1 Above my table where I write each morning is a painting of my studio in the desert There is an empty room and two black ladder—back chairs One is next to the fireplace where I built a fire each winter morning of lemon wood floated from Turkey Where I sat with my coffee huddled in an army blanket coaxing my stiffened fingers and my reluctant brain Through the huge arched window is the desert and the caves and about midway to the horizon an oasis with tall cedars and palms A spot of green nestled in a small depression the Arad cemetery surrounded by treeless hills and ancient mounds of sand and rock Where I sit on Shabbat watching the birds who forgive my intrusion 2 I have a friend buried here An old Russian, Zeev who built my workbench at first Oxana from across the way comes to interpret but soon she is bored and we are left alone We communicate haltingly with a melange of gestures bits and pieces of three languages and a strange urgency amused by our dilemma although perhaps only laughing out of pleasure He was a nuclear engineer in the old country now he tinkers every day with beaten up old cars persuading them to run again The day of his funeral I sat protected against the howling wind and the driving rain sitting by the fire talking to my sister on Cape Cod describing the scene through the great arched windows of my studio the winding road—bumper to bumper The Russian community streaming to his graveside My new friend and I were just getting to know each other We were so carefully getting to know each other fostering a precious thing a sweet kernel at the center of a new place A new world When his heart gave out 3 An empty room with two chairs There are three strong shadows on the pink tile floor that I have painted in a purple gray Behind the chair by the fireplace beside the chair in the foreground and the shadow of an unseen ladder with five rungs widely spaced crosses the floor Arad, Israel, 2001 (down the street from Amos Oz); Provincetown, MA, 2002
Hiding Out