Free Mr. Mani by A. B. Yehoshua

knotted in a noose at one end, and even the stool was back in place. It was a repeat performance. Maybe, I thought, he put it on every night to rehearse his own death until it became so obvious and convincing that he could stop fighting it ... and then, Mother, for the first time I felt so sorry for him that I really wanted to help, so that instead of walking away from that scene, which—you’re perfectly right—was much too private and intimate for me to have any business being there, I wanted to work my way deeper into it, to keep moving in that contrary direction that was pulling me like a magnet, and so I walked down the hallway to the back of the apartment, to this little bathroom off the kitchen, because I thought that if everything was happening again, he was probably in there washing himself as part of his suicide exercises...
    â€”I’m glad I finally got a laugh out of you.
    â€”Yes, Mother, it was definitely funny, my walking around that dark apartment like some kind of sleepwalker so as to find him and talk him out of this suicidal frenzy he was in. I would have broken down the bathroom door too, but it already was open, as was a door behind it that led to this little rear terrace that I hadn’t noticed before—and there, on the terrace, which was cluttered with all kinds of brooms and buckets and what-not, was my suicidal Mr. Mani in his big, heavy overcoat looking more like a ball or a closet than a man, peacefully smoking a cigarette in the fresh air beneath this sky that had suddenly cleared and even had stars in it, so absorbed in himself that he didn’t even notice me come in. I was still wondering how to let him know I was there when suddenly he turned around—and all at once, Mother, he went into the most terrible shock. The cigarette fell from his mouth and he let out this strange, painful cry as if he too were in some movie or book and the director had asked him to give it his all. Right away, though, he realized who I was and pulled himself together. He even laughed and tried making a joke of it and said, “Good God Almighty, don’t tell me it’s you again! You’re really something! I’ve never seen anyone so stubborn. Just tell me this, though: how in hell did you get into this apartment? Did you steal the key this morning when you left?”
    â€”Yes, but not in anger, Mother. He was perfectly good-natured, as though he were secretly happy that I had come to save him again. I began to mumble something about the neighbor who all but made me enter his apartment, and right away he said, “Yes, that Mrs. Shapiro, she’s always worrying...” There was this vague resentment in his voice, as if Mrs. Shapiro took so many liberties he wasn’t even sure what they were, and then calmly—he was still standing on the terrace—he began talking about the snow, as though trying to convince the two of us that that was what had brought me back to Jerusalem, that I wanted to see it while it still was there, because the weather was clearing, and cold as it was, it wasn’t cold enough to keep the snow from melting. Well, Mother, when I saw him all squirming and embarrassed like that I felt so weak myself that instead of confronting him with the horrible truth of what I had seen and understood, I began to murmur something about the snow too, to which I added that I really had come back for Efi’s sake, because I wanted to go to the unveiling in his place...
    â€”Yes, that’s just what I said. I didn’t want him to guess that I had been following him around to keep him from killing himself. At first he looked very surprised, as if he had forgotten all about the unveiling ... and in fact, if he had really meant to die that night he couldn’t have been planning on going to it, since the dead don’t attend ceremonies for the dead. Gradually, though, the idea seemed to please him. Maybe he really wanted to believe that