Shira (68 page)

Herbst left the hospital without seeing Shira. He had mixed feelings. He didn’t know whether he was pleased not to have seen Shira or whether he was displeased not to have seen Shira. Once again, a quality common not only to Herbst but to most people was manifest. When he decided he was pleased not to have seen Shira, an alternate view asserted itself: You could have seen her here. If you had searched, you would have found her. Because you asked that mere child, whose kerchief is still unwrinkled, who hasn’t dealt with patients yet, you assume you’ve done what you could. But, having said you are leaving it to your wife, it would be best to get out of here. Young nurses tend to be curious, and, if you hang around, she’ll ask about you, and who knows what that will lead to. Herbst adjusted his tie, imagining it had slipped out of place. Since he didn’t have a mirror and couldn’t see if the tie was in place, he adjusted it again. Since he wasn’t sure he had adjusted it properly, he pulled at the edges of his collar. By now, he was at the foot of the hospital steps, near the gate. At the gate, he saw Axelrod the clerk. He was hurrying. He was wrinkled; his skin looked old beyond its years. Unless his skin was created before he was born, I don’t know how to explain this fact. Axelrod raised his glasses all the way to his bald spot and eyed him in alarm. Whether or not you believe it, the glasses eyed him in alarm too. Herbst nodded and greeted him. He greeted him rather submissively. Axelrod looked back over his shoulder, as though a crowd were standing behind him, and said, “Did you want to have a word with me? Be brief and tell me what you want. You can see I’m busy.” Herbst said, “I don’t want anything.” Axelrod said, “It’s good you don’t want anything. I’m busy, and I don’t even have the time to chase a mosquito.” Herbst said, “There was a nurse here. If I’m not mistaken, her name was Shura.” Axelrod said, “You mean Shira. You are asking about the nurse Shira. Then why did you say ‘Shura’? The nurse Shira isn’t here. She isn’t here, as I said.” Herbst said, “Where is she?” Axelrod said, “If I knew, I would tell you.” Herbst looked around. He looked at Axelrod and whispered, “Allow me, sir, to ask: Shira works in this hospital, isn’t that right, Mr. Axelrod?” Axelrod said, “Who’s denying that she used to work in the hospital? On the contrary, everyone agrees that she performed well.” Herbst said, “But what?” Axelrod said, “But she quit.” “She quit?” “Yes, my dear sir. She quit and went off somewhere. These things happen. I don’t get excited over a nurse who quits her job.” “She didn’t say where she was going?” Axelrod said, “Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. In any case, she didn’t say anything to me. Of course, I’m too busy to pay attention to everything people say. Come, I’ll see if she left an address.”

Herbst trailed after Axelrod, following him to the office. Axelrod took out a notebook and began to leaf through it. He finally took his head out of the book, turned to look over his shoulder, and said, “What did you want to know? Whether she left us her address? She didn’t leave us her address.” Herbst said, “And what if I need to speak with her?” Axelrod said, “If you have something to tell her, I can write it in this book. But make it brief, just a few words. You can see I’m busy and don’t have time for long speeches. I don’t see the point of endless words anyway.” Axelrod stuck his head back in his book and didn’t look up again, making it clear that the conversation was over and he had nothing more to say. Herbst posted himself in front of Axelrod and risked another question. “She left no clue as to her plans?” Axelrod turned his head toward Herbst again, stared at him in alarm, and asked, “Who left no clues?” Herbst answered in a whisper, “The nurse Shira.” “The nurse Shira? We already forgot she ever existed, and he is still talking about her. She left absolutely no clues. Who needs clues anyway? I like things to be clear. Clear facts, not clues.” Herbst said, “Then there is nothing more to do.” Axelrod said, “What do you mean, ‘nothing more to do’? There is a lot to do, but we never have a chance to do it.” Again, he stuck his head in the book, conveying the impression that, if the whole world were to come and say, “Lift up your head,” he would not lift it.

Herbst left the hospital and stood around for a time. He glanced in all four directions, looking this way and that. Then he followed his feet to the bus stop. When he was sitting in the bus, on the way home, the road became two roads, one leading home, the other leading elsewhere. In all the time since Herbst’s return from Kfar Ahinoam, it hadn’t occurred to him to visit Shira. At that moment, he was convinced that he had to see Shira, in order to find out why she had left the hospital she had worked in for several years and gone elsewhere – also, where had she gone?

He took out his notebook to look for her address. He knew it wasn’t there. When Shira had said to him, “Write down my new address,” he hadn’t written it down. Nevertheless, he looked for her address in his book. The bus stopped suddenly. A large group of Arabs were gathered for a funeral. An Arab dignitary, a rival of the Jerusalem mufti, had been murdered by the mufti’s supporters. The victim’s entire clan – his mother’s whole family and his father’s whole family – as well as many of the mufti’s enemies, came to escort him to his eternal rest. It’s true, Herbst reflected, that Shira has moved. In fact, she told me she has moved. When I was first getting to know her, she told me she was thinking about moving, and now she has succeeded and has made the move. Too bad I didn’t write down where she is. He looked in his notebook again and found nothing. He shrugged his shoulders and made a face, for he hadn’t behaved properly. If not for his own purposes, then in the name of good manners, he ought to have taken her address when Shira said to him, “You can write down my new address.”

The funeral cortege grew longer and longer. Some of the mourners were in cars and buses; others rode donkeys and horses. There were also those who came on foot. “Too bad he was killed,” a fellow passenger remarked. “He was a good
goy
. Last Passover, as soon as the holiday was over, he sent me a loaf of fresh bread.” Another passenger retorted, “Let them kill each other rather than us. Still, it’s puzzling that the best of them get killed, while the worst villains are spared. Are you by any chance a journalist, my friend?” “Why?” “Because I saw you take out a notebook. You probably want to write about the funeral.” “Is that so?” Herbst said, putting the notebook back in his pocket.

“The road is clear, and we can move on. They create a disturbance when they’re alive as well as when they die. A constant disturbance. I never saw such a people. Their days are idle. They do nothing. When we come and take action, they sound an alarm, as if we were depriving them of work. Please tell me, folks, what do these Arabs really want? If not for the Jews, they would still be what they were in Terah’s generation, in Terah’s time. What haven’t we done for them? Roads, water, orchards, electricity. Still they complain. You, my friend, are probably from Brit Shalom and find my words uncongenial.” Herbst looked at the interrogator and said, “What makes you think I’m from Brit Shalom?” He said, “If you aren’t from Brit Shalom, please forgive me for suspecting you.” Herbst smiled and said, “And if I am from Brit Shalom, what then?” “In that case, you shouldn’t have come to the Land of Israel.” “Be quiet!” the driver shouted. “This is not the place for arguments. Professor Herbst, we are here. This is your stop.”

Chapter eight

I
t’s possible that he would have found Shira’s apartment, and it’s possible that he wouldn’t have found Shira’s apartment; it’s possible that he would have found her in, and it’s possible that he wouldn’t have found her in. But he made no attempt to find her. When he felt the urge to see her, he overruled it with this rationale: If, at the hospital, where she worked for so many years, no one knows where she is, who am I to know? On the face of it, Herbst was at peace with the situation. Not merely in terms of himself, but in terms of Shira, too, he was at peace. If she were to come and reproach him for not showing himself to her, he could say, “I asked Axelrod about you, and he didn’t know where you were.”

Axelrod didn’t know where Shira was, and Herbst didn’t know where Shira was. They were different, however, in that one had forgotten her and the other had not.

Shira began to show herself to him again. He saw her dimly, in his imagination. The image was different from previous ones, earlier on, when his heart was aflutter and, more recently, when he was bitter, angry, and eager to be rid of her. Now, the image was ambiguous; even as he saw her, he knew she had vanished. He wanted to ask where she had vanished to and why she had left her job at the hospital, but he refrained, lest his voice disrupt the pleasure of his vision. His thoughts drifted, alighting on the climber, the ambitious young man who had pursued her in her youth and whom she had rejected. He speculated that this man had come to Jerusalem and was at the head of every public institution – perhaps he was even a trustee of the hospital – and that Shira had left her job to avoid having him see her in a subordinate role when his position was elevated and prominent.

One day, Herbst saw that climber’s name on a poster announcing a rally in Jerusalem, at which he was to be one of the speakers. Herbst took out his notebook and wrote down the date, the hour, the place. At the appointed time, he went to listen.

Whenever Herbst went to one of these gatherings, known as rallies, he was appalled at the number of people who pushed their way into a noisy, crowded space to hear the same message over and over again – a hundred times, a thousand times – a message that was trivial to begin with. Now that he was at the rally and saw the mob that had come to listen, he changed his mind and decided that the public wasn’t crazy after all: if the speaker attracted such a large crowd, he must have something to offer. Herbst had said roughly this about several orators, and he had turned out to be mistaken. But, in the case of this climber, it was clear to him that he was not mistaken. I refer to him as the climber, not because he was unique in his ambition, but because I’m not free to use his real name. Since I prefer not to invent names, I refer to him in terms of his character.

Let me return to the subject. That particular day was hot and
hamsin
– like, a day when the good Lord remembered His land unfavorably. The sky was yellow, gray, and dusty; the earth was gritty and hard. In between, the air was yellow and gritty, searing one’s eyes, scratching one’s skin, drying one’s mouth and lips. Throats and palates became irritated, as if they had been sprinkled with salty sand. There was no wind. The sun peered down with ugly eyes. The murky tar on the roads began to melt, sticking to everyone’s heels. Loose dust crawled about, rose up, and seeped into one’s pores, one’s eyes, and one’s nostrils. There were no birds in the sky. Jerusalem had suddenly reverted to an earlier era, before the Second Aliyah, when the only birds in the Jerusalem sky were birds of prey, who came in droves, occupied the land, and behaved as if it were their domain. But the streets of Jerusalem were filled with people, men and women, old and young. On that day, Jerusalem was demonstrating against the Mandate government, whose policies added villainy to villainy, heaped decree upon decree, and made Israel’s burden hard to bear. Those who had escaped the sword and eluded the raging madmen, who had wandered over the land, who had gone to sea in battered boats without bread, water, or medicine – with nothing – reached our shores only to be turned away by the authorities and forced to wander farther, until their boats were wrecked, leaving them to drown and be devoured by sharks. Even people who ordinarily shunned public events came to join this demonstration. Without words, without noise, without shouts, in total silence the community of Israel made its way through Jerusalem, with faces that bespoke grief, for there was no one present who did not have relatives at the bottom of the sea.

British policemen were stationed on every corner of every intersection, armed from head to toe. They wore helmets, and weapons were fastened to their uniforms. In addition, military vehicles stood ready and menacing, reflecting the attitude of those in charge, as such equipment tends to do. Some of the soldiers were on foot, some in vehicles. If I’m not mistaken, there were even some on horseback. We walked in silence, not saying a word. We didn’t lift our eyes to look up at those who inhibit life, inflict death, and rule the world – those conquerors, angels of fury, villains dispatched by others even more villainous. In our hearts, there was neither hatred nor resentment, but each face was covered with sadness, a sadness that begins in the heart and takes over the entire face. Little by little, whispered words began to be heard. People who were not in the habit of expressing themselves in public began to whisper to each other. One man told his neighbor, “My wife said to me, ‘This cannot be.’“ What that man said was strange. If that’s what his wife said, what of it? Actually, it was meaningful to us that even his wife, who was not interested in politics, said, “This cannot be.”

Herbst was swept along by the procession. When he left home in order to hear that climber’s speech, he didn’t know there would be such a huge crowd. All of a sudden, he was part of the crowd. One minute, he found himself among ordinary, anonymous people. A minute later, he found himself next to a friend or acquaintance. On that day, it made no difference. Everybody was of one mind. Though opinions might be expressed differently, the substance was the same. Only on rare occasions is there such agreement.

His mind was suddenly diverted from all this, because he saw Tamara. He realized immediately that he was mistaken, that it wasn’t Tamara, that it was a boy. How could a man mistake a stranger for his daughter, and a boy at that? Since it seemed to him that he had seen Tamara, he began to think about her. Where is Tamara? She is undoubtedly here. She certainly wouldn’t miss such an event. Tamara, who is always denouncing the British and deploring their actions in this country, is surely here. And it’s possible Shira is here too. Not really; Shira wouldn’t be here. She doesn’t involve herself in public affairs. The very first time he saw her, the day a young man from one of Jerusalem’s leading families was killed by Arabs and the entire city turned out to mourn, she stood on the sidelines, a cigarette in her mouth, as if to declare, “I’m not with you.” This would surely be the case now, when her rejected suitor, whom she would not enjoy seeing in such an honored public role, was scheduled to address the rally. On the other hand, since the crowd was large enough for an individual to be swallowed up in it, Shira might feel free to come, if not to hear his speech, then to see him.