Each and every sound - english translation

The first chapter and several other excerpts from my debut novel, Each and Every Sound (Catharsis Press, 2024), translated by Yaniv Farkas

Each and Every Sound

Beginning

Imri was born in a guitar case. Tamar went into labor in the shop just as the city center was cordoned off due to the discovery of a suspicious object, and the ambulance didn't make it in time. The building, which in its ten years of existence had already lapsed into a forgetful slumber, suddenly awoke. In a spurt of resourcefulness, Micha rushed to fetch diaper-Esther from the incontinence supplies shop next-door. Esther set aside the box that she had been unpacking and hustled her customers out of the store. Then she locked the door and ordered Boris, the new worker who had arrived in the building fresh out of St. Petersburg, to erect a barrier of amplifiers and electronic keyboards. The activity was thus concealed from the eyes of onlookers, who besides the store's own clients included Shaul from the photography store upstairs, David and Rachela from the baguette shop, and a stray parrot from the pet shop. Esther then washed her heavyset arms in the kitchenette, ignored a cockroach that was lying on its back, fixed her hair, which was tied in a tight bun, grabbed a guitar string cutter, and set to work.

"Does she know what she's doing?"

"Is the baby gonna come out right there on the floor?"

"But couldn't they let an ambulance through?"

Whisperings from the corridor wafted inside and mingled with murmured Psalms until they reached Esther's ears. "Boris, shut them up out there, it's the last thing we need."

Boris opened the door a crack. "Hey you," he said in his thick Russian accent, "yes, you there, be quiet already."

And then, after some nerve-racking time – twenty minutes or two hours, who could possibly keep track? – there sounded outside the store Imri's newborn soprano, when Micha (who had by now recovered) put a microphone to her mouth, to let the gatherers outside know that a baby girl was born, and that she was all right, thank God.

The ambulance finally made it through and carried off Tamar and the baby, to loud cheers from the building's inhabitants.

"They're all crazy around here, believe me," said Micha to Boris, whose expression still conveyed something between horror and amusement. Neither of them noticed what was happening just then in the corridor outside diaper-Esther's shop.

"What were you thinking, Esther? All this impurity, and here of all places, God forbid," hissed one woman angrily, and a circle of women started to close in around the two of them.

"All due respect" – diaper-Esther waved her hand as if trying to shoo away an irritating mosquito – "what was I supposed to do, not deliver the baby? Let her die with her mother? This would be less 'impure' to you?"

"Perish the thought, perish the thought," a wall of murmurs rose around them.

"And how'd you get here anyway?" continued Esther, "Who summoned you?"

"No one did..." responded the outraged woman, her face flushing. "What do you think? Everyone could hear it when he turned on that microphone – the entire building! You know what it's like here!"

"I do."

"We thought a music store might actually help with the frequencies when the time came, but now – what do we do now?"

"Nothing to do but go on purifying," diaper-Esther said, closing the discussion.

It took some time for Tamar and Micha, the quiet, polite couple from the musical instruments store, to recover from the intimate moment they had been compelled to share with all the other occupants of the building. But Tamar never truly got over the fact that Imri, her firstborn, emerged into the world in front of everyone, "in the filth of the store." Imri's first cradle, a dusty old guitar case, was set in a delivery room littered with bits of strings and outdated catalogs.

"It's a wonder the child was not born with tetanus," Tamar said to Micha when she got out of the hospital.

A large stain remained from that birth on the faded carpet of the shop. Whenever Tamar noticed it, she would move a nearby drum to hide it. It was a marching snare drum that Micha knew had some commercial potential to it, so he had ordered a quantity in yellow and black.

"Michik, why don't we replace the carpet? This stain has been here since her birth," Tamar would suggest regularly.

"But it's a beautiful thing, a memento," was his own standard reply. And when she wasn't looking, he would move the drum back into place.

***

In the first moments, Imri was seized by those same old feelings, and, for a second, lost her focus. What were they supposed to play now? What was the opening note? She tuned her guitar with unsteady hands. But then the familiar sounds of the song began to trickle into the room, and she joined them mechanically, by force of habit. Ayelet picked up the melody with a long mawwal, and calm spread over the audience like a soft blanket.

Imri plucked single notes on her guitar, her gaze and ears drawn almost hypnotically to Ayelet, then snapped back just in time when Ayelet signaled for the beginning of the song with a couple of final foot-stamps. And it was then, precisely, that Imri felt like she had finally managed to pull a thread out of the musical skein and guide the audience to the opening notes of her guitar.

Perhaps because this gig had materialized so casually, almost distractedly, it also managed to flow the same way – softly, unpressured, with the natural movement of her fingers on the guitar neck. The enthusiasm of the audience washed over her. She wanted to punctuate their applause, connect with Ayelet's singing, and ground the listeners at the end of every phrase and every verse. And she, who had always been rather distrustful of overly intimate audiences, realized that she needed to let go, to release the memories and the pain of all those previous performances, and allow that Jerusalemite embrace to hold her tight for one sustained moment.

Every city has its own music. This is not about an abundance of concerts or a vibrant musical scene. Rather, it is a musicality ingrained in the very heart of the city, a musicality that is a part of it, like streets branching out in different directions, aiding orientation or just the opposite – disappearing into oblivion within the urban space. People and their homes and their shower-singing and lullabies and their radios throbbing on Friday noons, and car horns and school bells and the pealings of each and every sacred site. And nature, which, in spite of the city, breaks through in unbearable calls of doves and mynas. Jackhammers growling in a city's internal crust, and the most specific way that wind winds its way between buildings. There are songs that children bring back from kindergarten and songs sung on the way to football matches, spontaneous parties in private homes, and synagogues – synagogues from daybreak to nightfall. And neighborhoods bursting with piano teachers and mandolin classes, and someone whistling someone crying someone yelling, and karaoke nights at the neighbors', the shrieks of ambulances and squad cars, brakes screeching. And here, in this city, music spills out of shops like wash water, seeping down streets and completely soaking into their cracks. Could this city's feverish song draw back one more musician?

People recognized the tune and hummed along with it, and Ayelet joined them in wordless song, merely trilling around the scale. Then they transitioned to the next song, a slow, heartwarming number, and Imri smiled at the band, not yet daring to smile at the audience, and swayed rhythmically with her guitar, finally relaxing her body, except for her hands. Kobi responded to her gaze, knew that she would be looking for him, nodded his encouragement. And the rhythm and the sounds and the scent of araq and sweat and when did the entire crowd get to its feet? Who were those people roaring out the lyrics with Ayelet? When did dancing begin? Sounds soared, small groups were dancing in different corners of the room, and everything coalesced until... Was that it? Was it over? Applause, cheering, whistles. They're taking bows, so must she. Who put this smile on her face?

***

The city was still waking up from its drunken torpor following the previous night's Purim festivities. The cleanup would drag on for another couple of days. Not that it had long to recover – Passover was already lurking around the corner, with an incessant buzz and fever that would take some time to climax; but for now, the city could still relish its drunken repose, raise a lazy hand to ask for a glass of water and for some deep-fried food to really soak up the nausea. It could luxuriate in its feathers and tinsel that reeked of overuse, enjoying and declining to relinquish her last moments of rest.

If bipolarity is the city's essential character – the celestial Jerusalem and the earthly, the sacred and the profane – then in quotidian times you could certainly call it depressed. It was heavy and cold and sleepy on regular weekdays, to the point that it lacked the will to live. A carrier of history, it was doomed to be forever consumed by its own inner flames. Intifadas, and excavations, and Temple Mount ascents, and snowstorms, and knifings, and explosions, and recessions – yes, sometimes just a simple recession. Outmigration and building plans. On such occasions, it would withdraw into itself, barricade its roads against those who would ascend it, and shut down its trains against those who might leave. It would close itself proudly, taking offense, exposing its stone arteries. But in manic times, right before Passover and Purim and Jerusalem Day and Marathon day – then it would whirl into a dizzying maelstrom of vitality, preparation, camaraderie and solidarity, with fragrances of blossoms and alcohol fumes, colorful clothes visible from a distance, billboards and taxi drivers jacking up fares for a feast; it would feverishly spin around itself, pulling into its vortex anyone who did not resist it head-on (and there were resisters and there were the headstrong), until it dropped on its back, inebriated with life's merry-go-round, only to reemerge from its faint towards the next holiday.