CORPSE

Pushing the key into the lock, I hoped that nothing had changed. The weekend edition of the paper waited beside the door, wrapped in a plastic bag, covered in dew. I picked up the paper, shook off the drops, and opened the door.

Ruchaleh was on the couch, awake, looking terrible. Her eyes were puffy, her gaze was fixed on the ceiling, and there were two empty bottles of red wine on the table. The sun had risen but the blinds were still shut and the only light in the room came in from the kitchen. I said nothing. I stood in the entryway and waited for her to turn toward me. There was no need for me to go up to the attic. Something clearly had changed. Moving slowly, Ruchaleh turned and looked at me. Then, making a great effort, she smiled and moved her head up and down, again and again.

“Do me a favor,” she said, “and don’t stare at me with that pitying look.”

I froze, even though what I wanted to do was run to her and hug her and tell her that I loved her. I wouldn’t care if she said something like, I can’t stand histrionic people, or What a pathetic Arab. I wanted to fall into her arms, console her, be consoled, receive a warm hug, and hear her whisper in my ear, “Don’t worry, Mommy’s here,” in a voice that would soothe all my fears.

“What are you doing standing there like a golem?” she said. “It’s over, it’s done.”

“It’s just beginning,” I found myself saying, completely unsure of what I meant.

“I can’t stand,” she chuckled, and then she was quiet for a moment before adding, very softly, almost apologetically, “Come here, you little dunce.” I walked over to her and she hugged me harder than ever before and she wasn’t even taken aback when I lay my head on her chest. She hugged me as though I were hers, and I, on my knees, on the floor, burying my head in her chest, tightening my grip, tried to make myself more and more hers. I didn’t look up but I knew she was crying. She groaned in pain and her body shook. “What are you doing crying like a little kid?” she asked me in a wavering voice, stroking my hair. I knew she was silently saying, “Stay here, stay here with me.” I stayed until she fell asleep and only then did I break her embrace.

“A’rib?” the man in charge of burials in Beit Safafa asked over the phone.

“A’rib” I answered in Arabic. Stranger.

“So then it will be a small funeral,” he said.

“There will be no funeral,” I said.

“You have permission for burial?”

“Yes, I got it from the hospital.”

“You know where to bring him?”

“No.”

“You know the small mosque near the cemetery?”

“I’ll ask.”

“Okay, bring him there,” he said. “Ask anyone in the village and he’ll direct you there. Everyone knows where the cemetery is.”

“Okay, thank you very much.”

“Allah Yirachmo,” God have mercy, said the man to whom death was a livelihood.

Equipped with the signed certificate of death and the ID card, I set out in Ruchaleh’s car for the morgue at Shaare Zedek, where Yonatan’s body was being stored. An older nurse looked at my paperwork and made a feeble attempt at empathy.

“How are you taking him?” she asked.

“Ambulance,” I said right away, and she nodded.

“Should I order one for you?”

“Yes, please.”

“Okay, you can wait over there,” she said, pointing her chin in the direction of a small waiting room. Then she picked up the phone and began to dial.

A small TV, resting on a metal arm that protruded from the wall, showed soundless footage from the government channel. Two stern-looking men spoke to one another. One, who looked like the guest, was religious, with a black yarmulke, a thick beard, a white shirt, and a black jacket. The man who looked like the host wore a knitted yarmulke and a blue dress shirt. His beard was trimmed and sculpted. Every once in a while a few passages from the Bible appeared on the screen and then disappeared. The two men were visibly excited, waving their fists, punctuating with their hands, making expansive gestures, smiling at the camera, twisting their faces into occasional grimaces, underscoring again and again their wonder at the potency of Biblical verse.

“Shalom,” the Arab ambulance driver said to me in halting Hebrew, perhaps on account of my clothes and perhaps on account of my physical appearance.

“Shalom,” I responded, rising to my feet.

“You’re accompanying the body, right?” he asked with no preamble and no superfluous attempts at commiseration.

“Right.”

“To Beit Safafa?”

“Yes, to the small mosque near the. .”

“Yeah,” the driver said, handing me a copy of some paperwork, “I know the place. I’m from there. You going to follow me?”

The driver lit a cigarette on the way to the ambulance, giving his younger assistant time to walk over to the stretcher and the enshrouded body and push it toward the ambulance. The driver opened the back doors and the younger man pushed a button on the stretcher and shoved it into the ambulance, the legs of the stretcher folding into the track.

They drove slowly, and I followed. For some reason I felt a burning desire to take photographs. It seemed to me like the only reasonable way to pass the next few minutes, behind the lens of a camera. To press, swivel, document, hide, distance myself from the events. But even if I had brought the camera with me, I doubt I would have had the nerve to use it. On Army Radio a famous Israeli singer spoke about his experiences during the past week, softening his voice, making it sound thoughtful, trying to enliven the banal conclusions that he had reached regarding his life.

“This next song has accompanied me during sad and happy days alike,” he said after he had finished his little speech and before he let the music speak for itself.

The ambulance entered the village and immediately drew the attention of the locals. Kids on bikes trailed behind the ambulance and pedaled furiously in their attempts to overtake the two-car convoy. The driver opened his window and told them something, probably that nothing exciting was happening, that this was just the body of a stranger being brought to burial, not someone from the village. A crowd tumbled out of the small mosque near the cemetery. The men stopped and stared at the ambulance and waited to see what was going on. I berated myself for forgetting that there was this little thing called Friday prayers and that it was the absolute worst time for a clandestine burial. I parked behind the ambulance and stayed inside the car. The driver turned around and threw me a look. Three men, one of whom seemed like the man in charge and the other two his helpers, came up to the ambulance driver and shook his hand, smiling. They exchanged a few words and looked over at me. A few of the worshippers came over and spoke with the men, whispering, and once they realized that it was not a villager who was being brought for burial and their curiosity had been satisfied, they left and went to report back to their friends that there was nothing to see.

I got out of the car only after all of the worshippers had dispersed. The driver’s assistant pulled Yonatan out of the ambulance and wheeled him toward a small room adjacent to the mosque, the two young men from the burial society trailing behind him.

“He can go to hell,” an elderly man said to me in Arabic as I stood there. “Who’s going to pray for this dog?”

“Shalom,” the man in charge of the burial service said to me in Hebrew. “Don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of this. You staying here?”

“Yes,” I said, not understanding exactly what was happening.

“He has no family members?”

“Not that I know of,” I said.

A little kid on a bike circled around us and yelled in Arabic, “How long are they going to bury collaborators here? How long?” The man in charge barked at him to get lost. “Sure,” the kid yelled. “What do you care? For you it’s good business. You couldn’t give a damn.”