by Yael Hedaya
He said he hated light cigarettes, they seemed like an oxymoron to him, and Dana asked what that was. They both tried to explain, and Yonatan said, “It’s something and its opposite.”
“Like a clever idiot?” Dana asked.
Yonatan said yes. He thought about himself: he was being something and its opposite—a clever idiot. He was on the verge of suggesting they call Rona to see if she wanted to join them with Tamar, but instead he said, “So what’s new? What have you done since yesterday?” as if she gave him such reports every day.
“Nothing. Really nothing.”
Dana asked the waitress for hot apple pie with ice cream and whipped cream, to compensate herself for the bad panna cotta they had shared just a few moments earlier. “You’re both wearing the same thing!” she said. They looked at each other and at themselves, and smiled. Dana bent over and checked their feet beneath the table. “Look, you’re even both wearing running shoes.” They leaned over to look, and Dana said, pointing to each in turn, “You could be twins, except that you’re wearing a bra and you’re not.”
“Why are you so sure I’m wearing a bra?”
Dana pointed at Shira’s shoulder. “I can see the strap.”
Shira looked down at her shoulder and quickly pulled up her sleeve. She regretted having worn an ugly old bra that day, already gray from so many washes.
Yonatan, suddenly embarrassed, said, “And why are you so sure I’m not wearing a bra?” Dana made a face at him and he made one back and said, “Haven’t you ever seen my bra collection? Don’t you know that at nights I perform in all kinds of clubs in women’s clothing?”
“Yeah, sure, we know all about that,” Dana said.
Yonatan whispered, “You didn’t know your dad was a transvestite?”
“What’s a transvestite? Is it the same as gay?”
“No,” Shira said, and tried to explain.
Dana said, “Yeah, right, Dad, a transvestite would kill himself if he saw what kind of underwear you wear.” She turned to Shira. “Do you want to know what kind of underwear he wears?”
Despite the barriers that had been crushed beneath their feet, Yonatan and Shira both said, “Yes,” as if they were two children who had suddenly discovered their sexuality during a game of doctor–patient. They wanted someone else to lead them to the place where strange and forbidden secrets are revealed, but for that they needed a third child, smaller and more innocent.
Dana said, “Well, then,” and told Shira about the old baggy underwear her father liked to wear, and how they always bought him boxers because he fell for the models in the commercials and was convinced they would look good on him too, and how he never wore them because they were uncomfortable; he only liked his ugly cotton ones with fraying elastic.
Yonatan leaned back in his chair and listened and pretended to be horrified, but he knew his daughter was doing his dirty work. He was letting her take the new woman down that corridor to his bedroom, opening his closet doors for her, and emptying his drawer of ugly underwear onto the bed so she could see exactly what she was getting into. Then he said, “Now you have to ask her what kind of underwear she wears too, because it’s not fair that she only knows about mine.”
He felt like a child on the verge of his first orgasm, and Dana, who took her role seriously, asked, “What kind of underwear do you wear?”
Shira looked deep into Yonatan’s eyes—he thought he saw an invitation to bed—and said, “The same as your dad’s.”
As he stirred his latte and watched Shira empty two packets of sugar into her coffee, and heard Dana sucking lemonade through a straw, something moved in him—not in his underwear, although he was a little turned on, more alive than turned on; not in his insides, because he was not afraid; not in his heart or his mind, which was now finally empty of bothersome thoughts; but in his hands, which suddenly wanted to caress his daughter’s sun-flushed face, the face that was dotted with his wife’s freckles, and also the shoulder of the woman sitting across from him, just in the place where the gray bra strap had left a reddish line, because something in him knew that this encounter would soon be over: The check would be ordered, he would offer to pay, she would refuse, he wouldn’t have the courage to say you can pay next time, and in the end they would split it.
He caressed himself with words, his hands resting on the table. “Calm down.” His daughter, who had suddenly become mischievous, was scattering sugar from a packet on his hands. This is what people do in the world, he thought. They sit in cafés and flirt, with or without excited children keeping their fingers crossed.
They talked a little about their writing problems, and Shira said she had been quite successful that morning, and then she talked about her dad and asked if his parents were still alive. He said his mom was and told her about her house in the German Colony. Shira said she had always envied Jerusalemites, because she thought they had different childhoods, more mysterious, more wintry. Dana asked if she also liked winter, and Shira said she did. Dana ran her fingers over her father’s sugary hands and said, “We do too.”
Then they talked about computers and Yonatan complained about the software he used, which was slow and old-fashioned, and Shira told him she’d recently been given a new program. Yonatan enthused and said it was an excellent program but very expensive.
“I could copy it for you, but I don’t know how.”
“It’s easy. I can show you. Do you have any blank diskettes?”
“Yes, sure. Do you want to come over now? I live just here, on Borochov. Want to come over?”
“We could.” He turned to his daughter and, without meaning to, said, “Do you want to go over to Tamar’s in the meantime?”
Dana said no firmly, but then added, “Actually, yes,” as if she had remembered something, or only just learned it, absorbing it from her father’s look, which seemed so hopeful and desperate to her.
“Then let’s call Rona. I think there’s a phone here.”
“There is,” Shira said. It felt as if she were promoting a little scheme whose essence was unclear.
“Here,” he said to his daughter, handing her a few shekels. “Go call her and say hi to her.”
“From both of you?” Dana said, and jiggled the coins in her hand.
“Yes, from me too,” Shira said.
They watched her through the window as she dialed the number and talked, putting one coin after another into the slot. They were as quiet as they had been when they sat together the night before, but this time it was the silence of people recovering, resting after a big achievement, the silence of anticipation of the next accomplishment.
When Dana came back, she said that Tamar was waiting for her and Rona said they were both invited for leftovers that evening. “Okay, I’m going,” she said, as if she wanted to disappear quickly.
But her father caught her hand. “We’ll walk you.”
“It’s daytime, it’s not dark! It’s right here, two doors away!”
“We’ll walk you,” Shira said, and Dana huffed and said, ugh! Not only was she not wanted now, she wasn’t independent either.
Yonatan gestured to the waitress for the check, and Shira took her purse out, and he protested, and she said, “What’s the big deal? Can’t I buy you coffee?”
“I didn’t have coffee,” Dana said.
“Lemonade then.”
“But I had cake too.”
“Oh, well, in that case—”
“Then next time I’m paying,” Yonatan said. “I mean it.” He sounded like an old man again with the I mean it and he reminded himself that he’d better start learning how to control this man who insisted on emerging and talking in a language that gave away everything Yonatan didn’t even know he was trying to hide.
( 9 )
He fell in love with the coffeepot as soon as he saw it. He stood in the kitchen, examining it, and said he had to get one for himself.
“Should I make some coffee?” he said, and waved the pot in the air. He look
ed around at the walls, which were painted in an old shade of yellow, the high ceiling with two large damp spots spreading out from the corners as if they were going to meet in the middle, and the long narrow window that was open and looked out onto the wall of the next building and into another window, from which a little boy was watching them. “I want to learn how to use this thing,” he said, and she asked how it was possible that he’d never come across one before. He said he often had, at friends’, but he’d never bothered to watch when they made coffee. “It didn’t interest me. I enjoyed the coffee and didn’t ask any questions.”
“Then why are you so interested now?” She hoped she didn’t sound hostile and suddenly felt as if a nosy stranger had invaded her lowly empire.
“I have no idea. Don’t you sometimes find yourself suddenly fascinated by something you’ve never noticed before?”
“No.”
“Me neither, to be honest. So what do you do with this?”
“Leave it. I have to clean it first.”
“I’ll clean it,” Yonatan persisted, and started unscrewing the two parts.
“You seem technically inclined.”
“Yes. I’ve just discovered that for the first time.”
“This must be your day of discoveries,” she said, and immediately regretted it. How trivial she seemed, betrayed by symbols. When she had written about them, they had filled her readers with excitement, but when they came out of her mouth now they melted into thin air, leaving a cloud of cheap perfume trailing behind.
He smiled at her. Over her shoulder his eye caught sight of her lettuce spinner, which was standing, unused, on a high shelf. “That’s a great thing. Simple but ingenious. I need to get one of those too.”
“I never use it; you can have it.” Again she regretted her words: he seemed embarrassed by her generosity. They had only met yesterday and would probably never see each other again.
“No, that’s all right. I’ll get one at some point.”
“Or not.”
“Or not.”
“It’s the kind of thing you want to buy but never do.”
“Yes, I know those things.” He thoughtfully scanned the shelves, searching, perhaps, for other things he would like but would never buy for himself, things he might get as a gift from someone one day, from someone it was okay to take things from, not her.
This kitchen looked like his own. It was long and narrow, with wooden cabinets that had never been changed and a sink that was too small and was, like his, full of dishes. There was a table big enough for two or three people, and the Ha’aretz supplement lay on it, open at the crossword page. He could see she’d only done half of it but couldn’t tell if she’d solved the same words he had found yesterday evening, before being struck by the restlessness that now took on an almost celebratory significance, because without it he would not have wrung the invitation out of Rona. Without it he would not be here now, leaning on the counter in the kitchen of a young woman, a new woman, a woman, period. He felt comfortable in this kitchen.
He emptied the damp coffee grounds from the filter into the trash and rinsed it and the two other parts under the tap. Then he turned to Shira, who was standing beside him, watching him and looking a little worried, and asked, “So what do I do now?”
“Here’s where you fill it with water. I’ll get the coffee out of the freezer.” She felt as if it were not the parts of the primitive little machine he was handling but those of her body, and she grew embarrassed as she watched him empty the old coffee into the trash can, tapping the filter against the sides, then running his finger through it to clean out the greasy remnants—as if he were touching her own refuse, emptying out incriminating evidence of a lonely morning, the grounds of a way of life she was suddenly ashamed of.
She put the jar of coffee down next to him and he examined it and said, “This is excellent coffee. Where do you get it, at the supermarket?”
“Anywhere. They have it at the little grocery—at least the one where I shop.” He asked how much to put in, and she said, “That depends if you like it strong or not.”
“Strong. I like it strong.”
“Then fill the filter up all the way.” She gave him a spoon and he dug it into the almost-empty jar. She felt embarrassed again. “I have to get some more. Is there enough in there?”
“Yes, I think so.” He scraped the bottom and filled up the filter.
She stood next to him, following his movements, and when he screwed both pieces back together and said “That’s it,” and turned to her, his elbow bumped her arm.
“I’ll put it on the stove,” she said. When she took the coffeepot from him, her fingers touched his. She didn’t want him to see that the stovetop was stained with oil and tomato sauce, every splatter like a crystal of its genetic material. “Let’s sit down in the living room,” she said, after turning the gas on. “It’ll take a few minutes.”
In the living room, without the toy that had both brought them together and partitioned them, her embarrassment increased. She sat down on the couch and briefly regretted the uncharacteristic spontaneity that had spurred her to invite him. She looked at him standing in the doorway, scanning the room, and hoped he would not stand in front of the bookshelves and examine her books. So many had done that before him and it had ended badly with all of them; with him, there was now the fear that it wouldn’t even begin.
He ignored the books, said the room was nice, that it had good lighting, and sat opposite her in the armchair. He felt calm with her, without knowing why. Perhaps because she seemed so tense, tenser than he was, and he found that strangely comforting. He lit a cigarette and she got up to empty the full ashtray that was on the table, but he said, “Don’t worry, I’m used to it. I hate empty ashtrays.” She smiled and sat down again, but was still bothered by the full ashtray, as if the cigarette butts were further evidence.
He liked her furniture. There was something messy and warm about it, something heavy and slightly Jerusalemite that reminded him of his bachelor’s pad on Montefiore Street, except this apartment felt like home rather than a set. The couch was big and old, like the armchair he was sitting in, which was very comfortable—he had the strange idea that his body was setting off on a spying mission for him—but the coffee table was the most beautiful piece of furniture. It was made of rough, scratched old lengths of wood joined together with huge copper screws. It reminded him of a loft floor. He asked where it was from.
“The flea market.”
“I keep meaning to go down. Dana really likes hanging out there, but somehow we’ve been too lazy to go.”
“Me too. Parking’s a nightmare.”
“That’s true.”
“And getting there without a car is a pain.”
He nodded and blew out a thoughtful ring of smoke, and she wondered whether this sort of conversation could engender anything greater, or anything at all, and how long they would spend talking about parking and tables and coffeemakers and lettuce spinners, and whether they even had anything else to talk about. Then she got up and said, “I think it’s boiling.”
He walked with her to the kitchen and they both listened to the percolation, which sounded more energetic than usual to her, and she turned the gas off and poured them both some coffee. She handed him his mug and said they could sit at the computer. She was wary of more small talk with the echo of the previous trivial conversation still lingering in the room.
“Good idea,” he said, even though he wanted to chat a little longer. He asked again if she had any blank diskettes, and again she said she did and led him to a closed-off balcony that connected the living room and the bedroom. It had a big old desk, very similar to his father’s, and on it was her computer.
She told him to sit down, put the mugs on the desk, and went to get another chair. Through the open door to her bedroom he could see a bureau and the edge of a bed, newspapers scattered at its feet, and wondered if her life was like his. He suspected it was, and that suspicion fil
led him with joy. She came back and gave him a plastic box with diskettes and sat next to him, and he smelled perfume he hadn’t noticed before in the kitchen.
When he started working on the computer, he became a different person. Confident, almost violent, he moved the mouse around, opened and closed files, put diskettes in and out, and gave her a running commentary on what he was doing, step by step, like a doctor letting a patient in on a complex medical procedure. He did not look at her for a second, and she didn’t take in anything he said because she was busy planning her next move. What will happen, she wondered, when he’s finished copying the program he was so excited about, and once he has explained how wonderful it is? What will we do when the copying is over?
“It’ll be done in a second. There, see? Now it’s telling me how long it has left.”
She almost hoped for something to go wrong, like a power outage, so that everything he had done so far would be erased and he’d have to start from scratch. Because during those minutes it seemed as if copying the program was not an excuse but the true purpose of his visit. He was utterly engrossed in the job, talking to her computer as if it were a pet. “Yes,” he said to the screen, “Great, excellent, good job!” He turned to her suddenly. “This is an excellent computer. Really good, and fast too. I wish mine were like this.”
“Yes, it’s pretty good, knock on wood.”
“Are you superstitious?” he asked, as he rapidly clicked on the keyboard.
“Very much so. I’m like those old ladies. And you?”
“Not really, but talking about old ladies, my mother’s like that. She knocks on everything that moves.”
“I can relate to that,” she said, and suddenly his mother was in the room—in some ways more present than her son. He sat next to her, typing quickly, and bent over to put the last diskette in the drive, and his arm kept bumping her elbow, and his knee jolted hers when he moved back and forth on the chair, but he seemed so disconnected, so lost in the computer, that even if she had stood behind him and wrapped her arms around him and kissed the back of his neck, as she wanted to do, he wouldn’t have noticed.