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Authors: Margot Singer
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talentedâbut such professions were not possible for girls. Not girls like her, anyway.
La chimie
, chimera.
She really didnât think that the affair with Lev would go on forever, but now that itâs over she feels betrayed. Now like the city, she feels hollowed out. The British are mostly gone; seventy thousand Haifa Arabs have fled. Jerusalem is under siege. Sheâs heard that Levâs kibbutz has been attacked. When the war is over, things will no longer be the same. She will wear her knowledge of him like a pearl, a living thing, against her skin, where it will stay lustrous and complete. She feels like a sleeper waking from a dream, as if sheâs traveled to the outer reaches of the universe without really going anywhere at all. She opens the oven and feels the hot breath in her face, rippling like a wave. She smells the faint reek of gas. She kneels before the oven door, her kidneys, liver, heart, and spleen floating loose inside her body: flotsam, unmoored.
Lilaâs Story
Near the end of the Mandate, we had to move out from our flat. The British requisitioned it for their troops. We found another one, not so nice as this, down on the French Carmel. You know that I was always crazy for dogs, and one day, my littlest one ran away. You cannot imagine how worried I was! We searched everywhere, calling, calling, but he did not come. Then the next day, there came a knock at the door. It was the landlord, who lived downstairs. Do you have a small white dog? he demanded. Yes, yes! I cried. Have you found him? The landlord said, He ran back to your old flat. The British have him now. You must go to fetch him there. I was afraid, but I had to get my dog back, so I went up to the old flat. The British had retreated to our street with their guns and barbed wire barricades and armored cars. People called these compounds Bevingrads. I was very frightened, but I spoke with the soldiers at the checkpoint and after some discussion they let me through. I went up the steps to our flat and knocked on my own door. An officer answered, holding my little dog in his arms. He was stroking its ears and head. Here you are, Madam, he said, handing the dog to me. I was afraid that heâd be angry with me, but he couldnât have been more kind. Not long afterward, after Independence, we got our own flat back again.
The Book of Life
The married man once wrote me a note that said, Please love me even though you canât have all of me, love me with equanimity. We were in a hotel room, late at night; it was right before the end. I remember seeing my own dilated pupils reflected, huge and black,in the bathroomâs mirrored wall; I remember the way my heart felt, beating just a little bit too fast. It isnât true I didnât love him then. When I came back to bed, he took my hands in his and said, Donât believe that Iâm the only one. He said, Iâm here to show you that men like me exist. He held a mirror up to us and made me look. We were beautiful together, magnificent and grand. Of course, it was nothing but a dream. We made each other up.
My grandmother died a few weeks after that night in the hotel, in the fall, just before Yom Kippur. The Book of Life was open but there was a blank space where her name should have been. I couldnât get to Israel in time for the funeral, which in the Jewish tradition happened the next day. Now, on my last day in Haifa, my uncle takes me down to the cemetery with him. Itâs at the foot of the Carmel, near the railroad tracks that run along the sea, a dusty narrow space flanked with cypresses. My grandparents are buried beside each other near the end of a long row. I can hear the hum of traffic on the nearby highway to Tel Aviv, the clatter of a passing train, the faint thrum of the sea. Under my grandmotherâs flat headstone, among decomposing coffin boards and the shredded linen of a shroud, her bones remain. Only a pile of small stones adorns the
La chimie
, chimera.
She really didnât think that the affair with Lev would go on forever, but now that itâs over she feels betrayed. Now like the city, she feels hollowed out. The British are mostly gone; seventy thousand Haifa Arabs have fled. Jerusalem is under siege. Sheâs heard that Levâs kibbutz has been attacked. When the war is over, things will no longer be the same. She will wear her knowledge of him like a pearl, a living thing, against her skin, where it will stay lustrous and complete. She feels like a sleeper waking from a dream, as if sheâs traveled to the outer reaches of the universe without really going anywhere at all. She opens the oven and feels the hot breath in her face, rippling like a wave. She smells the faint reek of gas. She kneels before the oven door, her kidneys, liver, heart, and spleen floating loose inside her body: flotsam, unmoored.
Lilaâs Story
Near the end of the Mandate, we had to move out from our flat. The British requisitioned it for their troops. We found another one, not so nice as this, down on the French Carmel. You know that I was always crazy for dogs, and one day, my littlest one ran away. You cannot imagine how worried I was! We searched everywhere, calling, calling, but he did not come. Then the next day, there came a knock at the door. It was the landlord, who lived downstairs. Do you have a small white dog? he demanded. Yes, yes! I cried. Have you found him? The landlord said, He ran back to your old flat. The British have him now. You must go to fetch him there. I was afraid, but I had to get my dog back, so I went up to the old flat. The British had retreated to our street with their guns and barbed wire barricades and armored cars. People called these compounds Bevingrads. I was very frightened, but I spoke with the soldiers at the checkpoint and after some discussion they let me through. I went up the steps to our flat and knocked on my own door. An officer answered, holding my little dog in his arms. He was stroking its ears and head. Here you are, Madam, he said, handing the dog to me. I was afraid that heâd be angry with me, but he couldnât have been more kind. Not long afterward, after Independence, we got our own flat back again.
The Book of Life
The married man once wrote me a note that said, Please love me even though you canât have all of me, love me with equanimity. We were in a hotel room, late at night; it was right before the end. I remember seeing my own dilated pupils reflected, huge and black,in the bathroomâs mirrored wall; I remember the way my heart felt, beating just a little bit too fast. It isnât true I didnât love him then. When I came back to bed, he took my hands in his and said, Donât believe that Iâm the only one. He said, Iâm here to show you that men like me exist. He held a mirror up to us and made me look. We were beautiful together, magnificent and grand. Of course, it was nothing but a dream. We made each other up.
My grandmother died a few weeks after that night in the hotel, in the fall, just before Yom Kippur. The Book of Life was open but there was a blank space where her name should have been. I couldnât get to Israel in time for the funeral, which in the Jewish tradition happened the next day. Now, on my last day in Haifa, my uncle takes me down to the cemetery with him. Itâs at the foot of the Carmel, near the railroad tracks that run along the sea, a dusty narrow space flanked with cypresses. My grandparents are buried beside each other near the end of a long row. I can hear the hum of traffic on the nearby highway to Tel Aviv, the clatter of a passing train, the faint thrum of the sea. Under my grandmotherâs flat headstone, among decomposing coffin boards and the shredded linen of a shroud, her bones remain. Only a pile of small stones adorns the
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