Motti (7 page)

But nevertheless, something happens.

So out they went, drinking again.

Again Menachem drank a bit too much, drank till he became rude; he pressured the waitress to be nice to Motti, who sat there in despair, and to give him her telephone number—while Motti sat there reserved—and maybe go out and have a drink with them later, when her shift was over. She gave Motti a friendly smile, to Menachem her smile was less friendly and she declined as she always did (she wanted to go home too, to study for her test; she wants to be a veterinarian, to take care of hurt and abandoned animals; after doing it for years, she'll grow a little duller, she'll nurse a profound hostility toward dog owners who just can't wait to put to sleep or give away the pets who so adore them, and an even greater hostility toward those who refuse to spay and neuter: “We want her to experience the joy of giving birth, and for the children to enjoy it too, that connection with nature, there's nothing like it,” they say, and they don't know what they're saying, don't know about the puppies crowding the cages of shelters and pounds, soon put to death or dying of their own accord; and she too, when she's already a district vet, she'll start being a little too free with the syringe, in the evening she'll go home just wanting to forget it all, put her feet up on the coffee table and sigh; her own dog will put its head on her knees, looking at her expectantly, and she'll stroke her—the dog—absentmindedly and think of suffering).

Then they went out again, and Menachem said, cut the crap, I'm fine, come on, I'll give you a ride home.

So in they got, fastened their seatbelts, and started to drive. And then that dull thud (I didn't see where she came from, I didn't see her, Menachem said over and over, like he was possessed or something), and the crowd collecting after they got out of the car, the police lights, the muttering, the shouts, even the great astonishment, for up till now it was the persistence of life that had surprised Menachem. When his children were small he would wake in a panic from bad dreams and hurry to their room to check whether they were still breathing or if they'd died in their sleep, nothing to it, like a spark shining brightly, briefly, then going out completely and that's that. Not that it was always easy with them, no, mostly he didn't know what to do with them, with the kids and Edna, alive and his and they're all together, but the thought of losing them, that they wouldn't be there anymore (that there would no longer be any possibility of being together, whether this possibility was taken advantage of or not), that was something he couldn't conceive of.

So he hurried to their room at night again and again, and was astonished every time to see how life was preserved, how this stubborn thread continued, this metabolism, these breaths. And now, one little blow—and that was it. Sarah Rosenthal's soul departed in an instant, assuming she had one in the first place (assuming we all do, whether fictional or not). What could Menachem do? Around him shouts and flashing lights, cries of Mister, Mister, and him in the middle of it all, going back to the car and sitting down in the passenger seat, he wants to keep his distance from the steering wheel, his head in his hands, his nose and then his hands full of snot, moaning like a monkey, like a miserable animal, and Motti by the open car door, still standing. Oh God oh God (he moans), what have I done, Motti, what have I done, I swear I never saw her, oh God, Edna's going to kill me, what am I going to do now.

 

Dear Dad (Menachem's son might have written to him had he gone to jail) please by me a horse

Mom misses you a lot and she crys all the time she gets angri with us but we know its onliey becos she misses you and its hard for her and we miss you too and we want to come and visit you soon

Yours with love your son Avi

 

So weak he suddenly became, Menachem.

Edna's going to kill me, he said. My kids will grow up without a father, what will I tell them. This is my third offence, they'll fuck me over in court.

And when the paramedic asked, is someone here with her, Motti said, yes, we are. Then the paramedic said, we're going to such-and-such hospital; they put her in the trauma ward, and there was an elderly man who stroked his stomach and moaned loudly Mama Mama, and to anyone willing to listen he said, two days already I haven't had a bowel movement, two days already I haven't had a bowel movement, and he stroked the tubes inserted into his nostrils and said, it's for the asthma I've been suffering from for fifteen years now, and Motti looked at him and looked at the group of people, a family, standing nearby around the bed of someone else, a woman, and there too there was an elderly man with an expressionless face, and next to him his sons and his daughter in a babble of cell phones (“The doctors say that Mom won't…”), and a Filipina caregiver, also standing next to the bed and weeping bitterly; then Sarah's family arrived as well, and somebody asked, who's the driver who hit her? And Menachem said nothing, just sat there trembling weakly, and Motti stood up and said, it's me, I'm the driver. Menachem didn't even look up. And next to them stood Sarah Rosenthal's husband, and her children stood there too, and Motti in the middle of it all stood facing them and said, I'm the driver. Then the fist and the cracked eye socket. They took care of Motti, too. Then the police arrived, and from there to the lockup, and just as everyone in the hospital had proclaimed their afflictions, so in the lockup everyone proclaimed their innocence, everyone, that is, but Motti. And after a few days or weeks in court, even though it was a first offence, the judge came down on him hard, five years inside, he said. He came down hard both because it was a grave offence and because by then Sarah Rosenthal was dead, and also because his stomach hurt a lot—his daughter had pierced her eyebrow, which made him very angry (and maybe that's why his stomach hurt), and even though Menachem, sitting in the public gallery, flinched—afterward he said, I owe you, brother, man, oh boy do I owe you—Motti didn't even blink, five years, so what, what was that but five years in which he wouldn't have to struggle, which he wouldn't have to struggle to fill up now, until Ariella.

So, did he do this in order to finally invert their balance of power? Suddenly the power is in Motti's hands, and the debt will flip, as will everything. But this is a dubious thesis at best, because you can't invert power structures just like that. If only the consequences had occurred to Motti, the great break in the order of things as they should be—even as they must be—perhaps he would have decided differently. But none of this occurred to him, just a desire to be restrained, a desire to contribute (to take a part of the blame, one might add), and without thinking about it he gave in to these desires. Now: guilt proclaimed, blessed routine, just one decision and everything is already out of his hands. A few years out of his hands. He'll sit in his cell like he did in the hallway, in a doorway, waiting calmly, stubborn in a freedom born from borders now solidified, from the closing of doors, from necessarily diminishing choices. And the years ahead will indeed wait, everything will settle, shrink, recede, just as it should.

Now we may describe these cases by saying that we have certain sensations not referring to objects. The phrase “not referring to objects” introduces a grammatical distinction. If in characterizing such sensations we use verbs like “fearing,” “longing,” etc., these verbs will be intransitive; “I fear” will be analogous to “I cry.” We may cry about something, but what we cry about is not a constituent of the process of crying; that is to say, we could describe all that happens when we cry without mentioning what we are crying about.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein,
The Blue Book

It's hard to follow stories to their end. Especially when they don't actually take place. As though someone took a small hammer and struck a sheet of glass. The center of the break is obvious to the eye, and from it the fracture's lines run and branch out again and again, and at each juncture the paths grow more and more narrow (they're no less crooked, nor do the number of branches decrease). It's hard to follow them, and anyway, what kind of idiot strikes a sheet of glass like that? Here, for example, is a story in which Motti and Ariella run into each other on May 14th a few years from now: They met one day at a convenience store, it was entirely by chance, in the evening they went to a Chinese or an Italian or a French restaurant or for falafel, they ordered dessert or didn't order dessert, and the dessert reminded her of something or pleased her or, let's say, ruined her diet and at night they returned (let's say) to his apartment, and they made love or just had sex, and Motti came too fast or didn't come too fast, and in the morning, if she stayed until the morning, she put on a white or pink or striped shirt with buttons or without, and she got pregnant or didn't get pregnant, and they were together forever or not, and she became a veterinarian or a librarian or an unemployed interior decorator or a cosmonaut or a surveyor, and each and every day they did something or other.

There, I wrote everything in a hundred and fifty words, even less, but where does love enter into this condensed story, where does Motti's great longing come in, where is the burning passion, the desire to visualize, the urge to realize, the fear, the sweetness?

Overall it would have been better not to write this chapter. Nevertheless, I did.

She's had it, Edna has, up to here (she indicates with her hand a bit above eye level). She needs to clean up after him like he's a little boy. If not for the children, she swears she would just leave for good (she says this out of anger; she actually has it good with Menachem most of the time. She loves him).

So be it with the tab at the store (would it kill you to take a wallet when you leave the house, she asks him sometimes in jest and sometimes in real anger, because by now it's getting unpleasant for her too, dealing with that
fellow
—which is, in refined Hebrew, the code word for Arab—who almost begs her each time to talk to Menachem already, to tell him that this is impossible, for years now they've refused to put anything more on the tab, it throws off their books and makes for big trouble with the suppliers and income tax people). So be it. And so be it too, this irresponsibility of his, like a child who promises he'll take care of it and forgets. And so be it too his outings to the city, when they got married she already knew she wouldn't ask him to give this up, bitterness would just build up in him, so why not, let him go out with his friends and enjoy himself, he's a good father and a good husband after all, and even if he has a big mouth out there, she knows which bed he returns to at night (and things are still good between them there, thank God, no complaints).

He almost killed you, that friend of yours (she yells at him). Almost killed you and ran over a poor woman, and now you bring home his dog? Tell me, what's your problem?

What do you want me to do with her, Menachem says in his defense. He's my friend, c'mon. I owe him.

I don't care what you'll do with her, Edna is still angry. Give her to the Humane Society, for all I care.

I can't do a thing like that, Menachem says. C'mon, look how the kids…

How the kids, how the kids, Edna is raising her voice. And who'll take her out? You? The kids? And the fur everywhere, who'll clean it up, tell me, who. Everything will fall on me again, Menachem. And I've had it up to here. Up to here, are you listening?

And Laika, standing reluctantly behind Menachem, shrinks at the sound of this shouting.

I'm not mad at you, good dog, Edna says, almost still screaming, but only out of the inertia. C'mon, come inside, both of you.

How could I not take her? Menachem asks as he enters the hallway and drags Laika behind him. Look at her eyes, this dog. Beautiful like your eyes on the day we met (and he slaps her, Edna, on the butt).

You, you…ugh, Edna laughs and kneels next to Laika, to pet her.

C'mon, Menachem says, I told you it would be okay. You know I'm fucking crazy about you.

And in the house of Sarah Rosenthal, darkness. Her picture on the bureau in the living room (from a time when she was still alive, of course), with her own particular smile, her own particular teeth, her own particular hair, her own particular ears, her own particular chin.

Darkness descended, but no one sitting around got up to turn on the light.

 

Okay, okay. Not really darkness. When the day began to dim someone got up and turned on the lights, with all the associated unpleasantness, because how can this be, she's dead, and in her home people sit, get up, talk, eat, use electricity. As time passes they will turn on lights without this discomfort, without feeling that something here isn't right (apart from her absence), without looking around with the thought that there's some protocol to death, an order to mourning that one must obey, an attentive force in the blind universe that truly cares if you turn on or don't turn on a light and laugh or don't laugh, fall asleep at night or toss and turn in bed, cry or moan and blow your nose hard.

And Motti is in a cell. To his right a wall and to his left a wall, in front of him a wall (and a door), and behind him a wall, above him and below him only time. Presses an ear to the wall (no voice from the other side) and imagines. True, it's possible to argue that this is unproductive, even pathetic, him and his folded-up life, but he's so free in a way, even in his cell in a prison he's so free, one can only be jealous of this, and even though his actual life is pushed up like this against the wall, the other lives he imagines and remembers are quite numerous, more numerous than usual, even, and there is freedom in this too, and as the years accumulate, when at last time is mainly something stretching out behind us, what does it actually matter what we truly lived and what we only remember living?

In the corridor a bunch of keys jingle. Two prison guards are walking by. “Listen,” says one of them, we'll call him Guard A, to his companion, “Listen, I don't understand all this bellyaching with kids today. They sent me a social worker, can you believe that? A social worker. And for what? For what, I ask you. What dad alive doesn't give a little slap here and there, isn't that how it is? Spare the rod, spoil the child, I say. And what, didn't my own parents lower the boom on me from time to time? They lowered it, you bet they lowered it. And it made a better man out of me, let me tell you. I can't pretend I remember every slap, whatever it was for—but so what? I don't remember, but all in all they're good people, I'm telling you. They're good people, my parents. I also turned out—knock on wood—okay. Why should I remember every slap, whatever it was for? So I don't remember. So what. And let me tell you, it's given me the upper hand in life. It's given me the upper hand.”

“It's given you a hand all right,” agreed Guard B.