A Wall of Light (5 page)

S
ONYA

N
on-soporific,” my brother had promised, but he was mistaken. During class I felt myself growing sleepy and I began to yawn. The lines,
“Oh, how do you like my feather bed, and how do you like my sheets?— And how do you like my fair young bride, who lies in your arms asleep?”
from a record of English folk songs we had at home, began tugging gently at me, along with the image of a very soft bed. My students also started yawning, because that sort of thing can be catching. Only my translator, a small wiry boy-girl, was as energetic and jumpy as always, oblivious to the spell that was falling upon the rest of us.

A room full of semi-comatose students might not be such a drawback in philosophy or literature, where proximity to an unconscious state could produce some inspiring notions pulled out of one’s creative back drawer. But when students reach this state in ordinary differential equations, the situation is nothing short of hopeless; mathematical creativity requires a certain level of mental dexterity. And we were on a particularly difficult unit.

The math building was undergoing repairs, so the class had been moved to a small room on the second floor of the Gilman Building. It was a pleasant classroom, with tall windows all along the north wall, overlooking the campus. Students wear such lovely clothes, and I enjoy seeing speckles of purple and red and turquoise as I teach; it’s as if everyone on campus has deliberately dressed to contribute to this marvelous collage. As if they’ve been cast in a children’s play about birds and butterflies.

I had asked my seventeen students to arrange their desks in a circle; I wanted to see them all clearly. The lithe, overly slender girls never remembered to bring sweaters, and most of them would start rubbing their arms vigorously twenty minutes into the lesson. This was followed by lengthy negotiations which continued sporadically throughout the class: Should the two large air-conditioning apparatuses, which clung to the back wall like fossilized octopi, be turned on or off? One would be shut down, then turned on again, then both would be shut down, then one or both would be turned back on, and so on, back and forth, for three hours. I’d given up reminding the cold-sensitive students to bring sweaters.

My perky translator, Ma’ayan, tried to keep the class from yielding to the enchanted poppy field, but with little success: the students merely stared at her blankly, not absorbing anything. I didn’t need Ma’ayan to translate both ways; I can speak, though I don’t always choose to do so. My voice is my resident phantom, the ghost in the attic, or maybe the madwoman in the attic. Every Saturday afternoon I work with a speech therapist to prevent my voice from taking on a life of its own: like other natural skills, speech needs ongoing monitoring, a job our ears perform. In the absence of our own supervision, someone else must do the work.

The problem with speaking, however, is that your listener assumes you can hear. For that reason I prefer to sign in many situations. It would not kill people to learn some basic signing.

Ma’ayan was not only my classroom translator; I also relied on her to keep me up to date with all the gossip on campus. Luckily for me, Ma’ayan picked up gossip the way a positive ion traveling through the air attracts its negative counterparts. She knew things no one else knew, or before anyone else knew them, in the very early stages of their inception; clearly she had sources deep in the heart of the university.

I had worked with her for nearly ten years and we were very close. We often met outside of class to try out new restaurants or see Iranian movies that made us both weep profusely. But after all this time I was still confused by Ma’ayan’s sexual identity. She was delighted when people took her for a male and addressed her in the masculine form, and sometimes she used the men’s toilet. Shortly after she graduated from high school she fell in love with a fourteen-year-old girl she met at an ice-cream counter; Ma’ayan fooled the girl’s parents into thinking she was a boy for two months, and she nearly went to prison when the girl’s mother caught the two of them in bed. Ma’ayan was charged with seducing a minor, and the girl, to save herself from her parents’ wrath, testified against her and claimed she’d been tricked into sex. But the judge was skeptical, and Ma’ayan was acquitted of misconduct.

I myself was a little unsure of her gender when we first met. I had placed an ad for a translator and Ma’ayan came to my office for an interview. We instantly took to each other. Ma’ayan’s parents were deaf and she was fluent in Hebrew Sign; she also had a background in science, though she never managed to finish any course she began. When the interview was over, we both needed the toilet. She walked toward the men’s room, was about to go in, changed her mind, and followed me to the women’s. While I was peeing, I was tempted to peek under the door of the stall and see which way her feet were pointing, but it turned out that she’d only entered the stall to take a quick, furtive drag on a joint, the unmistakable smell of which filled the room a minute later. Before we parted I asked her, “Are you male or female?” She laughed and signed, “When I was born, the doctor said, ‘It’s a girl.’ Was he ever wrong!” On the other hand, she disliked lesbian women and never had anything to do with them. More than once she’d been involved with a man, and sometimes when we saw a particularly good-looking boy on campus, a boy with delicate angelic features, she’d sign, “Ooh, I want him!”

“I apologize,” I told my class. “My brother gave me an allergy pill this morning. He absolutely promised it was non-soporific, but he must have been misled. I can barely keep my eyes open. And now I see it’s contagious. So we will have to rely on our devoted and wonderful translator to pull us out of this stupor.”

My students grinned, grateful for any novelty that broke the monotony of our intensive summer course. They were good students. I always have remarkably clever students. This country is full of geniuses; every time young people get killed, we lose a few more brilliant souls. And it isn’t just the university elite; I teach signing and math in a poverty-stricken community, and the children there are brilliant, too. Statistics show that academic skills are in decline among the youth, but I don’t see it at all. On the other hand, I constantly come across stupid adults, adults whose stupidity is so overwhelming that one wants to give up hope on humanity. It seems there is a process of retardation that takes place in this country, which is capable of producing intelligent babies but manages to turn them into morons, gradually, bit by bit, until at fifty they are nearly brain-dead.

With great effort we went over the homework I’d assigned; I answered questions and explained some tricky problems. I like to use colored markers on the dry-erase board: black, green, blue, pink. I say very little; I find that silence often helps students see procedures more clearly. The silence forces them to focus on my colorful arrows, exclamation marks, and signs. They squint and frown, and I see their faces suddenly change as they catch on. Not in any obvious way, because they’re cool and tough and world-weary, but I can see the moment of illumination as clearly as if they had jumped out of their seats and shouted
Eureka.

But today the students were so unfocused that I gave up and dismissed the class early. I watched as Matar, the student whose eyes had been haunting me from the first day of class, packed his things. Impulsively, despite my sleepiness, or maybe because of it, I decided to confront him right then and there. I asked him to stay behind for a minute.

N
OAH’S DIARY
, D
ECEMBER
2, 1982.

In the news: we are getting
very
unpopular.

L
ots of people dying in Lebanon. Every day after the news you see the names on the screen one after the other, in black, and everyone wants it to be something else, not death, or not as bad as death. Like if you die for a reason it’s not so bad. But it doesn’t work, because in the end it’s still the end, nothing. Earth and worms. You can’t win over that, it’s too strong. I tried to imagine dying but I can’t, because if I imagine it that means I’m thinking and if I’m thinking I’m not dead.

Mom is furious, can’t stop talking about the war. Dad probably feels the same way but he doesn’t say much. Gran doesn’t care at all. Sonya says she’s a pacifist. She’s nine but she skipped two grades so she’s only one below me now. I don’t mind having a genius for an aunt. She helps me with my homework actually. I don’t mean that I need help understanding stuff. But sometimes I just don’t feel like doing it and she adores anything to do with school, so I let her.

Despite her brains, she’s very immature. She still sucks her thumb and has trouble falling asleep if Gran or someone else (when Gran comes home too late) doesn’t sing her a lullaby or tell her a bedtime story. She follows me everywhere and whines if I don’t take her with me when I go places. She makes soup out of her ice cream and then drinks it from the bowl, holding it up and pouring it down into her mouth—obviously it’s a mess and I can’t even watch. She drinks milkshakes with a straw so she can make bubbles. You’d think making bubbles was the most thrilling experience a human could have. Her friends are all around five years old and she plays house with them, or teacher. She collects lizards, bugs, snails, spiders, and even worms, and she has a tantrum and goes into heavy mourning if anyone by mistake flushes one of her creepy spiders down the toilet. She draws stupid faces on her hands so it’s like a mouth opening and closing between her fingers, and I’m not going to describe the faces she draws on her stomach and chest, it’s too disgusting. Sometimes when we’re out walking in the park she crosses her eyes and pretends she’s not quite right in the head. Everyone stares, it’s very embarrassing.

So her pacifism is not something I can take too seriously, but about this war in Lebanon I have to admit I am torn. I think I agree with Mom. What exactly is the point? Also I don’t like the way they lied about their plans. At least Sharon lied, and Mom keeps saying that’s what Hitler did. She always goes too far! She says Hitler kept saying, only this, only this and no more, but he never meant it. It’s disgusting, comparing Sharon to Hitler, and I told her so, but she said she was only pointing out this one similarity. I don’t believe her, she only retracted to calm me down.

At school everyone is for the war—get rid of the PLO, smash them to bits, show them we won’t give in, get rid of terrorism once and for all. But anyone can see (as Mom says) that this isn’t going to solve the Palestinian problem. But what will solve it? I don’t know. The PLO really do seem pretty evil. I don’t like that Arafat, he really scares me. He never shaves. Oren has started shaving. Dad says he didn’t shave till eighteen! But I don’t think I take after him. He’s into music and science and cooking and all that stuff. I think I might be a fashion designer but I haven’t told anyone yet. I’m experimenting a bit with Sonya, I’m trying different outfits on her. She’s a great model. Tall, broad shoulders, sort of chubby but symmetrical. And she’s weird, so she doesn’t mind if my designs are weird, too. She thinks they’re great.

L
ETTER TO
A
NDREI
, F
EBRUARY
25, 1957

D
earest, I am writing late at night, after a long evening of rehearsing. I am afraid Feingold is going to have a nervous breakdown. He is thinking of abandoning the entire project, but we are bound to it now because of the grant from Brooklyn. Apart from Feingold and me, only four of the actors have studied acting: Rosalind, Orlando, Touchstone, and Oliver/William (at least so he claims, but is vague about details). I have been giving lessons to Tanya and Carmela, but there’s only so much I can do in such a short time. At first I could not understand how Feingold could cast Carmela in the play. She’s completely hopeless. But Feingold is using her inability to act to create a very comic Audrey. In any case she really does have very few lines, so even if she murders them it won’t ruin the entire play. The fact is that we are short of actors as it is and can’t give anyone up. We have had to make some adjustments to the text, but I am sure Shakespeare would understand and forgive us.

The real problem is that people are not showing up for rehearsals or they have to leave early—there is always some very good reason or emergency. Other problems: Touchstone’s onion breath is bothering everyone, but he says he has to eat raw onions in order to “clear his nasal passages.” People show up without their script. Oliver/William lost his. No one listens to Feingold or remembers his instructions. People come in from the wrong side. Twice our rehearsal space was locked up, and once it was double-booked and being used for a meeting of leftists. The hall we’re supposed to be playing in has had a problem with the lights, and the place has to be rewired or it could burn down. No one knows whether the wiring will be ready on time; right now several walls have been taken apart. But I am encouraging Feingold not to give up. We will manage somehow. Kostya is helping, too. He’s looking after getting the program and posters typeset and printed.

I am eating bread and cheese spread as I write to you. There are such excellent cheese products in this country. The bread, which I get with food stamps, is also delicious. The local
hummus
(a chickpea spread) is another inexpensive item, and it’s quite tasty once you get used to it. In fact, it’s addictive. Falafel is a wonderful local food that is affordable and tasty. It’s made of ground chickpeas dipped in boiling oil, and you can buy it on the street. Kostya is very fond of cold borscht, which is made a little differently here. It’s common to eat salad for breakfast in this country. The main meal is shortly after noon, when people come home to rest. Remember I told you about the siesta from two to four? Well, I always wondered why it was so quiet at that time. I found out the reason: it’s against the law to make noise or play a musical instrument!

Even though people are supposed to go back to work at four, schedules are very lax here. Sometimes people desert their store at odd hours, and even official institutions are not always open according to schedule. So informal! What a difference from home, where everyone is obedient and afraid. I must say I do prefer it this way, even though there is a great deal of grumbling all the time about inefficiency. Yet the people who grumble are often the same ones who don’t do their own jobs efficiently! It’s quite funny at times.

I enclose a photo of Kostya that Carmela took on the city’s main boulevard. You can also see, in the background, the lovely palm trees we have here. The palm trees are the only part of this country which I imagined correctly!

I am waiting for your precious letters.