Free Mr. Mani by A. B. Yehoshua Page A

that was the reason I had crashed his apartment again. Anyway, he bowed his head with this sort of doleful acknowledgment and only said with a strange smile that it was a shame I wasn’t a man, because he needed ten men for the cemetery, without them he couldn’t say the mourner’s prayer...
    â€”It would seem so.
    â€”Yes, it’s very odd ... you would think it was this intimate thing that you said whenever you felt like it, but that isn’t the case at all. He even tried explaining it to me ... but suddenly—he was talking about it and I was looking out at that field by the old leper hospital, which was covered with these white splotches of snow—suddenly he said something, Mother, I don’t remember what, that affected me so that I got this big lump in my throat and burst into tears, don’t ask me why, right there on that little terrace between the brooms and the laundry rack...
    â€”Yes, real tears. They came from deep down and kept coming. I couldn’t stop them even though I knew they were making me look ridiculous. He didn’t say a word, though. He just stood there listening to me cry and calmly smoking another cigarette, as if I were getting what I deserved for hounding him and intruding on him...
    â€”No, Mother. He was not right.
    â€”No, he was not, and neither are you. Because what you think of as presumption, or even total irresponsibility, was simply my duty, Mother, a duty that was being spun out of me like the thin web of a spider...
    â€”The spider inside me right now.
    â€”The one made by the formula.
    â€”That’s what we learned in school about the development of the embryo...
    â€”I’m telling you we did ... I remember ... there was even a chart with all these pictures...
    â€”You must have forgotten. Or else you never studied it.
    â€”Don’t worry.
    â€”There is nothing the matter with me.
    â€”I’m imagining that too? You’re certainly making life easy for yourself tonight!
    â€”Why hunt for what doesn’t exist?
    â€”There’s nothing beneath the surface but what you put there.
    â€”Maybe beneath the avocado trees in your orchard, but not beneath the surface of my story...
    â€”I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings ... Good God, Mother...
    â€”I’m sorry ... I’m sorry...
    â€”I know perfectly well what I said.
    â€”I don’t care. That’s not what I meant.
    â€”What?
    â€”What did you say?
    â€”No, what an idea! You’re too much...
    â€”Of course not. How could you even think it?
    â€”So that’s what’s been bothering you...
    â€”Then why didn’t you say so?
    â€”You can calm down then ... not in my wildest dreams...
    â€”Incredible!
    â€”Although I must say in parenthesis—and only in parenthesis—that Mr. Mani’s charms are considerably greater than his son’s...
    â€”I can’t easily explain it. You’ll see what I mean when you meet them...
    â€”No. Just in passing. As we were walking back up the hallway past the grandmother’s room, I said, “I see that the blinds belt is broken again, it looks like a hangman’s rope.” He let out a big laugh and reddened and said, “So it does, and the room’s a mess too, because I’ve been looking there for something I can’t find. You’ll sleep in the living room. The couch folds out into a bed ... that’s where Efi always sleeps when he visits.” And without another word we passed that self-destructing room and went to the living room, where he pulled out the bed and brought me that old, embroidered nightgown again and all those half-torn sheets—I couldn’t tell if I or someone else had last slept on them—and quietly and not at all angrily went about setting me up for another night’s stay...
    â€”No. We hardly spoke. We didn’t even bother to wrestle, because we had arrived at what seemed like a temporary