Don't Ask Me If I Love

by Amos Kollek

  He left after the night nurse had brought my supper tray. He said he didn’t go for hospital food.

  I didn’t stop him; I was getting nervous about my plans for the evening.

  When the night nurse came to take the tray I told her that I was tired and was going to go to sleep right away. She said she was sure it would only do me good and turned off the light as she walked out. She was a motherly type.

  Half an hour later the lieutenant opened the door and stepped in. He shut it silently behind him and turned on the light. He had had to lie to the guards to get in but we didn’t have any trouble getting to his car. As I climbed in I felt a penetrating pain that made me gasp, but it went away.

  “You show the way,” he said.

  “You’ve got to start the motor in any case.”

  “That’s true.”

  “O.K., then,” I said, pressing my hand firmly on the bandage, “let’s go.”

  It took us twenty minutes to get to Joy’s house and by that time I was sweating.

  “What floor is it on?” he asked looking up at the building, as he turned the engine off.

  “Roof.”

  He whistled.

  “Then I guess I’ll be going with you, otherwise you might die on the way.”

  “Now let’s not exagg—”

  “No arguments.”

  We climbed slowly up the stairs, stopping a few times on the way. I felt increasingly tired. The lieutenant looked closely at my wet face from time to time, but he didn’t say anything.

  When we reached the roof he stopped and yawned. “I guess I’ll leave you on your own from here on. Scream if she hits you.”

  “O.K.” I smiled. “I won’t be long.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’ve got no one prettier than my mother waiting for me. I’m not holding my breath.”

  “All right.”

  When I got to the familiar grey door the piece of paper with her name on it was not there. I knocked and waited.

  There was no answer and no sound. I knocked again and then tried the knob but the door wouldn’t open. I stood there leaning heavily on the door and breathing the fresh air into my lungs slowly and deeply. I wondered why the hell I hadn’t expected this, why should any girl be home at this hour on a Friday night. No, I thought, if she were out on a date her name would still be on the door. I closed my eyes.

  I walked back inside. The lieutenant was sitting on the top stair, in the dark. I could see the end of his cigarette burning.

  “That was quick,” his voice was low. It barely reached me.

  “Well,” I said, “let’s go.”

  “Wasn’t in?”

  “Uh uh.”

  “Don’t want to maybe hang around for a while and wait?” he asked.

  “No. What the hell for? Looks like she doesn’t live here any more anyway.”

  “Ah,” he said, as if that was what he had expected all along. He showed no signs of moving.

  “O.K.,” I said angrily, “let’s go back.”

  “Paratroopers never go back,” he said solemnly. “Didn’t I ever tell you that? I thought you might want to ask the landlord if he knows where she’s gone.”

  I was surprised that the idea hadn’t occurred to me. It seemed so obvious.

  “I don’t know where the landlord lives,” I said weakly. It’s a big house.”

  “Oh, don’t be stupid,” he said with disgust.

  He started going down the stairs; I walked after him.

  He knocked on the first door we reached. An old man wearing a white shirt and a neatly pressed suit opened the door. He peered at us suspiciously.

  “Good evening,” my companion said politely. “We’re from the army and we’re looking for the landlord.”

  The old man seemed visibly relieved that we were not looking for him and immediately offered his cooperation.

  “Next floor down,” he said anxiously. “Steiner. But she is a woman.”

  “Thanks,” the lieutenant said.

  “You’re welcome,” the old man said doubtfully, and closed the door. We heard the key turn in the lock.

  “Are you feeling O.K.?” the lieutenant asked as we descended to the next floor. “You are quite pale.”

  “Lets see the landlady,” I said.

  Mrs. Steiner turned out to be a very nice woman, indeed, and she adored soldiers. What would we all do, she said, if there were no army? We didn’t answer that question. We didn’t think she was expecting us to answer.

  She was probably a widow, in her late sixties. She very sweetly asked us in, saying that there were always candies in her apartment for young boys like ourselves. I was getting impatient, especially since the lieutenant looked like he might not decline.

  “We have no time for this,” I told him flatly, not looking at the small woman.

  “We have to be back.” he explained to her. “Special mission. We are looking for the girl who used to live on the roof.”

  Mrs. Steiner smiled with delight. It made her face look like a moon.

  “A very sweet girl,” she said.

  “That’s the one,” I put in. “Where has she gone?”

  She looked at me sadly.

  “She is not here any more.”

  “Any idea where she is?” I asked, from over the lieutenant’s shoulder.

  “No.” She shook her head mournfully. I suddenly had the terrifying feeling she might produce some large wet tears any moment.

  “Thanks,” I said, and turned to go.

  “But,” said the high-pitched voice from behind us, “I believe she said she was leaving the country.”

  We turned back to her.

  “I don’t know where she went.” She looked at us apologetically.

  Chapter Seventeen

  WHEN I left the hospital a week later, I went back to my parents’ house. There didn’t seem to be much choice. The doctor said I still needed supervision and a lot of rest, and my mother wouldn’t hear of my going anywhere else. I didn’t really mind it.

  I stayed there three days, being completely passive and not going out.

  I didn’t take any exams. I thought I could take them on the second date they were given, two months later, in September, if I wanted to.

  My parents never mentioned Joy. They were cautious when they talked to me. They didn’t try to push me in any way and they also didn’t ask questions. They were patient. They seemed to believe that time was on their side. They just waited.

  I didn’t think that time was doing me any good but I just waited, too. I still believed Joy would show up or call. The phone made me nervous whenever it rang, but it was never for me.

  On my third morning home, having nothing better to do, I sat down and read the first chapter of my book. The similarity between the hero’s way of speaking and mine amused me. I hadn’t noticed it before. One chapter ended with the remark: “What good is all that crap if you don’t do what you want to?”

  I stared at it for a few moments.

  I went to my desk and started taking out the drawers. In the bottom one I found the small piece of paper:

  Lynda Strawson

  2, Arkheight Street

  (Near Haverstock Hill)

  London N.W. 3

  Under those four lines there was an addition in a more careless hand writing:

  My sister.

  I studied it for a few minutes more. Then I started another search for my bank book. It took me half an hour, but I did find it. Four thousand six hundred pounds, it said. What else, I thought, permission from the army? There shouldn’t be any trouble about that. Not now, anyway.

  So that’s that.

  I called a travel agency and asked the girl if there would be any problem getting a student flight to London.

  She said, no, none at all. I asked her to book one for me.

  The next morning I went to my military camp and asked for permission to leave the country. I got it within half an hour. For those times, it was probably a
world record.

  I came home and found my mother eating lunch. She looked at me worriedly as she put a plate of soup on the table in front of me.

  “I hope you are not tiring yourself,” she said. “You shouldn’t. Not yet.”

  “I am not doing anything physical,” I assured her, “and I feel fine.”

  “It’s for your own good,” she said defensively.

  “I know.”

  I started eating.

  She stood by the table and watched me.

  “Listen, Mom,” I said, “I’ll be flying to London. I think I could do with a vacation.” I smiled pleasantly at her astonished face. “And a change.”

  “But …”

  “I’ll rest as much as I do here.”

  She opened her mouth to protest and then shut it again.

  She sat down at the table, facing me.

  “When do you intend to go?”

  “Eight forty-five, tomorrow. It’s an El A1 flight.”

  There was no surprise left on her face, just a thin trace of bitterness.

  “I think you could have mentioned it before,” she said in a restrained voice.

  “I just thought of it yesterday,” I said truthfully, “and I had to check with the army this morning.”

  “You’ve been home four days.”

  “I need a change,” I said placidly.

  “All right,” she said.

  “I won’t stay long. A few weeks, not more.”

  There was something else bothering her. She hesitated a bit before she finally let it out in the form of a question.

  “Going with somebody?”

  “No,” I said. “Who with?”

  It didn’t hit me until the plane landed in Heathrow Airport.

  Driving to Lynda, the country around me had seemed too real and compelling to be disposed of by a $210 ticket. Israel seemed to be the only country in the world. I hadn’t been anywhere else for four years. But now as I looked out the window of the red coach riding through the rain to the West London Air Terminal, I realized that there were no soldiers hitchhiking. The people were actually speaking about the weather in their polite, polished English. No one was talking about the shooting in the Jordan Valley. No one was even alluding to the Suez Canal.

  Suddenly a pang of excitement rushed through me. Boy, I thought, looking at the traffic in an orderly procession on the left side of the highway, this is England.

  My father had raised no objections to my trip. He was rather open-minded about it actually. I had to grant him that. He said a change could only do me good. He even offered to give me the addresses of his business friends in London, in case I should need something.

  I had left the Triumph in the parking lot at the airport. I didn’t intend to be away from home long.

  When I boarded the plane and the stewardess showed me to my seat smiling her polite, professional smile, it occurred to me that this was going to be the first time that I had flown in four years without having to bail out.

  The taxi driver who took me from the Air Terminal to Hampstead was a sweet old thing.

  “A bit rainy today, isn’t it, sir?” he asked me joyfully as he put my suitcase in the back of the cab. His Cockney accent was refreshing. I found myself smiling broadly back at him.

  “Yes,” I said, “but I hear it has rained in London before.”

  “Oh yes,” he said, “it has.”

  The Rolls-Royces, the red buses, the men in frock coats and Derby hats, the funny policemen, they all seemed excitingly new. Riding through the busy city, I was very glad I had come.

  At Belsize Park tube station the driver stopped the car and turned to me. He lowered the glass screen between us.

  “You’ll have to tell me more precisely where you want to go, sir,” he said, pulling his cap down around his ears. “This is Haverstock Hill.”

  I scratched my head.

  “Are we close to a street called Arkheight?”

  He sniffed.

  “It’s right there, sir,” he said pointing with his finger.

  “Is there any small, reasonably cheap hotel around here?”

  “There is one around the corner,” he said.

  “Let’s go there.”

  “Right.”

  He stopped by a three-story house of red bricks with a red roof. There wasn’t any sign hanging in front.

  “This is it,” the driver said in his funny accent, taking out my bags. “It’s a pleasant place.”

  “Thank you.”

  I gave him his fare plus a two-shilling tip and pushed the gate open. It led through a small green garden to the door. I liked it immediately. An elderly woman at the reception desk smiled at me in a grandmotherly way and said that yes, I was fortunate they still had one vacancy.

  She led me up to the second floor and into a large brightly painted room, overlooking the street. I told her that it was fine and that I would let her know the next morning how long I was going to stay.

  I decided the best time to find a girl at home would be around seven, before supper. It was a kind of game I was playing with myself, pretending I was sure she would be there, sitting at the table, just about to start eating the fish on her plate. I could see it all quite clearly in my imagination.

  I had lunch at a small Swiss restaurant near the tube station and then I went back to the hotel, took a hot bath, and went to sleep. When I woke up it was past seven and I jumped out of bed, afraid that my oversleeping was a bad omen. I dressed quickly and left.

  Number 2, Arkheight Street was a five-minute walk from the hotel. There were only four families living in the house, so the name Strawson wasn’t hard to locate.

  At the second floor I stopped and smoothed down my hair with my wet hand. In God we trust, I told myself soothingly. It has to be true. It’s printed on American money.

  I rang the bell and waited.

  I heard light footsteps. Then the door opened. A tall figure in a flowery bathrobe stood in front of me. The girl’s face was familiar but she had short light curly hair and heavy dark eyelashes. There were a few seconds of absolute silence.

  “It’s you again,” Joy said finally. Her blush was unmistakable even under her make-up. “You’ve probably been counting on getting a good English supper.”

  I let the air out of my lungs, slowly and quietly, so as not to make my relief roaringly obvious.

  “I find London rather damp,” I said. “A bit nasty for summer, isn’t it?”

  “Oh,” she said.

  Somewhere, inside, a kettle whistled loudly and then stopped.

  “Well, come in, won’t you?” she said, but she didn’t move from the doorway.

  “Don’t tell me,” she said softly, “that you have come all the way to London just to see me.”

  “Yes, that is exactly what I’ve come for.”

  “Well,” she said, even more softly, “I’ll be goddamned.”

  She moved away a bit, to let me pass. I took my hands out of my pockets and stepped in.

  “Now,” the soft voice said, as I brushed by the thin cloth of her bathrobe, “in that case, perhaps a kiss would be in order.”

  I held her by the shoulders and pulled her to me. Her eyes closed dreamily and her lips opened a bit. Her mouth was warm and sweet. I felt my fingers tightening on her skin, involuntarily.

  “Why did you disappear, damn you?” I said hoarsely when she finally pulled back slightly.

  “Now what the hell is this?” a new voice said from outer space.

  I looked in the direction the voice had come from. A tall blond girl was standing there, in a bathrobe identical to Joy’s. She resembled Joy, but was not quite as pretty.

  “What’s so special about those bathrobes?” I asked a bit sourly.

  “They have quality,” the new girl said briskly but her eyes stayed on me for a moment saying, and what the hell is so special about you, flatfoot? And then they shifted to Joy repeating the same idea more or less, only more insistently.

 
“I might as well introduce you two,” Joy said, “This is my sister, Lynda, and this is Assaf Ryke, a tourist from Israel.”

  “Ah, one of those,” Lynda said, but she extended her hand and switched on a pleasant smile. “Actually I believe I’ve heard about you from Joy, but for a moment I thought you were the new milkman.”

  I weakly pressed her hand.

  “Yes,” I said, “they keep changing them all the time.”

  “And with no notice,” Lynda added. “But come in. Why are you two standing in the doorway?”

  It was a hard question to answer so I closed the door and we moved through a hall into a small, gay living room.

  “John!” Lynda hollered at someone who was hiding behind the sports page. “Come and meet your guests.”

  He jerked abruptly into a standing position and cleared his throat. He was tall and skinny and pale, every inch an Englishman.

  “Sorry,” he said, putting out his hand, “how do you do?”

  “Don’t be,” I said, taking it. “I am Assaf. Glad to meet you.”

  “Oh God,” Joy said, “I hope you haven’t reformed. This isn’t quite your style.”

  I shrugged.

  “I hope I have reformed.”

  “I trust you will join us for supper,” John said, folding his newspaper neatly and placing it on his chair. I decided he must be in his middle twenties, but his hair was cut short.

  “Thank you.”

  “We might as well eat, then,” Lynda said.

  She led the way to the table, which was on the other side of the room, near the kitchen.

  After we had finished eating, Joy asked me: “Where are you staying?”

  “A nice quiet place,” I said, “a few minutes walk from here. It’s in Lyndhurst Gardens.”

  “Oh yes, I know the place.” Lynda said.

  “Then, maybe,” Joy said, tapping with her teaspoon on the tablecloth, “we could take a walk there. It’s a pleasant evening.”

  “That is a good idea,” I said.

  She got up.

  “I’ll get dressed,” she said. “You stay here and amuse your hosts.”

  “I’d like to help with the dishes,” I said to Lynda.

  “Well, well,” Joy said nastily and left the room.

  “That’s sweet of you,” Lynda said, “but there’s no need.”