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

alliance, or maybe it was more of a truce. He pulled out the telephone plug and left me in the room with the warning that we had to rise very early, and I told him not to worry. “I’m a kibbutznik from the Negev,” I said, “and we’re the world champions at early rising.” Well, he just smiled at that and shut the door and left me all by myself in what was beginning to seem by then like home. I turned out the lights and opened the window to let in some air, and I could see that it was getting clearer and calmer outside. I moved the pillow to the other end of the bed and tried reading something, but I was too tired, and so I switched on the television without the volume until the news was over, and then I turned it up a bit to watch the movie, I don’t know if you saw it, it starts out nicely and then gets worse and worse...
    â€”You did? I thought it started out nicely.
    â€”No. I didn’t want to bother him with another request, and I didn’t know if there was hot water or if I would have to wait for it to heat. I knew I’d be on my way back to Tel Aviv early in the morning, straight from the cemetery, and I thought I’d take a big bath and wash my hair when I got there, because I was getting tired of living like a nomad...
    â€”Soon ... in a minute ... I’ll wash up soon...
    â€”If the water’s so hot, why don’t you turn off the boiler?
    â€”Soon ... in a minute ... there’s plenty of time. And so, Mother, I slept over there another night, and at 5 A.M. I looked up to see him standing over my bed all in black. He had this black suit and this black tie and this black beard—only his eyes were red from not sleeping. I had no idea why he was in such a hurry to get to the cemetery—you might have thought he didn’t want to keep his dead mother waiting. Breakfast was already on the table, a loaf of bread and some olives and these different goat and sheep cheeses, but he was looking awfully worried, and suddenly he said to me, but really serious, as if he were sounding some kind of a warning, “If anyone asks who you are, tell them the truth, I mean that you’re Efi’s girlfriend, and that you were supposed to come with him, and that at the last minute he couldn’t get away from the army...”
    â€”Yes. It was such a weird thing to say, “Tell the truth”—as if otherwise I might tell some lie that would get him into trouble...
    â€”How should I know? Maybe that I was his new mistress and that he wanted to do it with me in the graveyard...
    â€”No, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what he was talking about I was too taken aback to do anything but nod. I was sleepy too, and I was having this new kind of cramps, which went from my stomach down into my knees...
    â€”No. Yes. Cramps like when you have your period, only worse. We left the house at about six. It was very cold out, but dry and clear, with just a little snow left on some of the cars and fences. And then I realized what the rush was about, because two big taxis were already waiting in the street to drive behind us and pick up all the others...
    â€”No. I asked him about them afterward. They weren’t relatives at all.
    â€”Yes. He belongs to an old Jerusalem family that moved to Crete and back again, but he doesn’t have much family in Jerusalem. Mostly he stopped for a lot of old women, all these widows who were friends of the grandmother and didn’t want to miss the ceremony, weather permitting, which it was. They looked like something out of a Greek movie, all these quiet little early birds all bundled up and dressed in black, waiting like lonely crows on the corners for Mr. Mani to pick them up and usher them tenderly, respectfully, into one of his taxis. A few of them were accompanied by old men wrapped in scarves, who made Mr. Mani so happy that he hugged them for joining his prayer group. Everyone kept saying how