Waiting Room, The Read online

  About the Book

  The Waiting Room captures the sights, sounds, accents and animosities of a country overflowing with stories.

  Dina is a family doctor living in the melting-pot city of Haifa, Israel. Born in Australia in a Jewish enclave of Melbourne to Holocaust survivors, Dina left behind a childhood marred by misery and the tragedies of the past to build a new life for herself in the Promised Land.

  After starting a family of her own, she finds her life falling apart beneath the demands of her eccentric patients, a marriage starting to fray, the ever-present threat of terrorist attack and the ghost of her mother, haunting her with memories that Dina would prefer to leave on the other side of the world.

  Leah Kaminsky plumbs the depths of her characters’ memories, both the sweet and the heart-wrenching, reaching back in a single climactic day through six decades and across three continents to uncover a truth that could save Dina’s sanity – and her life.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Praise

  Copyright Notice

  In memory of Anka Altman

  ‘We all fear when we are in waiting rooms. Yet we all must pass beyond them …’

  Katherine Mansfield’s last entry in her Journal

  ‘… the faith and the love and the hope

  Are all in the waiting.’

  T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

  PROLOGUE

  Mother cuts my nails. The clippings fall into her palm and she places them on a tissue, careful not to drop any onto the floor. She folds the tissue in half, then in half again and walks slowly over to the fireplace. She stands two dead matches upright on either side of the hearth, taking her time, so they will not fall.

  ‘Now, throw the tissue into the flames,’ she says. ‘Do not spill a nail or you will have to come back after you are dead. You will roam the earth searching for every nail clipping you have ever lost. You will need to gather up each one, or else you will never rest in the next world.’ Mother tells me I’m a good girl.

  I watch the tissue burn.

  CHAPTER 1

  Haifa – May 2001

  The man wears a yellow vest over his ritual shawl. He holds a ziplock bag in one hand and a pair of disposable tongs in the other, for gathering up skin and organ pieces to ensure a proper burial for the victims. As a volunteer from ZAKA, he is there to assist ambulance crews and police in identifying corpses. Rubbing his beard with his shoulder, he inadvertently smears some dirt onto his cheek.

  Dina steps carefully, weaving her way among contorted bodies strewn across the ground, their hair singed, shards of glass and metal lodged in the bloody flesh of their limbs. The dead are a privileged lot, she thinks. They don’t feel pain; can’t look up to see the gaping hole blown into a wall behind her, dust swirling playfully in sunlight. They don’t believe in Heaven or Hell, in magic or reality. They are freed from hope – the future ripped from them in an instant, no time for final tears.

  ‘Can I help you, Doctor?’ the ZAKA guy asks.

  He is big-boned and impatient, getting his sidecurls tangled in the tongs. He turns one of the bodies onto its side with his foot. Seating herself gingerly on a bench beside a shattered window, Dina locks her fingers in front of her pregnant abdomen.

  ‘Do you have a list of the dead?’

  ‘They haven’t been identified yet.’ The man bows his head, revealing a bald patch beneath his skullcap. He drags his feet heavily as he circles around the debris. ‘Isn’t that why you’re here?’

  Poking around under a victim’s chest, he picks up what looks like a string of blackened pearls. Dina wonders how they managed to stay intact through the blast. He pulls out a magnifying glass and meticulously searches the necklace for specks of blood. According to Jewish law, a person must be buried as they were born, or their soul is doomed to remain in a state of perpetual turmoil. When the Messiah finally does decide to show up to save the world, and the dead get to return to their resurrected flesh, Dina for one certainly won’t care if she is missing a piece of skin here and there. Living once is more than enough for anybody.

  Eitan isn’t answering his phone. Dina has lost track of how long she has been there. Emergency crews have been rushing in and out of what was once the doorway. She is alone now with this volunteer, this stranger – if you don’t count the dead, that is. Placing the necklace into his plastic bag, the man runs his finger and thumb across the seal. He looks up at her. The moment of congealed silence that surrounds them is penetrated by sirens wailing outside. From where she sits, Dina can see a balcony that has been blasted off the wall of a neighbouring building, laundry hanging in tatters, still pegged to a torn washing line. Down in the garden, a dog spattered with blood runs furiously up and down along the fence. Someone has chained it up, its jaws dripping red from biting at metal links, its unearthly howls adding a macabre harmony to the sirens.

  The ZAKA man bends over again to scrape something up. He frowns as he holds it with his tongs, examining it on both sides.

  ‘Mr Potato Head’s eye,’ Dina says, gazing at the tiny orb. She notices the man has hairy ears as he looks up at her blankly. ‘It’s part of a plastic toy.’ Shlomi had one when he was younger. Dina called it Darth Tater.

  The man shrugs and shoves the plastic eyeball into another one of his bags. Shlomi used to love dismantling Mr Potato Head’s body parts and fitting them back together again, a foot shoved into an armhole, a red nose forced into a gaping mouth. When he was new, Potato Head’s bits held tight, but after a while Eitan had to bind the feet with tape to keep him together. When a right foot and left arm disappeared, he took Shlomi down to their favourite toyshop in the shuk, next door to Suidan’s bakery. Abu Musa rummaged through an old box of spare parts and pulled out some limbs, throwing in a brown moustache and red hat for free.

  As Dina struggles to stand, the baby kicks her in the ribs. One of the dead lies right beside her feet, head turned to the side, eyes staring straight at Dina, mouth half open, as though the woman died while trying to ask a question.

  Dina is about to leave when she notices something on the ground. She stops in her tracks. Bending down to pick it up, a rush of nausea catches her, her head suddenly veiled in swirling shadows. The ZAKA man turns around. She must look unwell because he suddenly drops his tools and grabs her arm to guide her away from the rubble.

  ‘Are you okay?’ his voice floats over Dina.

  He stares at her, his cheeks turning red. Orthodox Jews aren’t supposed to touch women.

  She clutches her side as a sharp pain grips her.

  ‘Please, would you do me a favour?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘Get that for me,’ she says, pointing to the floor.

  He steadies her and carefully bends over to pick up a child’s shoe.

  ‘I meant the stone.’

  He drops the shoe and snatches up a coloured gem instead, rubbing it on his trouser leg before handing it to Dina. She cradles it in her palm.

  ‘I’ll let you keep this if you like,’ he whispers. ‘It’ll be our secret. No harm done.’

  The baby kicks violently again. Pain rips through Dina’s side. She feel
s the air close in on her, the thick stench of burnt flesh and blood invading her nostrils. She can taste the bitterness of charcoal in her mouth. Tearing herself away from the man, she stumbles over to the corner, just in time to heave her insides onto the floor. As she turns back to look at the carnage, the last thing she sees before she passes out is a mangled body lying in a heap over in one corner. Red lipstick still perfectly frames the dead woman’s lips.

  CHAPTER 2

  Six hours earlier

  Boker tov. Good morning to all our listeners. This is Radio Haifa. An alert has been issued for a possible terrorist attack in the city. People are advised to watch for suspicious packages. The weather will be partly cloudy today, with the chance of a light shower.

  ‘Turn it off, will you?’ Dina asks.

  Eitan doesn’t move. He is standing at the kitchen bench preparing sandwiches for Shlomi’s lunch. Dina spoons Nescafé into her cup. She adds cold milk, stirs, then pours in hot water from the jug. Nes means miracle in Hebrew, and each sip is always like a shutter in her brain, opening up one slat at a time.

  ‘You’re in my way,’ Eitan says, pushing the breadboard towards her. He prises open the lid of Shlomi’s Batman lunchbox.

  Dina shuffles over. She knows it’s not good to drink coffee while she’s pregnant. Staring into her cup, she watches brown blobs chase each other as they rise to the surface. Changing shape as they spin, one by one they gradually disappear. A last trace of dissolving coffee looks a bit like the map of Australia. She catches it with her spoon and swallows it.

  The newsreader’s voice blurts out a report from the Counter-Terrorism Bureau regarding a terrorist thought to be en route to Haifa. This in the wake of yesterday’s bombing in the centre of Tel Aviv. Dina has lived in Israel for ten years and she thinks that, sadly, you do get used to hearing these warnings in other places: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the West Bank. But here, right in the middle of Haifa? It’s the first time there has been a high alert in her city. The news is always full of horrific tales, but today it’s too close to home.

  Dina heads over to the radio and changes the station to the Voice of Music, filling the kitchen with one of Chopin’s nocturnes instead. She takes her cup and saucer across to the table and sits down opposite Shlomi, who is reading the back of a cereal box. The morning paper is on the table in front of her, headlines shrieking about a three-month-old killed by a sniper’s bullet. Dina flips the paper over, covering the photo of the baby so Shlomi won’t see. She sips slowly.

  ‘Mummy, where’s my songbook?’ Shlomi asks, searching inside his Power Rangers schoolbag that’s slung on the back of his chair.

  ‘I saw it on the couch.’ Eitan slips his lunchbox into the front pocket and zips it closed. ‘Come on, Shlomi! Mummy doesn’t like to keep her patients waiting.’ He turns to Dina. ‘Can you please remember to call and let us know if you’ll be home in time for dinner tonight?’

  Dina crumples up a napkin and dabs at a coffee stain on her pants. ‘Oh. I forgot to tell you, your mother rang yesterday.’

  ‘Really? I haven’t spoken to her in a while.’

  Dina still can’t get used to how rarely Eitan sees his parents. They maintain an amicable distance – such a contrast to Dina’s eternal albatross of a mother.

  ‘I’ll call her back later.’ Eitan retreats to the sink.

  The children have an evacuation drill first lesson. Shlomi packs a book about a lion that has a thorn in its paw, so he won’t be bored in the bomb shelter. He also shoves in his Game Boy to pass the time catching Pokémon.

  At school, the children sing songs of wild cyclamens and anemones in the hills – of a time when there will be peace. People in this country live with a hope that all these wars will end someday. Even a simple hello or goodbye in both Hebrew and Arabic – shalom, salaam – has the word ‘peace’ embedded in it. The whole region utters it like a mantra, millions of times every day. Another twelve years, Dina thinks, and Shlomi will be an eighteen-year-old soldier carrying a gun. His eyes are already too deep for a child. She longs to watch him play Aussie Rules Football in Caulfield Park, back in Melbourne; delete from his lexicon words like bomb shelter, gasmask, dead baby. But she also understands Eitan would never leave his country. His family is firmly rooted in its soil: his parents escaped Europe just before the war and helped establish a small kibbutz near Haifa. Their only son grew up in a communal children’s house while they, two German intellectuals, milked cows and picked fruit in the orchards.

  And in all honesty, could Dina really walk out on Eitan now and drag Shlomi away from the father he adores? They spend so much time together, reading the sports pages, wrestling on the rug, practising card tricks and sitting side by side on the couch watching soccer matches on TV. Maybe all the craziness in the Middle East will be over by the time their son grows up?

  Dina gets up from the table and walks over to the fridge. She opens it and stares inside.

  ‘Sure thing. A nechtiger toog,’ Dina’s mother taunts, dragging on a cigarette. ‘You know very well our future will be exactly the same as our past.’

  ‘Not now,’ Dina whispers, opening the freezer instead.

  ‘And tell me something,’ her mother persists, peering over Dina’s shoulder at three bags of frozen peas. ‘Why is there never any food in this house?’ She heads over to check out the pantry.

  Dina can’t remember what she was looking for. The gentle music fades into a news update announcing, among other events of the day, that the parents of the baby who was killed last night refuse to bury her until the Israeli Army demolishes the house of the Palestinian gunman’s family. Dina feels a sudden kick under her liver, as if her own baby is protesting against the world it hasn’t yet seen. She reaches over to the radio and turns it off, just as a Bach concerto begins. The day will go on regardless of a terror alert and despite the murder of an infant, but Shlomi doesn’t need to hear about such things.

  ‘I was listening to that.’ Eitan scratches at the stubble on his chin.

  Dina slams the fridge door shut. A souvenir magnet of the Wailing Wall falls to the floor, releasing a faded photo of Eitan and Dina floating in the Dead Sea on their honeymoon. Dina leaves it there. She sits back down at the table to finish her coffee. Shlomi has his hand deep inside the Coco Pops box, rummaging around for a giveaway Pokémon Battle Top, hoping to find Pikachu, a kind of jaundiced alien rabbit. It’s his favourite character, and by far the rarest prize.

  He pulls something out. Dina notices his fingernails are dirty and need trimming.

  ‘Which one did you get?’ she asks.

  She takes a bite of toast, preparing herself for Shlomi’s daily Pokémon spiel. She glances at her watch. It’s seven-forty already. They need to leave in ten minutes to get to school by the first bell at eight, but she knows she will be privy now to a recitation from Shlomi, in which he will rattle off the names of every little Pokémon character he has ever collected. Dina even listed them in her head last night, when she couldn’t get to sleep: Bulbasaur, Meowth, Charmander, Jiggly-puff. They jumped up into the air like deformed sheep, shooting randomly in all directions as they landed on the other side of a barbed wire fence.

  Dina smiles at her son and waits for him to tell her which stupid monster he got this time. He is staring at her.

  ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Yes, darling?’

  ‘What happens to a suicide bomber’s eyeballs when he explodes?’

  Outside, an orvani sits perched on the branch of a pine tree, peering in at them. The bird raises its dark crest and ruffles blue-tipped wings, letting out a shrill protest as it waits to be fed.

  ‘Shlomi, finish your breakfast. You need to get a move on,’ Dina says, trying to sound calm in the face of what he just asked. She brushes crumbs off the tablecloth into her palm. The child spoons some cereal into his mouth, wiping drops of milk off his chin with the back of his sleeve.

  ‘Mummy?’

  She feels her muscles tense up as she waits for his next questio
n.

  ‘Can you make apple compote tonight?’

  The knot in her chest eases. She breathes out. ‘Only if you eat up all your cereal.’

  Shlomi quickly empties his bowl.

  ‘I’m done.’

  ‘Good boy. We’ll make dessert together when I get home, okay? Now, go brush your teeth. And don’t forget to wash your hands.’

  ‘It was another Bulbasaur,’ he whines. ‘I’ve already got four of those. I’m never going to get a Pikachu.’ He scratches his scalp as he scrapes his chair backwards.

  ‘Of course you will, darling. And if not, Abba will buy one for you.’ Dina shoots a glance across at Eitan.

  Shlomi runs off to the bathroom, kicking his soccer ball down the corridor.

  He first started loving that dumb show and its weird little monsters when he was four. He would often wake at night, climbing into bed beside her. Back then he still let her cuddle him, her hand reaching out to hold him, feeling his chest rise and fall softly. She would cover him with her doona, tucking it firmly around his back to form a little cocoon, and lie awake listening to his sighing as he tried to fall asleep.

  Late one night, soon after Shlomi crawled in next to her, he whispered: ‘Can you read me Surf’s Up, Pikachu?’

  She stroked her son’s curls. Eitan rolled over, grunting in his sleep, while Dina dragged herself out of bed. Mother and son shuffled down the corridor to the living room. Huddled together on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, she read Shlomi the adventures of Pikachu, his favourite Pokémon, the one with an electric red generator on each cheek, who helps his friend Ash win all manner of battles. He rated high on Shlomi’s list of immortal warriors fighting the forces of evil, second only perhaps to Eitan.