The Tunnel by A. B. Yehoshua

Author:A. B. Yehoshua
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781328622556
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2020-08-03T16:00:00+00:00

Winter

From the midst of a friendly, hesitant winter, a sort of second autumn whose gentle winds and tender drizzles dim the memory of a long hot summer, there erupts a cold, shivery winter, complete with heavy rain and hail, sending young and old to emergency rooms. The pediatrician has to extend her working hours, sometimes till evening, and the sandwich and salad provided by the hospital kitchen are her only lunch. Luria is not only left alone in the morning but is forced to eat lunch by himself, and feels no urge to surprise his wife with delicacies from gourmet shops or meals he cooked from recipes. He hasn’t yet been barred from picking up his grandson on Tuesdays, but the kindergarten teacher is careful not to burden him with any other child, single-parent or otherwise. Is the pretty harpist done with orchestra rehearsals? Or maybe she heard that a scrambled grandpa created an imaginary father for her son, and fears he may try to prove his existence.

Ever since the last visit to the neurologist, Luria has become more suspect in the eyes of his family, who have stepped up their surveillance. Despite the frenzy of her work at the hospital, Dina calls him periodically to find out where he is and where his thoughts are taking him. Yoav calls from the North and talks politics with his father, to check whether the dementia has derailed him from his old opinions. And Avigail escapes for a moment from her sacrosanct seminars to confirm delicately that her father picked up the right child and brought him to the right house. “Yes,” sighs Luria over the phone, “everything is in order, you also have warm greetings from the right schnitzel on a plate in front of the boy you gave birth to.”

It is thus no wonder that amid the storms that imprison him at home and the mounting concerns over his actions and thoughts, Luria’s delusions sail into the azure desert skies, to the gazelles nibbling the grass around the grave of Ben-Gurion. His heart flutters as he recalls the grand view of the Ramon Crater from the dining room of the Genesis Hotel, and wistfully unfolds a road map and wanders to an unmarked hill from which the new road will make its way. And as the huge howling trucks in the reddish-brown crater rumble through his soul, he pencils the approximate route of the future road, though he still has no idea why it is necessary, or where it is meant to go. It’s inconceivable that Maimoni will go on hiding the endpoint from him, even if he conceals its purpose.

In a protest against the gnawing uncertainty, he makes himself a thick sandwich of bread and yellow cheese, inserts a sour pickle, takes it into the bedroom, closes the window shades, gets into bed, hides with the sandwich under the blanket, and there, in the dark, he munches slowly, to tide him over till his wife returns. He hovers half

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