Girl Unwrapped

by Gabriella Goliger

  “Go ahead. Say it,” David urges. He massages her right palm with his strong thumb while his glowing eyes fix on hers. “You’ve been bottling up your feelings for so long, haven’t you, little girl? I know. We know, don’t we, Janet? It’s okay. Let it flow.”

  Abruptly Toni’s tears stop. The feeling of being seized by the throat is back. David turns to Janet.

  “Kiss her.”

  Janet regards him open-mouthed. She’s drunker than Toni realized. Her face wears a bleary, unfocussed expression. But to Toni’s surprise, Janet leans forward and kisses her, a quick, light brushing of the lips. The cool glass beads tickle Toni’s neck. She’s too astonished to say a word.

  “You call that a kiss? That prissy little thing? Come on, Janet, do it right,” David sneers. “Don’t be such a prude.”

  “What’s going on, David?” Janet asks slowly, a suspicious look dawning on her face. She sits up, arms crossed over her naked chest. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to help our little friend here. Have a heart. She’s a virgin, for Chrissake.” He says this as if virginity were an affliction. Toni tries to struggle off the bed, but David wraps his arms around her from behind, as if she were a mental patient to be subdued.

  “Easy, easy, girl. Trust me.”

  Janet looks past Toni, fixing David with a hurt and hostile look.

  “Leave her alone. This isn’t funny.”

  “That’s right. It isn’t. There’s a tortured soul here. All closed up like a fist. She needs you, Janet. Loosen up.” David sounds genuinely mournful, as if he himself were the lovelorn supplicant. Toni stops struggling and looks for Janet’s answer, wondering despite herself, what if? What if Janet could be persuaded to kiss her properly?

  “Come on,” he urges.

  Janet chews her lips, and her eyes dart from Toni to David. Then her face hardens and her fist swings wildly. She misses him and clips Toni smartly on the ear.

  “You pig.”

  “That’s not very nice, Janet,” David, says releasing Toni. “You hurt our little friend.”

  “And suppose we get off on each other, eh?” Janet shouts. “What if we decide to leave you out? Zee two vimmen, zey are so beautiful together! Ooh-la-la!” she says. “So what do we need you for?”

  And before he can respond, she rises up on her knees and kisses Toni again, harder, more deliberate this time, trembling with anger, her chin colliding with Toni’s. Yet her lips are soft as rose petals, as Toni always imagined they would be. When the kiss is over, Toni falls backward. From the far corner of the room comes the shrill wail of an electric guitar being fingered on the high notes.

  “Cool. You chicks go for it. I’m already gone.”

  David rolls off the bed to rummage on the floor for his shirt. “I wasn’t angling for anything,” he adds in an aggrieved tone. “You’ve got a petty streak in you, Janet. I just want us all to be happy. Free of hang-ups.”

  Standing above them now, his shirt hooked on his forefinger and hanging over his shoulder, he addresses himself to Toni.

  “You’re not going to chicken out, now, are you? You’ve got to act. You can’t just dream.”

  Looking from him to Janet, seeing Janet stiffen, Toni lunges forward like someone trying to grab a prize at the same time she realizes it’s all wrong, insane. But her body is already in motion. Before she can stop herself, she plants a sloppy kiss on Janet’s lips. No, not her lips. The side of her mouth. Janet wipes her face with the back of her hand and regards Toni in frosty silence. Suddenly they are back at camp, in that other crazy moment of drunken collision. Leaping to her feet, Janet snatches the scarlet shawl draped over the lampshade, wraps it around her bare shoulders, and stomps from the room. Her back retreats across the garden. She yanks open the back door to the main house and shuts it firmly behind her. David shrugs, a gesture that says, Hey, I tried, didn’t I, didn’t I try my best? The lamp, robbed of its fine, red-cloth covering, reveals a plain, parchment-coloured shade, scorched on one side. The light cast is harsh and cold, exposing the ugliness of the topsy-turvy room. The San Francisco band continues to grind out another variation of its plaintive, cacophonous howl.

  Janet has slept on Toni’s couch in the living room. David has withdrawn to the garden with a blanket and pillow (but not before he first cocked his head to Toni in invitation and grinned at her appalled rebuff). Toni has the turquoise room to herself. Mercifully, much of the night is gone. For a while she sinks into stunned sleep, wakes to a raging thirst and needlepoints of sunlight poking through the slits of the metal doors. She’s trapped in a dream. How did I get here, how do I get out? The turquoise-painted walls have turned a sickly colour, like the powdery bloom of bread mould. Despite her pounding head, she hurries into the house to kneel beside Janet’s blanket-wrapped figure on the couch. The eyelids flutter open, revealing red and teary eyes. They shut again quickly.

  “Janet, I’m sorry.”

  Empty, used-up words.

  Janet’s hair is a bird’s nest tangle. Smudges of makeup linger on her pale cheek. Yet she appears particularly beautiful now, concentrating with all her might on some private place inside herself, her fine bones showing beneath her skin. And merely witnessing this seems another transgression.

  “Goodbye,” Toni says, stepping backward.

  Janet remains tense beneath her sheet with her eyes squeezed shut. It’s clear she has no intention of opening them again until Toni has taken her sorry, unwanted self away.

  chapter 19

  She has to laugh at the name: Hotel Vienna. There’s nothing remotely Viennese about this dingy room with the cracked, smoke-grimed ceiling, the tattered bedspread complete with cigarette burn-holes she can put her thumb through, the drunkenly tilted wardrobe, the naked walls, and dusty floor. A faded sign above the hotel entrance, tucked away on a side-street off Jaffa Road, beckons to transients and lowlifes with little money and fewer expectations. Down the hall is a shared bathroom that reeks of urine and Flit bug spray. In the alley below, cats hiss and fight over scraps of garbage. But all this ugliness soothes in a way. Like a “fuck you” scrawled on a wall.

  Lying atop the bedspread in the stillness of the morning, Toni takes perverse satisfaction in her surroundings. Look at you, insect! You got what you deserve.

  The hotel room’s squalor is partly her own. She has contributed scattered unwashed clothes and remnants of take-out meals. Her stale smells mingle with those of her predecessors. The one bright spot is the forty-ounce bottle of Stock brandy on the windowsill. She’s saving that for tomorrow when downtown becomes deserted for the Sabbath and there’s nothing else to do.

  Gradually the city awakens. Traffic rumbles, feet hurry across the pavement, metal shutters over shops rattle open, newsboys call out the name of a local paper: Ha’aretz! Ha’aretz! She pulls on some clothes and slips downstairs into the lobby, trying not to draw the attention of the desk clerk, a young woman with heavy makeup, blood-red nails, and a suspicious pouting mouth, who always wants to know how long Toni plans to stay. Fortunately, her attention is elsewhere. “What’s your problem?” the clerk barks into the phone. She doesn’t notice when Toni steps past and out the front door.

  She meanders this way, that way, while all about her people full of energy and purpose hurry to their daily tasks. She wishes she could do a better job of pretending to have somewhere to go. What if she’s recognized? What if someone from the ulpan, or worse, David Konig, calls out from the throng? She imagines him tracking her. “Why are you avoiding me?” he would say, all innocent and hurt. “What’s the big deal?” Her reedy figure would be easy to spot. More than ever she feels conspicuously tall—an anomaly in a land of short, compact people.

  She veers off the main road and drifts toward the district of the ultra-orthodox. Jews dressed as they did in the nineteenth-century ghettos of eastern Europe spill through the streets, wearing black frock coats, black hats, flowing beards, and earlocks, payot, spiralling down the sides of their preoccupied,
stern-looking faces. The men rush past her averting their eyes, as required by their strict code of conduct. Women in sack-like dresses and tight kerchiefs herd flocks of young children. Weeks ago—it seems like months—Toni came here with David and Janet on a Friday evening. They stood together on a street corner while the sky turned a luminous royal blue and the joyful clamour of prayer issued from a dozen synagogues. Now she passes the same little courtyard where they had stopped to peek into windows and spy on housewives fussing over the Sabbath meal preparations.

  “Golem!” a shrill voice calls.

  She turns, startled. There’s no one in the courtyard but a very small boy seated on a doorstep. He has silky white-blond earlocks and a skullcap that covers his head like a black bowl. He sucks his fingers and stares at her with wide impudent eyes.

  “What did you call me?” she asks the boy.

  “Golem,” he says again, unfazed.

  Freak, monster, Toni silently translates to herself. A lava of words bubbles up in her brain. You little shit, you pompous little asshole with your inherited pretensions to superior morality. I’ll give you the evil eye like you’ve never seen before. She gnashes her teeth, takes a step forward. The boy’s face crumples. He runs across the courtyard blubbering, “Ima, Ima, Ima.” The moment, for the short time it lasts, is ridiculously satisfying.

  “I want to join the army,” Toni declares.

  Behind the desk in a big noisy room at the Ministry of Defence sits a girl soldier with officer’s stripes on her shoulders. At other desks, girls in khaki uniforms type letters and answer phones.

  “Why?”

  The question erupts, brusque, incredulous, from the officer’s mouth. A question Toni hadn’t anticipated.

  “Because, I … I love this country. This is my country.”

  The officer waits for further explanation. She has short, dark curls, cherub cheeks, a cupid mouth, and shrewd Slavic eyes. Her small, competent-looking hands are folded over the passport and other papers Toni has given her.

  Taking a deep breath, Toni launches into a monologue in both Hebrew and English about her desire to become a real Israeli, to integrate totally, and about her admiration for the military, her patriotism. As she rattles on, her face prickles with heat despite the big ceiling fan that whirls above. The officer eyes her with intent curiosity.

  “But you are enrolled at the university,” she says. “You have the stipend for foreign students.”

  Toni stammers that she is willing to pay it back, that it doesn’t seem fair that foreigners get a head start at the university while Israelis have to go to the army first. The officer’s brow furrows.

  “Fair? You have funny ideas. If you are entitled to something, why not take it?”

  She leans forward confidingly, eyes brightening, and says she herself intends to study abroad one day. Paris. London. Has Toni ever been? She smiles for the first time in their conversation. The digression strikes Toni as some kind of test. She swallows hard and tells the officer her goal is not merely the standard two years in the army but an additional year with the pioneering brigade that sets up border settlements. She’s willing to go wherever posted. She’s not afraid of death. Her interlocutor draws back with a frown at the word “death.”

  “You must take a psychological test to join the army,” she says sharply. “Did you know that?”

  “Yes,” Toni lies. “I know.” She hopes the officer doesn’t notice the blood draining from her face.

  “Let me ask you a frank question.” The officer leans forward again. Her eyes narrow. “Have you been drinking?”

  Toni jerks up in her seat. “No!”

  Well, maybe a bit, she has to admit. Hours ago. But she’s not drunk. She’ll take any test to prove it. Sweat from her armpits trickles down her sides.

  “I suggest you think this over a little longer,” the officer says. “Talk about it with your parents.” She pushes Toni’s papers forward, wrapping up the interview.

  “I’m rejected for the army?” Toni tries to keep her voice steady.

  The officer makes that “tzuk” sound, that disdainful click of the tongue. “It’s not for me to reject or accept,” she says with a shrug. “We have nothing to do with recruitment here. You wandered into the wrong department. I’ll give you the address. But I suggest you not make a hasty decision. The army is not as romantic as you think. Look!” She motions to the typing clerks behind her. “Does this look romantic?”

  The officer rises and calls for one of the typists to accompany Toni back outside. “Good luck,” she says.

  The flash of pity in her eyes hurts more than if she’d uttered words of contempt.

  The Arab boy, Samir, is here, in her room. He found her stumbling around the warren of alleys in the Old City at dusk. He could see she was sad. And lost perhaps? He offered to help. He said it was not good for a girl to walk the dark streets alone. She let him lead her up from the belly of the market to Jaffa Gate and then she let him follow her all the way to Hotel Vienna, up the dim stairway, into her room. She didn’t care.

  Now Samir does a little wiggling barefoot dance around the room, one hand on his stomach, the other waving above his head, and Toni can’t help but laugh. Her first real laugh shared with another human being in what seems an eternity. They collide together in hilarity.

  “You are a fine girl, Miss Toni, very fine and beautiful too. Perhaps no one has ever told you about your special beauty? You must not be sad.”

  His eyes glow with the ardour he once bestowed on Janet, a look hungry and pleading, but also a bit ruthless, inflamed by a need not easily thwarted. She couldn’t care less about this either. Tipping her head back, she guzzles the last of her brandy from the bottle and wipes her numb mouth with her numb hand. As soon as she puts down the empty bottle, he’s on top of her, squirming, tugging, panting, struggling with buttons. His eyes express urgency, and also the astonishment of someone who cannot believe his luck. He murmurs words in Arabic that sound like endearments. To her surprise, he says her name. Toni. It strikes her as odd that he should remember her name.

  His fumbling fingers tell him she is a virgin, which he acknowledges with happy cries. A Jewish virgin, a Western girl, offering him the gift of paradise. But he must not reveal his inexperience. He must pleasure her too. She senses this thought dawn on him as he attempts to kiss her. A mouth like warm glue.

  “Hurry up before I change my mind,” she growls.

  She hasn’t a smidgeon of doubt that she could roll him off the narrow bed and fling him onto the hard-tiled floor if she wanted. But she chooses to remain passively spread-eagled instead. She wants free of her virginity. Away with it, away with fairy tales of virginal innocence and Prince Charmings. Be gone, too, the myth of wedding-night tenderness. Such tales have nothing to do with her, never did. But this hard, sordid pain she’s invited into herself, courtesy of Samir, is truly her own experience. This is something she can fully possess.

  And now she floats away to another place, another time, a damp forest floor with Arnold straddled on top of her, trying to break her will with his punishing thumbnail. I win, says her unfeeling flesh.

  A few wild thrusts and Samir is done. The dead weight of his spent body sinks heavily onto her own. She pushes him off roughly, lets him know it’s time to leave. The molten bliss in his eyes hardens into a look of displeasure. She is telling him to leave? Yes, he’d better go before the hotel manager comes to kick him out. She’s not supposed to have guests, certainly not male ones. Samir scoffs at the warning, as well he might, since Hotel Vienna is clearly the kind of place where all manner of trysts occur. The mist of romance in his face has totally vanished.

  “You are hairy,” he sneers, with a contemptuous glance between her legs. “Like a monkey. Arab girls remove all that hair before they give themselves to a man. I have drunk from a dirty cup.”

  “Get out,” Toni roars. “I’ll call the police.”

  She’s on her feet, the whole stark-naked length of her tower
ing above the bed, brandishing the bottle she so recently drained.

  He wastes little time in pulling on his pants, nervously opening the door a crack, and peeking into the corridor. He casts a stern look in her direction as if to say, I’m not running away, see, and I’m certainly not letting you boot me out, because I’m the one in charge here. Then he scampers down the stairs.

  She is alone with the thick smells, the lingering ache in her groin, the dingy smoke-grimed room. On the ceiling above her head, a riot of insects executes an endless dance of repetitive loops.

  Hours later, she wakes to the noise of pounding on the door, a coarse female voice shouting, “Open up. Open up.”

  Toni’s head feels like a well-kicked soccer ball, her tongue like burnt toast. The woman refuses to identify herself and keeps pounding until Toni opens the door a crack. The clerk from downstairs stands upon the threshold, arms crossed over her chest.

  “I need the room,” she says curtly. Her eyes roam up and down Toni’s scantily clad body and scrutinize the havoc beyond. Her mouth wears a nasty little smile. “You have to leave.”

  “What? Now? Why? I paid you. I paid you yesterday for the whole week.”

  “I don’t want you here anymore.”

  Her sandaled foot taps the floor. She scowls with sour self-importance.

  “But why?”

  The clerk bares her teeth, the same grimace she uses when she aims her spray of Flit at a scuttling cockroach.

  “Don’t pretend innocence with me, habibti. That boy last night. I know where he’s from. You sleep with Arabs. You can do whatever you want, but not in my hotel.”

  Your hotel? The question floats into Toni’s mind, but she’s too stunned to say a word.

  To telephone overseas is no simple matter. She has to go to the Central Post Office, wait in a long queue to book her call. The huge, vaulted hall, built in the British mandate days, booms with echoing voices, a mirror of the chaos in her head. When her turn comes at last, the man behind the window tells her she’s in luck. Usually, one has to wait hours, even days, but a phone line has become available. She can go directly into the booth. “Well, do you want it or not?” he snaps, seeing her hesitation. She enters the cubicle.