Orly Castel-Bloom - Textile

No pause in the routine in memory of the dead Mandy. Everything as usual. Lirit looked at a new clothing store that called itself FREEDOM. Opposite it in a Delta store, there was an end of the season sale of tank tops for toddlers: three for sixteen dollars. She thought that everything here was relatively cute, but she didn’t have the strength for it now. The coffee had not woken her up, it had made her want to go to sleep, or more precisely, to disappear.

She was only twenty-two, and her mother’s death was really too heavy for her. And she hadn’t really taken in the fact yet that she had inherited a pajama factory that marketed its products to the ultra-orthodox sector, and that she had to pick up the pieces and step smartly into her mother’s shoes.

BUT TOWARD NOON she called Nighty-Night on her cell phone, and told her mother’s right-hand woman, Carmela Levy, that she wouldn’t be coming in for the next few days. But of course she wouldn’t be coming in, said Carmela Levy, and Lirit, who was still sitting in Cafe au Lait listened to a few more condolences, including wonder at the fact that the deceased had donated her body to science and had not asked for a civil burial in a coffin, which would have been far more her style, like the soldiers in the IDF. The two of them had talked about it. But now perhaps she too would donate her body to science.

Suddenly Lirit understood that science benefited from the dead who donated their bodies to it, and that science was actually humanity, and that it was a kind of feedback. She herself didn’t want to be part of this feedback, with all due respect to the cycles in nature. In order to get away from the subject of bodies and science, Lirit said in a gloomy voice that ever since the blow that had come down on them, she couldn’t leave the house, and she even wondered if she should tell Carmela that they had lost contact with their father. But in the end it was lucky that she didn’t tell her, or she would have kept her for another half an hour on the phone.

In conclusion Lirit asked her to convey a message to the workers. She knew — she stressed in a tone that sounded a bit as if she was on television — that her mother would have asked them to carry on. Despite everything. To sew. To work. To produce. Not to let her death confuse them and weaken their resolve. That is what she would have wanted.

“Definitely,” said Carmela in an almost holy tone.

AFTER THE CONVERSATION Carmela retired to some corner in the factory yard behind a tree, and cried, and wiped her eyes with the cloth handkerchief she kept about her person, as her boss had done, God bless her soul. She had learned many delicacies and refinements from her.

She was also anxious about the future. Judging by what she had heard from Mandy over the years, she had good reason to fear Lirit. Lirit was unpredictable. It was Carmela who had given Mandy the advice worth its weight in gold to give Lucas money and send him back to Jamaica. Lately, with Lirit living with someone twice her age, Carmela Levy had waited together with Mandy Gruber for the affair to come to a sticky end.

ONLY ON HER WAY HOME did Lirit realize that she had no more economic problems. It was a reassuring thought, and she made up her mind not to change anything in the short term, to study the subject even though she already knew it, having spent whole summers helping her mother manage the business.

She thought about the long term when she got home, and considered her sudden freedom. What was she going to do in the long term? She didn’t know. Perhaps she would turn Nighty-Night inside out, perhaps she would at long last renovate the place outside and especially inside, and march it into the twenty-first century.

It wasn’t at all impossible that she would examine, in the long term of course, the necessity of at long last changing the target market for the pajamas, and also of touching on the holy of holies, the five patterns exclusive to Nighty-Night, which had long been out of date. Mandy was as stubborn as a mule: she was prepared for there to be only stripes, in two versions; checks, in a one-and-only version for all ages; one floral pattern; and also a pajama in a plain fabric, but in all colors.

The patterns had hardly changed at all since Audrey’s time and to the new heir they seemed old fashioned and even repulsive, but in the meantime her mother’s ghost prevented her from coming to any decision.

She sat down on the sofa and sank into a black mood.

Is this it? she asked herself. Am I going to be buried in a pajama factory for the ultra-Orthodox from now on? Forever? Is this my life? Is this my vocation? Warp and woof for cold nights with no fear of impurities?

She sighed and tried to comfort herself that it wasn’t the end of the world even though it was the end of the world for her, and that perhaps she should take a bold step and transfer production to Turkey or China, and in Israel she would get someone else to do the marketing and who would work on commission. In the space of five minutes Lirit made a hundred decisions, including selling the factory, running away and leaving everything to Dael and their father, marrying Shlomi and then getting divorced from him. Somewhere or other in the framework of what might be called Lirit’s Dream, there was also a plan for an exclusive line of organic cotton (that would be without any fear whatsoever of impurities), which went hand in hand with the overall renovation of the factory.

THE PHONE RANG. On the screen of her upgraded cell phone she saw that it was an overseas call. Instead of rushing to reply, she let it ring, and only after seven or eight rings she took a deep breath and answered. A hard task awaited her.

But her father never let the flow of his words arrest itself, and as usual she couldn’t get a word in edgeways. Right off he started talking in a big hurry, as if he was speaking on a pay phone and he had no more change left. All the urgency in the world belonged to him. It was inconceivable that something fateful could have happened somewhere else.

He was sorry for not being in contact for the past three days, but he had forgotten his cell phone in Israel, and also he needed the holiday, especially as it wasn’t a holiday at all, it was work. There wasn’t a lot left, they had already been working for four days. He was taking what he required for the continuation of his TESU research and coming home in a day or two. It was morning where he was now, and what was the time over there? He was very happy and satisfied and eager to get back with the results.

He sounded distant and strange to her. She couldn’t believe that he was the only parent they had left, Dael and she. Would it occur to him to ask how she was? How his wife was? Usually he called to hear himself talking to his family.

Lirit let him finish his monologue down to the last detail, including the fact that he was now in the laboratory with his American colleague, and only then, a second before he was about to say goodbye, she delivered the bitter blow in full.

“Why are you only telling me now?” her father yelled down the line, “What are you saying to me all of a sudden?”

At this point there was silence, as if they had been disconnected, and Lirit asked twice, “Hello?” and then,

“Daddy, are you all right?”

“I’m here, I’m here,” he said weakly, and suddenly he seemed to wake up, “What do you mean she donated her body to science? Is she crazy?”

“So there’s no funeral, right? Only after six months or something?” he added after another silence.

“Yes,” said Lirit.

“I don’t understand this business of donating to science,” he said, “It isn’t her style.”

“That’s what she wanted,” said Lirit.

Only now he asked how she was bearing up, and without waiting for an answer he asked how Dael was.