Cafe Nevo

by Barbara Rogan

  “Not necessarily.”

  “I would. No offense, but who knows more about blackmail than a politician?”

  “Good point,” Arik said, suppressing a smile because she was so serious.

  “All right. I’ll keep the papers for you. Good luck,” she said briskly, holding out her hand. Arik brought it to his lips and kissed it.

  “Do I have to leave now?”

  Blushing, she drew back her hand. “What do you mean?”

  “Since I’m here, I wondered if you might show me your paintings.”

  She looked at him as if he’d surpassed her wildest imaginings.

  “I know you’ve exhibited them,” he said beguilingly. “Couldn’t I have a private showing?”

  Sarita picked at a loose thread in the Indian cotton bedspread, raveling the cloth. “I have work to do,” she muttered.

  “Maybe next time. When I come back.”

  “When you come back,” she said, her voice faintly questioning.

  Arik reached over and took her hand, resting his on her knee. She felt a line of fire leading from her knee directly to her groin, and she made her face a blank.

  “You never asked, ‘Why me?’“ he said. “That was your only mistake. It means you already know.”

  “Don’t get the wrong idea,” she said. “I’m happy to help in such a worthy cause, and maybe I did enjoy talking to you; but I’m not looking for anything more... personal. We could be friends.”

  “Whatever you say.” Arik smiled. His thumb made little circles in her palm that radiated in waves to the pit of her stomach.

  “It’s nothing against you,” Sarita said weakly; “it’s just that I’ve got no time or energy to waste on”—but then he silenced her with his lips. At first she was stiff in his embrace, though not resistant: more as if she were steeling herself for an injection. But slowly she melted, her body softening against his, her lips parting.

  A moment later she broke away and hung her head and would not look at him. Arik stood up with a little groan. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’m going. But I’ll be back. I’m telling you now, so you can start getting used to the idea. I want you, Sarita, and when I get out of this mess, I’m coming for you.”

  His rubber-soled shoes made no sound, but the stairs creaked as he ran downstairs. Sarita picked up the folder gingerly; it was still warm from his body. She looked through it briefly, then hid it under her mattress.

  She went back to the easel and turned it around, knowing as she did that it was no good: the sketch told her where she’d been, not where she was going. She’d lost her destination. Knowing that visions, like dreams, return sooner if not pursued, she gathered up the used cups and carried them into the kitchen. Next to painting, warm water running over her hands was the most comforting feeling in the world, and Sarita was in need of comfort. Arik Eshel, she thought, was an impudent, conceited, presumptuous person. If he thought he could force his way into her well-ordered life, he greatly overestimated his powers and underestimated hers.

  He did have a certain charm about him, she conceded, drying her hands. His countenance spoke well of him; his body was at ease with itself. She could have painted him, leaning back in that chair, looking perfectly at home when he should have been, anyone else would have been, dreadfully embarrassed. He had a masculinity that did not question itself, a wolvine grace; her painter’s eye saw nothing wrong with him, and much that was right, but her mind was set against him. Coming into the bedroom, Sarita met her mother’s eye. Yael seemed to be laughing at her.

  “It’s not funny,” she said indignantly.

  She often talked to the portrait, and it to her—not in words (she was not mad) but in looks. Her mother’s eyes followed her about wherever she went, and though Sarita herself had created the effect, it was out of her control.

  It was strange, she thought, how you could make something up out of whole cloth, and all the while you were making it, it was yours; but as soon as you were done, it separated itself from you and claimed autonomy—like Pinocchio, running away from Gepetto.

  Now her mother’s eyes were twinkling.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Sarita said. “I only did what I had to. In fact, I did what you did, Mama, that time in Nevo. You never even thought about it, did you? You were passing Nevo, you saw what was happening, and without stopping to think, you plunged right in. You were brave, Mama.”

  The sun passed over the roof of the house, and the light softened; so, too, Yael’s eyes.

  “I know you think you got your reward,” Sarita said. “A husband and child came out of what you did that night, though you never planned it.

  “But it’s not that way for me. You had just your own life to live, your own work to do. I have mine, and yours, and Daddy’s. You were cheated of life, and life was cheated of you, and whose job is it to make up for that if not mine? I don’t have room for a man in my life. I don’t have time.”

  Sarita ended the argument in the only way she could, by leaving the room. Leaning on the roof’s parapet, she watched the busy street below, filled with women shopping for their families. Sarita knew that she was right. She was a woman apart, cut off from the general course of women’s lives. She had a special purpose, which had sustained her through times of unbearable sorrow and would continue to sustain her for as long as she kept up her side. If she were susceptible to men, Arik might have been a contender; if she were seducible, he might have been dangerous. It was her good fortune to be neither.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Caspi was holding court in the center of Nevo, where his remarks, ostensibly addressed to his companions, could be heard by all.

  “I went through half a dozen translators,” he was saying; “and fired them all. I felt sure they were not doing justice to his work, yet I found it odd that all of the samples had a common failing, which was lack of cohesion. The poems contained some beautiful images, juxtaposed in a manner that made no sense at all. I knew the poems must have some sort of center—after all, the man is the leading poet of his benighted generation—but for some reason the translators were missing it. So I decided to have a go, at the expense of my own work.”

  Appreciative murmurs came from his audience, Rami Dotan and two girls. Caspi held out his hands to ward off their praise.

  “It was the least I could do,” he said modestly. “My whole conception in doing this anthology is to try to put forward and support struggling Arab writers. It would be criminal to burden them with poor translations on top of all their other natural disadvantages.”

  “Their natural disadvantages?” said Sternholz, serving a round of beer. Caspi ignored him.

  “I took the first poem to hand,” he continued. “My Arabic is rusty, but I knew as soon as I read it that something was wrong. Not only was the imagery old and tired, phoenixes rising from ashes and that sort of thing, but the poem totally lacked coherence. It simply made no sense. It sounded as if it meant something, the title—’Rebirth’—promised something, and yet the poem itself was like a baby’s babble. Every so often a few meaningful words would emerge from the midst of nonsense. It was ironic: I set out to be a midwife and ended up participating in a miscarriage.”

  The girls giggled. Rami Dotan murmured wamingly, “Enough said, Caspi.”

  “What’s your problem?” he growled.

  “We still have a book to do together. Don’t forget you have an interest in that.”

  “A great interest,” said Caspi. His eyes gleamed. “Money being the least of it.”

  “For you, maybe,” the publisher muttered.

  “I have been writing my introduction,” Caspi announced. “We owe these people the respect of telling the truth about their work. I hope I have done so kindly. After all, it is hardly their fault. They are a people without a land; little wonder their poetry lacks grounding. As the Arabs lack cohesion, so, too, their thoughts and writing. You will find that in my essay I have leavened honesty with compassion and a generosity which, I�
�m sorry to say, is sorely needed.”

  Rami said nothing but stared down at the table with an embarrassed expression. The two girls exchanged a look. Then Muny barreled over and shook his finger under Caspi’s nose.

  “You should be ashamed,” he scolded. “That’s nothing but racist slander dressed up as literary criticism. I never thought you’d stoop so low, Caspi, even if your wife is screwing Khalil.”

  Caspi turned white beneath his tan. He stood, towering over Muny; he clenched his fists. The café was dead silent. Muny held his ground.

  “I’m glad it was you,” Caspi said in a carrying whisper. “If it was anyone else, anyone in his right mind, I’d have had to kill him.” He grabbed Muny by the forearms and effortlessly raised him onto his toes, shaking him and spitting into his face as he shouted, “My wife doesn’t sleep with Arab filth!”

  At that very moment Vered was looking at the watch which was all she wore, lying naked on top of an unrumpled bed. She was thinking about Daniel, whom she had dropped at Jemima’s, wondering what she would give him for supper, since there was no food in the house; and she was worrying over the subject for an unstarted column that was due in two days. Her lover sat hunched over a table with his back to her, typing in rapid bursts punctuated by bouts of giggles.

  They had not yet made love. When she first arrived, Khalil had risen from the table, embraced her excitedly, and asked her to strip for him. As she did so, blushing, he pressed himself against her and ran his hands up and down her body, as if he meant to have her on the spot, against the wall. “Beautiful, beautiful,” he murmured, leading her by the hand to the bed. But when she lay down, he looked once more, sighed, and returned to his typewriter.

  At first she was astonished, then embarrassed, but as Khalil continued working, seeming to have forgotten her presence, she forgot his. Her mind drifted away on a tide of things forgotten and postponed.

  She was tired. She had so much work to do, and never, since taking this putative lover, enough time to do it in. Daniel needed new shoes, and his booster shot was overdue. She felt guilty at leaving him so often with Jemima; her mother loved the child dearly but was overworked herself and too nervous to deal with a three-year-old. Caspi was no help, almost never home, and when he was, shut up in his study, pounding away at his typewriter.

  She took some pleasure, strange under the circumstances, in Caspi’s having once again begun to write, and some pride in being the cause, though it was hate, not love, that had loosened his tongue. He was writing his introduction to Khalil’s half of the anthology, as Khalil (she surmised by his glee) was to Caspi’s. It seemed that everyone but she had time to write; and with that in mind she glanced at her watch, and a surge of irritation swept her to her feet.

  At the sound, Khalil whipped around. “Where are you going?” he said, more sharply than he’d intended.

  She stared at him.

  “Just a few more moments and I’ll be done.” He flashed an ingratiating smile. “I count on your generosity as a fellow writer.”

  “I find it easier to be generous with my body than with my time. I suddenly realized that I don’t have enough of it to spend listening to you write when I should be working myself. I count on your understanding as a fellow writer,” she said as she dressed.

  “You’re angry with me.”

  “Not at all; only maybe next time we could meet in a library, so we could both get something done.”

  Crowing, Khalil crossed the room swiftly to stand before her.

  “I love it when you show your vixen teeth, my delightful Mrs. Caspi.” His hands went to her dress; hers rose to deflect them.

  “Did it give you a thrill,” she asked, “to write about Caspi while his wife lay there naked?”

  “Of course it did.” He laughed, and putting his arms around her, he tumbled her to the bed with a force that straddled the line between lust and coercion. Vered pushed him away, averting her face. The struggle was silent and lasted two or three minutes. Then, with a curse, Khalil let go.

  Vered smoothed her dress, glanced in the mirror, and left without a word.

  His enemy’s turf was the worst possible place for a confrontation, but Khalil was too angry to be wise.

  Vered Caspi would not be back. That bird had flown, and it was no comfort to know that his own stupidity had done it; indeed, that knowledge only aggravated his anger. His wrathful eyes parted the hordes of Jews out for their Sabbath stroll; more than one soldier touched his weapon as Khalil passed, and he, who usually passed unchallenged, was stopped no less than three times by police and civil guards, forced to submit to the indignity of having his identity card checked and his business questioned. These coals of humiliation fueled the fire that was burning bright by the time he reached Nevo, but Khalil, having grown up in occupied territory, was incapable of showing his true face to the oppressor. He stepped into Nevo and looked distastefully about the crowded room, with the manner of an English don entering a den of undergraduates.

  The old waiter hobbled over purposefully, clawing at Khalil’s arm. “Go away,” he muttered, “Caspi’s here.”

  “What’s that to me?” said Khalil.

  Rami Dotan spotted him and wailed. “Oh, my God. Caspi, be cool,” he pleaded as the Arab approached their table. A murmur of anticipation, like the hum in a theater when the lights go down, swept through the café. Khalil ignored Caspi and addressed the publisher.

  “I thought I’d find you here. I was in town on”—he paused, smilingly seeking the right word—”personal business and thought I’d bring you this.” He tossed a slim manuscript onto the table before Rami.

  Caspi snatched it up. He read the first page; then, slowly, his eyes rose to meet Khalil’s.

  Khalil smiled.

  Caspi read another page. Then he ripped the manuscript in half.

  Rami cradled his head in his arms. The two girls slipped away.

  “The truth is never easy to take,” Khalil said sympathetically. “Don’t worry, Dotan. I have plenty of copies.”

  Rami pulled himself together with a visible effort “If we could just discuss this calmly, I know we could work it out. Sit down, Khalil.”

  “Don’t sit down,” growled Caspi, “and if you value your jackal hide, you’d better get the hell out of here.”

  “That’s enough from you, big mouth,” said Sternholz, coming quickly to Caspi’s side. “No use making a bad thing worse. As for you,” he told Khalil, “you get while the going’s good. Now. Go. Goodbye. Salaam Aleichem.”

  “The hell I will,” said Khalil.

  “I mean it. I’ll have no fighting in my café. Caspi, you shut your mouth. And you, Mr. Big Shot Poet, get out.”

  Khalil sneered at the old man. “You want me out? Throw me out.”

  Puffing his cheeks out furiously, Emmanuel Yehoshua Sternholz bore down on the interloper. He was blocked by Caspi’s rising bulk.

  “We don’t talk that way to Mr. Sternholz,” Caspi said with gentle menace. “I know life is crude where you come from, my little baboon friend, but when you visit Nevo you must act like a man.”

  “Stop it, stop it,” moaned Rami Dotan. He took a calculator from his pocket and set to figuring frantically.

  “I wouldn’t give advice about manhood, in your position,” Khalil said. “From what I hear you’re not much of an expert.”

  “You’re dead meat,” Caspi roared. “You’re history.”

  Khalil laughed scornfully. “Scratch a liberal and find a racist. You’re proving that every word I wrote about you is true.”

  “It’s not your race I’m insulting. It’s you, and your syphilitic bitch mother, and your ass-licking father, and your whore sisters and their whore sons, and—”

  Khalil swung at him. Caspi ducked. Rami, dancing ineffectually in the background, caught the blow squarely on the jaw. He crashed to the floor, where he lay still for several moments before scampering away on hands and knees.

  Nevo’s patrons scrambled for safety and a
view.

  Caspi lunged for Khalil, but the younger man skipped out of the way. Seizing a chair, he wielded it like a lion tamer while he taunted Caspi. “You call me animal names because you envy my virility. You pathetic old cuckold!”

  Charging, Caspi wrenched the chair out of his grip and tossed it aside. They closed on one another in a flurry of fists, elbows, and knees.

  Women screamed. A crowd gathered outside, but no one tried to intervene. Someone spoke of the police; but the only phone was behind the bar, and Sternholz made no move toward it but stood morosely with his arms folded, watching fatalistically. The fight was silent and vicious, as each man tried to inflict maximum damage in minimum time. For some time they traded blows, but Caspi had fifty pounds on Khalil, which he used to advantage. Though the Arab was wiry and surprisingly strong for a pen-pusher, Caspi had him pinned to the ground and was beating his head against the floor when three men finally stepped in and pulled him off.

  “I’m going to get you, you lying Arab bastard prick,” Caspi bawled as they hustled him toward the back. “I’m going to destroy you. You’re a lousy poet!” he screamed as they shoved him out the door.

  Chapter Seventeen

  There is no more intimate meeting place than a gynecologist’s waiting room, for the range of reasons for being there is so limited, and those reasons so very personal. Dr. Steadman’s specialty, fertility and its various effects, further narrowed the range of possibilities and increased their sensitivity.

  Fertility is a tricky commodity for a doctor to deal in. Most women wish they had either more or less of it, and it was a matter of continual distress to Dr. Steadman that half his patients seemed desperate to abort what the other half so desperately sought to conceive. The doctor had a Sabra’s fine disdain for the law. When he agreed with a patient’s decision to abort, he obliged without submitting her to the indignity of appearing before the requisite abortion committee of three. But when he disagreed, and especially when he sensed she had been pressured into a decision, he adamantly refused to perform even legal abortions, citing no reason but his own peace of mind.