A. Yehoshua: The Extra

“Not much is still there.”

“True, not much, and you can throw the rest out yourself.”

“In any case, you left Abba’s black suit.”

“It was so beautiful and new, a shame to give it to charity.”

“Maybe you’re saving it for a new husband,” teased Noga, and her mother laughed.

“You know me, Nogaleh — do you see me with a new husband?”

“Or at least a lover,” the daughter insisted.

“A lover, fine, but he’d have to be Japanese or Chinese, as Abba used to joke with me at night, but they’re so small and thin the suit wouldn’t fit them. I thought of offering it to Abadi, but I worried he would be embarrassed to wear a dead man’s suit. So let’s keep thinking. If you want, we can give it to our neighbor Mr. Pomerantz. He’s still a handsome man and dresses well.”

“But without the shoes and socks, because that would be insulting.”

“Shoes and socks? What are you talking about?”

“The shoes and socks you left below the suit. It almost looked like you were waiting for Abba to come back.”

“That’s right, Noga, I am waiting for him to come back, but if the shoes and socks bother you, then you should throw them out right away.”

“We’ll see. It really is lovely here, and the residents seem quite cultured.”

“The ones you saw. There are others in frightful condition who barely get out of their rooms. But if the experiment succeeds, it will be a relief for Honi, who won’t need to travel to Jerusalem, which he hates more by the day. That’s why he’s so pleased I’m here.”

“He’s really attached to you.”

“Too much. Drops in several times a day to see how I am, even joined me twice for meals in the dining room. Yesterday he brought the children for me to look after. Good thing there’s grass here where they can run around, because my room’s too small for their energy. I thought they’d be picked up in two hours, but Sarai showed up after four hours. I said nothing, she’s an artist after all, and her sense of time is rather vague. If I can be useful once in a while, why not? Now it’s dinnertime, come join me.”

But Noga didn’t get up.

“Take it slowly, Ima. We’ll do it next time. Today I have no strength for interrogation by your old ladies.”

The mother went off to the dining hall, and Noga sank into the small armchair, fixated on the remains of sunlight. After a while she stood up and went out past the porch to the darkening lawn. How did this grow here? she wondered. This old folks’ home is a building among other buildings on an ordinary street, and suddenly it’s like Oxford or Cambridge, where you open a plain door to find an ancient cathedral with great expanses of grass.

She strolls across the lawn to figure out where it goes and how it ends, and in the violet twilight she can make out, beside a bench, a little old man in a wheelchair covered in a blanket, a thin scarf around his neck, dozing or perhaps unconscious, a shriveling intravenous bag connected to his arm.

A forgotten resident, not brought in for dinner? Or perhaps the IV is his meal?

She is careful not to wake him, and sits on the bench to ensure his safety in the gathering darkness. But soon, in the warm evening air, she is intoxicated by the serenity of her napping neighbor and closes her eyes — and suddenly an unknown hand clutches her neck.

For a moment she is terrified that the man with the IV has risen up to strangle her. But the old man is gone. Apparently someone has quietly wheeled him back inside. And behind her, the laughter of her brother.

“You better watch out,” she says. “At age forty-one my heart can’t handle your jokes.”

“Your heart is the same as ever,” Honi says, holding her wrist as if checking her pulse. “A young heart, a strong heart, a heart of stone, as Uriah used to say.”

“He complained about me to you too?”

“Yes, out of desperate love for you. And how’s the home I found for Ima? The lawn lets her look after the kids while sitting in an armchair.”

“And this will be her final apartment, if she wants?”

“This one, or maybe a better one, providing you don’t weaken her resolve.”

“I didn’t come to Israel to weaken any resolves, yours or hers.”

He nods in gratitude.

In the room, a fruit platter assembled by the new tenant awaits her two children, and the three of them now sit, six months after the father’s death, in the peaceful setting of a posh old-age home, light years away from the blackening neighborhood in Jerusalem, discussing the experiment just begun, and the arrangements for the Jerusalem flat under Noga’s care.

“Wait a minute,” Noga says. “Those children, Pomerantz’s grandchildren… what do I do if they come into the apartment again?”

“They won’t come in,” decrees her brother, “and if they try, don’t let them. Even if they beg, no mercy. Don’t repeat Ima’s mistake. And make sure the bathroom window stays locked. They managed in the past to climb down the drainpipe.”

“From the third floor down the drainpipe? How old are they?”

“The older one,” says the mother, “is eleven or twelve, the younger six or so. The older one is Shaya’s son. You remember him, Noga? Pomerantz’s middle son, the handsome boy you sometimes ran into on the stairs or in the street. After you got married and left, they arranged for him a bride among the most extreme ultra-Orthodox in Mea Shearim, and though he is more or less your age, he’s already fathered ten or maybe eleven children — I think even his mother gets confused how many. And that younger one is a cousin, and as it happens in these huge families, one of them always turns out retarded.”

“That’s not a nice word, Ima,” scolds Honi.

“If not retarded, then strange, a space cadet, but sweet, nice-looking. And because he is hyperactive, they send him with Shaya’s son to let off steam at grandma’s house. But how much can Mrs. Pomerantz keep him occupied? She’s not a well woman. They don’t have a television, of course, just a radio tuned to some religious station, so it’s no wonder the kids get bored and run around on the stairway, up and down, over and over, making noise and yelling. And this little one, the retar—‘challenged’ one, he sometimes makes these blood-curdling screams. So to keep them quiet, I invited them to watch a little television, children’s programs, because they don’t allow television.”

“And you got permission from the grandma?”

“I didn’t want to put her to the test, get her in trouble with Shaya, who has become a total fanatic, but I’m sure she knew, or at least guessed and looked the other way. It brought her peace and quiet. The Pomerantzes were always a respectable family, not extreme. When you played music on Shabbat, Nogaleh, they didn’t get angry.”

“Well, bottom line, what am I supposed to do now? Not only keep watch on the apartment, but also deal with crazy Orthodox children?”

“No, not at all. Don’t let them in, period,” says Honi. “Ima took pity on them, that was a mistake, but you don’t need to do that. Just take the key away from them.”

“Key? What key?”

“They apparently walked off with my spare key,” the mother says defensively.

“Then you should call the police.”

“Police?” The mother is taken aback. “How can you talk that way, Nogaleh? These are Pomerantz’s grandchildren, Shaya’s unfortunate kids. We should call the cops to lock them up? What’s wrong with you?”

“Not lock them up, just take away the key.”

“We’ll take the key, don’t you worry. Honi will phone Mrs. Pomerantz, she’ll take the key from them. Just lock the bathroom window at night, that’s all. It’s not so hard.”