Light Fell by Evan Fallenberg

Author:Evan Fallenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2010-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

kodesh (holy, sacred, sanctified; the Sabbath)

FRIDAY, MARCH 1 – SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1996

JOSEPH STARES FROM THE depths of a pillowed armchair pulled close to the sliding glass doors of the terrace at the dark orange sun that has plunged through the thick ceiling of gray clouds, well on its descent into evening. His senses seem to have abandoned their usual posts and gone to carouse with one another: the orange of the sun roars in his ears, he can see the scent of simmering soup wafting from the kitchen, and a melody he cannot name leaves a peculiar salty taste on his lips and tongue. A crinkled letter lies splayed across his lap.

In the last hour his sons and daughter-in-law arrived and then, before he could finish showering, deserted him for services at an ultra-Orthodox synagogue of Gidi’s bidding. He had felt unhinged at the first knock and staggered to the front door in a stupor of emotions at what he might find on the other side. He was met by a large luggage cart crammed full of crumpled shopping bags and cardboard boxes, clothes on hangers, and two small and battered suitcases. A newish doorman, whose name escaped Joseph, stood to the side, his face pulled into a look of surprised amusement.

“Good afternoon, sir.” The doorman hesitated, waiting for a sign from Joseph that he was indeed delivering this unlikely baggage and the guests who went with it to the right place.

“Well, yes, good afternoon, young man. Come in, come in. Let’s get these deposited as quickly as possible.” Only as the cart rolled past him did Joseph catch sight of his youngest son, Gidi, and his bride standing motionless between the elevator and a towering potted palm.

When Gidi was five he had filched one of his older brothers’ bicycles for a cruise down the sloping road that led from the family home past the moshav’s citrus groves and ended at the village cemetery. But the bike had hand brakes—a mechanism Gidi did not yet know existed—so his furious backpedaling did nothing to stop him or even slow him down. In the ensuing crash he lost two baby teeth, mangled his chin, and suffered a medium-deep gash over his left eye. That cigar-shaped scar, still present on his twenty-two-year-old face, reassured Joseph that this was, in fact, his son. Gidi had been a robust child, nearly chubby, but now, encased in the shin-length double-breasted black coat of the ultra-Orthodox, he looked somehow depleted, long and thin like a stick of licorice. The only color in his face was the flush that came from wearing too many clothes in an overheated building. His beard—blond and boyish, a scraggly fuzz that barely straddled his jawbone—made him look more Amish than Jewish.

Batya was a pleasant surprise. Her eyebrows gave her away as a redhead, even though Joseph could not see a single hair on her meticulously covered head. He imagined her to have been a beautiful child, with a mane of wild

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