A Remarkable Kindness

by Diana Bletter

  It was Sunday, and after Eli left, Aviva went to sit in the café on the corner. She drank coffee and ate a flaky croissant and didn’t want to look at a woman standing alone at the back of the bar drinking a bright green absinthe. It was strange for Aviva to sit there just staring at the pigeons on the street. Because she was always studying or watching or waiting to casually pick up a discarded newspaper on the next table with a message tucked inside. She was ready for questions yet to be asked—probably the reason Kagan had chosen her for that sort of job—because she had learned from her parents on all those bird-watching outings to pay attention to details.

  Does the subject hold his coffee in his right or left hand?

  Where does he keep his gun?

  What does his bodyguard do when the subject gets up to go to the bathroom?

  How long a drag does he take on his cigarette?

  At the café, Aviva had nobody to study, and she forced herself not to think about what had happened with Eli. She tried not to remember every detail when she’d been trained not to forget.

  ELI’S SON AVIV passed the ball to a teammate, who jumped, did a fake layup, and then passed the ball to another player, who scored a three-pointer. The Druze team, Rafi’s team, still led by two points, thirty-eight to thirty-six.

  “Do you go to all your husband’s games?” Eli asked.

  “Almost never. But since Benny was killed, I hate being alone in the house. My other sons were staying late in school, so I showed up.”

  “Somebody planned this one for us.”

  The acoustics were terrible, but Aviva could hear his sigh, long and deep, isolating it the way she used to isolate somebody’s footsteps walking down a street. She used to be able to sit for hours and wait for a certain noise: a letter dropped in a mail slot, a knob turning, the spongy sound of a shoe springing off a step.

  Eli’s son’s team scored two more points, tying the score. Rafi called a time-out.

  “His name is Rafi,” Aviva said.

  “I didn’t ask.” Eli’s voice was hard.

  “I didn’t think you’d remember it, anyway. I always wondered what we’d say to each other if we met up again.”

  “At least now we can talk to each other.”

  “Not like that time we accidentally met on the bus. I still can’t believe we got on the same bus.”

  The Druze kids ran toward Rafi and huddled around him. Rafi knelt in front of them, took out a white board, and held it in the crook of his right arm, his bad arm.

  Aviva said, “He tried to detonate a bomb, but it blew up too fast.”

  “About that bus,” Eli said after a while. “I sat down right behind you because there was only that one seat.”

  Aviva remembered how she’d wanted to turn and throw her arms around him, already tired of living a double life. She couldn’t imagine being one of those people who dedicated their whole lives to working for the Company, who married and raised children in enemy countries, discarding their old lives like woolen coats in the sun, never seeing their parents or siblings again. As Eli had stood up, she’d felt him brush against her shoulder as if by accident, and then she’d stared through the window as he walked away, vanishing into the crowd on the street, so good at making himself disappear.

  The game began again and Aviva now followed Rafi. He paced the gym floor the way he used to pace for nights on end after Benny had been killed. Aviva would wake up and find Rafi standing in the living room as though he were looking for something, and the two of them would hold each other in the darkness, the sea pounding against the shore, drumming the truth into their heads. He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s—

  “Come on, Aviv!” Eli was shouting. “Aviv, pass to Noam! Pass to Noam!”

  A player on Rafi’s team fouled Aviv and then the other team’s coach, a toothy bald guy, called a time-out. The score was forty-eight to forty-seven, Rafi’s team down by one. Two seconds left in the game. When they resumed play, a boy from Rafi’s team stole the ball. Wahid, their best player—Rafi had told Aviva about him—scooted around Aviv, sideswiped Noam, and sank the ball. The buzzer sounded. Rafi’s team won.

  “Go fuck yourself!” Noam shoved Wahid.

  “You son-of-a-bitch!” Wahid pushed him back.

  Suddenly, all the other players were swept into a brawl. Rafi ran to break up the fight, Eli jumped out of his seat and bounded down the stairs, and Aviva sprang up after them, propelling herself through fists and elbows, knees and knuckles, the flash of teeth like knives. A boy yanked her out of the chaos and she tried to shoulder her way back in, but then she gave up. “Stop it!” Aviva shouted. “Stop!”

  Eli wrenched Noam off Wahid and threw them apart. “Noam!”

  All of a sudden the boys untangled, separating themselves.

  “Inte mnih?” Rafi asked Wahid in Arabic, throwing his arm around him. Are you okay?

  Aviva waited. She watched Rafi and Wahid walk back to their bench, but she followed Eli, who was dragging Noam across the gym. She noticed the bulge of Eli’s pistol under his shirt, tucked into his waistband, pressed against the small of his back. She suspected that he’d always carry a pistol, though he no longer worked for the Company, almost as if it were a part of him.

  “Don’t you ever, ever do that again!” Eli pressed Noam against the gym wall, leaning in close to the boy’s sweat-stained face.

  “What’s it to you?” Noam spat.

  “Where are your parents?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Look, he realized he was wrong,” said Noam’s coach.

  “That’s not good enough,” Eli said.

  “Noam,” the coach said shortly, “tell him you were wrong.”

  “I’m not apologizing to any Arab.”

  Eli nailed Noam harder against the wall. “How do you know that one day you won’t be in the same army unit with him? The Druze make better soldiers than you ever will.”

  “Abba!”

  Aviva turned to see Aviv grab on to Eli’s shirt, trying to yank him away from Noam. “Let him go!”

  “Aviv!” Eli shoved Aviv’s arm away. “This drives me crazy!”

  “I’ll talk to Noam,” the coach said.

  Eli jerked up his chin and dropped his hands. “You make sure you do.”

  AVIVA FOLLOWED ELI up the cement steps and they sat down again, in different twanging seats.

  “That was awful.” Aviva reached for her handbag to get a tissue to wipe her eyes, her arm accidentally brushing against Eli’s thigh. There was everything she loved about Rafi, but each nerve ending in her body now stood up, awakened. She hesitated, taking a few breaths to calm herself down. “Eli, can we meet up again?”

  “No.”

  “So, this is it?” She felt her entire being snuffed out once more.

  “Aviva, what are you going to tell your husband later?”

  “He won’t ask. He knows there are certain things I don’t talk about.”

  She looked down toward Rafi, catching his eye, holding his gaze. She felt full of love and gratitude for the way he’d washed up onshore just as Eli was receding. Aviva knew she’d loved Rafi for all these years, but she hadn’t forgotten the white curtains swelling out and in, or Eli’s voice close to her ear, the way his breath coursed through her. “Eli, just now when you jumped up to stop the boys, I saw the way you used to be. When you had this spark—”

  “The spark’s gone out.”

  “Don’t tell me you regret all that you’ve done.”

  “Why would I regret anything, considering the way the world’s turned out?” He stopped. “I remember you told me that story about the guy you met at the restaurant in Paris. You said you were having a nice conversation with him—until you mentioned that you were Jewish and he asked you, ‘Aren’t you ashamed?’”

  “The idiot thought I’d be ashamed.”

  “I’m never ashamed about who I am or what I’ve done. We didn’t have a choice. Still don’t.”

  “What does that have to
do with you and me?”

  “It’s like this. Every morning, I take a run through the fields behind our house,” Eli said. “When I start running, it’s dark outside, and then the sky grows lighter. But the sky isn’t blue, it’s all white, and the hills out in the distance are black. It’s really quiet in the fields. Sometimes all I hear is the wind blowing across the earth, and the birds flying overhead, but they’re black, too. That’s all there is, just black and white. I can live with that.”

  “The world isn’t black-and-white. We can still meet, even just for coffee.”

  “Aviva, you know as well as I do that it wouldn’t be just for coffee. And then everything would go gray.”

  “Please, Eli; I want to feel something else besides pain. Just for once, I want to feel something else.”

  “But I don’t.” He paused. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  Aviva sat back in her seat and turned from Eli, hardly noticing the quiet that had swept through the gym. Rafi was waiting with Wahid in the center of the court as Noam and the other coach made their way toward them. The boys shook hands like complete strangers who had nothing to do with each other, and then they turned and walked back in opposite directions.

  “It would have been nice if they pretended they could be friends,” Aviva said.

  “It would have been nice if they even looked at each other. Ever notice how none of the Arab parents come to these games?”

  “Jewish parents don’t come, either. You’re about the only one who’d travel to see your son’s basketball game. There’s not much school spirit. No cheerleaders or marching bands.”

  “But find me another country where everything stops for two minutes on Memorial Day. In America, who thinks about fallen soldiers? It’s all about barbecues and sales.”

  Aviva didn’t need those two minutes to remember Benny. She didn’t know exactly what she needed. “We can still exchange numbers—you never know.”

  “We’ll do that, just in case, but I’m not going to call.”

  Rafi’s head tilted up just as Aviva and Eli finished punching in one another’s numbers. Eli returned the phone to his pocket, 180 degrees from his hidden pistol. He walked down the stairs and Aviva followed. “Rafi,” Aviva said, switching to Hebrew, “this is Eli Rothfeld. His son was playing point guard on the other team. We met each other in Paris.”

  “And by some crazy coincidence, again right here.” Eli extended his arm. Took Rafi’s hand gently in his own. “It was a good game. I’m really sorry about what happened.”

  “Wasn’t the first time and won’t be the last.” Rafi glanced down at Eli. His voice sounded different, gruff even.

  “I’m going to make sure that the coach talks to the boys, and I’m going to talk to them, too.” Eli looked at Aviva. “Nice to see you again,” he added flatly, because he was still someone who’d never give himself away.

  “You, too.” Aviva kept her voice neutral. She stayed with Rafi in the empty gym while the boys changed out of their uniforms and then he turned off the lights and locked the door. The boys walked up the hill, and Rafi and Aviva got into their car.

  “That was terrible when the boys fought like that,” she said. “I hope Eli talks to the other team. I think he will, but I really didn’t know him all that well.”

  “Aviva, you don’t have to explain.”

  She turned and touched his right arm, his three fingers hooked around the steering wheel. “Ani rak rotzah lagid l’cha,”—I just want to tell you, she began, in Hebrew, to emphasize her point—“I love you.” She loved all of him: the small mound of skin that jutted out from under his lower lip and the flattened nose that his older brother had punched and broken long ago. Rafi said that even when blood was gushing into his mouth, he hadn’t stopped fighting.

  “And I don’t need to tell you how much I love you.” He gazed out, concentrating.

  An orange cat darted in front of the car and Rafi braked and then drove slowly, weaving through the winding roads. White lights burned in some of the houses, but by the time they turned off the highway and into their village, the night had deepened all around. All Aviva could see was the vague outlines of the bales of hay in the darkened fields, and at the end of the road under the streetlights, the frayed edge of the sea.

  3

  January 16, 2002

  Emily

  Emily could not believe she was there. Right there in Lauren’s car, driving into her village of Peleg. Most of Emily was terrified—about ninety-nine percent of her—but the other one percent was excited.

  “I know my dad would have been happy,” Emily said. “Maybe not about the reason—which I still can’t wrap my head around—but because I moved to Israel to be with you. Yay, us.”

  “I would never have moved here on my own,” Lauren said. “But I’m a wimp and you, obviously, are not.”

  Emily looked at Lauren’s pregnant belly, waiting for her to say something else. They’d been best friends since they’d lived in the same house on Willow Street in Cambridge as UMass Boston freshmen, yet there were times when Emily still couldn’t tell what Lauren was thinking. And that was frustrating for Emily because she was born in Charleston, West Virginia, and as her mother always said, “What you think on Monday, every Jew in Charleston knows by Tuesday.” Only her mother pronounced the days Mondee and Tuesdee. Emily had dropped the accent as soon as she got a job at an art gallery on Newbury Street (she was convinced that nobody took people with Southern accents seriously), but she could still hear her mother’s words. And now it was Mondee, and Emily was craving to hear what Lauren would say about how she’d completely flipped her life upside down.

  “And . . . ?” Emily waited. She wished she’d figured out by now how to get Lauren to say how she truly felt.

  “I’m really happy you’re here,” Lauren finally said.

  “But . . . ?” Emily knew there’d be a but.

  “But it’s not paradise,” Lauren said in that practical way that drove Emily crazy. “Not by a long shot.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?”

  Big pause.

  Emily watched a cloud tumble overhead, leafy and white, the way a tree might look if it were a cloud—or if the cloud were a tree. Birds circled the fields. She thought about how she’d come to visit Israel with her family before her father died. Shimon Freulich was born in what was then Czechoslovakia. After Hitler rose to power, he’d had the foresight to bribe some officials, finagle a visa to America, and land in Charleston because the temple there needed a cantor. (“And I needed an older, debonair husband,” Emily’s mother, Phyllis, used to joke.) Phyllis had supported the family until Shimon spoke English well enough to get a job as a used car salesman. And though he lost his entire family in the war, and though he’d struggled his whole life, he remained an eternal optimist whose motto was “Choose life.” Which was why Emily had chosen a new life by moving to Israel, taking a chance, shredding her past, starting all over, and rising like a phoenix. But any sense of hope she’d had during her flight from Logan International Airport (where she sat, not very phoenixlike, in an economy window seat) now vanished.

  “I’m just more realistic,” Lauren was saying. “I always wanted to be a nurse and you always wanted to be an artist.”

  “And you ended up the nurse, and I ended up one of those almost girls leading people through an art gallery.”

  “How many people actually make it in art?” Lauren asked. “You chose a very competitive field. But you’re still young.”

  “In the art world, if you’re not famous by thirty, you might as well be dead.” Emily locked her fingers together and turned them upside down, thinking of her favorite childhood game. “Here’s the church . . . here’s the steeple . . . open the doors and see all the people.” Emily’s father had made her say, “Here’s the temple, here’s the steeple.” And then her mother—in that irrepressible drawl—would say, “Honey, there are no temples that come with steeples.”

  Emily let her fingers
unclasp and fall. The neon pink polish on her fingernails, which had looked hopeful in Harvard Square, now looked ridiculous. She again thought of her father, who would have reminded her, “This is the land of sorrow and hope. It will sustain you and make you strong.”

  “Living here is far different from being a tourist visiting here,” Lauren said now. “I love the village—it’s a great place to raise kids, and it’s really charming—but I don’t want you to be disappointed, that’s all.”

  “After what Rob did, nothing can disappoint me.” Emily turned back to the window. The sky was crystalline. Full of brightness, and emptiness, too. Lauren was just trying to warn her: Wherever you go, there you are. You can’t leave yourself behind. Lauren was still Lauren, exacting and temperamental. “Well, she can afford to be,” Emily’s mother once said, “her parents are loaded.”

  “Oh, you’ve been through so much.” Lauren reached for Emily’s arm. “I’m sorry. I am happy you came to be with me. I just don’t want you to get hurt again.”

  “I don’t want to get hurt again, either. But I didn’t want to stay in Boston, and I didn’t want to go back to Charleston, and I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “Cantor Freulich’s daughter makes aliyah.” Lauren’s gray eyes softened as she broke into a smile. “That’s big news. I can’t believe that I moved to Israel before you did.”

  “Hey, check out those palm trees,” Emily said. “They look like Hawaiian dancers doing the hula. You couldn’t have planned a move more exotic than this.”

  “I didn’t plan it.” Lauren pushed her hair behind her ears and over her shoulders. “You know it was an accident.”

  “An accident meant to happen. You know how my dad always said accidents are God’s secret plans for us.”

  Lauren shook her head. “With all due respect to your father, I think it’s all random.” Her voice was firm. “There’s nothing planned for any of us.”