Michal’s eyes went wide. “But isn’t that the black part of the neighborhood?”
Gil cocked his head and said nothing.
Orit was still sitting, but with one hand planted on her desk as if she might, at any second, push herself to her feet. “Why would you want to move there?” she asked Gil.
Confused, I looked from Orit to Gil.
“Yes, our apartment is on a black street, and so what?” Gil squeezed my shoulder, then let out a short laugh. “You think we can’t handle it?”
“But why would you want to live right in the middle of those people?” Michal asked. “It’s—”
“Just because you don’t know how to deal with them doesn’t mean we don’t.”
Orit was shaking her head.
I stood immobile, a silent barricade between combatants. There was something I was supposed to do now. This was the point at which my mother would have taken a deep breath, made a withering speech about racism, and walked out in protest. Organized the university and led a march to the maligned neighborhood, making up rhyming chants all the while. I pictured the concrete façade of the center she’d founded in Brooklyn, in the neighborhood where her increasingly few white friends told her she was crazy to live. I recalled the rousing lecture she’d delivered to a white taxi driver who locked his doors before driving her through East New York, and I knew what she would think of me now for the way I hesitated, wordless, as the conversation sped past.
“But why do you want to live there? And with Maya?” Michal set her hands on her hips. “You want to listen to blacks shouting at you every sabbath when you go to drive your car? Every time Maya wears a skirt that comes above her ankles, you want a rabbi in her face like some avenging angel?”
My face flamed as I realized my misunderstanding.
“I’m just saying,” Michal continued, “that I don’t want Maya to have to put up with too much trouble for being a secular young woman living in a black-hat religious area. Living with a man she’s not married to, on top of it. You know what those religious can be like. Running to the yeshiva, saying they’re better than the rest of us. Taking government money, and most of them don’t even serve in the army.” Michal faltered as she spoke the last words. She exchanged glances with Orit.
“Maya and I can take care of ourselves.” Gil’s voice was cutting; he enunciated each word. “And as far as the army is concerned, don’t imagine I don’t know what you think of me. You needn’t bother spelling it out. Just keep the macho patriotism to yourselves, my friends. Because you haven’t a fucking clue.”
And Gil was gone from the room and descending the stairs.
I looked at my friends of the past weeks. I was met with blank faces, averted gazes. Then, as if washing her hands of Gil, of this entire conversation, and of her American roommate, Orit turned back to her desk.
Gil’s footsteps were growing fainter. Stumbling, I followed him. In the stairwell, I tried to recall what I knew about the apartment. Gil had clipped the advertisement, gone to the place, and signed the lease all on the previous afternoon, while I scribbled notes furiously in a history lecture. “The landlord was visiting from Haifa,” he explained when I called him from the cafeteria pay phone in the evening. “If I hadn’t signed today, we might have lost it. And I’m sure you’re going to love it, no point in waiting.” I pressed the receiver to my ear, trying to forget the noise behind me. Gil sounded happier than I’d ever heard him. The reserve he showed everyone, I’d begun to understand, was only a veneer; there were days, lately, when I could glimpse beneath.
“What’s it like?” I asked.
“It’s a surprise.”
Now I reached the bottom of the stairs. When I emerged, blinking, into the courtyard, Orit was watching me from the window. Dark curls rained down around her eyes. Her face was tight and I could see the effort that went into her smile. “Hey,” she called. “Enjoy the new place.” Then she waved, and before I could wave in return she was gone.
“Thanks,” I called to the empty window. I imagined leaving Gil waiting in the car and running upstairs to talk things over with Orit one more time. Would she even want to? Or was she happier, after these weeks of tension, to be rid of me?
From the street came the honk of a horn. I left the courtyard and made for Gil’s car. As I climbed in, something about his expression struck me. The smile on his pale, thin face reminded me of a child exhausted by tears, beaming through the traces of his misery. His smile, I thought, was heartbreaking.
For just a moment, I wondered how well Gil and I knew each other. Our conversations had a rhythm I loved—I spent afternoons layering story upon story, and Gil assessed each situation or character with a terse response: Ina, he declared, was the all-American girl he’d seen in a thousand Hollywood movies. My dance director was indeed too rigid. My chemistry professor was just a poor sod doing his job, I really should have paid more attention. Gil’s sarcasm or appreciation spurred me to bring yet more of my life in America before him, and I did so in a sometimes flummoxed Hebrew that made him, then me, weak with laughter.
There were hours, too, entire evenings, when I sat in his apartment doing my course work and watching him draw. Sometimes he would turn and explain a point of technique to me, and the flood of historical references amazed me. We didn’t visit with other people; it didn’t seem to occur to him to do so, and I didn’t mind. I could never tell quite why he liked being with me so much, and I wasn’t confident I’d win if I had to compete for his attention. One afternoon, after we’d been for a long walk, he pulled me into the shower with him. As we washed the dust from each other’s hair, I heard him inhale sharply. I looked up and found him crying. Water beat against his shoulders, tears rolled down his face. I craned my neck and squinted into the spray. Then he reached for me and hugged me so hard it hurt. He was sobbing. I called his name, but he seemed not to hear. “It’s all right,” I wanted to say, but the water was pouring into my face and I couldn’t breathe. I fought to support his weight as he slumped; I tried to hold his shuddering body as hard as he held me, tried to duck my chin to find air. But I couldn’t. I would never have guessed how heavy he was. Spots of black mingled with the glint of the water; the drops descended in slow motion. His arms were tight around my ribs. I could barely stand. Watching the drops and feeling my chest fight to expand, I thought: These arms could hold me forever. When at last he released me, I gasped for breath. But I said nothing; the emotion trembling on his face was more important than any rebuke. “I love you,” he told me, and I could see he was shocked by the simple miracle of it. My chest aching, I stood naked before him, awed by the power of his feeling. What could I possibly do to deserve this much love? And what did it mean that my love was so muted compared with his? We left the shower, Gil leaning on my shoulder. I guided him over the sill and gently toweled first his body, then mine. His trust made me feel honored, and frightened. More than anything, I wanted to be worthy of the peaceful expression he wore.
The afternoon was hot, and the breeze that bent some nearby cypress trees offered little relief. While he waited for an opportunity to pull into the street, Gil turned on the radio and began singing along. I grinned; he was terrifically out of tune. He drummed rhythm on the steering wheel and, seeing my expression, grinned back and sang louder. Halfway through the song, his palm made accidental contact with the horn, and the loud bleat made us both jump. Briefly Gil lost the song’s rhythm. Then, his face lit with mischief, he resumed his drumbeat, this time hitting the horn instead of the steering wheel in a salute that turned heads on both sides of the street. I joined in, beating time on the windshield and on the dashboard and on his body. I was, I knew, bright red with laughter; I wouldn’t look out the window for fear of seeing someone I knew, and I hoped every single passerby was watching.
When the song was over, Gil gave a last, patterned honk, the kind I’d learned Israelis considered friendly. “Nu, we’re gone already, Orit,” he addressed the silent dormitory building. “Go back to your pointless gos
sip.” He smiled at me. “At least in our new neighborhood you won’t have to worry about those busybodies anymore.” He released the brake, and we swerved into the street.
I watched the dormitory disappear as we rounded the corner. I told myself that whatever part of whatever neighborhood we were going to, whatever it was that had just passed between Gil and Orit and Michal in the dorm, everything would be fine.
From the university we drove downhill through residential neighborhoods, past low trees and two-story buildings, parks and playgrounds. When I’d first arrived in Jerusalem, gray downpours chilled the university lecture halls and slicked the stone pathways of the city. Now it was April, and the sun had dried the ground. As we descended the hill, the domes of the mosques glinted against a pale cloudless sky.
A left turn set us onto a main thoroughfare, where crowds of pedestrians signaled our closeness to the open-air market. Gil wove through the traffic, now and then executing a tight turn around a slower-moving car. I watched two middle-aged women hail each other and move on together down the sidewalk, their string bags bulging with vegetables and bread. An old man, struggling up the steps of a crowded bus, accepted the assistance of a woman soldier.
I reached over and smoothed the fine red hair that hung over Gil’s forehead, then brushed his gaunt cheek with my fingertips.
“It’s perfect,” he said. “The apartment. And it’s a classic Jerusalem neighborhood, not one of those ugly modern spots. You’re going to make us both crazy, you’ll be thanking me so much.”
I squeezed his hand until he pulled it free to steer. I tried to picture narrow streets, stone archways, dark-red flowers edging the tops of courtyard walls. A spotless apartment, with quiet streaming in through the shutters at midday.
“The apartment is in a religious area?” I asked.
Gil glanced at me. “Yes.”
“Do you think we’ll have trouble?” I ventured. “I mean, I have no problem with it or anything. But I’ve heard stories, about very religious people in black-hat neighborhoods who shout at women wearing jeans. Or even throw rocks at them. Things like that.”
Gil raised his eyebrows in annoyance. “First of all, this isn’t some closed-off religious neighborhood like Mea Shearim—there are some secular people on our block too. Secondly, your friends who tell you stories are paranoid.” He shook his head. “They have that word in America, yes? Pa-ra-noi-ot?”
We had reached the midrehov. Here, at the heart of the modern city, the streets were wide and lined with windows displaying fabrics, sports clothes, trays of pizza sprinkled with hyssop. In doorless shops, standing men ladled spicy paste onto paper-wrapped falafel. We passed the glittering front of the Mashbir, its escalator rising endlessly beyond the glassed-in entryway. As we waited at a light, American tourists stepped from an air-conditioned bus with the name of a Jewish organization on its side. While a knot of girls from the bus eyed two soldiers strolling past, the tour chaperones placed coins into the browned palms of beggars. “We Are One,” the tourists’ blue T-shirts proclaimed.
I looked away from the tourists, hoping Gil hadn’t noticed them. “The soft ones,” Gil liked to call Americans. “You can tell by their faces.” I was an exception, he’d said. My hand rose to my cheek, checking for some feature that might give me away.
The neighborhood was well into the valley, far below the light-green arcade of Liberty Bell Park. Gil turned down a wide side street, where shops gave way to quiet homes, then to square buildings with low walls around them and names across the doorways: Tent of Solomon, Tent of Moses, Sanctuary of Aaron. In front of one building, two boys in white shirts and dark pants were sliding down a railing, heavy skullcaps all but overwhelming their curly blond sidelocks. Next to another, marked Tent of Sarah, girls stood talking in a tight circle. As we passed I saw that their hair was cut in straight bangs, and all wore dresses that covered them from neck to wrists to dark-stockinged ankles.
Gil turned off the main street and onto a narrow alley. Lining the pavement on one side was a waist-high stone wall, purple flowers growing in its crevices. Between the buildings I saw gardens and low trees. “Almost there.” Gil winked at me.
He turned yet another corner and immediately hit the brakes. This street was a weave of black against a background of blue sky and tawny stone. Dozens of bearded men in black hats and long black coats crisscrossed the pavement. Sidelocks hanging under broad-brimmed hats, dull white fringes swinging from beneath their coats, the men conferred in small groups, now and then lifting their pale faces to glance warily at the sun. From windows and doorsteps kerchiefed women called out, and children mingled everywhere. The crowd of dark figures was dizzying to watch.
Gil inched the car forward, and people moved aside with the merest stirrings of curiosity. I tugged the short sleeves, of my blouse down toward my bare elbows.
“Look at this!” Gil pointed. The crowd had begun stringing yellow placards from balconies and hammering them to telephone poles. I watched a middle-aged man in a misshapen hat fix one to the top of his car. “Prepare for the Coming of the Messiah,” the signs instructed. The street was beginning to look like a parade ground, lined with the single slogan repeated over and over, and peopled by a remarkably drab crowd eager to welcome some foreign dignitary or hometown hero. The sharp sound of hammers made me want to roll up the window of the car.
An ancient, white-bearded man stood in the center of the street, talking with a young man hanging a sign from a narrow pole. Gil slowed the car to a stop and, when neither man moved, tapped his horn in quick rhythm. The old man turned his head and peered through the windshield at us. Then, motioning to his companion, he moved un-hurriedly off the street.
Gil pulled to the curb. “This is it,” he said.
Three boys turned at the sound of the car doors opening. As I stepped out, one of them spat onto the pavement.
“Gil?” I clutched at my elbows. Gil glared at the boys and settled an arm around my shoulders. “They’ll just have to get used to a woman in short sleeves,” he said, loud. The boys had already turned their backs.
“What are they all doing out on the street?” I whispered. “Do you think this is normal?”
Gil pulled me closer. “Don’t worry so much. Nobody was out on the street when I was here before. Maybe their rebbe declared this was a particularly good week for the Messiah to come, so they’re having a sign-hanging party. Either that or they all just turned’ out to welcome us.” He kissed the top of my head ostentatiously. I kept my gaze on the ground, afraid to look up and see my new neighbors staring.
We followed a narrow path through an overgrown garden to the entrance of a modest three-story building. As we climbed the airy stairwell, the sound of our footsteps echoed up past quiet apartments.
When we reached the third-floor landing, Gil pulled a key from his pocket and opened a red-painted door.
“They’ve just put another coat of white on the roof,” he said, “so it shouldn’t get too hot during the afternoons. And I already checked that the water heater works.” The apartment was large and breezy, with a wide living room and bedroom and a narrow kitchen. A half-circle balcony cropped out from the living room; Gil had known at one glance that it would be just right for his work. “Look how much sun this place gets,” he said, and even with the shutters closed I could see: light shone in through the slits, the apartment would glow with the shutters open.
I walked the length of the kitchen. From outside the narrow window I could hear hammers pounding and men shouting instructions. When I turned, I saw Gil waiting. His hands were clasped in front of him, and he was watching me so closely that I felt myself blush.
I smiled at him. “I love it,” I said.
“I knew you would.” His face softened in relief.
Yet again I asked myself what he saw in me.
By early evening the hammering had stopped, and as we unloaded the car I noticed that a few of the passersby wore secular dress. “See?” Gil said. “These buildings
have a few nonreligious people.” When our work was done we sat on the balcony with the doors to the living room open behind us, glasses of lukewarm tap water by our feet. The street was still.
“I love you,” I said.
“Prepare for the Coming of the Messiah,” the signs declared in fading light. Gil kissed me, then rested his cheek against the top of my head. With the dusk, the street took on a blue tint, which faded as the moon rose and the breeze from the west began to sweep the clouds across the sky.
3
A gathering of shadows, a swelling of sounds. In this building in this building on the third and highest floor. In this building on this street after all these days and years, something new.
An American, smiling so nicely at everyone, the postman tells me. He, foolish man, is pleased. The new tenant is who I’m talking about, he explains before disappearing down the path. For he, like the rest of them, believes I am simpleminded.
An American, smelling like soap and apple juice and new leather sandals. Did he think I had not noticed? Leaving her shampoo air behind in this echoing stairwell.
Back in my apartment I fling my hands in disdain. My neck protesting, I admonish the ceiling. After so many years I see you will betray me in your love for the new. This ceiling which is now a floor for American feet to march or dance upon as they please. I examine the chipping paint for proof of infidelity. I have no use for Americans, I announce. But the speechless paint disbelieves me.
I turn from the ceiling in disgust. My neck sings relief and spots sway weary before my eyes. Later when I cannot help myself I listen for foreign footsteps on the stair.
April 21, 1993
Dear Maya,
Thank you for writing to me about Gil. He does sound like a thoughtful person, and talented in his work.
FYI: you’ve misspelled Fanya’s last name. It’s not Goodman like mine, but rather Gutman. I’m afraid my parents were responsible for the Americanization, much as they liked to claim they resisted assimilation in all its forms. Or so they were fond of insisting, when they were angry with me for marrying a non-Jew. I suppose they might have been satisfied, had they lived to see the divorce and my return to their family name.
From a Sealed Room Page 7