Light Fell (22 page)

“I sent Ethan to take care of Gidi. Lucky for us, Noam and Gavri slept through the whole thing. I went toward the crashing sound, expecting to find six or seven Arabs in
kef-fiyahs
crouching behind the old bathtub. Instead I found Mother out cold on the bathroom floor. There was an empty bottle of pills on the counter and a smashed bottle of whiskey or vodka near her head. There was a little bit of blood but mostly a terrible stench of alcohol that made my eyes water. Mommy’s face was in a puddle and when I rolled her over I got a sliver of glass in my thumb.

“Ethan came down the hall carrying Gidi just as I was trying to figure out what to do. Gidi was red and feverish, and he had snot smeared across his face from all that crying. Ethan screamed and then Gidi screamed and I sent them both to the porch to calm down. I knew I had to think quickly, that Mommy might die or that maybe she was already dead. I was too afraid to run to Grandfather’s house because no one ever dared disturb Grandfather’s sleep, so I made a decision to bring Mommy back to life myself. I sat her up straight by heaving her up from behind, and I propped her against the bathtub. Then I started shouting into her face and pulling her hair and pummeling her cheeks with my fists. I tried scratching her and pinching her arms with tiny, painful pinches, the kind I gave Ethan and Noam when they really got to me. Just as I was about to give up and tell the other boys she was dead, she opened her eyes wide, puked sludge all over me and herself, and came to her senses. She got to her feet slowly, threw us both into the shower in our pajamas, and stood there hugging me under the hot water until the puke and the stench were all washed away. We found Ethan and Gidi much later, huddled together and sound asleep in a corner of the porch, and when Mommy moved them to their beds Ethan woke up and asked her if she had died and come back. ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘but I’m back forever now.’ I didn’t trust her, though, and I kept watch over her for a month until the night she came to tuck me in and whispered in my ear, ‘Thank you for saving my life,’ and I knew she was OK.”

They are all mesmerized by Daniel’s story. Each one seems to be trying it on, wondering where he was and how much he knew. Ethan asks clarifying questions, like “Did you find Gidi and me under the red stepladder?” and “Was Mommy wearing a coarse blue nightgown with a small tear at the knee?” Joseph cannot imagine Rebecca trying to end her life, what with five little boys right there in the house, in her charge. And yet, she could be absolutely bullheaded at times. Daniel’s story is so real that he finds himself thinking about the speckled floor tiles in that old bathroom for the first time in twenty years. They could have missed the crash and found her dead on the floor in the morning. What would he have done then?

“We bore the brunt of your decision, Father. We are still bearing it. This is your legacy to us. I will never trust a soul again. Ethan’s confidence is nonexistent. Noam is loved by everyone but loves no one. Why do you think Gidi and Gavri are so religious? You again. Ideology, politics, religion, anything but your brand of rampant hedonism. How did Gidi come to marry Batya?” He switches to English: “Damaged goods. She was raped as a girl and has never been the same since. Gidi is considered damaged goods, too, in the ultra-Orthodox world, with a father like you.”

Joseph looks to Gidi, who avoids his gaze. Batya stares silently at her plate. One enormous tear rolls its way slowly down her pale cheek.

Just then the phone rings. Joseph half expects it to be Rebecca calling to contribute her side of the story. But this is the Sabbath, and she would never use the phone on a Friday night. The answering machine picks up the call in the next room, and they all hear the message:
Bon soir et Shabbat
Shalom, cheri, c’est Philippe. You are a beast for not calling to
thank me for saving your meal. Was it délicieux? I’m sorry you
didn’t invite me to meet your beautiful boys. Dommage. The big
news is that my sex-starved North African has asked me to move
in, so if you need my services you must call me there. I’ll ring
tomorrow to give you the number. Amitiés à Monsieur Pepe.
Ciao!

There is no use explaining Philippe. Joseph figures the truth really is not far from what they all must be thinking, and what does it matter after Daniel’s story anyway?

Daniel is on his feet, on his way out of the dining room. He stops near his father’s chair. Joseph is prepared for a blow to the head, choking hands at his throat, anything. He will not resist.

“Why didn’t you tell us the truth—that you fucked his balls and his brains out, that you twisted the mind of the greatest rabbi of your generation? Rabbi Rosenzweig would never have met that fate if it hadn’t been for you. Didn’t he tell you so by killing himself with broken glass from the bottle
you
gave him?”

Daniel leaves the room. Noam stands, stretches, and says in an offhand manner as he departs, “You’re all crazy and I’ve had it with this family.” All the others whisper the grace after meals and file out of the dining room without a word. Joseph is left alone at the table.

The Shabbat timer suddenly shuts off almost all the lights in the apartment. Joseph does not move from his chair in the darkened dining room. He hears doors opening and shutting but he cannot tell who has left the apartment and who has stayed, if anyone. He realizes they never ate the blueberries or cut the Birthday Cake. Maybe things would have turned out differently if they’d just seen those blueberries?

He watches as the room comes back into focus. Is this the same room he worked so hard to make shine? The floor, the supple wood, as black now as the sky, as the beach below. Wilted flowers, tarnished silver, spotted crystal, stained linens. Isn’t it always like this; everything becomes refuse, ruin? He tries to remember which prophet said, “Many shepherds have ravaged my vineyards and made my pleasant field a desolate wilderness; the whole land is waste and no one cares.”

Joseph wonders if he himself even cares. He would like to cry out at the pain he has brought his boys, now men, but he feels numb. Maybe, he reasons, this is his true punishment: the will to react but the inability to feel.

Suddenly his beloved Yoel is there with him in his dark and messy vacated dining room high above Tel Aviv. For the first time since his death, Joseph truly sees him as he was. His beard and mustache are full, and the hues, in this darkened room, more dazzling than ever, the color of cinnamon sticks dripping with honey, illuminated by some distant, mysterious sun. His gray-green eyes are the shade of the winter sea and his once-pale skin seems ruddier, healthy and robust. He stands as tall and broad as he did twenty years earlier. His wide-spread legs suggest a sexuality he was once loath to own, and Joseph finds himself aroused by this—apparition. It is Yoel at thirty-five, and for a moment Joseph does not feel fifty. Pepe and Philippe do not exist and his sons are still children.

The relationship that he and Yoel shared was neither cheap nor manipulative, but he realizes Daniel and the others will never be able to comprehend completely his version of events. And maybe, he ponders, his version is wrong, too. To Joseph it is suddenly clear that every actor in his life has a different interpretation of that relationship, each to suit his own needs: for Daniel it is the unspeakable sin against him, his brothers, and their God, a perversion, a lusting, a destructive force. For Pepe it is a titillating string of tales, full of youth and vigor, hot sex and adventure. For Rebecca, it is her immature husband’s escape from reality and responsibility. But for Joseph and this apparition it was true love, a space wide enough to contain two souls and two souls only, bound at every point of their beings. That feeling Joseph is beginning to recall, that deep, heavy, pining desire to merge with him, to invade him, to explore him from the inside, see through his eyes, taste through his tongue. And to be invaded right back again.

The memory of their lovemaking floods him now as he watches Yoel in front of him, not fading, not moving. Once they began it was a constant torment until they could be together again. They were both embarrassed by their urges, by the physical need they had for one another, two bright men reduced to animal coupling. They were all over each other whenever and wherever they could be: in the sand just above water’s edge, in a field of wildflowers, in a cave, under a waterfall. In a bathtub, on the kitchen floor, in a pantry, on a roof. They could barely stand to be among people most of the time, the need to touch was so strong. ‘Did I really drive you mad, dear Yoel? Did I really bring you to insanity?’ The apparition provides no answer in his unblinking stare. ‘Did I kill you?’

The illuminating light dims and Yoel fades. Joseph does not try to stop him. He knows Yoel belongs to another world. A small figure appears at the door. It is Batya, in bathrobe and slippers. He is surprised that she and Gidi are still in the house, certain they had chosen to make the long walk to friends in Bnei Brak rather than sleep under his roof. “Come here, dear girl,” he says in a high whisper. “Come sit beside me.”

Batya does as she is told. She carries such a look of innocence that Joseph has the urge to take her face into his hands and cradle it. He hopes Gidi is wise and strong enough to protect her from life’s cruelties.

“I’m not used to being in such a big bedroom all alone,” she says softly.

“You can sit here with me as long as you like,” says Joseph, happy she has chosen him for company.

Batya smiles. She folds and unfolds a tissue. “It was a lovely meal you made. I could never make such food. I know how to make soup and chicken and potatoes but I can’t make them all come out together.”

“Does Gideon help you?” Joseph inquires.

“Oh yes, oh yes, he gives me encouragement. But my mother makes most of our meals. She’s such a good cook, like you but not so fancy. And she can make it all be ready at the same time.”

They are silent for a few minutes. Joseph would like to ask many questions, but he is drained of feeling, too tired to hear the answers.

“I think you really loved that rabbi,” Batya says into the dark.

“What?”

“You loved him, didn’t you? You loved him from the bottom of your heart and in your whole being. I know. That’s how I love Gideon.”

“Yes, I did. I still do.”

“Aren’t we lucky?” she says in a bright singsong. “Aren’t we so very lucky?”

Joseph looks at Batya’s young face, a pale moon, the room’s only light.

“Very,” answers Joseph with a sigh that borders on contented.

It is well past midnight when Joseph puts on an old pair of plain flannel pajamas, his favorites until Pepe complained about the inconvenience of the buttons. He is slow and relaxed about his nightly routine, but thorough, working his way from bottom to top as usual: first he soaks his feet in a ceramic basin, carefully drying the spaces between his toes and applying creams. Then he rubs lotion into his knees and elbows. Next he flosses his teeth then brushes them in the circular rotating manner his dentist insists on, a ceremony Joseph performs with near-religious fervor in hopes of being buried with his own set intact. And last, he washes his face with a medicated exfoliating soap that makes his eyes sting. His foreigner’s love of the English language conjures a picture of great plants and bushes sprouting forth across his face, requiring immediate exfoliation. Normally he would run to consult the dictionary. Can one really exfoliate one’s skin or is this typical American advertising hyperbole? But tonight he has lost interest in words; they have failed him, assaulted him. He wishes not to talk or even think. He wishes he could quiet his mind to avoid hearing Daniel or picturing the ravaged Sabbath table or his father, Manfred, ill and demented, or Rebecca, her arms outstretched in supplication, begging him for help.

In bed he props himself up on two thick pillows and reaches for a book or a magazine on the nightstand, anything will do. His hand shakes as he lifts the latest Meir Shalev novel and opens it to the marked page, determined to escape from the events of the evening. The characters are oddly unfamiliar to him, though he is sure he was following the story just a night or two ago.

Joseph restores the bookmark to the same page and replaces the book on his nightstand. He reaches down into his pajama bottoms, touching himself lightly, but quickly loses interest. Pepe desires him with such frequency and intensity that Joseph prizes his time alone, letting his over-burdened body lie fallow and untouched for as long as Pepe stays away. This quiet withdrawal is the secret he shares with his body; he is certain that Pepe is fooled by his willingness and Joseph himself is surprised sometimes at his body’s own complicity, tricking him into wanting to make love even when he feels nothing could arouse him. In fact, he has never refused Pepe in their three years together. Not for the first time Joseph wonders about Pepe, what he does when his urges overtake him during his many business trips and Joseph is on the other side of the globe. Pepe has an eye for smooth skin and narrow hips, and any young fool could see he is rich and safe. Once a stifled sneeze crackled down the line from Bangkok, prompting Pepe to comment on the paper-thin walls of his hotel. Another time Joseph woke him in Havana and thought he recognized Pepe’s postcoital purr, a thick huskiness his voice settles into after a night of love-making. Joseph never asks, would not know how to phrase the question. Nor does he know what answer he would like to hear. He hopes Pepe is careful and Joseph is in fact relieved when he returns from overseas depleted of energy. It gives Joseph time to reacquaint himself with Pepe’s paunch and the wide spaces between his teeth that give him the look of a lecherous crocodile. It allows Joseph’s body to accept invasion again.

Joseph makes one last trip to the toilet, stopping to open a window—on the far side of the room this time—before burrowing himself under the heavy comforter. The wind has subsided, leaving only a trace of misty sea air in its wake. He makes up his mind to dream of the great love of his life, to reenact a scene from their four months of perfect bliss, but instead his mind flits to fleeting scenes he would prefer to forget: unpleasant, indiscreet, confusing. The Joseph of fifty does not laugh at the Joseph of twenty-five or thirty. His naiveté is no funnier now than it was a quarter-century earlier, even from under a down comforter on the bed he shares with another man. A man old enough to have a slew of grandchildren. A man who treats him like a housewife. Instead he mourns that Joseph, so unprepared for the years ahead, so unworldly. How that Harvard toilet would haunt him for years, until today! The beginning of something, he recognizes now, the beginning of a piece of his life that had carried him to this very evening. He wishes to ponder this thought, and even raises his hand over his head to trace an arc of those twenty odd years, but the drama of the day and the lateness of the hour weigh heavily on him; his hand falls to the mattress and through the mist of encroaching sleep Joseph says goodnight to his sons and his home and his worries and wafts away, into his dreams.