the people who work in the morgue, a nurse, doctors, the security guard, the janitor, and he realizes that he doesn’t feel at all sorry for this death, no sorrow at all, only shame, a kind of disgrace, why don’t they cover him with a sheet.
A few days later they sat on the balcony of the apartment that overlooked the synagogue in Smuts Avenue. The child lay in a cradle. “We did well,” said Yoel, and Leah said, “He chose us.” The sterile Yoel Zisu. And suddenly he stood up, went to the front door with a marker in his hand, and added Emile’s name to the little sign. And then he wrote over their two names as well. And hastily, like a thief, he drew a cloud to frame the three names.
A solitary old neighbor peered at him small-faced through the peephole on the far side of the hall.
He remembered now, sitting on a bench in Rothschild Boulevard, how he imagined then, on the balcony, his sperm pouring out of his penis and seeping into the baby’s body, and soaking into it, or how during the night he would pick the baby up and set him carefully between his wife’s legs, and the baby would slide in easily, and he would wait for him there until daybreak, until he came out and was born.
Passersby cast doubt on the child.
And so he would draw him into a secluded garden, so they wouldn’t keep looking all the time. And they would be hidden among the trees. It was a botanical garden in the north of the city. And he thought of it as a secret garden. And once they saw a blind man in the garden, groping his way along the paths with his white stick. And Yoel wanted to go up, to help, and in the end he called out to him, “Hey, Mister, do you need any help there,” and the blind man answered him, “Stay with the child, Baba, there’s no problem, I just have to take a piss, don’t look.” And he stood next to a big oak. Yoel averted his eyes. But he heard the sound of the piss on the fallen leaves.
And he thought suddenly of the sea, how he once sat facing the Pacific Ocean, when he was an engineering student in California. Fields of flowers. And he looked round and there was nobody there, and at first he felt afraid, and afterward he spread out his arms and shouted, full of joy, and he didn’t look to see if anyone had come in the meantime, and he didn’t care if anyone saw him. On the contrary, he wanted people to see. Cars streamed along the expressway on the other side of the garden’s low wall. You have to look at every road as the distant continuation of some junction or other, he thought, some interchange, and then everything becomes clear, the picture becomes a big picture. At the end of this garden is our sea and at the end of the sea is an ocean, he thought. They’re connected. People think of every road as if it has a beginning and an end. But no, when one road ends another one begins, and even before it begins there’s another road, and thus like tributaries of rivers they stream slowly on until they reach the big junctions and overpasses and interchanges, and collect in the lakes that are the big parking lots next to the sea.
Another blind man came into the garden and started to feel the leaves. Emile looked at him and gripped the hem of Yoel’s coat. His fingers dug into it. Into the rough fabric. And the warm round button. And the frayed threads. And the holes in the button.
Next to the beach the two of them stood, [ ] and [ ], waiting for him. A crow pecked at his heart. Because he saw Emile in their faces. Because Emile looked like both of them, him and her. Even from a distance. The way they stood, the movements of their hands, their bowed heads—were his. No, not mine. And a burning insult flooded Yoel, undermined him, slowly disintegrated him. Everything came from there. From them. They even gave him his name. He was him and her too. Yoel’s eyes skipped from him to her. Yes, they were his parents, no doubt about it. What were their names? Like a door opening. Skies clearing. His eyes darted between them, he broke into a sweat, he went on walking toward them, understanding that he recognized them because of their obvious resemblance to Emile, whereas they did not recognize him. He could walk past them and they wouldn’t have any idea. For a moment it seemed to him that the man not only looked like Emile but was his actual, older twin, whereas the woman didn’t look like him at all, and then, a second later, Yoel saw that there was actually an astonishing resemblance between Emile and the woman. Although she was a woman, she was Emile—her eyes were his, her hair was his, though his eyes and his hair were his as well. Altogether, they looked alike, thought Yoel, they resembled each other and therefore both of them resembled Emile. And a second later, they didn’t look like each other, only the man, only the woman looked like him. It didn’t stop. Emile’s face flickered over his parents’ faces. Yoel couldn’t hold on to it for even a second, put his finger on the resemblance, on the feature that belonged beyond a doubt to the child who had been with him for thirty-seven years.
The go-between had refused to tell him their names. He’d arranged for them to meet on the street corner, the day and the hour, come to the corner of Yarkon and Yona Hanavi, good luck to you and my job is done. Yoel gave the go-between an envelope with a “nice sum” and said “You can count it” and lowered his eyes. But the go-between said, “No . . . we have complete confidence in you, sir,” and with two fingers he opened the flap of the envelope and peeked with one eye closed, with his mouth twisted sideways.
The two of them stood there, looking emphatically at their watches, as if to signal the fact of their waiting to everybody who saw them. Yoel kept his eyes on the pavement. He wouldn’t stop, he couldn’t stop just like that and address these people. Suddenly the whole plan seemed insane to him. What was he doing, who do you think you are, thirty-seven years, leave it alone. Look at them, simply saying the word, simply bringing up the idea, that’s already a crime. He fixed his eyes on the pavement and went on walking. There was a loose paving stone under his foot and for a moment he lost his balance. Walk straight past, go to the beach, come a little late. You’ve seen them, that’s something anyway. Run away, cancel the whole thing. They won’t know who you are, they’ll call the go-between, they’ll yell at him, he’ll try to contact you, he’ll forget all about it, he’s already received his fee. Go on walking, breathe normally, raise your head, don’t look suspicious. What a crazy idea, what were you thinking? Think that you’re on a bridge and they’re underneath it. Keep on walking, go past them, don’t give any sign that . . . And already his lips are pursed for a nonchalant whistle. A lot of people are walking past here, why are they all in fancy dress, why has that little girl got wings, is it already Purim? Why is it so hot? And he raised his head like someone out for an innocent stroll and walked past them with a quick, light step, looking ahead at the water. They turned their heads and said in unison, half questioning, half stating a fact: Excuse me, Emile’s father,
They stood next to the signpost, all three of them holding on to it like sailors to the mast of a ship. The sea was close. And he wished he could go down to the water, wade in deep, and let it wash over him. The signpost showed the way. And he was afraid, that’s the truth, to look at them. As if the look itself, their faces, would constitute a claim of ownership, and also the guilt, yes, also the guilt. Even though if there was a guilty party here it was them, thought Yoel. But their guilt was already subject to the statute of limitations. And even though they were the ones who had abandoned the child, and he was the one who had rescued Emile from the fate of a government orphanage, and without hesitation pointed to the child and said, that one, immediately, as if he had already decided in advance and there was no need to look at him any longer, nevertheless he still felt guilty. Like a thief. Like—
They told him their names and their surname but he couldn’t catch the names and asked again, and in his mind they remained as square brackets on a printed page, square and empty. Of the surname he remembered nothing but the letter S. He asked them their names again and forgot them again, and he was embarrassed to write them down. They had normal names, that he remembered, something like Avraham or Moni or Motti or Eliezer for the
