Shalev is Silent

Written by Sam Vaknin

Shalev's ample back is propped against the laundry dryer and he is
keeping silent. It jerks, he jolts, eyes downcast, his short-sleeved
T-shirt defenseless against the arctic ambiance.

"Shalev, say something" - I mutter. He only smiles. It is my daybreak
plea, repeated each morning since he quietened.

By way of responding, he turns to face the glass eye of the coinless
Laundromat, his stooping shoulders focused upon the swirling garments.
He motions to me to lay my wash on a truncated soggy wooden slab.

The laundry room is high ceilinged. Rags decomposing hang flayed on
oxblood iron juts, stabbing four walls coarsely mortared by the
inmates. Pipes conjoined with moldy tape drip onto the twin
contraptions - the malignantly oversized washer and dryer.

Shalev is average height but way obese. His wild stubble and wire
glasses accentuate his burliness, the towering machinery, the vaulted
chamber. "The Cyclops's Cave", I call it and well-read Shalev just
chuckles. He casts a longing glance at a pile of books and snacks
awaiting in his "Promised Corner". But he wouldn't say a word.

I occupied one of the twin armchairs in the ironing parlor and set the
backgammon board to play. Shalev was preceded in this job by a
transvestite whose nocturnal off-key strains of yearning were still
evoked. Forced to sequester him away from virile lust - both others'
and his own - the prison authorities allowed him to import his shoddy
furniture into the concrete monastery that later became the
washroom.

Shalev slept in his predecessor's bed and kept his munchies in his
metal bureau, coated with peeling sepia paper cuttings. Now, he sank
into the matching armchair, arranging his limbs gingerly, as though
preparing to inventory them. He smoothed his feral moustache with two
stubby stained fingers and studied the board alertly.

He then rose from his seat, swung shut the door but didn't bolt it
(regulations). To fend off the gloom, I stretched over and turned on
the milky lights above his bookshelf. His wife got him some of the
volumes and others he borrowed from the prison's library, my
workplace.

Shalev inclined and smothered a round piece with a bulky fingertip. He
drove it to a screeching halt next to a corner of the patterned board.
Then, content, he fisted the yellowed dice and hurled them at the
table. Six-six. His eyes aflame, he basked in this auspicious
opening.

I waited with bated breath for an exclamation of his evident exuberance
- but Shalev just proceeded to conjure his pieces into and out of
existence in a whirlwind of clattering dice and scraping moves and
sweaty palms. He suppressed even his customary snickers at my
clumsiness. Perhaps chortling was too akin to speech.

"Shalev," - I said - "why have you stopped talking? Why don't you laugh
anymore? Why the silence?"

He flings a pair of agitated dice at me. I groan as I pick them off the
gooey floor.

"Listen" - I persisted - "I have an idea". An involuntary twitch
betrayed his interest.

"Why don't you write what you have to say? We will prepare a stack of
small cards here and you could jot on them to your heart's
content."

"What cannot be said in words, can sometimes be expressed in
letters."

Shalev froze and for a minute there I thought I lost him. Then he
nodded his head excitedly. I abandoned him and his victory over me and
bolted outside, into the graying drizzle. I crossed two lanes muddied
by steamy kitchen waste and absconded with a pack of printing paper
from the library. Hiding them under my tattered blemished coat, I
hasted to the laundry room.

Shalev arranged the pieces in two equidimensional towers of alternating
black and white. I proudly presented my paper loot. We used a ruler and
scissors to divide them into squares. And all that protracted time I
prayed that Shalev will not devolve from verbal to written
taciturnity.

Shalev held the ordinary pen I gave him as though he never handled a
writing implement before. He scrawled his tortured letters
excruciatingly:

"I want to ask you for a big favor"

The dryer banged spasmodically and ceased.

"I want you to explain to my wife why I am keeping silent."

The hush was broken only by the sounds of his labored scribbling.

"I have a feeling that no one loves me anymore. She is distancing
herself and I am losing my daughters. When on vacation, I am a stranger
in my own home, with no authority or recognition. It feels so helpless.
I cannot hold on to them. Tonight I dreamt that I am screaming as they
retreated, eerily oblivious to my pleading, to my words. So I decided
to keep quiet. Tell her all that for me, will you?"

I nodded and he lifted himself from the crumbling armchair, hugging my
soiled clothes, and trotting towards the rumbling, cornered
appliance.

The following morning, at six o'clock, the warden bawled our names,
marking those present. Ensconced in dreary blazers, we fended off the
chill. Shalev, wearing his semipternal T-shirt, leaned on the barrack
wall. "Stand straight" - the warden barked and cast an evil glance.
Shalev recoiled dreamily. "Who's missing?" - our sentinel demanded and,
not waiting for an answer, invaded our windswept accommodation.

"You, come with me." - he motioned to Shalev - "The staff complained
yesterday. Clothes were amiss. What happened?"

Shalev kept mum.

"He doesn't talk" - somebody volunteered - "He is on a strike." And
wicked smaning.

"What is it that I am told?" - the warden shrilled - "You are not
talking? With this scum" - his outstretched hand enclosed us all, a
brown effluence - "you can do whatever you want. But with the
authorities of this facility, you hear, you will respond! Clear?"

Shalev just nodded absentmindedly. This far from innocuous acquiescence
infuriated our guardian.

"It is not the last you hear of me" - he spat and trotted towards the
management's stone parapet, splashing jets of mud on our rubber boots.
Shalev grabbed my arm and navigated me towards the prisoners' public
phone. Today was his turn to make use of it, his ten minutes with the
outside world.

A big, uniformed, crowd surrounded the booth. Everyone knew by now
about Shalev's weird protest. They came here to loot his minutes, to
scavenge the carrion of his allotted phone call. When they saw me, they
hummed in disappointment and dispersed, only to perch on the nearby
benches, just in case.

Torrential rain volleyed the butt-scorched and graffiti-tattooed
plastic shell with itinerant orange leaves. I held on to the scarred
receiver and dialed Shalev's home, his family.

His wife picked up. I recalled her deceptive fragility and her two
well-attired, well-mannered offspring. She always carried baskets with
her - one with food and one full of reading material. They did not
bother to inspect their contents at the gate anymore, that's how
predictable she was.

"Hello, this is Shmuel" - I said and read the note to her.

Silence ensued, chased by defiant sobbing:

"This is not true. We do love him." - whimpers.

"Shalev" - I hesitated, distressed, under the shadows cast by his
hirsute skull - "Shalev, please, she is crying ..."

To the receiver:

"I am giving you Shalev".

Shalev held the handset in his plump hand and listened
attentively.

"Are you there?"

He kept mute for many minutes, digging a moat of silence against the
verbal onslaught of his wife. He listened to his daughters, head
tilted, eyes moist, lips clenched.

Then, gently, he replaced the mouthpiece in its cradle, stifling his
children's whining.

There he stood, bent, broken, brow kissing the frosty metal,
reluctantly driven away by the minacious grumblings of his fellow
inmates. He mournfully dragged his feet along the silt-spattered road
to our barracks. Sometimes he stopped and kicked a gravel listlessly,
watching its trajectory transfixed, until it hit the rustling bush and
vanished.

"Hey, you!" - it was the warden, materializing with the grayness of an
impeccable camouflage.

"The chief wants to talk to you about your silence."

Shalev's eyes shifted in the manner of a hunted game. A muscle pulsed
wildly in his cheek.

"He doesn't speak" - I ventured, head bowed, eyes locked on the grimy
shoes of our custodian - "I can accompany him. He corresponds with me
and ..."

"You do what you are told to do" - the words awhipping, eyes socketed
in bloodshot red - "or you will end up just like him, in the
solitary!"

Bad winds thrashed Shalev's flimsy summer shirt as he descended towards
the patched glass door at the entrance to the headquarters.

Back in the barracks, I sat cross-legged on Shalev's bed, eyeing his
neatly folded blankets, clean smelling, flower-patterned sheets, the
mound of books under his night lamp.

I got up, tucked my shirttails into my cord-held trousers and crossed
the square between the barracks and the management. Shalev was seated,
overflowing, on a tiny stone bench, studying his fingers as he crossed
and then uncrossed them. He rubbed the sole of one of his boots against
the other. His lips, tightened pale, contrasted morbidly with the
inkiness of his beard and whiskers.

"Go away" - ordered the warden offhandedly.

"Shalev" - I said but he did not react - "I have an offer to make. Give
me your silence. I want to buy it from you. Let me be the one to go to
the chief and then refuse to talk to him. You tell him that everything
is fine, that it was all one big misunderstanding, that you had a fight
with your wife, with your family. Apologize profusely. After we exit, I
will give you back your silence, I swear to you."

Shalev exerted himself and raised his head, watching me intently. But
then his chin drooped and I chastised myself: "you lost him, you lost
him" and I wanted to beat myself unconscious.

The warden shook his head in mute disdain.

The silence was broken by the smoke-drenched curses of prisoners and
staff, as they crossed the linkchained paths. A woman staffer exited,
banging a wooden frame behind her portly figure. She scrutinized the
warden questioningly, a sooty cigarette hanging from the corner of a
lipstick smear:

"This is Shalev?"

"That's me" - said Shalev - "I am ready now. I will talk to you."

==============================

Short Fiction in English and Hebrew

http://gorgelink.org/vaknin/

http://samvak.tripod.com/sipurim.html

http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/6514/files/worksinenglish.zip

Poetry of Healing and Abuse

http://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html

Anatomy of a Mental Illness

http://samvak.tripod.com/journal1.html