Tel Aviv Noir

by Etgar Keret

  Then she came back, pulled off the dress, and stood there next to me in her underwear again. She was still practical. But I knew her. Her chest was heaving. I saw the pulse in her neck. That’s the body that used to be in my bed, in a hundred rooms at the Sheraton, in my shower, in my hands, between my sheets.

  The Orthodox guy was a bonus, she said. He got scared, you have no idea. Gave back all my money and returned the store to my name. It all worked out. She paused, watching me silently. All the words she’d rehearsed suddenly went dry. It didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, she said. You know this isn’t what I wanted. Her eyes were a question mark.

  I said nothing.

  Her voice broke. Can I smell you, one last time? she said. She put her face to my neck and breathed. She burrowed into my neck. I hugged her. She inhaled one last time and broke away. She put on the dress she wore when she came in, her face serious again. I could tell it took some effort to compose herself like that. She slipped a hand into her purse and pulled out three wads of crisp 200-shekel bills. Everything I’d paid for her debt, she said, and a little extra.

  I wouldn’t take it.

  She put it on the bench.

  I didn’t touch it.

  He’ll get sick of me eventually, she said. You’ll see.

  I said nothing.

  Okay, she said. A quick, embarrassed smile, without looking me in the eye. She left the changing room with the new dress draped over her arm. She paid for it, never turning back to me. And that was that. I’d have burned all that money if I thought that would bring her back. But it wouldn’t.

  I left the store with the money in a shopping bag. My heart was still pounding. The rush of seeing her was still there. It was like she was back. I thought I’d wait for her, no matter how long it took. Seven years. Fourteen years. Twenty. At some point, he’d have enough of her.

  But at home, in the shower, it all fell into place. Any remnants of her perfume that were on me were now washed away with the soapy water. Standing there in the steam, everything was suddenly clear: I wasn’t going to wait for her. It would be better that way. She was way out of my league. That was the truth. Even without that Bukharan asshole, she was too much for me. She was too much for me from the very beginning. People who are brave enough to jump off cliffs. More than I can ever handle.

  * * *

  A few months later I walked by the cell phone store and saw Ruti sitting behind the desk. I watched from across the street. She was busy with her phone. For a moment, an image passed through my mind: Ruti, ten years old, playing the piano with a sleeping mask on.

  WOMEN

  BY MATAN HERMONI

  Basel Street

  A.

  I first saw Nahum Tzobelplatz in January 2010 at the Kiryat Shaul Cemetery, for Abraham Sutzkever’s funeral. It was raining. It was cold and it was sad. Sad for those present, those who accompanied Sutzkever to the grave, and sad for me. I felt as bitter as can be, for the dead and for the living too—meaning, for me. I was swimming in an ocean of self-pity, I’m not ashamed to say. I found some comfort in the sadness hovering over everyone there. Finally sadness was the lot of all the people around me and not just my own.

  Yes, it was cold and it was sad. Before us lay the poet, wrapped in a shroud, and around him were his family and friends and acquaintances and admirers, including me. The raincoats and umbrellas and top hats and tears and scarves and boots and overshoes, all of those blended together. Yes, the deceased was gone from this world, and this world would miss the deceased.

  I spotted Nahum Tzobelplatz among those attending. At the time I didn’t even know his name. It would become known to me within a few weeks, maybe a month. But among the crowd that included all sorts of types, he, as they say, stood out. A guy, a man, a bit older than me, thin, with a schnoz and some wrinkles on his forehead. There was a sparkle in his eyes.

  He wore a short and shabby peacoat and beneath it a suit jacket; his white shirt seemed veiled in some yellow vapor, like nicotine. He wore a scarf around his neck and his pants matched his jacket.

  He was talking to Vladimir Gelmann, the secretary of Beth Sholem Aleykhem. He leaned in and whispered in his ear. Vladimir—Volodya, as we called him—tried to stifle a smile resulting from Nahum Tzobelplatz’s whisper. He wasn’t entirely successful. His lips remained pursed, but behind his glasses his eyes glimmered.

  Nahum Tzobelplatz’s eyes smiled too. As I said, they sparkled. That expression became engraved in my mind for some reason, a sort of inexpugnable first impression, a passport one man earns in another’s memory.

  * * *

  Months passed, two seasons went by, before I asked him about it.

  I said, “What were you smiling about at the funeral, Nahum?”

  “What was I smiling about?” he returned my question. “I smiled about crying.”

  “If you don’t want to tell me, don’t tell me.” I pretended to be insulted.

  He wasn’t impressed. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, lit one, and returned the pack to his jacket pocket. We were sitting on the balcony of my apartment. It was June, and Tel Aviv was burning with the Tammuz sun. The fan sawed through the air above us. Nahum Tzobelplatz wore a white shirt and a jacket. I sweated and sweated.

  * * *

  We’ll get back to June soon. But wait, we’re still in January. Yes. We’re at the funeral hall at Kiryat Shaul. There are no beads of sweat here, but rather tears and raindrops. The rain pleased me, as did, I already noted, the sadness. I am not a party pooper by nature. But at the time, in January 2010, and through the better part of 2009, things were, how shall I put it, very bad.

  B.

  Yes. Things were very bad, on every level, and especially on the main issues that I shall hereby detail:

  a. The novel I wrote had been sentenced to oblivion.

  b. I was penniless.

  c. (a derivative of b, or perhaps b is a derivative of c) I had no source of income.

  d. My wife told me to go to hell.

  e. (a derivative of d) I still loved my wife.

  About a month and a half before the funeral, I had moved into an apartment on Arba Aratzot Street. Yes. That morning I got up, packed two suitcases, two duffel bags, and two backpacks, and faltered down the stairs of the fine building my wife and I lived in, and which now housed only my wife. I left in haste, like the Israelites fleeing Egypt.

  It was a month and a half before Nahum Tzobelplatz and I first crossed paths. Then, a month after our first encounter, he would show up in my apartment.

  Not much had changed since I’d seen him at the funeral. I spent the intervening weeks holed up between the four walls of an apartment I rented for 4,500 shekels a month—1,125 silver shekels per wall. But it wasn’t only my glum spirit that kept me within those walls. It was mostly my financial standing. Those who step out of their homes get holes in their pockets, and the bills and coins fall through the holes and find their way into the hands of café owners, bar owners, shop owners, and other kinds of owners operating cash registers. And I—I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have bills or even coins. As such, I didn’t go out much.

  And yet, once in a while I’d wander the streets at dusk, between the sun and the moon, a meaningless and purposeless wandering, my only objective to let some fresh air seep between my bones. On one of these rare occasions, I returned home to find a man standing naked as the day he was born, in front of my closet, rummaging among the shirts and undershirts and jackets. Some of these were mine and some belonged to the previous tenant, a lonely old man who passed away mere days before I moved in. The apartment had been cleared out with haste and prepared for a new tenant. (In Tel Aviv, only real estate moves quicker than death.) Its new owners, his inheritors, left his gabardine suits, top hats, winter jackets, belts, and cuff links. The deceased, when he was still alive, was an elegant man, to judge by his wardrobe. There were some nice items in there. I have to point out that, had his inheritors been in less of a rush, they�
��d have found purpose in those things. But they, all they cared about were the walls. The walls and the land registry. And what are clothes when compared to walls? What are fabrics compared to floor tiles? I had to sleep on a bed in which a man, I think his name was Katzanelbogen, had died only days before, but I inherited some damn fine suits. Yes. A man needs one good suit. Me, I had several.

  Really, I couldn’t complain.

  The man who was found in my apartment, at dusk in February, had taken off one suit and was about to put on another. Shadows moved among the shutters. Dark was about to take charge of the room, and still it was easy to see that the suit the man had removed not only needed a good cleaning, but was ratty, the kind of cheap suit you buy at a textile shop in southern Tel Aviv. As far as I know, the main clientele in those shops is immigrants, newly arrived; those who cannot afford to buy jackets at finer stores, like those on Dizengoff Street. Like I said, neither could I, though some of the jackets in those display windows have caught my eye. I’ve developed quite a taste in recent months, as well as an eye for fabric and quality sewing. I can spot the good ones from miles away.

  Regardless, a naked man was standing in my room.

  The naked man saw me and nodded in greeting. I nodded back. He slowly reached into the closet and pulled out a pair of underwear (mine) and an undershirt (Mr. Katzanelbogen’s) and put them on. Though he appeared slightly older than I was, he was very skinny. He had a narrow rib cage. The ribs themselves threatened to break through his skin. I mostly wondered what he could have trapped within such a narrow rib cage. What could possibly fit there? Maybe some of his organs remained outside of it, something from the endocrinological system or his digestive tract. I don’t know, maybe the adrenal gland, or the gallbladder. There was no space for all of these. How could such a narrow, modest rib cage trap a soul?

  Yes. The naked man in my apartment—there was nothing obscene about his nudity. In fact, he looked as if he’d just emerged from a mikveh or a Turkish bathhouse and was searching for his clothes. He was a man, I was a man; what he had, I had. A moment passed before I noticed this was the same person I saw at Abraham Sutzkever’s funeral, whispering with Vladimir Gelmann. Now I also saw that the suit that lay on the chair in my bedroom was the same one that guy, that character, that man, had worn at the funeral. An inexpensive gray suit. I’m a bit ashamed to admit it—after all, I am a writer, a Hebrew writer, and therefore an intellectual, and an intellectual should not be wasting his time and mind thinking about trifles such as suits and fabrics, and pondering the quality of sewing and stitching—but I think that if one wears a suit, one should make it a proper suit. If you go out to buy a suit, make an effort and crack open your wallet. A nice suit doesn’t come cheap. If you don’t spend the money, it doesn’t look right. But to each his own. I have my own suits.

  C.

  Nahum Tzobelplatz was born in Berditchev in 1870 and died in Warsaw in 1905. Those were the days of pogroms, in Kishinev and in Odessa and even in Warsaw. But Nahum Tzobelplatz, he did not die at the hands of rioters. He died in rather embarrassing circumstances. In fact, he died of a broken heart. It happened when one Warsaw lady, a whore by vocation, informed him that he must leave her be, doing so in the company of a man in charge of her livelihood. He was not a very nice guy. But Nahum couldn’t let go. However, in order to keep visiting her bed, he had to pay, and he had no money. At any rate, he got drunk at a gentile restaurant. He didn’t pay for his drinks—and oh, did he ever drink. He was caught and pummeled. A policeman walked by and didn’t raise a finger to help. Those were the days of pogroms, as I’ve said. If policemen did nothing for Jews who were murdered for no reason, they certainly wouldn’t do a thing for a Jew who was caught stealing. It was winter. He walked on the bridge over the Vistula River, stumbled, and fell. The water was frozen, or near frozen. Had it been fully frozen, he would have broken his bones, but he might have lived. The water was a bit over thirty degrees, and a thin crust of ice had formed on the surface. But the water hadn’t frozen over fully, and Nahum Tzobelplatz drowned and died. And all for the love of a whore.

  That’s how he tells it, at least, if you care to believe ghosts.

  I said, “I was sure you’d died of tuberculosis. I was sure you coughed so hard that your soul left your body.”

  He said, “You’ve been reading too many books.”

  I said, “What do books have to do with this?”

  He said, “It’s a famous literary rule: a Jewish writer dies of tuberculosis, not of whores.”

  I said, “To each his own.”

  He said, “Whores are for the French, not for the Jews.”

  I said, “Times have changed.”

  He said, “You know the one about Rashi and the French?”

  I said, “I know it,” and hoped silently that he wouldn’t tell it. I blush all the way up to my earlobes whenever someone tells that joke. My prayers were answered this time. If not other prayers, at least this one.

  He didn’t tell it. Instead he said, “Literal meanings need not be explained.”

  I sighed in relief.

  He continued: “The homiletic is that what’s good for French writers is good for French writers, and what’s good for Jewish writers is good for Jewish writers.”

  I said, “I didn’t know you were a writer.”

  He was insulted. “You didn’t?”

  An unpleasant silence ensued. He thought I knew who he was. I found out later that he thought I’d recognized him at Abraham Sutzkever’s funeral, and that this was the reason I’d stared at him. But my reasons had been different. It’s happened to me more than once and can be a little uncomfortable. This staring habit of mine has caused me several embarrassing incidents, and one scandal.

  I said, “No.” It is a well-known rule that the truth is often the best lie.

  He said, “Those in the know would realize who I am. I used to be famous in Warsaw literary circles. I thought you were in the know.”

  I said, “I’m in the know on some matters, and less so on others.”

  He said, “That guy, he knew who I was right away. He’d read my story in Hashiloach journal in 1904.” When he said this, he mentioned the name of a man, a writer, my age. We used to be friends. Any mention of his name made my vision go dark, as they say. This particular writer was now bathing in tubs of money and respect, while I wallowed in this derelict apartment, visited by a demon.

  I kept my cool in spite of this and said, “Go live in his house then.”

  The demon said, “I merely pointed out that he’d heard of me and my stories, and it would behoove you to read them too.”

  I said nothing.

  The insult clung to us, not letting go. To appease him, I searched for the copy of Hashiloach in which he claimed that Bialik, who was the editor at the time, had published his short story. He also said Bialik had sent him a letter in which he praised the story, and so on and so forth. But I couldn’t find the story, or the name of my demon, Nahum Tzobelplatz, in the index of Bialik’s book of letters—he was known to have all his letters edited quite carefully, what he wrote to one man becoming the property of all. I searched by Nahum’s first name and last, I searched this way and that, I even asked a man I know and cherish, an important professor, if he’d heard of this Nahum who’d taken hold of my apartment, but he hadn’t. Yes. This professor has been blessed with many qualities, but modesty, as they say, was not one of them. “If I haven’t heard of someone,” he told me, “there must be a good reason for it.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. And yet, not only did this demon in my apartment claim to have existed, to have been a writer, to have published in Bialik and Klausner’s journal, Hashiloach, but he was wearing my clothes and eating my food. He didn’t ask for much—he was a ghost, after all—but even a ghost has to eat something, and today everything costs a fortune. And if all of this weren’t enough, he was just sitting there, insulted.

  D.

  Yes. We sat and conversed. I didn’t have
a job, and couldn’t leave the house. Even if I had a roll of money, I would have sewed it into my pocket. What could I do? If any money came in, I’d give it to my landlord. My debts were growing by the minute.

  As my creditors came from all directions, their advisors devising a collection plan, I sat with Nahum. On the table was a pack of cigarettes he had stolen. Cigarettes are very expensive these days. He smoked, and I smoked. I pulled the smoke from the cigarettes into my lungs and he pulled it into the netherworld. But what difference did it make? The cigarettes were free, and me, when something is free, I take it.

  He asked, “Why did your wife kick you out?”

  I thought for a moment and finally said, “For loving another woman, she kicked me out.” Then I corrected myself: “Not really loving, just making love.” That’s what I said, and then blew a jet of smoke across the room.

  Nahum thought for a moment and said, “A Jew, as long as there is blood in his veins, will be plagued by lust. As long as there’s blood in his veins, and even when there isn’t.”

  I said, “Yes. She was married too, the woman I made love to.”

  Nahum said, “I was also caught in a woman’s net. With that kind of woman, fornication is seventy-seven times sweeter.”

  “Seventy-seven times,” I repeated.

  Letters addressed to me were still sent to my wife’s address. Bills came here, letters went there. Good news went there, pogroms and calamities came here. Once in a while I went to her building and checked the mailbox. My wife left my letters there for me. It had been a long time since anything came.