Песах Амнуэль - Zion's Fiction - A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature

The bus door closed. The green bus backed out of its bay. I realized I was sitting in an Egged Line 552 bus to Ra’anana, on my way home. I stared outside as if what I saw was the most interesting thing in the world, even though I knew each tree, each traffic light along the way. I’m going to Ra’anana, to see Mother.

I got off at my station near the Wars Memorial. My legs, still on autopilot, kept taking me along those side streets, imbued with suburban tranquility, to the four-story grey building on 58 Hahagana Street.

I took the stairs, reaching the door that bore a simple sign, “Menashe.” I buzzed, and Mother opened the door. “Oy,” she said. “Ido. I just called you. You weren’t home, so I had a chat with your roommate, Max.”

“What did you talk about?” I asked.

“Nothing in particular,” said Mother. “Life.”

The hall fixture spilled yellow light, sad and weak, deepening the shadows made by the creases in her face. The Menashe Family Map of Troubles, I secretly called Mother’s facial creases. It was a one-to-one topographic map of all the shit this family has eaten over the last twenty years. Mountains, valleys, nothing missing. Just get on an air-conditioned tour bus and take the guided tour. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’d look to your right, you can see a fold running from the side of the nose to the corner of the upper lip. It got much deeper the day the family business went bankrupt . Mother said this was because he was a good-for-nothing jerk. Although they wouldn’t admit it, this was what finally killed their marriage. If you’d look to your left, you can see the central crease across the forehead. Yes, right there. Watch your step, Ma’am, it’s very deep . This one came from him: my idiot of a father. It came into being overnight, complete, when he took off to India with Rina. It started a lengthy geocosmetic process, which slowly but surely deepened this crease, during those long nights when Mother was left alone with her nightmares.

Look here, everybody: this is very interesting. Right here, in the middle of the forehead, between the eyes, rising vertically through the eyebrows, a crease I’m particularly sentimental about . My handiwork. Each little fold has something to say. Each tiny crease represents a stage in my growing up. Bottom left, you can discern the time I went with Tomer Freistadt down to Sinai without telling anybody. A bit higher up, on the right-hand side, you can see my glorious motorcycle crash in the orange orchard, two weeks after I’d got the bike . Flew twenty feet through the air into a tree. The tree came out alright, not a scratch. The bike was a total loss. Its carcass is still lying there in the backyard, rusting away in the rain. I got platinum nails in both my legs, and all the girls in my class came to the hospital to scribble on my cast, great fun. Here to your right you will notice the classic crease known as Recruit’s Mother Canyon, proudly borne by every Israeli mom . It got a bit deeper each day during my three loony years in an infantry battalion.

“Come in, sit down,” she said. “Eat something. If I’d known you were coming, I would have done some shopping and cooking. Just for myself, like this, I don’t bother.” She got some vegetables out of the fridge and started slicing them for a salad. “You want egg?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer before putting a small frying pan on the gas fire, which shed a gloomy light on her narrow, darkish kitchen. When the pan got hot, she poured in some oil which started bubbling noisily.

“I’m not hungry, Mom, I’ve already eaten back home,” I murmured my line, like an actor on his two-hundredth show. But a few minutes later I had in front of me a plateful of omelet and green salad; a couple of buns, hot from the microwave oven, lay beside my plate.

Mother made black coffee for herself, lit a Time cigarette. “Need money?” she asked. Hope lit up her face.

“No, Mom, the problem ain’t money,” I said. “I don’t know what I need. What can you give me?”

“I can write you a check, if you want.”

“Besides,” I added, “I broke up with Osher.”

“Why?” asked Mother, getting up to stand by the open window. Dying daylight lit her face when she blew cigarette smoke out into the open air. “Osher’s always been such a nice girl.”

“She dumped me, Mom. She’d said she was done, puff , just like that. Three years went out in smoke, because Madame Osher Yehoshua was done overnight. So she smokes two packets of my Winstons, uses up all the coffee and tissues in the place, and lets me know this is it. I’m done,” I said. “Game’s over. I’m taking a break from life—and terrible things are going to happen. Mostly to me, but also to you. To all of you. Shit’s about to hit the fan—and no one’s going to stay clean. I’m through waking up every morning to see who crapped in my plate, eat it like a good boy, then smile and say thank you kindly. You all will be sorry.”

Mother remained standing by the window, her face still turned outside. She took another deep drag off her cigarette. Then she let it out with such an ouch sound, reminding me of Grandma’s soul-rending sighs, the ones she used to make when she was still alive. “Okay, so what do you want? Like I was part of some conspiracy against you. I’m your mother, Ido. I’m just a mother, that’s all.” She crashed the cigarette in the ashtray. “What is it with the two of you? First him, now you too. I’m worried, is all, must I be punished for it?” She sighed again. “You do what you feel like doing. I’ll write you a check if you want.”

There was nothing left to say. So I took off.

It was only when I got back home that I discovered the horror.

The apartment’s yellow, peeled up walls were covered with lengths of white, clean cloth. The rickety orange couch, the one I brought in from Grandma’s old home, was gone. And something very strange happened to the floor: you could see the tiles’ original color. This was quite bizarre. Something about the apartment’s air was fundamentally different. The stench and general ickiness so typical of bachelors’ shared rental places in central Tel Aviv were completely replaced by something else.

Max was in charge of Operation Cleanup, waving his arms in broad, slow gestures as he spoke and sounding quite serious. Seeing him like that, I could no longer be mad at him for the missing couch. I was just sorry for him, terribly. Poor Max. He just didn’t have it coming to him. He used to be one of the good ones.

From the kitchen smells of home cooking wafted in, such as never before filled the air of this place. A pair of chubby twins, with long, blond, curly hair, were standing there, stirring two gigantic pots on the gas stove. They said hello, it was their pleasure to meet me, they’ve heard a lot of stories about me from Max. It was all I could do to avoid their attempts to hug me. They did try. Orit and Hagit, they introduced themselves with dimple-deepening smiles. Hagit offered me a chair, and Orit pushed a wooden plate in front of me loaded with rice and vegetables. She actually wanted me to eat it. When I saw those pieces of celery in the rice, I politely declined.

What the fuck, I thought. Lucky for them I don’t have the energy right now to deal with this entire mess; otherwise I would have kicked the lot of them, just like that, out of my apartment. I turned aside to hide in my room. I got in—and immediately got out again, slamming the door. This can’t be. Sheer horror.

I stepped back into the room. The first thing that hit me was the odor of orchids. The floor, believe it or not, was just like in the commercials, smelling of orchids. The windows were wide open, and fresh, pure air came in—who knows how long it’s been since such a thing had happened. The floor was sparkling clean. All those pizza crusts, empty Coke bottles, and unidentified food leftovers that used to carpet it, all gone.