PROLOGUE
1
There was a moment when it seemed to Dalia that summer might just be bearable, though she knew it would linger for a long time yet over the Tel Aviv buildings. The unappeasable light would scowl; many pounds of indignation would blow across the tops of the dusty trees on Gordon Street, down which she was now walking, plastic grocery store bag sweating in the palm of her hand. Evening had slowly conquered the street, and she could feel it breathing down her neck, inching after her, flowing down from the sea to dim the brief, too brief past, stretching between her and the supermarket on the corner of Ben Yehuda Street. She was already waiting at the light on the corner of Dizengoff when the summer dark, the weight and heat of which were indistinguishable from the weight and heat of daytime, caught up with her, grazing her back. In a flash of befuddlement, she turned toward it. A light breeze blew, caressing her face. The street held its breath, a rare strip of time in which the silences and spaces contained in every motion, in every movement, occurred at once. For a fraction of a moment, creation ceased, and human deeds, their loosening ticking, filled the land with their disruption—no one started an engine, no one parked a car, the sliding doors of the drugstore froze, the sycamores paused in their rustling, the fruit bats avoided dropping their feces on the cars waiting at the light from north to south, Gordon Street was desolate from east to west, girls obliterated their giggles, boys hid away the growl of their broken voices, the beggar with the amputated leg gathered in his murmurs, the espresso makers of coffee shops fell silent.
When was the last time she felt such glory, the absence of the extant beating on? When? The grocery store bag tapped the sidewalk, Tel Aviv’s smoke-stinking blood renewed its flow down asphalt veins, and Dalia reached out her hand to grab hold of the traffic light pole. Seven years had gone by since she descended from the number 5 minibus on this corner.
“Ask the driver to let you off on the corner of Gordon, turn right, and walk about three hundred feet. Make the first right, onto Israëls Street. I live at number seventeen, first floor on pillars. The buzzer doesn’t work, so if the front door looks closed, just give it a little push. Go up the stairs. It’s the first door you’ll see. Don’t ring the bell, it stopped working about a week ago. Just knock hard, because sometimes I’m deeper in the apartment and I can’t hear it. Come after four o’clock.” Ronnit had sounded out of breath on the phone, and not very inviting, but Dalia had taken so long just to muster up the courage and call her cousin, the only person she knew in Tel Aviv.
From the ages of five to eight they sat together, wide-eyed, watching The Smurfs, Belle and Sebastian, The Little Lulu Show, and Maya the Honey Bee, scampering around Dalia’s yard, scribbling on the walls of her bedroom, being scolded, looking forlornly through Ronnit’s bedroom window at the gray skies of Sderot, or through the third floor balcony at the lawns, throwing carefully cut pieces of paper on the head of the Romanian’s son, the one with the training wheels on his bicycle, who made fun of them, calling them the two fat-asses. And when summer soared, the intoxicating fragrance of those red flowers—hibiscus, said Ronnit’s mother, who was a teacher at the same elementary school where Ronnit’s father was principal—and the public pool, the sweetness of chlorine, the bothersome odor of the skin after swimming and basking in the sun, which years later she learned to equate with the odor of semen, and the time spilling in abundance around them. And winter again. The town of Sderot skipped over autumn and into a sudden cloudiness, puddles formed by sparse rain between thickets of dandelions and beds of stork’s-bills, but Sderot never rested in its race to the gold and the next brightening of weather, an explosion of chrysanthemums in the small valley on the way to Dalia’s house, Passover on the horizon, and the two of them gathered one mum after another, tying heavy floral bracelets around their wrists, one year and then the next, until Ronnit’s father was transferred—so pronounced Ronnit, with a stern expression, glowing in her gravity: “My father is being transferred to Beersheba.” And that was that.
No, that wasn’t that, because Dalia saw Ronnit one more time. Six years later, on a school trip. Dalia hated organized school events—field trips, Holocaust Remembrance Days, Jerusalem Days, educational outings. But that day, she couldn’t find a way out. That rolling laughter, growing until the breath caught, replaced with brief wheezing, rang in her ears as soon as she set foot on the steps outside the Museum of the Jewish People, and she followed it, bewitched, knowing she was being pulled by a sound she’d heard before, but unable to place its source among her many memories. When she reached the tall, skinny girl who had emitted it, she paused, flummoxed. Something about the facial features looked vaguely familiar, but only in the way that a stranger might resemble a forgotten friend. The girl who turned to her cheerfully, saying, “Dalia, you haven’t changed a bit,” was indeed a stranger. She wasn’t joyful Ronnit, easily enticed by any childhood mischief. The time that had melted her fat had also imbued her every movement with steel, replacing her natural friendliness with reserved conceit. Dalia didn’t understand this right away. For hours, she dragged behind Ronnit and her friends, enduring their biting comments. Only after a long period—too long—did she learn that “you haven’t changed a bit” was, in Ronnit’s new and sophisticated lingo, an insult.
It stung even five years later. Dalia’s mother called Ronnit’s mother. “Dalia is having trouble finding her path lately … no, she didn’t enlist … really? Intelligence corps? An officer? Wonderful … Yes, I know she’s renting a place in Tel Aviv. That’s actually why I’m calling … She’d like that? They haven’t seen each other in so long … I know, they used to be so sweet together…”
Dalia stopped eavesdropping and returned the receiver of her bedroom phone to its cradle, using a maneuver she was well-versed in, dropping a heavy book—Samuel Delany’s Dhalgren—from her shelf to the floor to camouflage the hushed click of her hanging up.
“Dalia, how many times do I have to tell you? Be careful with the books you borrow from the library. You don’t own them,” her mother called from the living room, then lowered her voice once more to continue her conversation.
On the Seventeenth of Tammuz, Sderot put Dalia under siege. On the Third of Heshvan the wall fell. Winter began. Life with her parents became unbearable. If she had to sit for whole days, waiting for the rain to stop just so she could step out onto the streets of Sderot, where every crack sprouted a memory, where every turn offered up the same convergence of sight and smell, eucalyptuses and moist pines, glistening thatched-roof houses and loose dirt and ozone, she would lose her mind.
She made the call, packed her things, and left. When she got on the number 5 minibus, she lost herself so deeply in her Walkman that she didn’t hear the driver calling, “Who wanted Gordon Street?” and rode on to the end of Dizengoff Street, where she stood up, startled, approached him, and whispered, “Excuse me, driver, have you passed Gordon yet?”
He showed her where to catch the minibus going the other way. This time, she sat at attention. She got off at the light, dragging her bag behind her, letting it drop to the sidewalk, reaching a hand to grab the traffic light pole, breathing a sigh of relief. Then the world stopped turning in the wintry air, bathed in thick amber light.
Two weeks later, she and Ronnit parted ways with a fight that shook both houses, the House of Shushan and the House of Abraham, reopening some old wounds. Dalia found an apartment with roommates in the Florentin neighborhood of Tel Aviv, but a year later, passing through Dizengoff, she saw a notice attached to a tree: “1.5 bedrooms for rent on a quiet street in central Tel Aviv.” The woman who answered the phone gave her the details: 17 Israëls Street, first floor on pillars. She was filled with victorious glee. Though she was unemployed and could just barely scrape together a deposit, she signed the lease and never moved out.
Now she crossed the street heavily. Light signals of distress lurked on the edge of her consciousness. Seven years earlier, Ronnit had waited for her with pursed lips, skinnier than Dalia had remembered. Even though Dalia was late, and according to her calculations Ronnit must have been waiting for at least an hour, she was still wearing her officer’s uniform. Well, sure, thought Dalia, Ronnit would never miss an opportunity to show what she’s worth.
“What’s up, baby?” Ronnit asked, smiling with satisfaction. “Did you miss the bus?”
Yes, Dalia wanted to say, just like you made me miss the school bus back from the museum on that field trip. But she was too tired to talk. Besides, she’d been feeding off of that memory for much too long for her to waste it right away.
“Why don’t you take a nap, and then we can go out tonight? You’re going to love Tel Aviv.”
Dalia remained silent.
“All right, well, I’ve made up the office for you. Maybe you’ll want to go out tomorrow night, once you’ve had a chance to walk around a little and get to know the city.”
Why not? Ronnit had lived there for six months and already Tel Aviv was “the city.” Her city. With whose permission? With the permission she was brave enough to demand. There’s an age, sometime before the end of adolescence, which is crucial. If by that point you haven’t gained the courage to formulate your desires as a list of demands, you’re done for. Men are primed for this, but women? If you miss that train, you’ll spend eternity trying to appease life.
“I’m sorry,” Dalia muttered and walked past Ronnit, into the room that was prepared for her.
What’s going to welcome me this time? Dalia wondered. I’m going to sacrifice the first creature to walk toward me out of the building to the gods of Tel Aviv. The thought amused her and she straightened her back, as she always did when she was expectant. Eran, the officer from the second floor, came down the stairs with that signature bouncy gait of his. She would have been happy to sacrifice him, but somehow she didn’t think he’d make a proper offering. “And a happy day of mourning to you too,” he greeted her with a chipper sneer.
The signals she’d so successfully ignored now became a burning flame. Every step in the short flight of stairs leading to her apartment was harder than the one before, more bitter, a step toward the gallows, toward a date she’d tried to suppress, because it reminded her of him. It never ended. She slammed the door behind her and tossed the bag into the middle of the living room. Then she walked from the living room to the balcony, crossing the distance with long strides. Peeking out at the sky. The Ninth of Av was already descending fully on the outside. She could see the evening.
Dalia plopped down into the armchair and thought of the last time she’d seen him. That meeting she’d so been looking forward to. Her body was scarred with longing for his touch, any kind of touch. For a week her flesh had been wanting, but he had avoided any physical proximity, inching away as she moved closer. She grabbed the notebook from the living room table and wrote feverishly, more an etching than a composition, stopping occasionally to pierce the paper with circular motions of her pen in an effort to conquer the emptiness washing over her, roiling up her bloodstream, approaching her heart, gripping, sentence by sentence. Dalia felt like she was drowning. She closed the notebook and threw it at the television.
“Enough,” she said out loud. “Stop it, stop it, stop it,” her voice grew louder. “God, if you save me now, I, I…” she gasped. “Stop it, stop it.” She felt her voice attempting to rip open the boundaries of her throat, climbing up into a scream. “Stop it!” She shoved her right hand into her mouth and bit down on it. A thin stream of clarity appeared along with the pain. A breach was opened inside the blackening air.
To her, crying was a shock that had hardly any physical manifestation. Even as a little girl, she cried like a fossil. Her tears streamed down, unhindered by expression. Her facial muscles thawed from their tension, their effort to delineate an emotion. She got up and went to the bathroom to wash her face.
Her crying bout was brief but to the point. True relief did not spread through her body, but the heaviness in her limbs, that made her move like her bones were shattered, shrunk and drained into her chest. She leaned over the sink, getting closer to the mirror, examining her face, the blood-drenched vessels. The fluorescent light spread a sickly hue, pushing away any illusion of wholeness or softness, gaping open every blemish on the skin, highlighting the small pimples, revealing webs of wrinkles and pockmarks.
A branch from the mighty ficus out in the yard banged against the bathroom window, getting tangled in the bars. Wind, again? The Ninth of Av was losing steam early this year. Oh, well, she thought, I haven’t done this in a long time, not since I was fifteen. What was the point in trying to control the season if you couldn’t even control your own heart?
She stepped into the bathtub, reached out, and collected a dry leaf from the windowsill. She ran a hand through her hair and tore one single, short, black hair from her scalp. From the kitchen cupboard she pulled out a candle and a saucer. She lit the candle and dripped a circle of wax onto the saucer. Then she tied the hair around the leaf, wrapped it with a piece of paper, and placed it in the center of the circle. She walked out onto the balcony, placed the saucer on the plastic table, lit the ball of paper on fire, and said, “I, Dalia, daughter of Esther Shushan, on this eve of the Ninth of Av, command summer to die.”
2
Rami Amzaleg was angry. Everything he tried the past week had gone wrong. And now the fucking sampler wouldn’t turn on. He was hot. The angrier he got, the more his sweat levels rose. His black T-shirt, with the words “Wired is the Lord” smeared across the chest, weighed on him with its dampness. He’d bought it at the designers’ market on Shenkin Street and couldn’t remember if the designer with the pierced lip had promised that each printed statement was unique. At any rate, he’d never seen anyone wearing a similar shirt. The bad noontime of Tel Aviv boiled and boiled. He took off his shirt and ran it over his shaved head, feeling the film of sweat thicken and irritate. The bad noontime of late August scorched and sizzled. He didn’t know whether to crack a window and let the tumult of Herzl Street in along with a random gust of wind, or continue to assume that the closed windows were helping to preserve some kind of shaded, nocturnal chill. It must have been even more hellish outside.
He thought if he could work for a spell he might relax, but that fucking sampler wouldn’t turn on. It was the heat. Had to be. That sampler was only a year old. The human body has its own built-in cooling system and yet even it could barely take this heat, this humidity, this fucking Tel Aviv humidity. How much? Eighty percent humidity? You could swim through the fucking air.
These past few months, he’d made a habit of shoving the word “fucking” into every turn of phrase. He thought he’d tapped a way of refreshing clichés, rescuing them from their fucking cheesiness. Nicole laughed with contempt whenever she heard him use the word. Maybe that had been the last straw. No, it had been the last fucking straw. “If you’re going to insert that word into every other sentence, you need the skills to back it up,” she said.
Nicole and that mouth of hers. For six months that mouth worked overtime while he listened, enchanted. It was her idea to move to southern Tel Aviv. “Look at these gorgeous floor tiles,” she said. “And the ceilings! So high! It’s going to be nice and cool here in summer. We won’t need AC. And listen to this,” she said, opening the windows—the street emitted honking horns and spurting engines—“you can totally feel Tel Aviv.” And he, like an idiot, was deeply moved by her enthusiasm for the real Tel Aviv, the city hidden within the city. He sampled the racket of the spice market. The monotonous din of the textile factories. The flatulence of buses. He woke up at five thirty to stake out trucks, drivers fighting over parking spots; he hid beneath the balconies of Lewinsky Street apartments where greedy contractors had squeezed ten Thai migrant workers into a single room, recording their excited evening chatter; he visited the makeshift churches of Nigerian laborers on Sundays, stopped house cleaners from Ghana on the street and asked them to shout something in their native language into his microphone. He even considered going to one of the massage parlors on Ha’aliyah Street and wearing a wire to smuggle out recordings of fake Russian moans, but the idea angered Nicole, and he had to let her moan into the sampler instead. He downloaded this cacophony onto his computer, put together beats made up entirely of the ruckus of the corner of Herzl and Lewinsky, layered them with atonal melodies, roars and rattles, curse words and arguments, the Mediterranean basin meets Generation X. “It’s amazing,” he’d tell anyone willing to listen, “a brand new urban sound. Pure Tel Aviv, none of that German industrial nonsense.” Once, under the influence of a combination of Jägermeister and some exceptional weed, he got lyrical: “If only I could capture the sound of soot and cumin.” Dalia wrote a song based on that statement that he planned to include in his instrumental album.
Copyright © 2004 by Shimon Adaf
Translation copyright © 2022 by Yardenne Greenspan
