One Last
Encounter withAvrahami
Semititski
by
Clare Kirwan
I am in town on
an ordinary weekday morning, dragging all my years around
as if they make me heavier. I walk more carefully these
days, like they told me. And I’m not really part of the
crowd — I was taught to keep my distance, taught how
precious the space around you can be. I don’t chat like
other women to their neighbors and I try not
to look people in the eye. But today, I look up for a
second at the pedestrian crossing — right into the eyes of
Avrahami Semititski.
I feel a great lurch of recognition that is so welcome,
it’s almost like love and I have to hold on to the
railings. Avrahami is there across the road, large as life,
and he sees me looking at him but he doesn’t smile.
Of course! He doesn’t recognize me. I was just a girl then,
after all. But I’d know him anywhere — that gangling frame,
those thick spectacles, the red sweater he always used to
wear. And when the “walk” sign lights up, he strides
towards me with the same loping walk and my heart is
thumping so loud I can’t hear anything else. It takes me
leaping back to our small flat and the smell of old books
and sound of voices in another language. But of course he
wouldn’t recognize me here, now, with my grey hair, my
shopping trolley, and my walking stick.
He’s coming straight towards me but I’m as invisible to him
as I am to everyone else. To make him stop, I have to place
myself right in front of him and speak quickly: “Avrahami
Semititski. I’d know you anywhere!”
The man looks at me funny, just like he would have in the
old days. I waited for him to smile slowly and come out
with something charming — a riddle or quote.
Instead, he says: “You what?” And he doesn’t sound like
Avrahami at all. His voice is much less nasal. And there’s
no accent. Well there is — a sort of Scouse indignation —
but not the accent I was expecting, despite knowing in my
heart that Avrahami has never been and never would be
shopping in Liverpool.
It’s not even as though I was especially fond of Avrahami
Semititski. There was always something creepy about him,
but it is oddly comforting to find him again like this and
now that I have, I don’t want to let him go.
“Avrahami? It’s me — Clara. Don’t you remember?”
“You’ve got me wrong, love. You’ve got me confused with
someone.”
He wants to walk away but I’ve taken a hold of his sleeve
and I’m stronger than I look. He pulls his arm
uncomfortably but there’s nothing he can
do.
I warn myself
to go easy here, not to get carried away, because they’re
everywhere, of course — people who look like other people.
The number of times I’ve been walking through town and
stopped short at the sight of some old friend from another
country, many years dead. It happens a lot. It feels, as I
get older, that there are fewer people around that I do
know, but more and more who look like people I used to
know. I’ve seen Bella on Seaview Road with grandchildren in
tow, and Reuven in the day centre. I hear familiar voices
too, but less so. It’s very disorientating. I forget where
I am sometimes. But I like to see them — it makes me feel
as though they’re sending messages, remembering me, or
wanting me to remember them.
A few years ago I saw someone who looked so like Mosheleh
that my heart nearly stopped. I followed him all afternoon
at a distance, not wanting to break the spell — just
drinking in the look of him. But now I have hold of
Avrahami’s sleeve and I’m still not letting go.
“But I’d know you anywhere!” I continue. I probably should
stop there, but I don’t. “You have the same hair, and that
sweater, and your glasses are... well, not exactly the same
— but it’s been a long time — and you walk the same way.”
“Are you taking the piss?” he says. And the closer I look
at him, the more I see that he is not quite as I remember.
He is shorter, his chin is more pronounced and he isn’t
smiling at all. He has planted himself squarely, feet
apart, as though bracing himself for action or flight. He
is looking at me the way people look at traffic accidents
and now I am afraid to ask if he has any tattoos, and I
know that if I tug his sleeve up his arm, there will be no
numbers written underneath, and he looks like Avrahami
looked all those years ago, when I looked like a child.
“No.” I sigh. “You look just like someone I used to know.
It’s just — you know... he lived across the hall from me
and we... we went on a journey together.”
I feel the need to explain to him how we were crowded onto
the trains and suddenly so intimately close to our
neighbors. But you can’t talk about it. Nobody wants to
know how things were then. They get embarrassed. And
anyway, it’s ancient history now. Soon we’ll all be gone
and no one will have to think about it any more.
The
man is waiting for me to come to the point.
What is the
point?
“His wife was very tall and quite beautiful,” I say,
remembering how she hollowed out to nothing, how we all
did. “She ran the library and there used to be so many
books I didn’t know how to choose just one. There were so
many and I just couldn’t choose. But anyway they burned
them. They burned them all. You know?”
The man clearly doesn’t know at all, and he’s looking less
like Avrahami by the minute.
“Where is this going, love?” he says, not unkindly.
And I can’t
answer him. It goes everywhere I go.
Copyright
2008 by Clare Kirwan