Second Person Singular

by Sayed Kashua

  Why was he so jealous? After all, the lawyer believed Yonatan’s story. He believed him even when he said that he didn’t remember Leila’s note and that he could hardly recall her name. But the fact that she might have had a relationship with a talented, perhaps successful artist rattled him nonetheless.

  All things considered, the lawyer thought as he lit a cigarette with the electric lighter in the car, Yonatan’s reve­lations had only improved his relationship with his wife. After their initial meeting on Scout Street, the lawyer had come home full of love and lust for his wife, so much so that he decided to alter his sleeping habits and return to her bed.

  “We have to force the kids to sleep in their rooms,” he had told his wife as he took his daughter down to the ground floor and moved his son’s crib into his room. The feeling was wonderful: he desired his wife, fell back in love with her, and, despite the discomfort, even insisted on spooning before sleep. When their daughter came upstairs crying in the middle of the night, the lawyer insisted that she return to her room. His vigilance lasted for several nights. After that he gave up and let his daughter back into the bed and resumed sleeping in her room downstairs. What can you do? he thought. With all due respect to love, I sleep much better alone.

  What would he say if he met Yonatan at the exhibition? Walking toward the art academy, the lawyer tried to formulate the sentences that would explain his presence. But why did he even need to offer an explanation? The show was open to the public. They would surely speak in Hebrew, only in Hebrew. He could say to Yonatan, I remember you mentioning the opening and art has always interested me so I decided I’d swing by, or he could mention that he had heard about the exhibition from a friend, a professor of art history, and had decided that he couldn’t afford to miss it. After all, he also liked art, especially the work of a certain Egon Schiele. The lawyer’s apprehension quickly changed shades, turning into a desire to know what “Yonatan” was like in public, among his friends, among the artsy crowd in attendance, and to see his reaction when he saw the lawyer—whether he blushed when he lied, whether his lies were transparent, and whether this charade was something he could really pull off.

  The lawyer walked through the gates and onto the campus and stood before a sign that pointed the way to the different exhibits—plastic art, visual media, ceramic design, architecture, and other shows that did not interest him in the least. He looked for the arrow that pointed the way to the photography exhibit.

  There was very little foot traffic in the photography wing when he got there. Each time he heard steps along the hard floor, the lawyer spun around to look for Yonatan. There were different-sized photos hung on the walls of the open classrooms and along the halls. The lawyer tried to walk slowly and lend himself the air of someone just taking in the arts even though what really interested him was the little white rectangle next to each photo, where the student’s name was presented.

  The lawyer, looking for Yonatan’s work, toured the halls and the classrooms, gazing at landscapes and ­rotted-out buildings and portraits of people who glared at him, generally in the nude. There were also plenty of unclear photos, cut in the middle or blurred or splotched with color. He walked into the classrooms and, if they were empty, he made do with a glance at the name of the student presenting. If there were others milling around that particular exhibit, then he forced himself to make a round, eyeing the pictures at a hurried stroll.

  The third room he entered was Yonatan’s. All it took was one glance and he was set at ease: these were not the photos that the art history professor had referred to earlier in the day. There was no way that these old photos, in black and white, were outstanding or compelling. He himself had already seen more interesting photos in that day’s paper.

  “To my mind,” the lawyer heard an older woman whisper to her partner, “this young man’s work is the most interesting of all.”

  “Yes, he’s a real talent,” her authoritative partner said. “What’s his name?”

  Please, no, no, the lawyer prayed before hearing the woman say, “Forschmidt, Yonatan Forschmidt.”

  The lawyer looked very carefully at Yonatan’s prints, the faces along the wall. He felt he had to understand what had so impressed the elderly couple, for whom art exhibitions were surely a way of life. He breathed in deeply and started to examine the expressions on the people’s faces, the wrinkles, the pupils, the sad smiles, every last one of the details that Yonatan, that bastard, knew how to zero in on. They really are impressive, the lawyer thought, looking at the close-ups of the children, teens, women, and men. The lawyer, who was always proud of his ability to discern between Arab and Jew at a glance, had a hard time determining the ethnicity of these people.

  He looked at his watch. He still had some time and he lingered in front of the prints and thought of the best way to express his enthusiasm to Yonatan, if he should bump into him. All told, there were twelve prints on display, eleven of which were portraits. Suddenly the lawyer was drawn to the twelfth one, which was positioned apart from the rest, in the corner, as though someone were hiding it from him.

  The photograph was of a naked back, the arched back of a woman on the edge of a child’s bed. He approached the picture slowly and felt his heart rate rise as he drew nearer to the woman’s bared back. Ashamed of what he was doing, he looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was coming. This picture, also in black and white, had been taken in a rather dark room, and he imagined that Yonatan had trained a soft yellow night-light at the woman’s back. The complexion of her skin, her hair—trailing down the nape of her neck in a few scant ringlets—were of an indiscernible shade.

  Again he made sure that he was alone in the room and then took one more step forward, so that his nose almost brushed against the print. He stared hard at the spot where the woman’s behind touched the bed, at her scapula, her spine, her neck. Suddenly he put a hand out to caress the naked woman’s hips. He could have sworn they were Leila’s.