A. Yehoshua - A Late Divorce

“So how come you didn’t want to tell me? What’s to hide?”

“I didn’t realize that you were familiar with the place.”

“Of course I am. You’re not the first fare I’ve taken there, and you won’t be the last.”

The taxi swung around Acre to the right. Soft pastel colors, a row of eucalyptus trees, stands selling wicker furniture. We passed the old railroad station with its freight cars gleaming in the waxing golden light of sunset. Dusty streets, Arabs selling pitas, cars backed up in a row. A crossroads. To the right the road ran eastward to the Galilee but we drove straight ahead. We crossed the railroad tracks where they swerved toward the sea, the western horizon all awash, the sun slipping free of the clouds, dropping as they rose. The taxi slowed. The traffic ground to a halt, cars honked. Something must have happened ahead. I leaned impatiently forward and glimpsed a pack of dogs blocking traffic while cars beeped their horns and tried to shoulder them off the road. At last we came to the yellow sign of the hospital and stopped to turn left, waiting for the line of southbound cars to pass. More dogs ran by wagging their tails, careening off the car and into the fields. Finally we turned into the narrow approach road that led to the hospital gate. Back again. For the fourth time this trip. Yesterday you were certain that you would never return. The sea. The sun at eye level near the horizon. The mountains at your back. In a few hours I would be taking off. The cottages. The trees like paper cutouts, a slender form standing by them in the brackish, yellow, crinkly evening light.

“Stop!” I cried.

The taxi slowed down.

“Stop right here, driver!” I said again, grabbing him by the shoulder. He turned to me angrily.

“What’s wrong?”

By the distant gate I had made out Calderon’s white car and several figures standing by it. Tsvi, I recalled, made a point of never entering the hospital.

“Stop right here.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Wait for me here. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

“I can bring you right to the cottages. They always let me drive into this crazy house.”

“You needn’t bother. Stop here and wait. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes, half an hour at the most. Can you wait?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Because I once waited here for half the day for someone who was supposed to be coming right out. For all I know he’s still in there.”

“No, listen here, I’m not a patient… I just have to deliver some document. Here, let me pay you for the return trip.”

“Keep it, mister. Pay me for coming here and for the wait. Let’s call it an hour.”

“That will be fine. Would you happen to know what time it is?”

The sunrays glance off the green dollar bills he holds them up to the light pretending to know what to look for. I get out and stride into the fields leaving the road behind me cutting through rows of young sprouts in the moist earth bearing traces of sand from the sea heading for the hole in the fence that the patients told me about. The yellowish light gives the sprouts a blue tint I’m walking through a sprouting sea on my right to the north the houses of a village. A tractor pulls a cart piled high with long irrigation pipes and drops them off at intervals in a field. Behind me my huge shadow plows the ground. Homeland why can’t you be a homeland. No fantasy then she wanted to kill me. Had she just gone mad I would have stayed to nurse her but she used her madness to settle old scores. I disappointed her? Wait till she sees what I do now. And there it’s morning Connie grinding coffee in her gadget-filled kitchen. A pregnant woman by herself she wonders how. I’ll take back what’s mine. I reach the old concrete wall festooned with dead vines looping up from its base an imposing barricade of barbed wire but where is the hole in it? All at once the wall stops but the gap is sealed with barbed wire too. Have I been misled? I press on. The wall resumes again it’s lower now the concrete yielding to ancient stones perhaps the ruins of a Roman aqueduct of the kind often found in these parts. I clamber up its broad stairlike headers there’s the hospital below me the lawns the paths even the little library. The parchment flying through the air. I turn to look at the black taxicab parked now in front of the railroad tracks next to Calderon’s car.

Hurry.

Not really dusk yet it’s the clash of clouds and sun that’s ground the light to smithereens. Already you’re on the hospital grounds you know your way from here. Your fourth time in ten days. Once more into the breach. Collect yourself. The right to change your mind. The clump of trees. The rubber hose snakes upon the ground someone is standing there and slowly hoeing a small dead bush it’s that mute giant hard at work. I pass close by him but he doesn’t see me. Be quick. Ask her for the waiver and destroy it have the lawyer cancel it in Tel Aviv. I jam my hat down on my head. The library door is open the puddles of mud have dried to hard earth. No one here. Silence. Soft light of fear. Born-again balminess of the spring evening. Here’s her cottage. Three years ago when I first came to visit it was pouring cats and dogs she sat layered in clothes by the kerosene stove listening to me tell her about the snow in America. It was then that I promised to write her.

Stealthily I enter the cottage ready for anything. The beds in rows some made some not a small overly tailored lady of about forty sitting on a chair by a window next to a very big suitcase reading a woman’s magazine. She glances up at me her face twitches quickly. I take of my hat and nod.

“Excuse me. Perhaps you could tell me which bed is Naomi Kaminka’s.’’

“I’m sorry but I just got here myself. I don’t know anyone.”

But I’ve already found it by the broad straw hat upon it. I hurry to her locker here are her dresses her red robe the shawl that Ya’el brought her for me. I open the drawer and go through it rattling the dog’s chain. Bottles of perfume salves bags full of medicines here are some papers a packet of letters from me the parchment divorce a peaceful white dove the waiver on the house a copy of the power of attorney for Asa. I fold the last two and stick them in my pocket I turn to leave passing by the small lady again she hasn’t stopped looking at me.

“Excuse me…”

“Yes?”

“How were you allowed in here?”

I smile. “What do you mean, how was I allowed? That’s my wife’s bed over there…”

“But didn’t you need special permission?”

“Not at all.”

“Men are allowed in here?”

“Of course.”

“Because my husband said he wasn’t. Perhaps they misinformed him, or else he misunderstood…”

“He must have misunderstood.”

“Because suddenly he left me…”

She rises and comes over to me perfumed rather scared suddenly she whispers:

“Do you happen to know by any chance if this is a religious institution?”

“A religious institution? What gave you that idea?”

“We came here so quickly. I had a sort of breakdown at the seder, and the doctor from the health plan sent us here. But I think… I’m afraid… that they sent us to a religious institution. My husband is an army officer and knows nothing about these things…”

“But what makes you think that it’s religious?”

“It looks like it is. The walls… these beds…”

“Well, it isn’t. Some of the patients may be observant, but…”

“And the management? How about the management?”

“No. There’s no reason to think… it’s a government hospital, after all, it’s run by the department of health… it’s not a private institution at all…”