The table lamp framed the rectangle sheet of paper with a
pale flourescent light.
The blue veins that protruded from under the skin of the
writing hand, nearly transparent, moved like tiny rushing
streams across an arid, barren plain.
Words -- small, black and crowded, poured onto the scented
stationary. They flowed with confidence, without pauses for
reflection, for a sigh emitted, a correction, and certainly
not for erasure.
*
He had waited forty years, they said, short somewhat, if you
took into account the years of innocent childhood. Oh,
how great was the deception in that innocence! he
thought, though his hand did not stop writing.
The age of innocence was over. Past. Life was finished, you
could say.
*
Across from him, partially illuminated, partially dipped in
darkness, stood a small photo. A nickel frame and cardboard
foot. A photo of his Chaimke. His son. His only one, may
Hashem avenge his death.
The picture was faded, but the smile reflected in it, was
not. The smile had a color all its own. Chaimke's smile...
Oy... The uniform he wore in the photo had also lost its
color, but the smile remained with its full warm shades.
He took a pack of cigarettes and removed one. Next, the
lighter. You had to press real hard to get the puny flame
started, and be quick before it was swallowed up.
He inhaled deeply and looked out the window.
A thin drizzle hovered, transparent, melting away, a futile
rainshower.
Chaimke's father laid the cigarette in the ashtray and his
hand continued to speed along the surface of the page. He
was writing about himself, in an effort to reconstruct and
test the present that was wrapped up in the past, and the
past that had borne and buried the core of the present.
Chaimke. His only son, who would never become a part of the
past, despite his -- death.
The hand froze for an instant, remembering the calendar,
which would probably refuse to turn its white pages. Oh,
well, either way, the day would come. He whispered the date
with sibilant fear and reverence.
He had already imagined, at some time, how that day would
look, the anniversary of his son's death.
He wondered if the sun would dare peek out from the autumn
skies. Perhaps the rain would shower drops like damp tears
on the straight lines, washed with pain, gleaming, long.
The manicured paths of the cemetery would be aglow with
autumn bloom, and the dwarf palm bushes would stretch their
hands out to him, shaking them in mute supplication.
And when his feet would reach the tombstone of Chaimke's
grave... they would stand upright.
He would not prostrate himself upon the stone. But his heart
would be petrified within him, so weary, when they would
stand there -- he, and the autumn wind, by the grave.
*
A tremor played on his lips. The cigarette plume curled
towards the window where the twigs of the apple tree dipped
their tips in weariness.
He laid down the pen, got up and went over to the window.
Some red apples were scattered under the apple tree, rotten,
half buried in the grass.
When he had sent Chaimke off to the army, his uniform had
been smart and starched like a fresh fruit. A dark green
ripeness. But when they had brought back his Chaimke,
enveloped in the talis, his uniform lay folded on the
side of the stretcher -- wrinkled and red with his son's
blood.
How symbolic his son's body had seemed -- shrouded in the
talis...
Despite the excruciating pain, deeper than the night, he
could not help nursing the thought that the price he had
paid for casting away his own talis and
tefilin had been too dear.
The memory of his youth in yeshiva caught him up -- the
evening when he had taken leave of it.
*
In his blind stupidity, he had entered the room of the Rosh
Yeshiva, his grandfather, bareheaded, in khaki Bermuda
shorts which one of his new comrades had recruited for
him.
"Are you that naive?" his grandfather asked, embracing him.
"My poor innocent child... It won't take many years -- and I
want you to remember this -- before you discover the sham,
the deception. Before the black underneath the khaki peeks
out and surfaces. Think of the word yorok, green:
when you remove the yud and the vov, the
letters of Hashem, you will be left with rak, only
emptiness, nothingness. You will be shorn of everything."
His grandfather's voice begged, "Change your mind, son,
before it's too late."
*
He smiled bitterly now. How sure he had been of himself.
Deadly certain.
He had even left his talis and tefilin behind,
there.
He had even cut off his own branch, the very branch upon
which he had grown and sat... forty years he had hovered
before the fall. And when he had fallen, the fruit had
fallen with him. Chaimke. Truly, he was left empty and
bereft of everything.
Then he had again encountered the talis. The
talis that enshrouded his Chaimke.
*
The rain had drizzled then, too, discouragingly, when the
rain of earthclods had tumbled into the fresh pit which
gaped like an open wound under the autumn skies.
He had stubbornly insisted on watching until the very last
wisp of talis had been buried under the cover of
earth.
Even afterwards, he had continued to rivet his eyes upon the
heaping mound, his eyes drained. Empty of anything and
everything.
Some person or other had approached him. His face was
blurred.
And the words said to him shivered and shattered to a single
distorted line.
His void eyes searched for the green uniforms,
representatives of the dream that had disintegrated into the
grave. But he didn't find them. No one was there.
During the week of mourning the phone rang and an anonymous
voice, which identified itself as Chaimke's commanding
officer, transmitted the condolences of his unit into the
receiver, like one reading an official telegram.
The dream and its shattered finale.
The seven days passed like an olive-colored dream, faded and
washed out to a yellowish white, like the color of the
woolen talis with its two black stripes.
*
Chaimke's father closed the window, and the branches of the
apple tree tapped gently on the pane.
He returned to the rectangle of light that danced on his
desk, but when he bent over it, he visualized the marble
slab under which his son lay.
And again rose the memory of the talis peeking from
under the clodded earth, with its two black stripes, hugging
his son's body with their slim arms.
It was unbearable.
A supreme effort succeeded in suppressing the scream that
almost erupted, and nailed it between his pursed lips.
Someone was knocking at the door.
Was it real? Yes, it was a knock, hesitant yet determined.
Followed by another.
He didn't feel like opening it. He had no desire to see
anyone. Oh, he had no desire to keep on living... But then,
another knock descended upon the door, demanding.
A moment of silence. He could hear the breathing of the
person on the other side. Then another set of knocks.
Chaimke's father went to open the door.
In the doorway stood a young soldier, dusty from an
apparently long trip.
"Mr. Shub?"
"Yes."
"Are you... the father of..."
"Yes. His father," nodded the father of...
They were silent. The soldier looked at him with tender
steadiness, with pity.
"Please come in," the father gestured.
They sat down in the living room near the desk. The
rectangle of light emphasized the darkness of the room and
highlighted the smiling face of Chaimke in the photo.
The soldier's muteness pinched his heart.
His green uniform was covered with a dusty film and his high
laced shoes were caked with dirt.
"Let's drink some tea," suggested the father.
"Thank you," agreed the soldier.
Surprised himself, Mr. Shub discovered that he had not
forgotten how to prepare tea. Chaimke had loved his tea
strong and sweet.
He returned to the living room with two glasses of tea,
arranged esthetically upon a tray.
"I don't have anything in the house..." he apologized.
"That's perfectly alright, Mr. Shub. I won't stay long..."
the soldier's voice had a sweet lilt.
A twig from the apple tree tapped softly on the pane.
Tapped softly, so gently.
They sipped their tea.
To his own amazement, Mr. Shub found that he had not
forgotten this simple pleasure. Of drinking tea. That
satisfaction which he had acquired in his youth, in
yeshiva.
There, on the long winter nights, with one chavrusa
following on the heels of another, when day and night melted
into the parameters of one another.
He recalled the gigantic samovar, somewhat lopsided, of tea,
that rested on a table in the entrance of the yeshiva
library. He could almost hear its humming.
*
The soldier laid the empty glass back on the tray.
"Thank you very much, Mr. Shub."
"Gladly. What's your name?
"Ilan."
"You were friends, you and... Chaimke?"
"We never had the chance, Mr. Shub. I only knew him a few
days before..."
"Yes."
"I brought his personal belongings. They asked me to."
"Yes?" The father's voice broke.
"Here." Ilan handed over a black bag, rather small. A plain
black plastic bag, the rustling kind they give you at the
fruit store, for your potatoes, or -- from the bakery, for a
loaf or two.
"That's it?"
"I guess so..." Ilan said, lowering his eyes.
Chaimke's father opened it up with hands that shook, very
hard. He spread its contents upon the table, inside the
rectangle of light.
Ilan wanted to go, but, no, he couldn't.
His gaze was riveted upon the illuminated square and upon
the quivering hands of Chaimke's father.
The first item was the army identification tag.
A pair of sunglasses.
Several pairs of new woolen socks and a crushed telephone
notepad.
There was another bag, too, a bag within the bag, black as
well. Knotted tight.
Mr. Shub couldn't open it and Ilan, filled with pity, rushed
forward to help.
He untied the knot and fished out from the bag -- an
embroidered velvet bag.
The plastic bag stopped rustling.
Chaim's father stared at the velvet and could hardly
breathe. There was no need to open it. He knew. For sure.
This was a talis and tefillin bag... for
talis and tefillin.
He opened his mouth. He threaded his hand weakly through his
silvered hair, shut his mouth and swallowed. His eyes tried
vainly to find a refuge and encountered Ilan's hands,
resting on the table, Ilan's eyes, the bag, the blinding
white rectangle of light.
Talis? Talis and tefilin? My Chaimke's? These
belonged to Chaim Shub? The son of... Oh!
"Sit down, Mr. Shub," Ilan drew up a chair.
He sat down. Chaimke's father. And as he did, he felt a
burning, fearful desire, piercing and surprising, deathly
so, to get up from the table, uncover the tefillin
and kiss them.
But his strength abandoned him. And so he sat, silent.
Silent.
And from that silence, a gentle tapping reached his ears.
The tapping of an apple tree on his window pane.
