Look for Me Page 9

  We didn’t stay long because Volvo began complaining that his hemorrhoids were bothering him. I didn’t realize until I was in Rafi’s van how tense I’d been all evening. It was a strain, talking to Graciela; it was like talking to someone through a screen, or through water. It made me think of dreams in which I tried to phone someone but the phone wasn’t working properly and I kept getting wrong numbers or operator interference.

  Rafi drove through the quiet streets. He parked in front of our building, carried Volvo into his flat, and lowered him gently onto the bed. I organized Volvo’s tray for the night: sunflower seeds, the newspaper, vitamins, his emergency beeper, an ice pack. He watched me with a look of disdain, but in fact he liked it when people did things for him.

  “Have fun,” Volvo said bitterly as we were leaving. “As for me, I may as well have had my cock blown off as well.”

  “Did you? Did you lose your cock?” Rafi asked.

  “His cock is perfectly fine,” I said. “Trust me.”

  “In theory,” Volvo said.

  “Good night, Volvo.”

  “Who’s coming tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Joshua.”

  “God help me. Joshua—one foot in the grave, totally senile, drool constantly hanging from the left side of his mouth. This is what I’m stuck with. Well, have fun. She has lots of lovers, by the way,” he told Rafi. “Including a woman.”

  “Thanks for letting me know,” Rafi said.

  “Well, two or three anyhow.”

  “Glad you’re keeping count.”

  “I’m not keeping count. If I were, I’d know whether it was two or three. Or maybe more.”

  We left Volvo and entered my flat.

  “Dana! What happened here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It looks as if someone was here looking for your heroin stash.”

  “I’m just messy. Sorry.”

  “No you’re not. You’re not sorry at all.”

  “I am. I wish I were neater. I try, but somehow I can never manage it.”

  “Dana, do you want me to ask our cleaning woman to pay you a visit? Mercedes, she’s really good.”

  “Okay. We had someone when Daniel was here, but I let her go after he vanished because I was broke for a while. Then I started making money, but I never rehired her. It isn’t dusty, at least.”

  “How can you possibly tell?” Rafi laughed.

  He began inspecting the flat, like a cat sniffing a new place.

  He started with the living room, then moved to the kitchen, stared at the wall painting of the two train windows.

  “Who did this?”

  “Someone from Daniel’s firm—I never met her, she did it while I was at work.”

  He kept staring at the painting. “The letters of his name are hidden everywhere,” he said.

  “Whose name?”

  “Daniel’s.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, look. The legs of the cows, and here, on the barn door, and all over the window curtains. And the grass.”

  “I never noticed! And neither did Daniel …maybe she had a crush on him.”

  “That would explain all the little hearts.”

  “Hearts? Where?”

  “Here, among the flowers.”

  “Maybe that’s just the way she paints flowers.”

  “This flower is broken,” Rafi said. “That must be her broken heart.”

  “You might be reading too much into this. But I guess it’s possible. Lots of women liked Daniel, I think. Funny that we never noticed!”

  “At least you didn’t.”

  “Daniel didn’t either.”

  Rafi didn’t say anything. Instead, he moved to the next stop on his inspection tour, the bedroom.

  “I spend most of my time here,” I said. “We used to watch television in the living room but now I watch in bed.”

  “Don’t you find it claustrophobic, all these leaves?”

  “I guess it’s getting a bit out of hand, but they’re all tangled up, I don’t know what to do.”

  “Just take a scissors and snip some of the stalks. They can be replanted, if they’re put in water first. I’m sure you’d find takers … What’s this?” he asked, noticing my dream notebook with its conspicuous Madonna and the Fish cover.

  “I write down my dreams. I like to remember them.”

  “Even the bad ones?”

  “I rarely have bad dreams.”

  “That’s unusual.”

  “Or maybe I don’t think of them as bad dreams because they interest me. What’s the story with you and Graciela?” I asked. “Are you fighting?”

  “No, what made you think that?”

  “You didn’t speak to each other.”

  “We don’t speak much.”

  “Why?”

  “Graciela isn’t talkative.”

  “That’s a stupid answer.”

  “I don’t know what else to say.”

  “You must talk sometimes. You told her about me.”

  “No, she saw you before the demonstration, when she dropped me off at the park. And she recognized you, she remembered seeing you on some show about deserted wives.”

  “Why do you have separate bedrooms?”

  “She has problems sleeping. She can’t sleep with anyone in her bed, or even in the room, every small sound wakes her up.”

  “Since always?”

  “I think so. Since I’ve known her, at least.”

  “When did you meet?”

  “A long time ago. Ten years ago. When I was twenty-one.”

  “You’re thirty-one?”

  “Yes. I was twenty-one and she was twenty-three.”

  “And she told you to invite me?”

  “She suggested it.”

  “What were her words exactly?”

  “She said, ‘That woman, Dana, she’s the one with the missing husband. Why not invite her to dinner, if you can get hold of her?’”

  “Do you have people over often?”

  He slid down to the floor and crouched Arab-style with his knees up.

  “Yes, we have people over. Not during the day, during the day she plays. Unless she’s having one of her migraines.”

  “You don’t have sex.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “That’s why people get migraines. Women especially. When they don’t come.”

  “You can have sex without orgasm.”

  “Well, the studies aren’t conclusive. I want you to get up now and leave and not come back. Do you think this is what I deserve, to be some sort of voyeur?” I threw myself on the bed and burst into tears. I hadn’t cried in years.

  Rafi made tea and brought it to the bed and we drank in silence.

  Then he left.

  Daniel managed to avoid reserve duty five years in a row, but in the sixth year they insisted. He was a hopelessly incompetent soldier. In one of his favorite movies two armies march pompously toward each other, raise their rifles, fire, and fall down dead—all of them, on the spot. Daniel laughed very hard at that scene and he laughed every time he remembered it. He saw fighting as absurd and he refused to take his training seriously: several times he sabotaged practice operations by clowning around. His punishments were much worse than mine. I had to clean toilets, but one time he almost died when he was disciplined. He’d marched backward during an ambush drill, and the sergeant made him march backward around the camp for several hours with all his equipment, until he finally collapsed. Daniel was very entertaining when he told people the story: vomiting on the medic’s shoes, reciting Bialik in semi-delirium, being stripped and washed down by a ninety-year-old nurse. But in fact the doctor had filed a complaint, and Daniel later found out that his condition had been critical. Only once did he confess, after we’d been particularly intimate one night, that he’d suffered and cried, and that everyone had seen him crying.

  When notices for reserve duty arrived in the mail, Daniel always replied that he was in
the middle of a crucial project at work; they had a deadline and he couldn’t possibly get away. But this last time the army checked up on him, and found out that he was dispensable after all. He didn’t mind all that much. The laundry job itself didn’t bother him, but he hated being part of what he called auto-genocide. The government was killing its citizens by the thousands, he said, finishing off the job the Nazis had started. Why should he provide clean uniforms for the pathetic slobs who were being sent to their deaths by heartless politicians? Nevertheless, he was in a good mood when he left. He called me every evening, and described in great detail what he was going to do to me when he got back.

  MONDAY

  MONDAYS AND THURSDAYS WERE MY DAYS at the insurance office. I kept the job after Daniel left, but they downsized me to two days a week. This meant I could no longer water the plants, all of which had different watering schedules; my employer had to do it himself. In fact, the only thing I did now was look after correspondence in English; I would have lost the job altogether had they not needed a bilingual typist. The letters I wrote were sometimes cruel, but my employer allowed me to insert mitigating phrases, for whatever they were worth. We deeply regret, in this time of great difficulty and stress, to inform you, much to our sorrow, that we are unable to cover…

  The day passed quickly.

  In the evening, Rafi called. “I spoke to Mercedes. She can come tomorrow, is that okay?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “How are you?”

  “Fine. Boring day at the office where I work.”

  “What do you do there?”

  “Tell people they can’t get compensation for the various disasters in their lives. It’s not very exciting.”

  “Will you be at the demo tomorrow?”

  “The one at the Defense Ministry? Yes.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you there, I’m bringing some of the signs. Do you need anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “I don’t need anything. How’s Graciela?”

  “She’s working hard.”

  “How’s your daughter?”

  “Naomi is fine.”

  “Yes. Well.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow. You’ll know me by my red hat.”

  “Your long-lost hat.”

  “My finally found hat.”

  “We’re talking about hats.”

  “Yes.”

  “The characters in the books I write never talk about hats. I think I’ll try it out tonight. This conversation is inspiring me.”

  “You write books?”

  I paused. Then I said, “Not real books, just junk romance. I have to go now,” I said.

  “You all right?”

  “I have to go,” I said, and hung up. I sat at the kitchen counter and stared at the fridge, which was covered with snapshots of Daniel. Daniel sitting on a chair with our cat in his lap, Daniel and me at a party, Daniel with his friend Alex in Venice. I had not meant to tell Rafi about the romance books. This was the first time anyone other than my father knew something about me that Daniel did not know. In my interviews I always updated Daniel: I talked about all my adventures and misadventures, and about the people around me. That way, if Daniel read or heard the interview, he’d have some idea of what my life was like. But I didn’t want to discuss my romance novels in those interviews, so I didn’t tell anyone else about them either. Only my father knew. I had to tell him, because he couldn’t figure out how I was managing financially, and he was worried. My father was my biggest fan. He bought all my books and he said they were a blast.

  I stared at the snapshots and the pain of Daniel’s absence stirred inside me. Usually the pain was like a little boy sitting on a little chair in a darkened corner—like Little Jack Horner: it was there, but it stayed in its assigned place, quietly recalcitrant. At other times, without warning, the pain rose and expanded and threatened to suffocate me.

  At those times I longed for the drug Vronsky had prescribed when I broke my ankle. I was on an excursion to see new settlement outposts and I found myself near Be’er Shalom, an old settlement deep inside Palestine. Over the years I’d taken a few good photographs of settlers, but never of settlements. I managed that day to sneak away from the group without the army noticing, and I made my way toward Be’er Shalom. I knew it would be fenced in, but I was hoping to take some photographs of the fence, its guards, and of the settlement itself, viewed through the wires. Maybe the guards would even let me inside.

  Before I reached the fence I came across a cabin someone had built just outside Be’er Shalom, a cabin surrounded by newly planted trees. Whoever had built the cabin had also constructed an elaborate doghouse next to it. Most likely an eccentric lived here, someone who refused to hide behind a fence, who saw himself perhaps as some sort of prophet.

  I went up to the door and knocked. There was no answer. I tried the handle and the door slid open. The room inside was very still, its contents petrified under a thin layer of dust and cobwebs; no one had lived here for some time. And yet nothing had been disturbed or moved, as if the owner were expected back: the effect was spooky, but also intriguing. In one corner a plank of wood set on two cement blocks served as a makeshift bookshelf: it held about thirty books, all in English and all on the same subject, more or less: firearms, war technology, nuclear terrorism.

  In the center of the room stood a table covered with black oilcloth. Newspaper clippings, also in English, were spread out on the table. Seemingly random words had been circled and there were indecipherable numbers and symbols in the margins. The clippings were held down by a bottle of transparent glue and a paperweight that appeared to be the skull of a small animal. There was a mattress on the floor, and next to it sticks of incense, an oversized book on the Kabbalah, and a pamphlet of poems written by children in Theresienstadt. I took a photograph of the little animal skull, and I was going to take a few more, but I must have been on edge, because when I heard a noise outside the cabin I panicked and ran out.

  I was so flustered I didn’t look where I was going, and I tripped on a metal rod protruding from a large uprooted sign that was lying on the ground. Two soldiers were hovering over me, half-smiling. “Seen a ghost?” they asked. I looked at the sign; it was trilingual, and it said, in English, DANGER / FIRING RANGE / ENTRANCE FORBIDDEN / ENTRY REQUIRES PRIOR APPROVAL AND COORDINATION WITH THE ARMY CENTRAL COMMAND COORDINATOR / 02-5305252 / CENTER OPERATES 24 HOURS A DAY / EXCLUDING SATURDAYS AND HOLIDAYS. Its two metal supports had been set in large cement blocks, which now hung helplessly from the rods like Frankenstein’s feet.

  “Everyone was worried about you,” one of the soldiers said. “Next time don’t leave the group without permission. We have enough to think about.”

  “Sorry,” I said. I took a photograph of the sign from where I was sitting. Then I discovered that I couldn’t get up, and I had to be carried piggyback to the bus. “Who lives in that cabin?” I asked the soldier who was carrying me. “Lived,” he said. “Some guy, he was killed a couple of months ago. Are you single?” “I’m in too much pain to remember right now,” I said.

  Vronsky was on duty at the hospital when Odelia, who had also been at the outpost-tracking activity, brought me to the emergency ward. I used her shoulder as a crutch; the pain was excruciating, but I was stoic and didn’t let on. As a result, the nurses didn’t think I had more than a sprain, and I had to wait several hours for a doctor to see me.

  The doctor was Vronsky. While he was examining me he noticed the flyer in my hand. It was a glossy fund-raising flyer from Be’er Shalom asking Americans to help them fulfill God’s promise by sending tax-deductible donations. I’d found it on the rented bus. “What’s that?” Vronsky asked. I told him about the illegal outposts and the deserted house of the dead prophet. He seemed interested, though he didn’t say much. At midnight he sent me home with a cast and a bottle of painkillers. They were stronger than was usual because Vronsky felt bad that I’d
waited so long, and also because by the time he saw me I was no longer stoic, and I told him I’d pass out if I didn’t get something strong soon.

  I became madly addicted to the pills and when they were finished I begged Vronsky for more. At first he yielded, but after my cast came off he refused to renew the prescription. I was sorry then that my anklebone, which had apparently broken in an unusual manner, healed inexplicably within two weeks. Vronsky discovered by chance that the fracture had healed: the cast was causing me all sorts of problems and had to be removed and replaced. As it turned out, though, the cast wasn’t replaced, because Vronsky took another X-ray and found, to his astonishment, that I was cured. “Remarkable,” he said. “Most unusual. Two weeks—I’ve never come across such a case before.”

  “I still need those pills for pain,” I said hopefully, but Vronsky assured me I wouldn’t be experiencing any further discomfort. My body never forgot the pleasure of the drug, which had spread inside me like a gentle breeze on a lazy summer day, a day filled with cyclamens sweetly trembling under blue skies. Every now and then a deep craving for the remembered sensation would take hold of me, and one night I was so desperate I tried to find the drug on the street, but no one had heard of it.

  Now the familiar desire came back. I needed to narrow the pain of my longing for Daniel, send it back to its corner, but it was stubborn and didn’t want to budge. I decided to go out for dinner with Volvo and then walk with him by the sea. The sea at dusk was my best bet.

  We ate at a falafel stand down the street and then we strolled along the boardwalk. Some people smiled at Volvo and others averted their eyes. No one was indifferent. When I grew tired of pushing the wheelchair, I parked Volvo at one of the semicircular shelters scattered along the walk and sat beside him on the curved bench. The sun was setting behind us and the sea turned gray with streaks of orange and white. Then it was dark green and the orange changed to scarlet. And then slowly blue came back, blue with specks of gold.