The following scene became etched in my nightmares and mind for a long time. Mother was sitting in a bathtub filled with blood. Her face was ashen and her head tilted backward. She was alive. She whispered something that took me few seconds to decode: “My bird, my little birdie, I’m so sorry.” She was wearing a nightgown and her wrists were slashed. She sat there, not wanting to soil the room.
I must have taken her out of the bathtub. The two security guards who came from the embassy found me sitting on the bathroom floor, hugging her, caressing her hair, and saying, “Stay with me, stay with me, Mummy. We’re going to leave him. We’ll go back home. Everything will be alright. I’ll take you. I’ll take care of you. It will be alright, you’ll see, but stay with me. You have to.”
At Lenox Hill Hospital, I sat in the corridor and felt like the lame heroine in some B-movie, sitting in a hospital room and waiting for news from the doctor. Soon the man would come out with the announcement. Just like on Yom Kippur; he says who gets to live and who gets to die. I felt a terrible void and a depressing helplessness. People were talking to me trying to find out what had happened and how I was holding up. Someone handed me a glass of water, and I only wet my lips with it. I didn’t see any of them and heard nothing. A dull ringing was blowing in my ears an unstoppable siren. The words kept banging inside my head, “Wonderful party. Wonderful party.”
The security guards insisted on asking me about Dad. With a short time delay, I realized that they had a problem. Apparently, he had broken a few security regulations by disappearing. I wasn’t about to tell them that he was at Sebastian’s. They couldn’t locate George, the driver, either, despite all the radios and special beepers that they had. It was past midnight.
A bespectacled doctor who looked exhausted approached me with an African-American nurse by his side, “Your mother is alright,” he started to say and I collapsed to the floor. “The cuts were superficial and the bleeding stopped a long time ago.” I heard him through a fog after they must have sat me on a bench. “We pumped out her stomach because she took a few dozen pills. Has she been depressed lately?”
I was not in any state to answer.
They brought me a wide, reclining armchair next to Mom, where I could sleep if I wanted. Mom was sleeping and I was caressing her hand over the bandage, promising myself that I would leave New York as soon as possible with her to end this terrible nightmare.
I awoke the next morning in the armchair when Danny entered the room. He was still wearing his tuxedo and a black wool coat that usually made him look regal. He smiled at me with great dismay. “You were so right. We really should have gone home.” He looked at Mom who was sleeping, and said to her angrily, “You shouldn’t have done this to me, Pnina.”
Instead of kicking him and throwing him out of the room, which I should have, all I could say was, “It’s lucky you even got here,” and “Thank God you are here,” just like that time with the foreign minister in Rome.
He turned to me and to Ziv, the security guard, and said, “I’d like to be alone with Pnina.”
I looked at Ziv pleadingly and whispered to him, “Don’t do that. He’ll finish her off.”
“Stop talking nonsense. Please.” Danny was shocked but seemed to remember that I could be violent. “Start acting like a seventeen-year-old. I am asking that you two leave me alone with my wife now.”
“Don’t let him.” I was louder now. “Don’t let him!”
“What?” Danny said as if he couldn’t hear well. “What on earth you are trying to say?”
“Please help me, take the girl home,” he now whispered angrily at Ziv standing close to his ear. “She’s had a rough night.”
I held onto Mom’s bed and started screaming, “Don’t do it! Don’t let him stay alone with her. He will kill her! He will finish her off. What the hell do you think happened here? Why do you think it happened? He’s been trying to kill her for a long time; slowly and quietly, with kind words, the way he knows so well. He is strangling her. This man has an empty heart. There’s no room for anyone in there but for himself. Don’t believe a single word he is saying. I plead with you don’t leave him alone with her. If she wakes up and sees him standing next to her, it will be the end. She’ll never recover. She needs someone she trusts. I need her. You just can’t take her away from me and don’t you dare leave her alone with him.”
The African-American nurse returned. She received a quick explanation from the guards.
“Sweetheart, you’ve had a rough night.” She had gray hair and soft eyes and tried to explain and implore. “Nobody’s here to kill, sweetheart. We bring people back from the dead here. We will not let anyone do his killing here. This man is married to your mother. He is nice and important and only wishes your mother well. Don’t worry. We are looking out for her now. Please, go home and get some rest. You deserve it. You really did have a tough night.”
Ziv held me under the arm and it didn’t take too much effort to escort me to the elevator. He looked at me, not knowing whether he should stay in the corridor waiting for the UN ambassador or make sure that I left and didn’t come back to threaten them and to scream. But the procedure was clear; the head was the first priority. He would have to stay with Danny.
“It’s alright, Ziv. Don’t worry,” I mumbled in defeat and headed downstairs.
Outside the hospital stood Danny’s staff car, his huge Chevrolet, escorted by a local security car. Three security guards stood around the car, chatting, and became quiet when they saw me coming over.
“Do you need a ride home?” George, the driver, appeared from nowhere.
“No, thanks, I’ll walk.” I hurried down Lexington without looking back. The flashing blue light from the security car accompanied me. I took the first right turn and started to run. My feet seemed to have a mind of their own as they led me to Fifth Avenue and then south along the Central Park fence and to the Sixty-Sixth Street entrance. It was lazy noon when I arrived at the lake and its imitation Middle-Ages castle. I sat down on the grass and didn’t want to get up. I lay on my back, covered my face, and could feel my heart beat. There was no relaxation there. All I wanted was to dig in the grass, bury myself, and disappear once and for all; so that no security guard would ever see me or talk to me again; so that nobody would tell me lies and make me promises.
When I opened my eyes I saw with renewed horror that it was early afternoon already. I leaned against a tree trunk and looked at the swans in the lake. I stared at the vendors passing by with their carts, selling cotton candy to children. Obese nannies were chasing small toddlers running all over the grass. Their voices reached me as if through a filter. I heard them talking but could not decipher their words. Dozens of cyclists were sharing the park’s paths with skaters, in an endless festival of moving people. Homeless people in their filthy, tattered clothes went by giving me a cursory glance, checking out the goods. This could have been the way to go. Filthy, with matted hair covering my face, so nobody would see me and I would have to see nobody. I stayed there on my little plot of grass, leaning against the tree. The sun started to set. The park became cooler and I started to relax. Ready to fall asleep again.
I felt the cold air penetrate my bones but had no intention of moving away. I pulled my knees close to my chest, held them tight, and waited for night to fall. I wasn’t afraid at all. I was determined that there was no way I was going back to the ambassador’s residence. My mother wanted to die more than anything. She didn’t care about abandoning me, her best friend; the best friend I had. Now it was my time.
An ageless homeless man, wounded, and with a dirty beard and missing teeth, came towards me with a sickening snicker and said something. I didn’t care to reply. He pushed me slightly with one hand like a cat checking out a wounded mouse before devouring it. Three large Afro-American teens were walking on the path. Their heads were shaved, their pants slung low and their huge sneakers unlaced. They walked down the path, laughing, approaching the crazy old man and me with some
curiosity.
“Scram, grandpa!” one of them said. “Now!” The homeless man limped away quickly. The three stood and looked at me. “Hey, babe, wanna have some fun?” said the leader. I didn’t look at them and didn’t say a word. He leaned down, touched my hair, and said, “A good girl from a good family, huh?”
“Come with us now,” he said. “Come with us, sis. We’ll have some good time, otherwise, it’s sure gonna hurt and it won’t end well for you. Oh no, sis. It’s dangerous here. We’ll protect you. You need it.”
I raised my head. The sun was almost down and the park would soon be in complete darkness. Behind the teens stood a short muscular guy with curly hair and a flat nose like that of a boxer. To this day I don’t know what happened. He approached us with quick steps, totally oblivious to the Afro-American teens. Any other white man would have panicked and run away from them. He grabbed me by the arm, stood me on my feet and said, “It’s late, honey. Let’s go home.”
I started walking with him as if it was the most natural thing in the world; not out of fear, nor because he looked so strong, but simply because he took me away. Anyone grabbing me at that moment would have had me. We took a few steps before one of the teens said, “Hey, hey, man, where do you think you’re going?”
My savior knight turned around and looked at the three teens. For a moment, I was afraid of him too. They exchanged long looks and said nothing.
“I’m going where I need to be going,” he finally said. He turned to me and took my hand. We exited the park. He hailed a cab and got me inside. “Where do you need to go, honey?”
My words wouldn’t come out. I searched my pocket with a weak, shaking hand. All I could find there was a business card from the day I had visited the embassy. It read ‘Ronny Sofer, Photographer’. The address was on Seventieth-and-something-Street, East.
The stranger examined the card with a satisfied look, gave the driver a ten dollar bill, and said, “Take her there. All the way to the door.” The driver didn’t try to argue. The cab jiggled and jumped for a few minutes from one pothole to the next until we arrived. I was fighting hard to get back to my senses when we walked up the stairs to the third floor of a building whose façade was adorned by a black fire escape. The door was opened and Ronny stood there, astonished. “She’s all yours now,” smiled the driver evidently relieved and quickly left.
“Holy shit!” the photographer from the embassy cursed with awe, before and after trying to ask me what had happened a few times. He gave up on getting an answer and tried in another direction. “Are you lost in the city?” I shook my head. “Do you need to get to the UN mission?”
I shook my head again, terrified, and looked at the apartment above his shoulder. Only then did he realize that we are still at the door; he apologized and let me in. I sat on the couch for a while. I was unable to respond
“Would you like to stay here for a while?” I nodded my head affirmatively.
“We need to notify someone that you are here,” he said and was not surprised to see me shaking my head.
“OK, you’ll rest here a while,” he stated and then pretty much ignored me. For a while, he fiddled with a sound system. A quiet piano could be heard in the room; Beethoven again. I got a chill. He moved to the kitchen and started cooking something, accompanying the piano with soft whistling. Then he called from the kitchen, “How about some warm soup?”
I cuddled with the pillows on the living room sofa and sank into a terrible, fitful nap. I woke up at three in the morning and headed for the window. Night-time New York looked ominous. I knelt to try and see a piece of sky and felt suffocated. The surrounding skyscrapers looked ready to crush and bury the third-floor apartment I was in. The night was black and menacing. I wanted to scream but couldn’t utter a sound. Back on the living room sofa I covered my head with the pillows but couldn’t sleep anymore.
A few hours later I heard Ronny from the kitchen. “I have a photography project but I hope to be back in about six hours. There are some eggs in the refrigerator and there’s orange juice, so if you’re hungry you can eat, but don’t go out into the street by yourself. I don’t think you should. Is that alright?” He was now by my side and looked handsome and worried.
I nodded, grateful that he didn’t ask questions or try to find out what had happened, or worse than that, to return me to anyone.
“Would you like to listen to music while I’m gone?”
I shook my head.
The next time I woke up, it was night time again; stifling and scary. Ronny was tall with long auburn hair, and sitting in an armchair in the living room. He was listening to music and taking slow sips from a wide mug. He looked at me casually when I opened my eyes.
“Do you understand,” he said as if answering a question. “I am here on a contract for a photo album. Someone back in Israel signed me up, and it fit my plans because New York is indeed my kind of city. But in three weeks, my contract will be done and so will the photo album, so I will be returning this apartment to its owner with whom I exchanged apartments and who now lives in my house on Rupin Street in Tel Aviv. It’s a totally different place because it overlooks the sea and there are no tall buildings around that may suffocate and scare you.”
I looked at him wonderingly. This was the second day of my refuge in this apartment and apart from two glasses of water I hadn’t eaten a thing and I hadn’t said a word.
“I did get my passport renewed at the embassy, probably thanks to you. I came back after an hour and they were polite for a change, but they wouldn’t tell me where you had gone. You must have had a good influence on them.”
I didn’t even smile.
“Look, if you continue to fast, I’ll be forced to take you to a hospital and they will probably know where to send you from there. This isn’t something you want.”
I shook my head ‘no’.
“Now, I’m going to make you a bowl of soup and even if it is horrible, you must eat because otherwise, you will collapse. Is that alright?”
I nodded.
“This isn’t a regular thing with you, this silence, is it?”
He knew it wasn’t, but I liked it. It was easy not to have to give explanations to no one. Not even to Mom. But where is she now? I couldn’t recall. I saw my mother in a white bed, her hands slashed and bandaged. I started to weep quietly.
“Alright,” he grew scared. “I didn’t mean it, but you do realize you can’t stay here forever, right?”
I shook my head ‘no’.
“That means you want to stay here.”
I nodded.
“You’re in serious trouble, aren’t you?”
I nodded ‘yes’ again and continued to cry softly, without a sound.
The next day I got off the sofa and for the first time started walking around the apartment. I watered the plants and looked at some photos that were hanging on the walls: black barns against a background of empty fields, a broken bench, graffiti-covered walls, and open doors. No people. Ronny was a lonely person, maybe even lonelier than me.
Ronny came back late in the morning with coffee cups and a bag full of freshly baked croissants. He didn’t mind my refusal and watched me looking at his pictures. He led me to the darkroom and started explaining about the fixer, the developer, and the games he plays with exposure times in order to get the truth out of every image. The pictures, he said, do not lie. He didn’t believe in montage or in manipulating pictures, just in simple photography that tells the truth. Through the lens, it sometimes hurts less; sometimes more, but it’s always real.
I started spending my time in the darkroom printing his pictures. All apart from the project that included color photographs that only he developed; he took black-and-white photos for an album in the making; on doors from all over the world. He shot doors, gates, and openings in walls. “Passages, new opportunities, hopes,” he tried to explain.
He shot dozens of pictures, which I would develop and try to print in a way that would show the beauty
of a tree, the pain of a rock and the cruelty of steel. I enjoyed printing photos while listening to Beethoven through the loudspeakers in the living room.
On the fourth, or was it the fifth, day, I came out of the darkroom and wiped my hands, after having washed them well from the stench of the developer. The doorbell started ringing. I was alone and ran to the living room sofa, covered myself in the duvet and put a pillow over my head. After a while, the ringing stopped. That night, while Ronny was walking around the apartment cooking something at the same time and wanting to tell me about his previous life, the doorbell rang again. I looked at him in astonishment.
“Get into the darkroom,” he ordered.
I heard the muffled sounds of conversation and then a knocking on my darkroom door. I sat in the corner, crouching.
“It’s alright, it’s me. They left.” I heard Ronny’s voice. He came into the room and turned on the red light. “It was the police,” he said. “The neighbors reported someone fitting the description that they had seen on television of a missing girl. Did someone see you when you came in?” Without waiting for an answer, he added: “It looks to me like they’re making a real effort to locate you. Is there anything you can tell me?” I didn’t reply.
“They’re looking hard for you, huh? Perhaps it’s time for you to go back?” I shook my head so vigorously that I thought my neck would snap.
“Yes, actually I know the answer to that one,” he mumbled to himself. “We need to think of something. No rush, I guess.”
He told me about his studio on Rupin Street in Tel Aviv. The studio at the back of his apartment building up on the roof. “You have a natural knack for photography, you know that?” He was quite comfortable not getting answers. He knew I was listening. “Your choice of photos, exposure times, and your grasp of light. You could be a great photographer. Why don’t you go back to Tel Aviv? I’ll be there at the end of the month. It may appeal to you a bit more than hiding here in New York.”