A Late Divorce (8 page)

“You don't believe me,” he whispers hopelessly his eyes growing red.

An actor in the bargain.

“Of course I do. Leave it to me, you'll see that everything will be all right. Now go eat.”

I hurry out past rows of prisoners in gray uniforms murderers thieves terrorists each holding a plate and a spoon. I should eat here myself sometime and see what the food is like. There's no one in the office I head straight for the telephone. My mother is right I shouldn't have gotten involved. Ya'el. Her father is up. He doesn't want me to go by myself. It's immoral to send me in his name white he begs off. He has to talk to her or at least to be there with me.

“Fine. I'm not going. I'm chucking the whole business. Do what you please. Now it's morality. Do you know what morality is? Do you? It's a pebble in somebody's shoe. I've had it! I'm tearing up the papers I drew up and going back to the office. There's enough work for me there. I'm jumpy and I'm hungry. In a minute I'll eat the dog's vitamins and start to bark.”

I could always get the better of her by quietly beginning to rave. They're used to giving in to hysteria. When Asa was a little boy he'd lie flailing his arms and legs on the floor and the whole family would kneel in homage.

All right all right. She'll talk to her father. Maybe she'll go herself tomorrow. I'm right. It's best for me to go first. I should just be careful.

At the gate I'm stopped and sent back to have my exit card stamped. Getting in is easier than getting out. I have to waste fifteen minutes looking for the clerk with the stamp. Meanwhile the head warden gets hold of me a sly old bugger who has this ironic thing with lawyers. “What's the matter with you people? You're not helping us to solve the overcrowding here. Where are your golden tongues? Come, let me show you some drawings made by one of our high-security prisoners. They're absolutely marvelous.”

It isn't easy to shake him off.

Then down from the mountain from the forest to the sea I'll zip through the bay area past the refinery driving thou art my comfort my desire my only love. I hug the curves of the-wounded-the-quarried-mountain road silently racing the cable cars that pass over my head with gravel for the big cement plant down below the panorama spreading out in the valley beneath me there's the Galilee there's Acre there are the white cliffs of the Lebanese border it's like flying a plane coming in for a landing in the clear spring air the car wheels gently touching down on the tarmac of the highway to Acre I could get a free lunch if I stopped at my mother's but there's another woman that I'd rather see.

I've never cheated on Ya'el nor do I intend to but here and there I keep a few women on standby. In restaurants in cafes in the offices of courts and colleagues I see them now and then I exchange a few words with them I touch them lightly I drop a few soft promises. If only in thought I wish to be a candidate for love. A restaurant with glass walls by the highway near a gas station. Across the road a ceramics plant and beyond it the sea. Here I used to wait for Ya'el those first years she went to visit her mother when she preferred I didn't come with her. Right away I noticed the round waitress with her slow challenging walk. Where is she now? I order lunch from the proprietor and go to call the office.

“Did your wife get in touch with you?”

“Yes, I've spoken to her. Is there anything new? Are you still warming yourself by the heater? Did the check come?...What, I don't believe it! For how much, a hundred thousand?...Fine, put it in the bank.... I have to endorse it first? Right you are. All right, then put it in the drawer and lock it. I'll come by later to pick it up.... What, when will I be back? Why do you ask?”

All at once she asks shyly if she can leave work early today. It's almost Passover and she has to help out at home. I gallantly agree. Think of the electricity bill that I'll save. I tell her again where to put the check and how to lock the drawer. Now I see the narrow ankles stepping slowly the pretty eyes open wide to see me she remembers me she better not drop my meal.

At last I'm putting something into my mouth until now it's all been outgoing. I'm the only customer in the place I keep sending her back for salt for pepper for beer for a clean fork enjoying her slow challenging walk the dumb blond animal. She blushes each time she returns. Do I arouse desire in her with my big mug and pot? The thought amuses me. Every day you suffer on account of those you lust for you never think of those who suffer on account of you. In the end she sits down near me with her legs innocently crossed we're all alone except for the music on the radio. I cut my meat and devour her white hands I dip my bread in her eyes and suck them she sits there passively pliantly she brings me coffee a newspaper she unties her apron and bends to clear the table showing me her breasts that I have no time for not now.

Kissinger dining before the next delicate phase of his Middle East shuttle invisible reporters all around him. The quiet restaurant the highway the cars zooming past behind the glass. The sea and the spring and this cup of fragrant coffee. A short nap. A hundred thousand waiting for me in the drawer my little murderer who'll be firm on the witness stand about the elementary particles of time my brilliant strategy brought to the world care of his uncle in Belgium. My mood's on the upswing again. I ask for a cigar and more coffee. And why not? I deserve them. My eyes grow moist. Finally I rise to go I pat her shoulder. There's warmth in my largesse. It was very good. The proprietor is called to add the bill. I leave a generous tip and register her silent gratitude.

Ten after three. A light gentle breeze. I always call by now to see if Gaddi's safely home but I don't want any more truck with the moralists not when this salty breeze from the sea is busy caressing me. I walk slowly to my car. A strawberry vendor has a stand nearby I buy the old woman a bag of them let her have a little pleasure that's all of it she'll get from me today. I check the air in the tires moving softly thinking of the children at home swelling with love even for this ludicrous land. I get into my car.

A leisurely drive along the coast to the hospital. I turn into a side road straight toward the sea toward little cottages surrounded by broad lawns. The thin line between a bungalow colony and an insane asylum is no more than this guard at the gate he must be a rehabilitated nut himself they've given him a visored cap a tin badge and a pistol every third person in this country is either a policeman a security guard or a secret agent. I step on the gas honking the horn keeping my head down maybe he'll think I'm a doctor and open the gate so I won't have to walk half a kilometer but he won't give up his one chance to wield authority. Open up you moron I whisper but he doesn't he jumps from his chair to point out the parking lot before I know it he'll put a bullet in me.

I haven't been in many loony bins Ya'el but if ever I go crazy myself this is the place for me. Perfect silence. The sweet sound of the surf lovely white cottages gorgeous lawns. They build prisons in forests way up in the Carmel and lock up crazies by an enchanted beach they've given them the nicest places in this country and left the rest of us the crumbs.

A nurse in white walks quickly down a path she vanishes through a doorway a man is standing in a distant field suddenly around a bend I find myself facing a crazy giant even taller than I am a colossus with a straw broom on one shoulder staring at me in bewilderment I smile magnanimously at him and pass him quickly leaving him standing there turning to gape at me his mouth hanging open a thread of spittle running down it as though a million-dollar sports car had just gone by him. A small group of patients is sitting on wicker chairs by her cottage I keep smiling as though in a trance a pale old man in a white smock jumps up from his chair he knows me a few months ago I chatted with him about Begin and Sadat.

“Mr. Kedmi, Mr. Kedmi, she's in the garden by the woods. She's waiting for you.”

We shake hands warmly.

But first I go look for the doctor as I promised. The large bare room is full of bright light a few women are sitting there each by herself the TV in the middle looks demented too. I already have a guide he grabs my arm and steers me toward a small side room. A smell of medicine.

“Thanks, I can manage by myself now.”

The sharp light is everywhere a blue patch of sea fills the windows. A young doctor is lying on a bed his arm flung over his eyes quietly sleeping among the crazies but the patient steps right up to him and wakes him. “Here's Mr. Kedmi, here's Mr. Kedmi, he's come to see his mother.”

“My mother-in-law,” I whisper damn his eyes. “Mrs. Kaminka. I wanted first of all to know how she was ”

The young doctor lowers his arm from his eyes and smites up at me.

“Is her husband here? Is he with you?”

“No, he'll come the day after tomorrow. He's already in Israel, though. I see you know all about it.”

“We know everything,” says the patient right away. “She told the nurses ... they're getting divorced ...” His eyes sparkle.

“That's fine, Yehezkel, that's fine. Now leave us alone for a while.” But nothing can make him budge. He already wants to know what's in the bags I'm holding.

“What do you have there, candy?”

“Later, Yehezkel, later...”

But he must know what's in the bags. “What is it? What is it?”

“It's for the dog.”

Only then does he back off violently blinking his eyes chewing on his tongue his voice changes he rocks back and forth as though shaken by something inside. “That dog. That dog.”

“That's enough, Yehezkel, that's enough.” Without sitting up the doctor tries to calm him. “Why don't you write a letter to the Prime Minister? You haven't written him in ages. Come, sit down at the table, I'll give you some hospital stationery.”

“Is it all right if I talk with her ... is she...?”

“In good shape? Definitely. She had a cold last week but now she's better. She's been waiting for you, your wife phoned two hours ago. She's behind the cottage.... Yehezkel, come here ...”

The doctor gets up and grabs the old man in a bear hug.

I leave the room I walk down the path to the little woods I see the loony giant with his straw broom standing just where I left him still searching for me. And then I see her among the tall trees watering something with a hose a broad straw hat on her head as soon as I start toward her I hear a muffled growl that seems to come from the earth she turns her head in my direction the glitter in her eyes like droplets of water in the air. I walk uncertainly toward her not knowing if the dog is tied the last time I was here he attacked me I ask you gentlemen what other lawyer would agree to work in such conditions.

I never did understand exactly what was wrong with her not that I ever really tried to. I'm not sure that even Ya'el knows there are things that this family has hidden. And I know from the courtroom what rigmaroles psychiatrists are capable of it hasn't made me think any more highly of them. The last few years I've gladly forgone the pleasure of visiting her I've usually waited somewhere with Gaddi while Ya'el went in to see her. Still she must be better if they've started treating her now with water therapy instead of electric shock. Apparently she's taken to working in the garden hosing down the big trees that the Turks forgot to chop down in World War I to stoke their troop trains drenching everything in sight with Noah's floods if the hose were any longer she'd be watering the sea.

I pick my way through the bushes the divorce file in one hand and two paper bags that are already coming apart in the other. If the dog jumps me I'll throw him the strawberries. They needed special permission from the department of health to hospitalize him here the first time I set eyes on him when Ya'el introduced me to her family he was in the prime of life I said right away this dog needs either psychoanalysis or a bullet in the brain and the first he can get only in America they thought I was making another one of my jokes. All joking aside I can now make out the big mangy beast through the bushes part shepherd part bulldog and part monster getting slowly to his feet rattling his chain which I hope is attached at the other end to something solider than grass.

“Hi, there!” I call bizarrely jolly coming to a halt waving the file of documents moving slowly forward again to within a few feet of the dog who isn't looking at me but knows that I'm there. After the wedding I tried calling her mother for a while but soon got over that aberration I even used to kiss her now and then. I was one confused person after that wedding.

She tosses the hose into an irrigation hole she bends down among the weeds to turn off the water and comes forward to greet me in the loose cotton shift that Ya'el bought her last year her strong legs in farm boots her uncombed blond hair that's turned white with an odd luster falling gaily around her wrinkled freckled sunburned face. The day they all started saying that the baby looks like her was the day they spoiled the baby for me.

I press her hand.

“How are you?”

She smiles gently she ducks her head pertly she doesn't answer.

“Ya'el sent this powder for the dog. It's some kind of vitamins, I'm not sure which. I guess you mix it with his food. And these are some strawberries that I bought for you ... I saw them on the way ... luscious berries...”

She thanks me with a nod her eyes smiling she carefully takes the bags from me the smile is still there. If I had time I'd write a book about the connection between smiling and madness. We stand there for an awkward moment then lead each other to a bench beneath the trees we sit down she smiles uncertainly shaking her head with a slightly automatic motion.

“So he arrived the day before yesterday,” I begin in my most grandly auspicious even epic manner.

She listens still saying nothing.