Orly Castel-Bloom - Textile

Mandy had succeeded in raising herself on her stomach (the condition of her spine gave her an unnatural flexibility) and she was pleading with Dael to tell the nurse to turn her onto her back.

“Morphine. Lots. And head up.”

The nurses didn’t dare turn her over on their own initiative and went to look for the doctor. Dr. Lidani gave his permission, on the grounds of human dignity. He gave instructions for her to be given a heavy dose of an extreme painkiller, to wait for it to take maximum effect, and then to turn her over with her face to the ceiling.

Dael and two nurses turned her over and fixed the pillows, and Mandy whispered:

“To die on my back. Not my stomach. At least.”

It was apparent that she was gathering her strength. “Children. Body to science. The funeral later. For what’s left. No to organic cotton.” She looked at her horrified daughter. “No nonsense. My line to continue. Like my mother. From generation to generation.” After it seemed that she had fallen silent, she added with a unique effort, “I’ll haunt you from above.”

“Yes, yes, mother,” mumbled Lirit without believing her. She wondered if she would really haunt her, and remembered how her mother would say that death was the unraveling of a thread from the fabric of life, and from the point of view of the dead, death was a final exit. It seemed to Lirit that she had discovered a contradiction in her mother’s words, because if death was a final exit, the unraveling of a thread, how would she be able to haunt her from above?

“Only the ultra-Orthodox market. Only them. No tricks,” Mandy mumbled, and then she began to rattle, and the rest followed as usual, until death, the road to which was padded with generous amounts of morphine, because why let them suffer?

THE DOOR TO the Intensive Care Unit opened again to the brother and sister Gruber, this time on their way out.

“What time is it in the United States?” asked Lirit.

“Seven hours back.”

“Back? Not forward?”

“Back.”

“But there are a few time zones there. At least four.”

Dael didn’t answer because his world had collapsed. What did he care what time it was, even in Israel?

They walked silently down the vale of tears of the Ichilov corridors, until they reached the elevator.

The stock of the M24 got stuck between the two closing doors, and Dael groaned and pulled the gun toward him. He was still in uniform.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said, “I don’t understand this situation.”

Lirit led her brother in the direction of their mother’s car, in which she had arrived. While she was racing into the Ichilov Hospital underground parking, she had muttered to herself, “What a terrible thing to happen. . what a terrible thing to happen.” And now, as she wandered round with her brother looking helplessly for the way out, she thought that it really was a catastrophe. She asked Dael:

“What’s going to happen now?”

Dael didn’t answer again, because his thoughts were a mess. When they arrived at the parking lot and it turned out that Lirit didn’t actually remember where she had parked, because of course she was very upset, he said, “Find the car already. I’m dying to get out of here. There isn’t enough oxygen here. They should hand out oxygen masks at the entrance to the parking garage, not a ticket. Did you pay?”

“No,” she said, and by chance they found a pay station.

“Do you remember the color? The section?”

“Orange I think. Green. I don’t know.”

“Brilliant,” he said.

They split up to look for the car in the oxygenless site. Dael continued in minus two, and Lirit went down to minus four. In minus four there was even less oxygen, and judging by the suffocating atmosphere Lirit guessed that the car was on this level. And indeed she found it, got in and switched on the ignition, and drove up to minus two, where her brother was sitting on some step, after giving up his search.

“Come on,” she called to him and opened the window of the seat to her right. “I found it.”

Dael got up, threw his gun and bag onto the back seat, and sat down next to her.

“ Yallah , let’s get out of here,” he said.

IRAD GRUBER SWITCHED ON THE TELEVISION SET OPPOSITE his bed. He had no idea what time it was, neither here nor in Israel. On the screen two men maligned one another refereed by the host. Probably a repeat broadcast. A televised debate between two presidential candidates. The incumbent Republican, his face flushed and his expression resolute, and the Democrat, his skin gray, his face long, his look beaten. Gruber tried to take sides in order to give himself an interest in the debate that had nothing to do with him, just as he sometimes did when watching a football game on TV. But he lacked sufficient data on the American scene, and after a few minutes he was sick of their talk and began to flip channels.

Couldn’t be better! All in the Family —his favorite series of all time! And what’s more, an episode he couldn’t remember seeing when it first came out. Gruber smiled to himself when the familiar characters appeared on the screen, chuckled from time to time, and once even laughed out loud.

His laughter woke Bahat McPhee, who was sleeping in the next room. The laughter was uninhibited, carefree, not at all that of someone whose scientific world had come crashing down around him. She felt a little envious of the Israeli man who was capable of forgetting how grave his situation was.

She glanced at her watch. In another hour or two a pale light would dawn outside. Bahat detested the pale dawn light, a detestation dating from the period of her parents’ yoga studio in the green suburb of Ramat Aviv. She thought that normal people should be sleeping when the sun began to rise because it had nothing to do with them. Sunrise! Sunset, maybe. It expressed a lot of feeling. But all this excitement over a pale, boring sunrise got on her nerves, with all due respect.

In the end she gave up and switched on the TV in her room and listened with interest to the debate, with her eyes closed because she had missed the live broadcast. She was divided in her mind over the elections. One of the candidates was good for Israel and not so great for the Americans, and about the other they said that the USA was his top priority and that he thought America should look inwardly. Despite all the years that had passed since she last set foot on the land of Israel, Bahat was unable to choose sides in light of such divided data.

BAHAT HAD LEFT Israel at the end of the seventies, and since then she had only returned for the funerals of her mother and father respectively, and had not even stayed till the end of the week of mourning. She was one of those Israelis who are reluctant to stay in Israel because of fear, especially since the nineties, and it was just about then she also fell under the spell of Rod Serling, something that had a big influence on the bedrock of her reality.

From the beginning of the third millennium, Israel already seemed to her as frightening as Iraq. Afula and Falluja, Karkur and Kirkuk, what was the difference, she would sometimes sit and muse in the morning, with her sixth coffee and cigarette.

Since acquiring the title of Reform rabbi was conditional on spending at least one full year in Israel, she decided, on the advice of and with the consent of the most respected female rabbi in the congregation of Albany, that she, Bahat McPhee, would instead make a great, pure gesture, one that called for charity and sacrifice, toward the state of Israel, and the Albany rabbi would exempt her from the obligation of staying there for a year.

Sacrifice and charity for the sake of Israel would stand to her credit long after she became a Reform rabbi too, and Bahat liked the idea of having an advantage over all the others; it was pathological with her, the desire to open a gap, but she had been this way since she was a child.