Eduardo Halfon - Monastery

OUTSIDE, IT WAS BEGINNING to get dark. The yellow security gate was down. A festive air prevailed in Kiryat Mattersdorf, in the buildings, in the houses and apartments, in the entire neighborhood. But not in the two of us.

We walked in silence out to Panim Meirot, the main street, and began waiting for a taxi. All of a sudden, without giving it much thought, not sure if I was serious, I told my brother I wasn’t going to the wedding. A taxi sped by without stopping. Then another one. What do you mean you’re not going to the wedding? Exactly that, I said, I’m not going to the wedding. And why not? he asked. I didn’t know how to respond, how to explain the exasperation I was feeling toward all that pretentiousness, all that farce. Or was it fear I felt? Was it something else? What was I actually trying to escape from? I didn’t know. The only thing I did know was that I needed to get as far away as possible from all of that, and from all of them, and maybe, if I could, even from myself. I don’t know, I whispered to my brother, and he frowned and shook his head and said, raising his voice, that we were there for our sister, that it was our sister’s wedding, that the wedding was what we’d come to Israel for, that I was crazy. Yeah, could be, but I’m not going. I can’t. Another taxi sped by. You can’t or you don’t want to? my brother asked, his voice now rather aggressive. I exhaled and replied, my voice just as aggressive, that it was the same shit. Because of all this, I suppose? he asked, almost as though it were an insult, his fiery glance cast back, perhaps encompassing all of the buildings of Kiryat Mattersdorf, perhaps encompassing all of Judaism. Maybe, I said. Well if that’s the case, he said, then you’re being more intolerant than they are. I kept quiet. Whether you like it or not, he said, whether you accept it or not, you’re as Jewish as all of them. That’s the way it is. That’s your heritage. It’s in your blood.

It struck me then, watching my brother stand there in front of all of the gray buildings of Kiryat Mattersdorf, that the discourse about Judaism being in the blood, the discourse about Judaism not being a religion but something genetic, sounded the same as the discourse used by Hitler.

There are thoughts that jump up, dark and clammy, like little frogs.

Neither of us spoke again. Finally, a taxi stopped. Just as we opened the door to get in, we heard shouting and howling from behind us. It was a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews from Kiryat Mattersdorf. They were enraged. They were shouting at us and insulting us for getting into a car during Shabbat. Some of their stones landed very close.

THAT NIGHT, AGAIN UNABLE to sleep because of the time change or because of the grimy old hotel, and smoking on the narrow balcony overlooking a pitch-black and possibly abandoned Jerusalem neighborhood, I missed my sister. That Orthodox woman, with her outfit and her wig and her sermons, was not my sister. I didn’t know who she was. But not my sister.

I remembered her as a girl. Her wide-eyed gaze, her turned-up little nose, her beautiful black curls. And then I remembered this: my sister, so shy in public, hiding behind my father’s legs, refusing to let go of my father’s legs. And then I remembered this: my sister sucking her thumb until she was ten or eleven. She sucked only the right one, and only when she was holding a worn pale yellow blanket that she — to our public delight — called her Booby, and whose lace stitching she would scratch with the fingernail of her index finger as she sucked her thumb (recently I found out, amazed, that all those years of scratching had unraveled a dozen yellow blankets). And then I remembered this: a letter that my sister had written the tooth fairy, to apprise him of our upcoming move. We’re moving, she’d written. Please don’t forget to come for my teeth. And then I remembered this: my sister’s reaction when, after admiring him for years, she finally met Mickey Mouse in person, on our first family trip to Orlando. Look, sweetheart, here comes Mickey, my father had said. My sister looked swiftly down at the ground in an attempt to find a mouse there, and on seeing the huge creature in front of her, she burst into sorrowful tears. And then I remembered this: my sister on my mother’s lap, on a private balcony at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, where we’d gone one night to see Cats . When the show began, all the lights were dimmed and the actors, dressed as cats, made up as cats, their eyes flickering green and red and yellow like cats, slunk out and prowled stealthily through the audience. A black cat, perched on the ledge of our private balcony, was so shaken by my sister’s panicked screeching that he nearly fell, and he had to come out of character and whisper to her that it was all right, that he wasn’t a real cat but a regular man, a man like any other, a man who was just dressed as a cat.

Smiling, I decided to stop remembering and stubbed out my cigarette.

I was about to open the sliding glass door to the room, when yet again I heard the shrieking or wailing. So I hadn’t dreamed it. There it was again, out there, down below, somewhere in that dark and abandoned Jerusalem neighborhood. It no longer sounded like a baby crying, but like many babies crying. Like a whole hospital or nursery school, I thought, where all the babies have started screaming or crying at once, almost in unison. High-pitched cries, loud, horrible, tormented. Though by turns they sounded more like the cries of an animal or a pack of animals, frightened, or dying, or about to die. I thought of the bleating of lambs. I thought of the slaughter of lambs. I thought of sacrificial lambs. Of course — I was in Jerusalem. I stood listening for a few minutes. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t figure it out. There was no light and no moon and no one around, not a single soul down on the street below. Then, maybe having given up, maybe just too scared, I turned and went back into the room. My brother slept the exquisite, motionless sleep of a little boy.

I’M DOWNSTAIRS.

It was eight o’clock in the morning. The phone had awakened me and I had to get out of bed and stumble over to the desk to answer it. It was Tamara. She told me that she was downstairs. That she knew me — laughing, teasing, alluding to the past — so she knew she’d have to come and get me. That she wanted to spend the day with me, take me to see a few sights. My brother was still in bed, in a deep sleep. I thought momentarily of the lunch and the prayer service we had scheduled with my sister and her fiancé and all of their friends and ultra-Orthodox rabbis from the yeshiva. I shuddered. Be right down, I said, and hung up.

As I got off the elevator, I saw Tamara sitting in an armchair in the lobby, her legs crossed and long and bare. I motioned to her to give me a minute and walked over to reception. She walked slowly up to meet me, and stood waiting in silence beside me as I greeted the same old man (I’d begun to view him not as receptionist but as owner, one of those cantankerous owners who don’t trust anybody but themselves, or who are too stingy to pay anybody but themselves) and asked him for a yellow memo pad so I could leave a note for my parents, excusing myself. The old man looked worse than ever. His face more greenish and shriveled. His eyes red. His clothes wrinkled. His hands seemed to tremble. He was staring at Tamara beside me, still serious, still grumpy, and murmured something in Hebrew that sounded disdainful. Tamara ignored him, or perhaps she didn’t hear him, or perhaps his comment wasn’t that disdainful after all. She was wearing a pair of very short, old, torn khaki shorts, leather sandals, a flowing, almost see-through white linen blouse that showed the top of her freckled shoulders, and a bra that might have been red. And that was it. No makeup. Her copper hair was wild and matted, as if she’d just awakened. Her eyes were bluer than I remembered. When I finished and handed the old receptionist the note, Tamara immediately gave me a hug, an urgent hug, and this time there was no Lufthansa uniform and it wasn’t awkward at all. And though part of that hug might have been retaliation for the old man’s disdainful comment, I liked that she held me so tightly and so absolutely. I liked seeing her few strands of gray. I like your gray, I said, and she smiled at me with her big Mediterranean eyes. Then she took a step back and held my hands in hers, our fingers entwined, and I noted with satisfaction that she wasn’t wearing a ring. But for a second, I thought I could make out a very faint circle of pale skin on her left ring finger. Perhaps I had imagined the wedding ring, in the confusion and heat of the airport. Perhaps she had taken it off that morning. Perhaps she had left it at home, hidden in some drawer or case or jewelry box. I looked up. Best not to know.