Look for Me Page 10

  “You’re very distracted,” he said. “Are you premenstrual?”

  “What’s the connection? Or were you just looking for an opportunity to say that word?”

  “What form of contraception do you use, if I may ask?”

  “You may not ask. Volvo, look how nice the sea is. Look how nice it is here, and everyone’s relaxed—why don’t you try to relax too? How can you be cranky near the sea?”

  “I’m not a happy man, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Well, I’m not happy either, but it’s still possible to appreciate some things. I was incredibly sad this afternoon, but I feel better now, thanks to this walk, and the sea, and having a falafel with you.”

  “The difference between us, Dana,” he said, “is that you have hope. I, on the other hand, will never wake up one morning to find that this was all just a bad dream.”

  “Why don’t you try to meet someone? If you weren’t so grumpy and negative, you could fall in love, you know.”

  “Brilliant idea,” Volvo said. “The best idea I’ve heard all week. A plan for my rehabilitation. My spiritual rehabilitation.”

  “Why don’t you give your family another chance? I’m sure they miss you.”

  “I already told you. We’ve been through this.”

  “Yes, you said they were religious, but—”

  “Not religious, fanatic. We no longer have anything in common,” he said with self-satisfaction. “I have liberated myself from the chains of superstition and zealotry. I am a free man.”

  “That’s no reason not to see them.”

  “Their interpretation of my personal disaster fills me with dismay and revulsion,” Volvo said. “I will never forgive them for giving God the credit.”

  “Yes, I know that’s frustrating.”

  “Frustrating! Try twisted, pathological, and betraying a degree of imbecility that staggers the mind.”

  “You know, Volvo, you’re intelligent, you have a lot of talent, why not use it? Why not see a therapist? Or go back to school?”

  “I’m too depressed to see a therapist and too smart to go to school,” he said, bursting into his wild hyena laugh.

  “What exactly did your parents say?”

  “I’d rather not dwell on it.”

  “Come on, tell me.”

  “I don’t want to get into it. But I’ll tell you this: they got a perverse pleasure out of what happened to me. They took a graphic photograph of me while I was still unconscious and they made a big poster, until I threatened to sue them if they used it. I hired a lawyer, he sent them a letter.”

  “Well, who cares? Who cares what they think? It’s not important. Anyhow, I can’t believe your entire family all feel the same way.”

  “You’re right, it’s really only my parents, siblings, six aunts, eight uncles, and forty-seven cousins.”

  “You must have one person you feel a bit closer to.”

  “I do have one sister I miss,” he admitted. “She’s fourteen by now. Just turned fourteen. In August. Sara.”

  “Why not see her?”

  “First, she’d never be allowed to come see me on her own. Secondly, the less she travels, the better. Those roads from the settlements are too dangerous.”

  “Write her a letter. I’m sure she’d be delighted to hear from you.”

  “Let’s drop this subject. It’s kind of you to bring it up, but I’d rather move on to a more stimulating topic. So what’s that Rafi guy like in bed? And does his wife know?”

  “There’s no point trying to annoy me. You’ll never succeed.”

  “I was only asking. He seems nice, actually, if a bit on the touchy side.”

  “We have to head home, I have to get back to work.”

  “Ah yes, Dana and her mysterious job. Do you write pornography?”

  “No, but you’re not that far off.”

  “Seen Vronsky lately?”

  “You know I see him Wednesdays.”

  “I thought you might be off-schedule just for once. Why always Wednesdays?”

  “I told you, Vronsky likes it that way.”

  “Where do the two of you do it, in his car? That must be awkward, and a bit public.”

  “We do it right there on the table, in the restaurant. Between courses.”

  “Yeah, well. He’s probably too old to get it up anyhow.”

  The hospital waiting room. Flowers. The nurses intimidate me. Daniel’s parents are spending the summer in Greece, and we can’t reach them. They left the name of a hotel, but the hotel doesn’t exist, they must have spelled it wrong. The travel agent can’t be reached either; she’s even farther away, in India. We keep trying hotels with similar-sounding names, but we can’t track them down. Nina joins me and starts chanting, Wa-heh guru, wa-heh guru until the nurses ask her to leave. She doesn’t return, she only phones. My father flies in from Belgium, keeps me company. More flowers, lots of flowers. Daniel’s friend Alex brings them. My father is reading Nadine Gordimer. I am happy, happy, I want to dance in the waiting room. Daniel is alive, and every day the news is better. No internal damage, he’s going to pull through, and soon I’ll be able to see him. In the meantime he’s asked not to have visitors and anyhow he’s all drugged up. I stand by his closed door until they chase me away. Finally they tell me I can see him the following day. I go home to shower and change and then I look for a gift. And while I’m gone Daniel slips through my fingers.

  I had now reached the hardest part of my novel: the obligatory sex scenes. I always left those for last, because they were the only passages that required concentration: the publisher’s rules were stringent and you had to get it just right. Apart from that, the sex scenes involved a catastrophic collapse of logic, because I had to convey the man’s thoughts without switching to his point of view. Entering the hero’s mind was strictly taboo. I braced myself, and started writing.

  She felt his strong, confident fingers tracing the outline of her exquisite throat and sublime exposed shoulders. He held her well-proportioned body to his and his lips brushed her divine skin. She was resplendent in her brilliant blue gown and dazzling sapphire necklace, which glinted enticingly on her swan-like, curvaceous throat. She shivered as his hands slowly, boldly, caressed her back and the gown fell in a heap around her dainty ankles. Her excitement rose to soaring heights as she stood before him, trembling in her modest lace underslip.

  I needed six sex scenes, but I was exhausted by the time I’d finished the first two. I called it a day and went out for my evening walk. The man from the special unit was waiting for me.

  “I was hoping you’d be here. I sought her, but found her not,” he said, slightly altering the quote.

  “Well, you’ve found me. You can walk with me, if you like. But please don’t ask me to sleep with you. It’s not something I do. Besides, I’m very busy. I can’t take on anything else.”

  “Why? Why isn’t it something you do? A young woman like you …”

  “I seem to remember that you’re married.”

  “Married …” he said vaguely, as though he wasn’t sure what the word meant. “Funny, you supporting the Palestinians, me in a special unit. If you knew the things I know …but I can’t tell you. If you knew what they think of us, how much they hate us.”

  “We do know the things you know. We just interpret them differently. Or we see their feelings as natural, and temporary. Or irrelevant to ending the occupation.”

  “Irrelevant! No, no, you don’t know. You don’t know and I can’t tell you, and it’s too bad. Because if you knew …you wouldn’t do the work you do. You would know that the things they say are not what they really think. They’re lying to you when they say they want to live in peace with us. They don’t. They want to destroy us. If you saw the things they write.”

  “Maybe they’re lying when they write. Why do you think you’re the one who knows what’s real and what isn’t?”

  “Why! Because I see the consequences! I see the plans and I see them
carried out!”

  “You don’t know what would happen if we stopped tormenting them.”

  “I do know. I do know, and I wish I could tell you.”

  “It’s not that simple. You simplify things. It’s dangerous to simplify, it’s the basis of every war. Simplification.”

  “You aren’t realistic.”

  “I’m just more optimistic than you are, that’s all. I trust the Palestinians—they’re exactly like us. Just people. People without a home or anything else, and if we were in their situation we’d be just as desperate, and some of us would be just as militant as some of them are.”

  He sighed. “Maybe the next generation will be able to do something. It’s too late for this generation, there’s too much hatred. Nothing will change for the next thirty years.”

  “People who were slaughtering each other in Lebanon are now drinking coffee together. One of my Palestinian friends told me that. ‘That’s the Middle East, my friend,’ she said. I agree with her. It can happen, people don’t stay angry once they get what they need.”

  “Why aren’t you married, by the way? Why don’t you have a family?”

  “I am married, but my husband is in hiding. I’m waiting for him to come back. He thinks I won’t like him, because he was burned.”

  “Burned?”

  “Yes, his face and arms and parts of his body. He tried to help a soldier who was on fire, and he caught fire too. He’s alive, but he lives in hiding somewhere.”

  “You don’t know where?”

  “No. He won’t let me or anyone else see him. It wouldn’t bother me, what he looks like, but he thinks it would.”

  “What a story!”

  “Yes. I miss him.”

  “Maybe you should forget him.”

  “No, I’m not going to forget him.”

  “Such a devoted wife …and he gave you up. Still, I can sort of understand it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “How did the two of them catch fire?”

  “Just a stupid accident. My husband was delivering laundry. That’s what he did in the army, laundry.”

  “Laundry! Did he have a low profile?”

  “No, he just hated the army. He wanted to do something as unrelated to combat as possible.”

  “Yeah, okay. Laundry!” He shook his head incredulously. It was hard for him to grasp. “So what happened?”

  “He was delivering laundry somewhere, and there was a young conscript there who was fooling around with a smoke grenade. His sleeve caught fire and someone next to him doused him with the contents of a jerrican he thought was full of water, one of those black plastic jerricans, you know the kind. But the can didn’t have water in it, it had gasoline. Everyone ran away except my husband. He tried to wrap the guy up in a blanket, but there was gasoline on the floor too.”

  “What sort of idiot puts gasoline in a black plastic jerrican!” he said. He was furious, as though he’d been there and had witnessed the disaster himself.

  “It was a mistake,” I said.

  “A mistake,” he guffawed. “Yeah. I’ll bet. Some joker, some joker who should be rotting in prison for several centuries.”

  “I don’t want to think it was on purpose. It could have been an absentminded mistake.”

  “Yes, to mistake black plastic for metal, that would take a special kind of talent. Well, did your husband save the guy’s life?”

  “No, he died. It was all for nothing.”

  “Not really for nothing. He tried.”

  “No, it was for nothing. A complete waste. He got a citation, but I had to go receive it. He’d vanished by then.”

  “What a country. The crazy things that happen here. You know, when I was a kid, one afternoon a boulder fell on a boy, and killed him on the spot. Right in our backyard. We all shared a backyard, all these buildings shared one backyard, and there was a slope running along the edge of it, like a hill, with stones and boulders. And the boulder fell on this poor kid and killed him. One minute he was there, the next …I was eight. I sometimes think there’s a reason for all these freak accidents. Some message. A message from above.”

  “What message?”

  “I don’t know. That the place is dangerous. That we need to be stronger, more aware. Another guy I know got eaten alive by bees. In my high school two kids drowned, and one girl died when a branch fell on her during a hike. I swear, it’s weird.”

  “Those sorts of things happen everywhere, you just don’t hear about them. We’re a small country, so we hear about every death. We hear, and we also remember. We feel bad, and we remember.”

  “Yes, that’s true. We remember.”

  “Also people here are careless. They drive like they’re homicidal and on amphetamines. They think they have to be tough, so they aren’t self-protective. They don’t avoid bees and they swim where there aren’t any lifeguards. The city doesn’t clear boulders. We don’t look after ourselves, that’s the problem. We’re too arrogant and vain and we’re obsessed with being tough. Maybe we’re also suicidal.”

  “That doesn’t seem to describe you.”

  “You’re right, I do try to protect myself. I don’t care if people think I’m a coward.”

  “I do. I would hate that. I would hate it if anyone thought I was a coward.”

  “People don’t distinguish between real bravery and just showing off. Are you going to be here every night I come and walk?”

  “Do you want me to be here?”

  “No, I need to be alone.”

  “Who wants to be alone? Isn’t it bad enough you haven’t got your husband?” He placed his arm around my shoulder.

  I slipped away from him. “Yes, it is bad enough. That’s why I need to be alone. I like to walk here and think about him.”

  He was silent for a few minutes. Then he said, “All right, I won’t bother you again. But if you ever need anything, call me. Here’s my number.” He handed me his business card.

  But he didn’t want to leave; he had something more to say, and he wasn’t sure whether he should say it or not. I waited while he deliberated. Finally he decided. “Listen, I can find your husband’s address, if you want,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told you, I’m in a special unit. I have access to everything. I can look him up on our computer.”

  “I already tried that. I mean they checked their computers at all the offices I went to. He has a fake address, but it’s not where he lives.”

  “Those weren’t the right computers,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. If he was a soldier, and he’s wounded, I can find out where he is.”

  “When can you try? How soon?” My heart began to beat faster.

  “I can do it tomorrow, it’s not a problem.”

  “You mean you can look anyone up?”

  “Yes. You deserve to know. Why shouldn’t you know? Just don’t tell anyone it was me, okay? You have to promise. And I mean no one. Promise.”

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I just need his ID.”

  “Do you have a pen?”

  “I’ll remember. I have a good memory.”

  “Five-three-two-two-six-four-nine.”

  “Five-three-two-two-six-four-nine. Call me tomorrow evening around six.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He began jogging along the beach. He turned around once and waved good-bye, jogging backward, then continued on his way.

  Daniel’s parents returned from Greece two days after he vanished. At that time we were still convinced that Daniel would be back in a day or two. We thought he just wanted some time alone; Nina said he needed “to reestablish his aura” and the doctors said he hadn’t finished his treatment, and his health problems would bring him back. In the meantime Nina was practicing a Japanese method of long-distance healing and she asked me to join her, but I was too anxious about Daniel to think about energy currents. I was certain he would contact me so
on, but I also sensed that something was wrong.

  Nina and I drove down to the airport and waited restlessly for the plane from Greece. Finally, we saw Daniel’s parents striding cheerfully toward us. Daniel’s mother was a slim, determined woman who wore her hair in a bun. She was closely tied to national traditions: biking trips across the country, evenings devoted to folk dancing, public sing-alongs of robust pioneer songs and lachrymose ballads. Her husband was tanned and blue-eyed, and seemed to have drunk from the fountain of youth. They were a good-looking couple, hardy and self-assured.

  As soon as Nina saw her parents, she began to cry. I had not slept in two days, and probably looked pale and disheveled. When Daniel’s parents saw the two of us standing there without Daniel, their daughter weeping, their daughter-in-law pale, they assumed the worst, and Daniel’s mother fainted next to her suitcase. There was a great deal of confusion, as everyone around us also thought we’d come with dire news, and none of our explanations seemed to have any effect. An ambulance was called and arrived within seconds; Daniel’s mother was lifted onto a stretcher. We tried to explain the situation to his father, but his mind had gone blank and he didn’t hear our reassurances, or else didn’t believe them. In the end we had no choice but to climb inside the ambulance, and only then were we able to explain to Daniel’s mother, who had revived from all the commotion, that Daniel was alive, and not in danger— that though he’d been badly burned and we were not sure exactly where he was at the moment, he was all right.

  Daniel’s mother began to laugh hysterically at the news of her son’s resurrection, and was given a pill to calm her down. It seems that being too happy is also a disorder. We then stepped out of the ambulance, and everyone looked at us with pity. “Terrible, terrible,” they murmured. “Be strong.” We thanked them and made our way to the car, where we all burst into tears and laughter. Daniel’s parents hugged each other and began to kiss passionately; Nina was embarrassed and told them to control themselves.

  We gave Daniel’s parents a detailed account of what had happened. They didn’t seem at all surprised by Daniel’s disappearance. “He’ll contact us in a few days,” I said. “Don’t be so sure,” Daniel’s mother replied placidly, and I never forgave her, especially since she was right.