzivony asked Tali’s friend if she’d be willing to do her cartwheels without her underwear on, and she said okay and took off her underwear and folded it and wiped the dust off the edge of the ping-pong table with her hand and put it down there, and now he could see that they were pink teddy bears of various sizes. He heard Bentz breathing heavily and he looked at her hole, the likes of which he’d only seen in Playboy magazines at Bentz’s—once, last summer, he was asked over there and immediately warned: “Here is just for looking; you jerk off at home”—and turned to Yoel, who gave him a furious glare because he’d agreed to the fight without consulting him.
The older boys whispered and David Tzivony left the basement. Tali, who was blushing, stood near the door, and, while the girl did more cartwheels, seized the chance and said she had to go home. She urged her friend to join her—her mother would make them pancakes, she said—and the girl said she probably should go. Shimon and Bentz said they were really enjoying her cartwheels, but she could do whatever she wanted. She flashed an indifferent smile, though her expression remained unaltered, and Tali snapped, “Well then?” and the girl said, “Soon,” in a slightly sardonic tone while she stood on her hands, and everyone laughed, except for Tali, who walked out.
To his surprise, he was relieved they’d let her go. Yoel took advantage of the break and walked to the door. Bentz stopped him.
“Let him go,” Shimon said.
“It’s too cold outside,” Bentz scoffed.
“Let him go, I said,” Shimon grunted, and Bentz moved aside.
Yoel walked past them, resigning himself to the thump that landed on his back, and to Shimon’s kick.
“Wait, one important thing we didn’t tell you,” Bentz called after him, his voice sounding more mature and serious.
“What?” Yoel turned back and his face looked gloomy. His arm was dangling behind him, as though he were dragging something with it.
“Tell your mamma we can’t make it tonight, maybe we’ll send the Arab gardener instead!” Bentz cawed, and by the end of the sentence he was roaring with laughter. Shimon laughed too, and they exchanged back-slaps and high fives. Yonatan wanted to laugh but he held back. The girl stared at them uncomprehendingly.
Yonatan was left alone with the kids and the girl and wondered why he didn’t leave, since he wasn’t all that excited about the cartwheels, and seeing the hole over and over again. He couldn’t understand why it thrilled them. David Tzivony came back to the basement and shoved something rolled up in a rag into Shimon’s hand. Shimon, who’d been humming a song, went over to the girl—it was obvious that he was the only one she liked—and coughed lightly, the way he did before he spoke to girls or adults. He asked if she wouldn’t mind doing another few cartwheels but slower, or maybe even a handstand, and she said she wouldn’t mind, and Shimon asked if she’d mind if they took a picture of her so they’d have a souvenir.
The girl didn’t answer and the other kids stared at her, enchanted, as she stood on her hands again, and Tzivony whispered to the others, “Do you understand what’s going on here?” Yonatan was overcome by an ominous feeling. He wanted to tell the girl that she should go home because it was late, but he knew the others would kill him if he interfered, and he also knew that he would not leave the room now: under no circumstances would he leave her alone with them.
Shimon glanced at his watch. “The A-Team’s starting,” he exclaimed, and David Tzivony narrowed his eyes at him as if waking up. Shimon and Bentz turned to the door but David Tzivony didn’t move.
“Wait,” he said to Shimon, “aren’t we going to do anything?” He pointed to the camera.
“No,” Shimon declared. He walked over to Tzivony, put his free arm around his back and shoved him toward the door, but halfway through the motion he changed his mind and went back to the girl and told her she was very pretty, and that she would be a wonderful dancer or something like that, but no one was going to say anything about what had happened here, were they? She stared at Shimon with her green eyes, squinting. Yonatan was surprised to notice crowded freckles around her eyes, which reminded him that she was younger than he was, and her expression saddened him and he looked up at the cobwebs again.
Her response did not satisfy Shimon. He kept standing there looking at her, until he picked up the underwear from the ping-pong table, kneeled down in front of her and handed it to her. She took it and turned her back and put it on. Shimon waited for her to finish and straighten out her dress and then he headed for the door.
“Don’t talk too much,” Bentz told Yonatan and gave him a look.
They didn’t shut the door behind them. He hoped the girl wouldn’t hear them laughing in the hallway, and to his relief all he could hear were footsteps and hushed voices. The girl stood there for a moment longer. He wanted to talk to her but did not have the courage, and he stared at the clumps of dried mud on his shoes. He soon heard her footsteps in the hallway, then in the passage leading out to the yard. After that it was silent.
——
“Put your hands inside your sweater,” Yoel told him. “Do you want them to freeze?”
The wind blew from the north and struck their faces every time they put their heads up. A few dark blocks of clouds hung above them, but they were not rainclouds. They had no time to waste: the fight with the towers was inevitable, and it would either happen in their world or in the other kids’ world; it was up to them. They wore wool hats and ugly parkas—his was from Florida, where a friend of his mother lived and sent annual packages of hand-me-downs—and Yoel had red Liverpool gloves. In the wadi they saw only two thin boys in wool coats who ambled down the path toward their street, smoking. Yonatan thought they looked big and beautiful, and he envied their interesting lives.
They had a shovel they’d pilfered from the garden where they worked in agriculture class, and two flashlights, some large plastic bags, a little bottle of kerosene they’d found in the basement, a loaf of whole wheat bread, sliced cheese and a bottle of Coke. Yonatan did not mention what had happened the day before in the basement, assuming Yoel was regretting leaving him alone there. But Yoel said nothing and he wasn’t about to let anything come between them now. He knew what was worrying Yoel: why were they digging instead of preparing for the imminent fight? He was afraid Yoel might ask this question, in the next hour or the next day, and that then everything would collapse, because the things Yonatan did alone existed only in an unsteady way until Yoel joined in. He once again felt obliged to glue the fragments together with the fervor of words—with storylines he would invent about the wonderful things that would happen when they finished—and to present Yoel with a complete picture.
The first twenty feet of the trench were dug in soft earth that felt good to crush between one’s fingers, taking handfuls of it and kneading it into shapes, and they easily dug up the few little stones and twigs. They made fast progress, each taking turns holding the shovel while the other loaded the dirt into bags and rolled them over to a black heap of trash that someone had burned. Yoel said his hand hurt, and when he removed the gloves that now smelled like leaves, they both stared at a pinkish-white blister that had developed on one of his fingers.
