“If you think she’s too tall for you ... or too strong ... if that’s it ... then there are other options ...”
He spoke quickly, deftly, in a reasonable, businesslike tone.
“It’s not a question of that. At the moment I’m ...”
“Because I have others too. Just tell me what you’re looking for ... explain your wish to me ... I’ve got a big selection around here. I know a sweet, very classy young girl who lives right next door ... you might like her ... she’s practically still a child ... she may even still be a virgin ... yes, I believe she is ... real class...”
He laid a warm, friendly hand on my shoulder. I gave a start.
“There was something I liked about you as soon as I saw you walk into the station. You only have to say the word to me. Just tell me what you want. Everything is available. Why don’t you have a quiet cup of coffee and see what I have to show you?...Where did you say you were going?...The buses run late, I know because I’m always here. And if you miss the last one, I’ll bring you home in my own car. Come on ... you only have to look ... let me show you what real service is. There’s something about you I like. Don’t be scared ... it’s all aboveboard ... no obligation, no money down ... I just show you the goods, it doesn’t cost you a cent...”
He was quiet, reassuring, trustable. And I was out of time, out of place, plain out of it. Let her wait up for me. She’s probably gone to sleep at her parents’ anyway.
“At least you’ll join me for some coffee?”
“But I’ll pay for it.” The words tumbled out by themselves.
He smiled, highly satisfied.
“But of course ... it’s your treat ... you’re the boss. Don’t let me pressure you. I never pressure anyone. It’s like window-shopping ... just pretend that you’re window-shopping...”
The coffee was served, us at once. I gripped my cup hard, in need of the hot pick-me-up. A small teen-ager ran up to my new friend with some message. Everyone in the café knew him. Bazouki music blared over a radio. He lit a king-sized cigarette and offered me one. I declined. His face was furrowed, with wrinkles. An unplaceable accent. He managed the conversation with me tactfully, reliably.
“Many people can’t explain what they want and end up being disappointed. It’s not something that can be done just like that, automatically. You have to find the right combo. That’s my business. Every dream has its answer. Its fulfillment. Take yourself. You’re an intellectual type, I can see that right away. But you’re pressed for time. You’re in a rush, and so are your thoughts. If you’d just say the word to me ...”
“What’s the price nowadays?” My voice sounded foreign to me, squeaky.
“That depends on how long it’s for.”
“No, I mean just the usual ...”
“It depends ... whatever you feel like paying...’’
“But what’s the going rate?”
“Some people give five ...”
“Hundred?”
“Thousand. What’s a hundred these days?”
“Five thousand?”
“But not for you. For you there’s no charge. It’s on the house. And I have this feeling that she’ll go for you ... that you’ll make it with her big ...”
And supposing just this once. To prove to myself. Not against her but to realize to help us both. For our future. Our child. Another Jerusalem bus pulled out across the street. A new one pulled in after it and was boarded by a crowd of religious Jews. Whenever I want I simply pay for the coffee, cross the street, and get on it.
A couple entered the café and came over to say hello, a chubby girl dressed in white with short-cropped hair and smiling, mischievous eyes and a tall young man whose hand rested on her shoulder. The girl glanced at me inquisitively, her pants stretched tight over her thighs. The little pimp pulled her toward him and she bent down to kiss him, baring for a moment the dark ivory globes of her breasts, before being led by her partner to a table in the corner. Something about her eyes and short hair sent a stab of pain through me. The young man came back to us and whispered a few words to my companion, who listened judiciously.
“She’ll be here soon.... Would you like to drink something stronger in the meantime?”
“No, thanks. I have to be on my way. I’m in a hurry ... I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time on me...”
“Why worry about it? It’s my time. And I’ve enjoyed spending it with you...’’
I noticed him follow my glance to the girl in the corner, who sat smilingly holding her friend’s hand and bobbing her head pertly.
“Maybe you like her? Just say the word ... let me know...”
“Who?”
“The one who just said hello to us ... in the corner ...”
“Who?” I tried acting innocent. “Oh, her. Yes, I think she’s nice ... but why do you ask?”
His face lit up all at once.
“Very nice! A real personality ... she’s a student, you know.” He grasped my hand. “Allow me. You won’t regret it. Now I see what your taste is ... you won’t 1‹ disappointed ...”
He rose, crossed the room to the chatting couple, made a sign to the girl, and whispered something in her ear. She blushed, taken aback, then glanced my way with her large, gleaming brown eyes and ducked her head shyly. She was gentle, not at all hardened. And yet she was pleased. I caught my breath, the blood pounding away in my heart. My hand shook. I’ll punish her. It’s my right to. For two years I’ve begged and gotten nowhere. The pimp came slowly back to me, sat down without a word, and offered me a cigarette. I glanced down and when I looked up again the girl had already slipped out the back door. Her friend had opened an evening paper and was reading it. Across the street the bus was still waiting. Two teen-agers boarded it and then got off again.
Home. She’s probably having a fit. Who needs this insanity. And all the money too.
“Come.” He touched me lightly.
I still played innocent. “Where to?”
He threw me a hard look.
“You’re just like a child. A stubborn one. Come on, it’s only to say hello to her. Just to say hello. To get to know her.”
“Not now ... some other time,” I murmured, rising and putting a friendly arm around him. We stepped outside, pausing in the doorway for him to regard me with a despairing smile.
“Just come say hello to her. She’s waiting for you. You can arrange to meet her some other time ... it isn’t nice to stand her up ...”
And patiently, expertly, without losing his calm, he steered me into a narrow side street. All at once I was back among the shoe stores, only on the opposite sidewalk. Boots and sneakers filled the dark display windows. In the back of one of the stores a small bulb still burned. We stepped into the hallway of an apartment house. The man pressed the handle of the first door and opened it. “Just say hello to her. Act your age! What are you afraid of? This is strictly on the up-and-up.”
I was in the lit store. I could see myself reflected in its mirrors, thin and gray, the scratch on my face like a string of tiny pearls, my tie over one shoulder, my jacket badly creased. Next to a divan were some inclined stools for trying on shoes and shelves with samples of ladies’ footwear. Empty shoe boxes and white tissue paper lay scattered on the floor. Shoes had been sold here a short while ago, there was still a human smell about the place. She stood at the back of it, near the cash register, examining a shoe with a spiked heel. Close up she was not so pretty; her perfume was cheap and there was a small scar by the side of her mouth; but the special charm of her eyes, that humorous gleam, was still there. No choking up this time. Which thought turned to slow desire. She looked at me calmly, tossing her head with a deep, natural grace so unlike the manner of a whore. She sat on the divan, about my age, perhaps a year or two older, and placed one leg on the stool in front of her, her pant bottom rolled up to reveal a plump, smooth, creamy-white foot. I stepped toward her, still holding my black briefcase. She glanced at it with a bright, intelligent look, waiting smi
lingly for me to put it down. I laid it on the carpet and sat on the stool like a salesman.
“What’s your name?”
“Natalie.”
“Natalie? Really? How lovely ... are you Israeli?”
“For the time being.”
I laughed abruptly.
“My name is Tsvi.”
“You’re not from Tel Aviv?”
“I used to be. Now I live up north, near Acre.”
The need to leave a trail of lies in self-defense.
I stroked her foot. Her skin was warm, sweaty, smooth to the touch. I undid the buckle of her old, worn shoe and slipped it off her foot, which she let lie, white and puffy, on the slope of the stool.
“What size do you take, madame?” I asked suddenly, feeling myself go scarlet.
Firmly she set down her other foot, presenting me with it. I unbuckled the shoe, slipped it quickly off, and threw it aside. With an awful lust I fell upon her feet, kissing the dust, the Nubian loess, the faint stink of callused skin, the smooth underarch, the human flesh. Swooning, I licked them, my pants bursting with desire, with my hideous love for her, lifting her feet and sticking them into my mouth, nipping them lightly while she laughed with alarm and strange pleasure, her eyes shutting light. I dropped from the stool to the carpet, still licking and biting, beside myself, dizzy with desire, grunting like an animal, abandoning myself to the depths. Glassily she stroked my hair and hauled my thin tie in like a rope. Suddenly, though, she took fright and pulled her bare feet away.
“Don’t. Stop that! Get up and come over here.”
And I did, filled with a passion I had never felt before, struggling to undo her blouse and pants. She pushed my hand away and slipped out of her pants herself. Brown lingerie parted along a hidden zipper, revealing a large, scar)’ brown navel. My love, I whispered. My dearest.
“Help me, please.”
She didn’t get what I meant.
“Can you help me?”
She made a face. “What do you want?”
“You know. Help me in.”
And standing there I began to come even as I went down on her. A failure. Here too? Panic took hold of me. She spread her legs wide, reaching for my wet cock, grimacing with disgust.
“Wait a minute! Hang on there. You’re shooting your load. Hang on!”
I buried my face in her, trying to hold it, feeling her warmth, her legs wound around me, shuddering with each jet that squirted as though from a little heart, still coming while I kissed the white fabric of her blouse, searching for her eyes which she denied me.
At last she threw me powerfully off.
“Was I in you?”
“Sure, sure. Don’t let it worry you.” Her voice was suddenly harsh, impatient. “Don’t tell me that this was your first time...”
“Of course not. What makes you think that?”
She rose, looking away, and quickly zipped up her pants. She ran a hand through her hair while casting me a querying look of concern. I zipped my pants too, took out my wallet, and gave her the thousand-pound note that I’d gotten from father.
“This is what he and I agreed on.”
“Who’s he?”
“That man...”
“Since when does he do business for me? Hand over another thousand.”
“I don’t have it.”
“You don’t have it? What do you mean you don’t have it?”
“I don’t have it.”
“Then give me your watch.”
“My watch?” I was flabbergasted. “No way!”
“The hell with it then. Give me five hundred more pounds.”
“I tell you I don’t have it.”
“What’s in that briefcase?”
“Just papers.”
She sat down by the cash register, slipping her feet back into her unbuckled shoes, her butched head held high. Where had I seen before that look that flared in her eyes?
“Let me see your wallet.”
Her voice was dry, tough, but controlled.
I laughed nervously and showed it to her. She went through it quickly, found five hundred pounds, and started to take it.
“Leave me that money. I need it to get to Jerusalem.”
“You can hitch.”
“No, I can’t. No one will stop for me ...”
I spoke fearfully, fawningly, a stranger to myself.
Someone tried the front door of the store.
She reflected, replaced the money, and handed me back the wallet.
“I’m letting you off this time,” she scolded. “But it isn’t nice to take advantage like that. You look like a decent type ... let’s have none of your tricks next time...”
“I really am sorry ... next time ... I didn’t realize ... do you always hang out around here?”
Her eyes smiled.
“You’ll find me. But no more funny stuff, please.”
A middle-aged man in a custom-made suit opened the door, bowed hurriedly, and shut it again. I took my briefcase and left, walking quickly with my head down, not looking where I was going, losing my way in the vacant streets until I found the station again. I joined the small line of people waiting for the Jerusalem bus. The wind had died down but it was colder now, with fog instead of dust. A few students and tired commuters stood alongside me. Feeling empty inside, I leaned against the metal railing of the platform. Someone reached out to me across it. It was the short, swarthy man with the link chain.
“How was it?”
“Okay,” I murmured. “It was fine. But I don’t have any cash left I gave it all to her.”
“How about a watch or a pen...?”
I didn’t answer. People turned to look at us. He smiled to himself, fair and patient to the last.
“Never mind, then. It’s something else in there with all those shoes, isn’t it? A special thrill. I always score well there. Well, never mind ... next time ... this is my beat, by the Jerusalem bus ...”
He shook my hand. I felt shaken. Had he really seen right through me?
The bus lurched into the night, confidently negotiating the narrow streets of south Tel Aviv. To hell with the money. Not against life or beside it but straight into the teeth of it. Home. Home. You’ll help her. She’ll let you. She’s scared and so are you. But to lick her like a dog! From where did it grab me like that? The cheap scent of her perfume still clinging to my face the dust on her feet the sickening horror of it not till my dying day. Alone and by myself. The pairs of shoes in the dark store. An unplumbed reality. And now what? Horatio’s head between my palms old and decrepit half dead from chasing after father. I must make order at once. But what made me say my love? Something has happened. Something dreadful has happened and is done. If I’m not careful I’ll lose her. Dina my love. My child. My light. My forgiveness. Not against you. With you. But what made me say my love? Yours the decent folk and mine the lunacy. Let him stick to what he’s good at. He alone. While he lives and breathes. Let him sit and write.
Take care take care all things are possible never again. Too chancy. Though my heart stirs for it. And you deserved it.
A smell of orange groves in blossom. So spring is breaking out after all. The lights of the houses receding behind us. The last factories. What made me say my love? How did the words slip out? How do I annul them, take them back? What have I done? She must be worried to death. Gone to her parents’, called Ya’el, they’re at our house now. There’ll be hell to pay. What made me say my love?
The three basic rhythms. Contact, release and contraction. The more human beings come to resemble each other under the influence of culture, civilization, commerce and cross-contact, the more they seek freedom, even perversity, but also a greater sense of self via new conflicts. The Peloponnesian Wars. In the midst of such insight, such sophistication, such a blossoming of philosophy, art and religion, the Greek cities declare all-out, bloody wars on each other for no good reason and contract self-destructively.
The roar of the speeding bus int
o the night, plunging through Judean fog. Surrounded by patients. She leaned on me with such assurance. Did they sense it in me too? A kindred soul. I must be mad to bark like a dog where could it have come from? My students should have seen me. Must get up and bark for them. Her eyes on me. Vera Zasulich. The individual in history. After Passover I’ll start straight from the murder of the Tsar. In a subdued tone, with precise, colorful details. The thirteenth of March 1881. Nikolai Riskov pitches a bomb at the horses’ feet, not far from the Winter Palace. The cobblestones caked with ice. Sofia Proveskaya, that noble, magnificent soul. And above all, the thrower of the second bomb that killed the tyrant, the blond, curly-headed Pole Ignaty Grynbatski, age twenty-four, an engineering student who refused even to give his name when he lay dying in his own blood. Sitting paralyzed on a bench in the summer garden, Dostoyevsky hears of the planned assassination several months in advance and, despite his reactionary views, neglects to inform the authorities. I’ll hook them with the flashy little items and take them quickly on to the big significant ones. They’ll learn to love those lost young terrorists yet.
I can’t get rid of her smell. The taste of dry felafel and greasy sauerkraut. The smell of diesel fuel. My sticky fingers. First of all a hot bath. What strange stains on my clothes. I’ll elude her in the dark. But what made me say my love? And so easily.
The bus is speeding like mad. A cowboy of a driver. A wave of nausea inside me. The other passengers slumped mostly asleep in their seats. I can never learn to sleep on a bus. Horatio. Horatio. Did he ever get back to mother? So terribly sorry for him. Father will go back there tomorrow by himself. And you hit yourself. You’ll go mad yet. They’ll drive you to it. Genetic insanity awaits you Asa. But give it your all keep a clear head don’t take a wrong step. Now I know what my soul stirs for what I need. The sacred tremor within. A woman not a child. Yes my love.
I tripped going down the steps of the bus, the vomit already in my throat, while an old Civil Defense reservist stood looking on. My briefcase had puke on it too. Sick and shivering with chills, I dragged myself to the bus stop, where I waited endlessly for a bus to take me home.
A Late Divorce Page 20