The Passionfruit / My Father’s Visits

The Passionfruit / My Father’s Visits

After my mother's death came my father's boredom—every day outside my house. In the early hours of the day, he would arrive with the white truck, or the white truck would arrive with him. Actually, he often arrived on a scooter. And then he would call my phone, or yell my name, or whistle, or just pierce through the air, and I, after whatever sound signaled his arrival, went out. Frankly, that should count in my favor: I never didn’t go out. I would never hear him and then decide, out of numbness or lethargy for example, to leave him waiting under the tree, puzzled and irritated. On the contrary, whenever he came over, I walked out to meet him. Even when it involved having to leave right after I’d showered, or right before I’d showered, or right out of bed. Even when I had to leave a woman there, lying in my bed, or leave merely a blanket, or halfway through a cup of coffee, or right when the water had reached a boil. No matter what, I always walked out and came up to him. Because there aren’t many possible maneuvers when faced with a bored father. So we would stand there like roosters outside my house, on the street corner. In fact, we stood like that under many skies, on all sorts of street corners—because our standing didn’t depend on a particular corner, and we would never stand like that inside the house.

We met in spaces where there was nowhere to sit down. In parking lots and on dirt roads. We’d stand and try to exchange words. To transfer things from my language to his language. Sometimes he got confused and called me by my sister’s name. Sometimes he got confused and used male pronouns to address me. If my partner’s name was Hagar, he’d call her Hadar. If her name was Hadar he’d call her Smadar. By the end of these exchanges, I would retreat back into my home and he’d drive away in the vehicle he’d arrived in, and so it went.

These visits were inexplicable, galloping on and on, as if determined to become a perpetual occurrence, as if they held nothing back in their effort to become a ritual. I didn’t understand this at first since he at first only came to visit me twice a week. But slowly, as the gaps between his visits shrunk, I discovered that I must adjust and create new habits to align with the new reality of my father’s daily visits. They became a fact. The custom grew roots swiftly and swept me alongside it into a routine. As a person who now had a routine, I amassed weight. My breathing changed into sighing. I lost my agility. I became un-immediate. And truly, every single day, in the outskirts of my neighborhood, which was in the outskirts of the city where I lived, from the moment I woke up and until the early afternoon, I’d prepare my spirit and my body to leap to my doorstep (other than that, I was concerned with two things that felt important: sweeping the entryway to the house and watering the trunk of the passionfruit tree I inherited from the previous tenant. At the foot of its trunk, in its shade, my father and I would meet to ascertain our relationship.)  

Just like that. Every day. No exceptions. Except the days when it was pouring rain. But there weren’t many days in the year when it was pouring rain. I could say that as time went on, I had so few moments alone that I couldn’t even remember what a moment alone was, although in truth I was alone most of the time. And I could say that for most of the time I felt that my father’s boredom could make an appearance at any hour, out of the blue. But in truth, he’d arrive at fairly set times, with his vest and toothpick, in the truck with his tools in the back, the ones he used to fix refrigerators with when he was still a technician. If it were a sunny day, he would always be waiting under the tree.

But despite their repetitiveness, my father’s visits consistently caught me off guard. When I was daydreaming or mentally checked out, when I was writing, or when I was tired. At times I was not yet fully awake when the phone rang. And even though the last thing I wanted to do was get up, I couldn’t pretend to be asleep. I’d rise, grab my cellphone with both hands, then swipe my finger across it and answer with a grunt: “I’m coming.” I’d try to quickly gather myself in the seconds it took me to get ready, since the call would scatter my serenity. I’d approach the mirror to make sure my hair looked alright. But the moment I’d walk out onto the entryway, my father would make some comment, and all my efforts to keep calm would plummet.

Until I arrived at the spot where he was standing, I’d lift and tighten my pants a little, try to walk at the right pace, run my hands through my hair again and again. Once I reached him, my father would stroke my head soothingly. Then he’d give me a pear, or a pack of Bamba, or an apple, or a tuna and onion sandwich, or a blood orange because it was the middle of February, which is an excellent time for blood oranges. And I would nod, and mumble thank you for any of these. If we felt so inspired, we would chat about politics, about soccer, about my mother’s family members, about my sister. But mostly, we just lingered in the empty gestures of speedy conversations. Impatience, as well as difficulty expressing our longing for closeness, kept the meetings brief and light, like we were pressed for time. However, the gravity of our meeting habit would reveal itself when we deviated from the norm. Then the habit seemed pale, glaring, odd. Its entire essence revealed itself only when we misstepped.

It's no secret that my father’s visits weighed heavily on me, especially when they caught me when I wasn’t alone. At times he visited me at school, and if there were people around, I’d have to come up with an excuse to leave. Only a few times did I tell the truth, to a few people. If I was at home and friends were visiting, I’d ask them to wait a moment and said I’d be right back. If my ex-girlfriend landed on my couch and in that moment the space we were in faded away, and with a lack of affection between us, we had to labor to update each other about our lives, our conversation sounding like a fossil and a rock trying to speak to one another (I would be the fossil), my father would call right when it was my turn to speak.

In that moment, I debated whether to answer the call, but I had a strong feeling that if I didn’t, I would regret it. I had no other option but to answer. So I did. My father informed me he was outside. I said I was coming but only for a short time because I had guests, and took pleasure in saying, “I have guests.” Outside, he once again gave me a sandwich, but only after he took a bite of it. He asked, “How much money do you have in your pocket?” I said I have some, even though I didn’t. And even though I had one guest who was not particularly eager for my return, I impatiently reminded him again of my guests, plural, who were sitting and waiting for me in my living room. My father grew quiet and said, “Alright, go be with them,” and I went back in.  

When there was no one at home, my father would ask to use the bathroom. When he finished urinating, we’d conclude that the visit was over, and thus all that was left was for me to escort him to the door. I would thank him at the doorstep, and he would bend down to avoid getting tangled in branches in the entryway. One day, when I was standing still in a shaded area and my father was standing next to me, lethargy became my most dangerous enemy. When we met, I was entirely impatient and preoccupied with returning home and to my business as quickly as possible. My father, who in that moment was eager to tell me something that had happened the day before, continued to share: “Unbelievable! It wasn’t a wasp! It was a giant hornet!” he said, very upset. I felt no affection toward him at that moment. So much so that in my head I said: “Well, they are both part of the Hymenoptera order.” Torn between the version of me that corrects his zoology and the version of me that remains silent, I chose silence. However, even though I chose silence, I knew I was about to receive a blow of indignation. So easily I gather an incomprehensible desire to throw—

With every question my father asked, my patience thinned, and I shot back short and evasive responses, like seeds. At this point, we ignited. In a parallel world, my father was hurt by me. In the real world, he cursed me. Flooded with hatred, he said, “You spend your entire life not giving a crap about anyone. No wonder every woman runs away from you.” In a parallel world: I was hurt. In the real world: I was swallowed by my hurt. I cried. I left without saying goodbye. With no gesture. No look. I went back to the entryway. Back and back again.

Because. My blood can become foggy too. And in a split second I turned back from the threshold and yelled, bursting, right before he escaped into his car, “Other than mom, who would’ve gone near you? No one. You would’ve been alone your entire life.” The childhood that is still in me is also tired of this game of cruelty, and generally, I’d always determine he was crueler than me. Later, in my bedroom, I’d declare to the walls that no one gets to speak to me like that.

After that fight, my father and I stopped with the street-corner routine. It’s more accurate to say, actually, that my father stopped it, since I didn’t change anything. And still, even though he looked like an angry father during our fight, I knew he was capable of coming to snoop around my house. He could certainly sprout out of the folds of the passionfruit tree. He could lay under a slim branch, on the pink sidewalk, or on the yellow dirt, or wherever, with a toothpick in his mouth, open the tailgate of his truck, look for something, mutter something, not be able to locate something, get annoyed at something, be in a hurry for something, get tangled in something, and I, on my end, really didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me. So, I’d barricade myself in the house. I looked out through the blinds every once in a while, but other than that I kept most of the windows shut. That’s how I spent almost a week, without going out to the yard even once. I stopped prancing around in my room, I didn’t sweep the entryway, I didn’t water the garden. I felt followed. My focus was damaged; I only half-thought about anything I thought of. I emptied the refrigerator and ate anything that looked edible. Once almost everything in it was finished I drank a lot of coffee, a lot of water, and in the evening, I always ate a slice of bread with butter.

One day I invited my ex-girlfriend to stay over, because my loneliness was overflowing. When she walked in, I offered her coffee, but she asked for tea. After she took a few sips, we went to the bedroom and tried to get things going like we used to. When we took off our shirts and quickly started to caress one another, and things got heated, I stopped, unable to control myself; she lifted her head toward me with wonder, and I said: “I apologize for stopping, but must ask. For a variety of reasons I won’t detail right now, I can’t look out the window. Can you tell me if there is a man standing outside, alone?” Following some perplexity and a spark of light resentment, she got up, craned her neck and looked out the window, and then said: “No, I don’t see anyone out there.” And I asked: “Are you sure? Is there anyone who looks like he has no reason to be there? Who’s all tangled up in his coat? Who’s swallowed by his boredom? Who’s pathetically expecting something?” She went silent for a moment, then said I was acting paranoid, and that if I continued to not leave my house, my paranoia would only grow. “Is that what you want?” she asked. Then she put her shirt back on and left.

I stayed in bed alone and thought about what the woman who left had said. I was surprised at how hard it was to define what I wanted. Because really, is this what I want? To contribute to one another’s erosion? To accept that from now on, every day we stand there and mourn like two ferns on the street corner, my mother’s ghost floating above us like a branch? To be prepared every day to rush out of my house? Do I want him to wallow in widowhood, and for me to wallow in my orphanhood? But horrified as I was at the thought that this habit would never end, I was now equally horrified at the thought that it had just slipped through my fingers. I realized I had to make a decision, and I felt that any choice I made would force me to decide between my blood connection and my connection with the world.

I passed the time in my bed this way until nightfall; I fell asleep out of a frustration that couldn’t be translated into action. And when the light of day rose outside my window, like in a dream, I again heard the familiar sound of piercing through the air. And just like that, so simply, we were standing there again. Two heads under a thin branch, without many words. Once again, we were tearing black bread rolls with our teeth, grinding them down with our molars, chewing time together. Once again, we were swallowing and chatting, but now we were doing so in gentle doses. Once again, we knew to rein in the affection. Once again, we knew to steady our turbulent hearts, and with every word we didn’t say I sensed that last night’s urgency to make a decision was wilting and my yearning for concessions dissipating. After this, we said a quick goodbye, and I returned to my bedroom.

In the meantime, on my end, I decided to urge the passionfruit to grow thicker and thicker on the wooden trellis, and felt it more and more coming to life, like a Golem who revolts against its creator. When I was finally happy about the privacy the passionfruit tree was providing by keeping my oh-so-visible sidewalk out of sight, and by making me a little less visible to the street, my neighbor knocked on my door and complained of its wildness. He demanded I prune it, as it was blocking the entryway to the house. I nodded and promised I would get it under control, and in truth, when I looked back at the passionfruit, I instantly recognized it was over the top. It was wild and lush, forceful and incorrigible, disgusting and unruly, but how could I explain this to my neighbor? I was not in a place to hew something that had so much passion. And so it was: the passionfruit spread, clasped, cradled, wrapped, penetrated through the glass, sprouted above the bed, and in a nutshell, it ruled the entire area to the point where it was difficult to remember that the tree rooted at one single trunk in the ground. In the summer it bore fruit, and I did not find a whole lot of pleasure in it.

Translated from the Hebrew by Liat Graf

This story was first published in Hebrew in the online edition of Granta  in September 2020.