Safekeeping

by Jessamyn Hope

  The people have spoken. It was sacrilegious to think it, but sometimes the people didn’t seem to know or care what was good for them. The same song started up again. Did he have only the one record? You’ll feel blue, you’ll feel sad, You’ll miss the bestest pal you’ve ever had . . .

  Dov took Ziva’s hand and tugged her toward the makeshift dance floor. She shook her head, eyes wide with warning.

  “In honor of Frau Kessler,” he said.

  Ziva caught one of the survivors watching them, and she realized she wasn’t going to win this battle with inflexibility and fury. Tomorrow the phonograph would be gone, but tonight she would show the people what it meant to follow the group. “One dance.”

  It had been fifteen years since she and Dov had been the worst pupils in Frau Kessler’s dance studio, but they immediately fell into their old habits, Dov leading, not on the beat, Ziva following, only when she felt the beat had arrived. She remembered how Dov used to mimic Frau Kessler’s high-pitched voice in her ear: One two three, and one two three. Not only were those younger versions of her and Dov gone, but it was all gone—the dance studio, bombed with the rest of central Berlin, the boys who’d grown into German soldiers, and all the Jewish children that had waltzed around them, as well as their parents who would wait in the hallway. Frau Kessler herself had probably been fed to an oven.

  “Sorry, my friend.” Franz tapped Dov’s shoulder. “There’s only one woman to every three men.”

  Dov released Ziva and, stepping out of the way, extended an arm like a maître d’hôtel. “She’s all yours.”

  “I’m all nobody’s.” Ziva turned to go. “I’ve had enough dancing.”

  “One dance.” Franz grabbed her wrist. He pulled her in and wrapped his other arm around her back. There’ll come a time . . .

  Behind Franz’s head, Dov gestured with his hand that it was going to be all right.

  Ziva kept her head stiff, eyes fixed over Franz’s shoulder, as he guided her around the dirt with a slight press on her back, pull at her waist, gentle push on her hand. He was such a competent lead, he swept her around the campfire, making other couples seem stationary, making it look as if she knew how to dance. Was she being paranoid or were people observing them with knowing eyes? Knowing? Why would she think such a thing? Franz’s breath tickled her ear as he crooned along, “Babe, think what you’re doing, You know my love for you will drive me to ruin . . .”

  “You have a voice made for Hollywood,” she said sarcastically.

  “Thank you.” He swung her out and drew her in again.

  When the song came to an end, he flamboyantly dipped her, drawing applause from all around. He smiled over her horizontal body at their admirers. When he pulled her back up, a wobbly Ziva turned to leave, but he wouldn’t release her hand. With his other arm bracing her back, he kept her facing him. Someone started the record again, and Ziva jerked to get away, but not too violently. She didn’t want to draw attention. Franz held on, forcing them to sway side to side.

  “Let go.”

  “I wish you were all mine.”

  . . . After you’ve gone away. . .

  Ziva’s heart thumped against her ribs so hard she feared Franz could hear it. Since that afternoon in the cotton fields, he had given her a compliment here and there, a friendly wink, but always in a way that allowed room for doubt, for her to act as if she simply didn’t take it the way he might have meant it. His neck smelled warm and brackish, like the sea. Maybe he had taken a dip after buying the phonograph in Haifa or Tel Aviv. Why had she allowed him to force her to dance? She lifted her hand from his shoulders and pinched his neck. Hard.

  “Ow.” Franz let go, and rubbed his neck.

  She strode away from him and straight through the joggle of dancers, past Dov, laughing and dancing with David, a newer member from Paris. She had to get away. She left the light of the campfire behind and climbed up a knoll into the surrounding darkness, toward a half-built schoolhouse.

  She ducked through a doorless doorway and stepped among the planks and piles of bricks on the unfinished floor. In a few weeks, the school would be ready for the kibbutz’s handful of children and the more to come, but in its incomplete state, it felt abandoned, private. From here, she barely heard the stupid Bud Crosby or whoever it was. She stood before a wall of wooden beams, not yet covered with planks, facing away from the campfire and the dancers, toward the black silhouette of Mount Carmel. The stars twinkled above the mountain.

  A wobbling light illuminated the wooden framing, and behind her she heard someone stepping on planks.

  “I think you drew blood.”

  She turned. “You should have let go.”

  Franz wasn’t wearing his usual smile, but his black eyes still flickered with amusement. He set his gas lantern on a worktable.

  “The phonograph isn’t the only thing I bought in Tel Aviv.” He dug his hand into his pocket and retrieved a small black box tied with a silver bow.

  Ziva eyed the box. “Gifts to individuals are against the rules.”

  “So we better not tell anyone.” He held it out to her.

  What could be in that tiny box? It wasn’t square like a ring box, but the shape and size of a finger. “If you want to buy me a gift, buy the kibbutz a gift.”

  “My God, Ziva, some things can’t be given to a whole kibbutz.”

  “Why not?”

  “Take it and see.”

  She shook her head. “There’s no point. I’m not going to keep it.”

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been given a gift. Not since Berlin anyway. Fourteen years? The silver bow pulled at her—the selfish, undignified pull of gifts. Maybe the gift giver had dignity. Maybe not. Giving a gift was also a manipulation.

  Franz kept holding out the box. “What do I have to do to get you to take this?”

  “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “What about seeing you in it? Just once? And then I’ll take it back.”

  Seeing her in it? Was it a pair of earrings? A necklace? She hated wanting to know. And she hated how being alone with him in this room made her nervous, parched her mouth, muzzied her thoughts. She didn’t feel in control.

  “I’ll tell you what . . .” She grabbed the small box. “I’ll put on whatever’s in here if you promise to never—never—try to do this thing that you’re doing right now. Wooing me, I suppose. If you promise to never woo me again.”

  Ziva waited while Franz, staring at the box in her hand, made up his mind. For a second she hoped he would choose to take back the box, so he could woo her again tomorrow, but no, this needed to end.

  “Fine,” he said. “Put it on.”

  She almost didn’t want to know what was in the small box now, to keep it a mystery. She pulled the silver ribbon. Having no use for a silver ribbon—just a waste—she handed it to Franz, who nervously fingered it as she lifted the box’s black top. Inside was more silver. What was this trinket? Looked like a mezuzah. She picked it out and found it to be another finger-shaped box with a silver snap on its side. Franz took the gift box so she could unsnap the flap and pull out—

  “Is this lipstick?”

  “It’s from the Kaufhaus Louvre in Tel Aviv, a new store, as beautiful as any in Berlin. Well, maybe not, but as fancy as you’ll find in Palestine.”

  She held up the silver tube as if it were court evidence. “You thought this would make me happy? All this does is show how little you know me. The women of the kibbutz, we’re trying to throw off our old shackles. And you know what’s the saddest part? You don’t even know you’re giving me a shackle. Why didn’t you pick me up a pair of high heels while you were at it?”

  Franz’s gaze dropped to her scuffed brown work boots. It was a pensive gaze. Was it dawning on him that if she did put on this lipstick, wore high heels, she would cease being the woman he was falling in love with? Falling in love—how could she think something so ridiculous? He was a playboy. She was merely a conquest.

 
He spoke slowly, hesitantly. “I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing you in high heels . . . Not every day. But maybe once in a while, on a special occasion. Is that wrong? Maybe it is.”

  “There’s no maybe.” She held the lipstick out to him. “Go.”

  “You said you would put it on.”

  “I’m not putting on lipstick.”

  “Come now, Ziva. You would go back on your word?”

  Ziva glowered at him, kept the lipstick extended.

  “That was the bargain.” He shook his head, smirking. “If you don’t put it on, then I get to keep wooing you.”

  She drew back the lipstick. Clenching her teeth, she pulled off the cap and peered into the tube.

  He pointed. “You twist the bottom.”

  She twisted out a bright crimson, the shade worn by young women who slept all day and let men buy them drinks all night. She wasn’t even so young, thirty years old.

  “There’s a mirror in the top flap of the case.”

  “Enough with your gottverdammt instructions.” She lifted the lipstick and mirror to her face. The sliver of mirror reflected only her mouth. She drew the brilliant color across her bottom lip, as she had seen her mother do many times. The effect was dramatic. Even with only the bottom painted, the jolt of red ripened her lips. She felt Franz watching as she painted the top. Being a perfectionist, she couldn’t help but go back and dab the tips of her Cupid’s bow. Her lips bloomed in the mirror, the juicy, glistening red of ripe pomegranate seeds.

  She twisted back the stick, eyes on the tube, unable to look up at Franz. She knew he would find her attractive, and the idea brought back that wooziness. She had never felt anything like this—a fog that made it impossible to think. She only worsened the tension, though, by shying away from him. She raised her head. “Now you can go.”

  Eyes on her painted lips, he said, “You think we’re so different, but we’re not.”

  She inhaled, grateful for his pronouncement. As powerful as smelling salts—it cleared her head, returned her senses. “You and I? You must be kidding. We’re as different as can be. You’re a . . .” What was he? A loafer? No. And then the perfect word came to her. “You’re a leisurist.”

  “I don’t work as hard as you,” Franz admitted. “Maybe I’m not as good a person in some ways. But we both refuse to be bound by fear. To be told what to do. We both insist on being true to ourselves. We do share that, Ziva.”

  “The most fearless person I know is Dov Margolin. If it weren’t for his bravery, you wouldn’t be standing here today. Trying to seduce his wife.”

  Franz half nodded. “Dov’s part of the reason I’m still alive, it’s true. But not all of it. And you don’t love him the way I want you to love me.”

  “You obviously don’t know how much I love Dov.” She managed to keep her eyes on him. And why would she look away? What she had to say was true. “I couldn’t love anyone more than I love him. Now it’s your turn to fulfill your promise. Please go.”

  Franz hesitated, and Ziva wondered if he was going to try to kiss her, if he was going to rush forward and take her in his arms like the fiery couples in the moving pictures. And she wanted him to, because if he attempted to kiss her now, she could push him away. She hadn’t been so sure a few minutes earlier, but now she could easily turn him down. Deridingly. Come on, she thought, try to kiss me.

  “That’s something else we share.” He picked up his lantern. “I keep my word.”

  He navigated between the wood panels and bags of cement toward the doorless doorway. He stopped before it and took one last look at her before going through. Ziva continued staring at the empty doorway, the dusty ground and night sky it framed, confounded that such a man could affect her so. She didn’t admire him. He wasn’t a serious thinker or man of action. He had no honorable ambitions, wasn’t a part of any important movement. He seemed immune to the sweep of history. Whatever was happening in the world, he would have given her this lipstick, which she found was still in her hand. Franz would have been Franz no matter when or where or to whom he had been born.

  Ziva grabbed a knife from the worktable and sawed the corner off a burlap bag. She rubbed the scratchy cloth on her lips and checked the mirror. A red stain persisted. She rubbed at them again, but it was no use. No matter: it wasn’t enough color to make anyone think the unthinkable, that she had been wearing bright red lipstick. It was only enough color to make her look perhaps a little, inexplicably, prettier. She left the half-built schoolhouse, tube of lipstick and smeared scrap of burlap in her pocket, chin raised. She had nothing to be ashamed of. Everyone had uninvited thoughts and feelings; the only thing that mattered was whether one acted on them.

  The dancing had ended. Franz was folding down the phonograph while stragglers sat around the dwindling fire smoking cigarettes and passing a flask. Ziva walked up to Dov and held out her hand. He took it, and she helped pull him to his feet. Together they ambled up the dirt path to their bungalow. Seven years had passed since the days of the communal tents, when she and Dov would only have privacy on Shabbat. Everyone had assumed theirs would be the first child born on the kibbutz, to grow up never knowing what it was to be a persecuted minority, a wandering Jew; but people had long ago stopped teasing them about babies. Although no one had said it to her face, she had the feeling most blamed her for their sterility, that she was the barren prig.

  She hooked her arm in Dov’s. “Did you tell him to get rid of it?”

  “Not exactly. Wait before you get upset, Ziva. I said he couldn’t play the phonograph as long as he was on the kibbutz, but that he could keep it under his bed and take it with him when he leaves.”

  “Leaves? Did he say he was leaving?”

  “No, but he’s not exactly the type to live the rest of his life on a kibbutz, is he, Ziva?”

  Ziva stopped walking and turned to Dov. She wanted him to look at her, while her lips still bore a hint of red. She wanted to see if his crystalline eyes would have even a fleck of the desire that had burned in Franz’s black eyes as he contemplated her lips in the unfinished schoolhouse.

  Dov looked confused. She smiled, sadly. He said, “What is it, Ziva?”

  It was shortsighted of Franz to not want the love she felt for Dov. It didn’t make her dizzy, but it made her steady, made her feel like herself in a way that nobody else did. Franz wanted a carnal love, but that dizziness couldn’t last forever, and what she had with Dov would.

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  Dov pinched her cheek. “Don’t worry, Zivale. Everything will be back to normal in the morning.”

  Ziva opened her eyes and saw Claudette wiping down a grave at the far end of the cemetery. How long had she been sitting here with her eyes shut? She held out her wristwatch far enough to make out the hands. Three o’clock? Could she have been daydreaming for nearly an hour? Wouldn’t the girl have noticed? Claudette seemed to be in her own world again, wiping down the grave and—was she talking to herself? Ziva got to her feet. She would just have to work twice as hard to make up for the lost time.

  When they finished cleaning the cemetery, Ziva and Claudette returned the tin buckets, watering cans, and rags to the garden shed, where shovels awaited a more gruesome chore. Walking away from the graves, Claudette couldn’t believe she still hadn’t given in. As they walked through the fields, her body itched to run back and finish tracing the father’s grave. She kept repeating in her head It isn’t true, it isn’t true while putting one foot in front of the other, letting the foot land where it landed, even if, once they were back on the cement paths between the houses, it landed on a line.

  As they were passing the kolbo, Ziva stopped Claudette with a hand on her arm. Claudette assumed the old woman needed a rest. It wasn’t hard to see the walks home were getting harder for her. Last week, Ziva had been given an electric golf cart, which was how members ten years younger than her buzzed about the kibbutz, but she refused to use it. The cart sat in front of her apartment, only brought to life onc
e a week when Eyal came around to make sure the battery was charged.

  “I would like to buy you something, Claudette.”

  “Buy me something?”

  In front of the store, a spotted dog panted in the shade under a tomato stand, and children leaned on a crate of oranges, licking yellow popsicles.

  “Yes, Claudette. A little gift.”

  Claudette followed Ziva through the chiming door and into the air-conditioned store. The plump, ruddy-faced cashier acknowledged Ziva with a nod. When Claudette was a child, she used to wish someone would give her a gift. At Christmastime, she rummaged through the bins of donated dolls, sweaters, and kaleidoscopes, imagining the girls who’d been given these things when they were new. Over the last half a year, Louise had bought Claudette a bra, a toothbrush, and the costly airplane ticket to Israel. She didn’t mean to be ungrateful, but none of these things gave her the silly delight she had imagined those girls felt ripping away the festive wrapping paper. Louise gave what her poor half sister needed. It wasn’t Louise’s fault—she meant well—but if anything, these handouts made Claudette feel like a burden.

  “Where are the lipsticks?”

  “Lipsticks?” The cashier gave Ziva a bemused smirk. “For you?”

  “Just tell me where they are.”

  The cashier pointed down the middle aisle, and Claudette followed Ziva to a small shelf space reserved for makeup. Eye pencils stuck out of a tin canister, and a repurposed shoebox held a disarray of blushes, lipsticks, and mascaras.

  Ziva rooted through the shoebox, disappointed by the plastic cases of these mass-produced lipsticks. No silvery elegance. At least back then capitalists had some concern for workmanship. She held up a green-tubed CoverGirl between her misshapen fingers. “Do you like this one?”

  Claudette took the tube and turned it around in her hands. Ziva told her to pull off the cap and turn it. Claudette did, and Ziva crumpled her face.

  “Blech. Pink is such an insipid color.”

  While Ziva fished again in the shoebox, Claudette spied Ulya standing in front of a shelf of shampoos. Ulya’s eyes were on the cashier as she slipped a purple bottle into her work shirt. So that was how her roommate brought home so many new beauty products.