Look for Me Page 8

  “What exactly did they go through?”

  “I don’t really know. They never told me about it, except for hints here and there. They risked their lives and they were in prison for a while. They had a rough time in prison, but it was only for a few months, I think. I should ask my father one of these days. And then when they got here, most of the people they knew weren’t as radical as they were. They were a good match.”

  “I trust you, Dana.”

  “I trust you, of course.”

  “Well, you—you trust a lot of people.”

  “It makes life more pleasant,” I said.

  “Riskier.”

  “No, less risky. You’d see that if you tried it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Try it sometime. Try trusting people more. You’ll see, it works out. It protects you. You think it makes you more vulnerable but it doesn’t.”

  “No, I just can’t see that. I think you have to be on the lookout or you’ll get stabbed in the back.”

  “I don’t believe that. Most people are nice.”

  Daniel burst out laughing. “Yes, and history proves it.”

  “People just get led astray.”

  “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” Daniel said.

  On the way back to my flat I knocked on Volvo’s door. “Anyone home?” I called out.

  “Enter.”

  I opened his door and peeked in. He was still in bed, lying on his back. He had been over six feet tall when he had his legs and now he lifted weights to keep his torso and arms in shape. He looked solid and sturdy, lying there on the bed, his stumps protruding from pajama shorts. I had painted the walls of his little room sand white and had decorated them with prints of van Gogh’s Sidewalk Café and Matisse’s Window: the café was a compromise, gently suggesting to Volvo an alternative to his rigid outlook while relenting partially on the question of sorrow, but the window, with its dazzling optimism, left no room for discussion. Volvo complained that I was being manipulative; nevertheless, I often caught him staring at Matisse’s multiple rectangles of happy light. The room contained only a narrow bed and a chair: Volvo kept his clothes in a suitcase under the bed and his books stacked in tall, precarious piles against the wall. He didn’t want to feel settled, he said. “I’ll end up in Siberia anyhow,” he added. I had no idea what he meant, and didn’t bother asking.

  “Volvo, do you want to come with me to dinner tonight? Someone I met invited me. A guy, Rafi, and his wife.”

  “Yeah, all right. Who’s favoring me with his or her presence today?” he asked, referring to the volunteers. He always pretended not to know the volunteer schedule, even though there were only four and they always came on the same days: Rosa on Sundays and Thursdays, Joshua on Mondays, Miss (or rather, Sister) Fitzpatrick on Wednesdays, and Daniel’s old friend Alex, the albino musician who had played in their band, on either Friday or Saturday, depending on his availability.

  “Rosa’s coming today, as I’m sure you know.” Rosa was a very devoted volunteer, and though she had innumerable health problems of her own, she cleaned Volvo’s flat, went shopping for him, and did most of his cooking. She was a widow and extremely talkative; she never noticed Volvo’s bad moods because she was too busy telling him about her own tragedy-filled life, past and present.

  “God help me.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  “If Rosa lost forty pounds and had a brain transplant she would actually be tolerable.”

  “She’s fine as she is. You’re the one who’s always sulking.”

  “If Rosa lost her legs at least she’d weigh less.” He began laughing hysterically.

  “Very witty.”

  “Where were you yesterday? That taxi driver waited for you for hours.”

  “I was just out with friends,” I lied. I never had the courage to tell Volvo about my activities. I was afraid he would never speak to me again.

  “And then as soon as you got home, you sent him away. So he waited for nothing, unless it was a real quickie.”

  “Volvo, I’ve told you a million times, there’s nothing sexual between me and Benny, not that it’s any of your business. I sent him away because I was tired.”

  “Pass me my tray, Dana. And get the hell out. What time is this dinner?”

  “Rafi’s going to pick us up at seven.”

  “I hope there’s room for my chair in his trunk.”

  “He has a van. We’ll manage.”

  “Who is this guy?”

  “Just a friend.”

  I went out to drop off my film for developing and on the way I picked up some groceries: potato salad, hummus, bread. Then I returned to my novel. I noticed that I’d made several mistakes the previous night. I’d forgotten that my character’s name was Angeline and at some point I started calling her Angela. Then I forgot that Pierre was a count and I made him a prince, and his wicked cousin Martha accidentally turned into his aunt. I wasted a lot of time fixing these mistakes.

  I was still writing when Rafi knocked on the door. I didn’t hear him at first, or rather, I didn’t think the sound I’d heard was a knock. “Were you asleep?” he asked, when I opened the door.

  “No, I was at the computer. I’m ready, we just have to get Volvo. He’s in the flat next door.” I was very nervous.

  “Relax, Dana,” he said. “There isn’t even going to be tear gas.”

  We knocked on Volvo’s door but he didn’t answer. “I know you’re in there, Volvo. We’re ready, Rafi’s here. I’m coming in.”

  I opened the door. Volvo was sitting in his chair reading the newspaper. I could tell he’d been waiting impatiently, but he tried to look bored.

  “Volvo, this is Rafi.”

  “Hi,” Rafi said.

  “Do you know that when you lose your legs people assume you’re also retarded?” Volvo asked, embarking on one of his favorite subjects.

  “Yes,” Rafi said. “I’ve seen it many times. They speak to you as if you’re deaf, and they use simple words as if your brain’s been damaged as well. People are idiots.”

  Volvo was delighted. “Absolutely true,” he said. We wheeled Volvo to the van and Rafi lifted him onto the front seat. I folded the wheelchair and climbed in back with it. “You can’t imagine what fun it is to be carried like a sack of potatoes,” Volvo said. He held on to the door for balance and buckled himself in.

  “You can’t imagine what my back is going to feel like tomorrow morning,” Rafi said. “Why don’t you get yourself some prosthetic legs, for goodness’ sake?”

  “Ha! Ha ha ha. Very good, very good. A true understanding of anatomy. I see a Nobel Prize in your future, young man.”

  Rafi looked embarrassed. “You’re right, I hadn’t really thought it out …I guess it wouldn’t work … Unless you combined legs with crutches maybe?”

  “So you can feel better when you see me? So you won’t have to feel so bad? For your sake?” he said, embarking on his second favorite subject.

  “Well, why shouldn’t I want to feel less bad?” Rafi said defensively. “What’s good about feeling bad? And if there’s nothing good about it, why endorse it?”

  Volvo ignored this question. Instead he said, “Nice van. You’re obviously filthy rich.”

  “My wife’s rich,” Rafi said.

  “Yeah, what is she, a drug pusher?”

  “She’s a pianist, Volvo, and I resent that comment. And if you want to come to my house I’d like an apology.”

  Volvo grunted. “Very touchy.”

  “I don’t like racist stereotyping.”

  “I don’t even know your wife!”

  “You assume she’s Sephardi like me.”

  “You’re totally paranoid,” Volvo said. “I have no idea what your background is and I couldn’t care less.”

  “Good,” Rafi said. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “So, how did she get rich?”

  “Her parents are rich. They own a bathing suit company, they export to
Europe and the States.”

  “Obviously they’re not Sephardi,” he said wickedly. “Just kidding!”

  Rafi decided not to respond.

  “I used to like to swim,” Volvo said glumly. “Well, those days are gone.”

  “I forgot to ask the two of you if there’s any food you don’t eat or don’t like.”

  “I eat everything except shrimp, brain, tongue, belly button,” I said. “Or liver. I don’t want to recognize anything I’m eating, that’s the general rule.”

  “I’m a strict vegetarian,” Volvo said. “I don’t eat vegetables.” He began to laugh in his crazy, hysterical way.

  “I did make a lot of vegetable dishes,” Rafi said in a worried voice.

  “He’s just joking,” I said.

  “I am present,” Volvo said imperiously.

  “Yes, how could we possibly forget?” Rafi smiled.

  It didn’t take us long to reach Rafi’s building. He pulled the van in front of a luxury apartment building and helped Volvo into his chair. I wheeled Volvo into the lobby and we waited while Rafi parked the van. I felt sorry for the lobby. The building was striving to look like one of the newer five-star hotels along the beach and there was something rather desperate about the little water fountain with its blue and green lights, and the black leather sofas set carefully around it. Daniel used to say I was the only person in the world who felt sorry for places.

  In the elevator Rafi pressed the button to the penthouse floor.

  “Penthouse!” Volvo said. “How pretentious can you get?”

  “Those are the largest flats,” Rafi said. “My wife needs room for her piano.”

  Rafi’s wife met us at the door. Her name was Graciela. She had fair skin, a high forehead, and long black hair braided in back. She was taller than Rafi and she was untouchable.

  Graciela’s shiny piano took up half the living room. The flat was beautiful: thick beige carpets, a panoramic view of the sea, simple Danish furniture, framed paintings and prints on the walls. An inviting place, elegant and sophisticated and at the same time bohemian. It matched Graciela’s outfit: a top made of dark crimson velvet and lace, with flowers in relief on the dark velvet, and a matching skirt. The velvet changed color with every movement or change of light, like the sea.

  “Hello, Dana,” she said. “I’m glad you could come. Our daughter just fell asleep, too bad you missed her. She doesn’t usually go to bed so early, but she had a birthday party in the afternoon and she was tired.”

  I couldn’t answer. “Excuse me, I don’t feel well,” I said, and escaped to the bathroom. There I sat on the edge of the bath and tried to find a way to resurface. I wanted everything Graciela had, except maybe for the flat, because I loved our place, and when we moved it would be into a house Daniel designed. It would be as elegant, as sophisticated, as this apartment. But the rest hurt me. Once, a long time ago, I too wore beautiful clothes. And their daughter, their daughter! I was thirty-seven.

  Rafi knocked on the door. “Dana? Everything okay?”

  “Yes.”

  He’d lied to me. He said he would protect me and he did the opposite. He flaunted it all.

  “Can I come in?”

  “If you want.”

  Rafi came into the washroom, leaned against the sink.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said.

  “I don’t think anything.”

  Graciela joined him in the washroom. She was holding an open box of chocolates. She ignored Rafi and sat down next to me, offered me a chocolate. “These are very special,” she said. “Handmade, from France. My parents bring me a box every time they go to Europe. I’m sure you’ll like them. What’s your favorite flavor? Do you like coconut?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “We mix up all our courses here. Chocolates first, then dessert, then the main course …”

  I couldn’t tell whether she was joking because her voice was so controlled and careful. Her movements were controlled too. She was as unhappy as I was.

  The meal was in fact a little chaotic—not because the courses were served in reverse order, but because Rafi and Graciela were both so frantically solicitous toward me. They fussed and fretted as though I were an honored but fragile guest. Volvo was stunned into silence for the first time since I had known him; he was wondering whether he’d missed something, because wasn’t he the one without legs, wasn’t he the one who deserved attention and pity and love? And so he sat there quietly, puzzling it out. And he ate voraciously. He loved food.

  They were both solicitous, but each one separately, as though they were not connected in any way and had not been introduced. They never spoke to one another, only to me. There was a routine: Graciela in charge of serving, Rafi in charge of salad and washing up; they didn’t negotiate anything.

  “Where do you live?” Graciela asked me.

  “Opposite the City Beach Hotel.”

  “I know that hotel. Friends of my parents often stay there. It must be nice to be so close to the sea.”

  “Yes, and we’re all friends in the building.”

  “Really! That’s very nice. How many are you?”

  “Me and Volvo on the first floor. Tanya and her mother and Jacky on the second. Benny’s on the top floor. Tanya used to be a prostitute but now she’s a fortune-teller. Benny drives a taxi.”

  “And Jacky?”

  “You know him, Jacky Davidson. The rock singer.”

  “Really! I heard he went crazy.”

  “Yes, he’s pretty crazy. But he manages. We all help him out.”

  “Who looks after his money? He could get ripped off.”

  “No, his sister looks after all that, though there isn’t much, you know. Rock stars don’t get rich in this country.”

  “That’s true. Still, there would be royalties … What about Tanya, is she good?”

  “She has lots of clients.”

  “I would like to have my fortune told. But I’m always afraid. I’m afraid they’ll see something bad.”

  “They don’t tell you the bad things.”

  “I’d be able to tell, all the same, by the look on their faces.”

  “Do you perform?” I asked.

  She smiled for the first time since I’d arrived. “Yes. I guess you don’t follow classical music very much.”

  “No, I don’t like going to hear music alone. Sorry, are you famous?”

  “Well, not internationally. I only perform here, and we’re such a small country that it’s not hard to become well known.”

  “Do you think you’ll have an international career one day?”

  “Who knows? I’m getting better all the time, but I never go to competitions, that’s the problem.”

  “Why not?”

  “I hate them.”

  “When’s your next concert?”

  “I have a recital coming up in February that I’m working on now.”

  “What pieces will you be playing?”

  “Mendelssohn, Songs Without Words. Chopin, Nocturne in E-flat, Ballades One and Four. Beethoven’s Appassionata.”

  “A romantic program,” I said.

  “Yes. I’m doing a Bach concerto in the spring, though. The D Minor.”

  She ate very little. “I’m on a special diet,” she explained. “For my joints. There are all these foods I can’t eat. But please don’t pay attention to me.”

  “My husband is very musical,” I said. “He can play jazz on the piano, even though he never had lessons and he can’t read music. He just likes improvising. But music is only a hobby for him. I wish I were musical.”

  “I don’t understand why you can’t find him,” she said. “Surely the police know where every citizen lives.”

  “He was clever, he rented a tiny room in the city. And the police said, Well, this is his address, what more do you want? But it was just a cover—he wasn’t living there, he was living somewhere else. Someone was collecting his mail at this place, and someone also left notes on the
door: Back soon, gone to the supermarket, things like that. Someone was in on it, I don’t know who. I never found out. Someone in this country knows where he is.”

  “Did you try writing to him at that address?”

  “Yes, of course, but my letters were never picked up. His other mail was picked up, but not my letters. That really hurt me. I stopped trying.”

  “Is the room still rented?”

  “Someone else lives there now. I stopped going after a few months—I saw it was hopeless. A year later I looked in again, and an old couple was living in the flat. I’ve been back a few times, but it’s always the same story: the old couple, wondering what I want.”

  “Did you try the police again?”

  “I tried everything: the government, the army, the police. I didn’t get anywhere. They all had that address, the fake one, and that’s the one they kept giving me. That’s where his disability checks go. But the old couple doesn’t know anything about it. They’re immigrants, they barely seem to know where they are.”

  “Have you tried someone higher up in the army?”

  “Yes. I mean, I meet all sorts of army people, and once this woman really tried to help me. She looked Daniel up on her computer and I could tell she wasn’t really supposed to, that she was doing it because she thought I should know and that he shouldn’t be hiding from me. Maybe she just liked me. She looked and looked and typed in all sorts of things, but she couldn’t find anything apart from his fake address.”

  “Maybe you just need someone higher up than that woman.”

  “She was very high up. Or rather she was the secretary of someone high up. She could have got into trouble probably, but she went ahead. And she couldn’t find anything.”

  “Please have more to eat,” Graciela said, handing Volvo a bowl of breaded zucchini. “Rafi made all this especially for you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Everything’s delicious, really exceptional.”

  “His mother’s recipes.”

  “Not bad,” Volvo admitted.

  Rafi didn’t say anything. He looked at me and Volvo and his wife, and he seemed slightly worried, as if the three of us were floating in space and he was wondering whether we would eventually land and whether the landing would go smoothly.