Look for Me Page 13

“Seven years and two months. We had a cat, but she died last year.”

  “When did you get pregnant?”

  “When I was twenty-two.”

  “You were nineteen when you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “If it took you three or four years the first time, even though you had sex every day, you aren’t infertile, it probably just takes you longer.”

  “Not every day, we did something every day, but he didn’t always come inside me, there were other things we liked. But you’re right, in the middle of the month we always tried.”

  “Maybe that was your mistake. My mother always told me the magic number was ten, ten days after your period starts, she said that was the fertile day, not the middle. She has to be an expert, she had nine kids.”

  “Nine …”

  “Two died at birth, but she did have nine.”

  “Which were you?”

  “Second. What will you do about Daniel?”

  “I just have to find someone else in Intelligence. At least now I know that the army knows where he is—all I have to do is find someone who will tell me. Such a fluke! This could really be it; this could finally be the key. After so many dead ends. Do you know anyone I could ask?”

  “No, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find someone.”

  “I just don’t understand it. Why aren’t they telling me? Do they want to protect me, or him, or themselves? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “My guess is they want to protect you from something, but I can’t figure out what it is.”

  “You know, now that I think back to that secretary who spent a lot of time trying to get the information for me, I think she also saw what this guy Aaron saw. I remember she was reading the screen, and I was sure she’d finally found something, but then she shook her head. But I remember wondering what she’d read, why it had taken her so long. She wasn’t even supposed to be going into those files—she was doing it because she hated her boss, I think, and also she wanted to help me. But then when she found the information, she changed her mind.”

  “Maybe he’s more handicapped than you think.”

  “But he was fine when he left the hospital.”

  “Maybe something happened to him afterward.”

  “No, it can’t be that, that wouldn’t stop them from telling me. It’s something else. This is so crazy! But I’m excited, too. I think I’m getting close; I mean, if I just find the right person now, I’ll know. I’ll know! I might be seeing Daniel soon. I might be seeing him in a few days, even. I can hardly believe it. This is the first real lead I’ve had!”

  He looked at me and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You look like Joan of Arc.”

  “Well, imagine. Imagine. I’ve been waiting eleven years. I’ve been waiting eleven years for a lead. Such a fluke. Such a fluke that I met this guy. He was trying to pick me up.”

  “Did he succeed? Not that it’s my business at all, so you don’t have to answer. Forget I asked, in fact.”

  “He didn’t succeed. I think I’m even a bit insulted by the question.”

  “No one expects you to live like a nun.”

  “Yeah, well. It’s not my style. And usually I wouldn’t even talk to him, but I just felt like it, I don’t know why. And he asked about Daniel. Imagine if I hadn’t met him. On the other hand, imagine if I’d met him ten years ago! I don’t even want to think about that.”

  “You know what the Buddhists say.”

  “No, what do they say?”

  “Things happen when they happen.”

  “I read the exact opposite somewhere,” I said. “I read that the devil is in charge of timing.”

  “Yes, I guess that’s the opposite approach.”

  “Nothing can make this long wait a good thing. There aren’t any advantages. None, none, none.”

  “Let’s go to the sea—do you want to?”

  We walked to the sea and sat on the sand and stared at the black waves. The white foam crescents along the edge of the waves rolled toward us and then vanished, like the smiles of ghosts. We sat side by side and watched the waves rising and falling, but we didn’t touch.

  WEDNESDAY

  I DREAMED I FOUND DANIEL, and he was living with another woman, a tall woman who was young and beautiful. Then I realized that she was blind. And I thought, I can be blind too, if that’s what it takes. I can wear a blindfold. And I began thinking about all the things I’d have to learn to do while wearing the blindfold. It wouldn’t be so hard, I thought. In the dream it seemed like a simple thing, being blind.

  When I woke I remembered that my photographs were ready and I went to pick them up. I walked home slowly, made myself café et lait, sat down at the kitchen counter, and stared at the envelope. Finally I opened it.

  The one of the donkey was very good. The photos of the children were lovely as always, though not because of anything I’d done. There was also a good one from the upper story of the warehouse: a young woman I didn’t really remember, with both hands on her ears, and a terrified young man next to her. I captured that second when the sound grenade explodes, the fear in their faces and bodies. The photographs of the soldiers, on the other hand, were static, the angles weren’t good, and you couldn’t really see their faces. I threw those out. Unfortunately, the photo of the woman who had the seizure didn’t come out either. The tear gas had prevented me from focusing or framing properly. I kept it, though; I added it to a shoe box marked not good but can’t throw out.

  The photographs of the two friends were my favorite of this lot. I noticed things about them which I hadn’t seen at the time: for example, the man who had given up hope had delicate hands with long slender fingers, and his more optimistic friend was much more depressed than I’d realized when I’d spoken to him. In fact, it was no longer clear which one of them was ready to keep trying and which one wasn’t. The man who seemed to have given up on the future looked thoughtful and wise in the photograph, while his friend’s shoulders were slumped forward in defeat.

  There was one photo of Rafi. I had caught him in profile, looking down at the soldier. His expression was serious and angry, but his body was completely calm, as if he were enjoying an outing at a vacation resort.

  I couldn’t decide what to do with the photograph. I wanted to hide it, but I knew it was already too late. It had always been too late; from the moment I saw Rafi in the warehouse it was too late. I couldn’t bear the thought of concealing something from Daniel when I saw him, and now it seemed I might be closer than ever to finding him. Daniel was moving away from me just when I was closest to reaching him. I wanted to stop his retreat, but I didn’t know how to do it. It wasn’t Rafi’s fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. I placed all the photographs, including the one of Rafi, in a shoe box marked September and slid it under my bed.

  I returned to the counter and made a list of activists I knew who might have a link to someone in Intelligence. I wondered whether I should also contact Daniel’s family and tell them what had happened, but I didn’t really have any news for them yet. Besides, if I found out where he was, I had to go see him first, before anyone else. Before he had a chance to escape again.

  I began phoning the people on my list. No one asked why I needed information; they assumed I was trying to help a Palestinian in trouble. One had a brother in Intelligence, but he was “a stickler.” Another had a brother-in-law with a lot of power, but “he’d open a file on you.” The others didn’t have any connections.

  It was too soon to feel discouraged. Possibly I would have to try old friends of my parents. The problem was that they’d want to see me. I’d have to invest an entire evening in each one, just to get information they might not have; they would also want to know why I needed to talk to an officer in the upper military echelons. I would try my coworkers at the insurance office first. I’d also ask Tanya; more than once I’d seen extremely distinguished-looking men walk confidently up the stairs to her flat.

&nbs
p; I decided to finish my novel in the meantime; I was very close to the end. I wrote the last few sex scenes and sent the file to my publishers. Then I signed a form relinquishing copyright and crossed the street to the City Beach Hotel to fax it.

  Working on the novel had exhausted me and I lay down for a nap on the sofa, but I had a crabby sleep, as my mother used to say, crowded with distressing dreams. I dreamed, among other things, that Volvo had his legs back, thanks to a miracle drug that rejuvenated cells. But when he tried to walk, he couldn’t. He’d forgotten how.

  Despite the bad dreams, I didn’t really want to wake up. I tried to pull myself out of sleep because I knew that something very important and wonderful had happened in my waking life, something which required my attention. I was also aware that it was Wednesday and that I had to get ready for my weekly dinner with Vronsky. But another part of me seemed to be stuck deep inside the disjointed, garbled images. Only with the greatest effort was I able to break loose. I sat up groggily on the sofa and checked my watch: I had to meet Vronsky at seven. I had just enough time for a quick shower.

  The first time Vronsky phoned I was very surprised. It happened a few weeks after our medical relationship had come to an end; he called and asked whether I wanted to go out to dinner with him.

  “You know I’m married,” I said right away, to avoid any misunderstanding.

  “Oh no, nothing like that, I mean … I didn’t mean …” He was very flustered.

  “Sure, I’d enjoy it very much.”

  “I’ll show you the article I wrote about you. Not that it will interest you much, it’s quite technical. Still, yours was a most unusual case. At seven, then?”

  We settled on an Italian restaurant a few blocks from my building, near the American embassy.

  After that we ate at the same restaurant every Wednesday, from seven to eight-thirty or nine.

  Vronsky was meticulous. He liked everything to be in its place, at the right time, in the right way, and it would have driven me crazy had I seen him more often; but since our meetings were limited to two hours a week, his need for order endeared him to me. He was meticulous but at the same time he never seemed to notice anything around him or anything about me. I soon found out that this was only an act, that in fact he took it all in, every detail, and if he didn’t comment on what he saw and felt, it was only because he was afraid. Afraid of me, afraid of himself, afraid also of the future, which would inevitably bring change. He was considerate and made an effort to be friendly and there were times when I felt maternal toward him, even though he was fifty-six, nearly twenty years older than me. He had a grown son who lived in Berlin and designed costumes for avant-garde plays. His wife had died years ago, and he lived with his unmarried sister Sonya, a mathematician. Sonya was deaf.

  I had wondered, at first, whether Vronsky was courting me. Odelia was convinced that he was interested, but I finally decided this was not the case. The significant looks or gestures or small verbal hints that indicate a desire to move beyond a platonic relationship never made an appearance. He needed the friendship—that was all. And I enjoyed his company. Sometimes I teased him, because he was so formal and reserved.

  I was still on the sofa, trying to summon the initiative to get up and shower, when there was a knock on the door, followed by a muted voice: “It’s me, Miss Fitzpatrick. Anybody home?”

  Miss Fitzpatrick was one of the volunteers who helped with Volvo. When Volvo first moved into the building it quickly became evident that he was more than I could handle alone. He had no visitors; he had broken all ties with the past, he said. I placed an ad in the paper several weeks running; I had wanted the ad to read, Interesting, intelligent young man, confined to wheelchair, needs volunteer companionship and help, but Volvo insisted on, Young man, no legs, needs unpaid assistant. This sober text no doubt discouraged some potential candidates, but Miss Fitzpatrick was not put off. I was a little surprised when she called, because she lived in the capital. Later I found out that it was a treat for her to come down to the city; she loved the sea, and was thrilled to find that we lived so close to the beach. She had a rosy face, short brown hair, and the hefty body of a dreamy, artless schoolgirl. When Volvo and I first met her, a large silver cross dangled from a chain around her neck, for she was in fact a nun of some sort, though she introduced herself as Miss Fitzpatrick.

  Volvo was appallingly rude during the interview. “I hope you are not a proselytizer,” he said, in a menacing voice. I was surprised he knew the word in English; possibly he had looked it up before Miss Fitzpatrick arrived. “I hope you are not thinking to save my soul. I am planning to go straight to hell,” he added, laughing shrilly. Miss Fitzpatrick laughed with him. “I can see you’ve got a good sense of humor. We’ll get along well. I love a good joke.” But Volvo was determined to test her limits right there and then. “And I do not like to have to stare at a cross all day. I am the atheist.” She gathered her cross and slid it inside her tunic. “There, all gone,” she said, as though humoring a child who was afraid of the shape in the closet. “Do you wear that thing at night?” Volvo asked. “Young man, I will not ask you what you do in your private time, and you will not ask me what I do in my private time, and we can be good friends.” Volvo looked somewhat abashed, but he quickly remembered his plight and recovered. “Fine, fine. Whatever Dana wants is fine with me.”

  I rarely saw her after that because she liked to take Volvo on excursions that lasted the entire day. She drove him to places of interest or to public parks and gardens.

  “So sorry to bother you,” she said when I opened the door. “We can’t go anywhere, the poor car is in the garage. It’s been overburdened, I think. And between us, some of the sisters have yet to master the finer art of shifting gears.” She smiled, and two dimples appeared on her cheeks like the imprints of a child’s fingers in dough. “Volvo wants me to read to him. Have you any appropriate novel I can borrow, in simple English? Hemingway, perhaps? What do you think?”

  “I’m just stepping out, but come in and have a look. Borrow some books for yourself, too, if you see anything that interests you.”

  “Oh, goody. I do like a novel now and then. Well, this place has been tidied up nicely.”

  I decided to forgo the shower. I left Miss Fitzpatrick crouching in front of my bookcase and walked to the restaurant. I was a little early, but I didn’t mind waiting. The waitress showed me to our usual table, by the window. The view was not very appealing, but Vronsky suffered from mild claustrophobia and we always reserved this table in advance.

  “You’re late,” I said when he entered the restaurant at exactly seven. It was a worn-out joke, but I always liked it. Vronsky was incapable of being late. Or early.

  “If I gave you a hundred dollars, would you wear jeans?” I asked him. He always wore a nondescript pair of trousers, and he seemed to have several identical pairs. It was impossible to say what color they were. They negated the concept of color.

  “Hi, Dana. How are you?” He sat down opposite me and folded the cloth napkin in four, set it aside. No one I knew used cloth napkins; they were just there for show, or for tourists. “I don’t have jeans.”

  “If I gave you a hundred dollars and bought you a pair of jeans, would you wear them?”

  “They wouldn’t fit.”

  “What if you came with me to the store?”

  “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”

  “What if I told you it would be a dream come true?”

  “I’d think you were joking around.”

  “No, you’re wrong, Vronsky. It would give me immense pleasure to go shopping with you and buy you real clothes.”

  “As you know, I don’t like new clothes. I know it’s silly and irrational, but I feel self-conscious in new clothes. How are you?”

  “How do I look?”

  “Worried. A bit pale.”

  “Tell me what else you’ve noticed.”

  “Your shirt is a little torn, at the sleeve.”

&n
bsp; “What else? In the restaurant?”

  “Nothing’s changed here. The waitress has had a haircut. That’s all.”

  The waitress heard us and came over to take our order. “My friend likes your new hairstyle,” I told her. Vronsky was embarrassed, but he smiled.

  She smiled back. “Thanks, my boyfriend thinks it’s too short. But everyone else likes it. Maybe he doesn’t want me to be too pretty!” She took our order. I always had the same thing, spinach cannelloni, but Vronsky went down the menu, dish by dish, and then he’d start at the top again, so that every week he had something else. He was very particular about food, and one reason he liked this restaurant was that he thought the chef was excellent. He once surprised me and the waitress by commenting, at the end of the meal, “I guess the chef’s on vacation?” He’d noticed the difference at once.

  While we waited for the food to arrive I said, “Tell me about your latest patients.” This was one of our favorite topics.

  “Well, today a very young child came in with internal injuries. They were rather unusual, and we were baffled, and the parents were baffled too. They couldn’t think of anything that had happened. We were all called in to see if anyone had any ideas. Finally, after we quizzed the parents for a very long time, we discovered what it was. Water. They’d held this poor child too long under the tap at the beach. The stream was too strong for him. And apparently he’d screamed his head off, but they thought it was just because he didn’t like the water. They decided for that reason to keep him under the jet longer, to desensitize him, so to speak. Get him used to the water, make a man of him. And the pressure of the jet caused some internal damage. I’m surprised a shower jet would be that strong.”

  “That’s really weird.”

  “Yes, it was an unusual case. A very sensitive child.”

  “No, that’s not what’s weird. What’s weird is that I know who you mean, I think. I think I saw them. A young couple, immigrants, he has freckles, she has very large breasts?”

  “That may be them.”