Safekeeping

by Jessamyn Hope

  “Hello? Shalom?”

  “Shalom. Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Or English?”

  It wasn’t Dagmar. A man. Traces of a German accent. He must know her.

  “English, English,” Adam said. “I’m American.”

  “Good. I’m calling from Toronto. A friend told me about your ad in Yedioth Ahronoth.”

  “Great.” Of course this is how it would go: a turnaround at the eleventh hour. Adam felt light, rescued.

  “I know a Dagmar Stahlmann who would be around eighty today. We were in a Maccabi Hatzair chapter together in Berlin. Did she contact you?”

  “No. Can you give me her number?”

  “Oh.” The man clucked his tongue. “I was hoping you would give that to me.”

  Someone else looking for Dagmar? Adam leaned on the phone.

  “Hello?” said the old man.

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “So you haven’t found her?”

  “No. All I know is that she lived on a kibbutz in forty-seven. After that, I’ve got nothing. You? Do you have any idea of where she might be?”

  “Well, I can’t imagine Dagmar ending up anywhere but on a kibbutz. She was obsessed with the Land of Israel and the kibbutzim. Of course, I’m talking about a sixteen-year-old girl I once knew. People grow softer as they age. They give up. Though I can’t picture the Dagmar I knew giving up.”

  “So you think she’s still on a kibbutz?”

  “That would be my guess . . . if she’s still alive.”

  “Thing is she’s probably not even called Dagmar anymore. Apparently, everyone changed their names in Israel to something more Jewish. Hebrew.”

  “Well, I might be able to help you with that. We all had Hebrew names we used at the meetings. My name, David, was already Hebrew. Maybe that’s why I got a nickname, Bloomie. Now what did Dagmar go by? God, I haven’t thought about it in decades. In school, everywhere else, she was Dagmar. But . . . it’s right there, on the tip of my tongue.”

  Adam waited. Come on, come on.

  “She did all the translations, and she would sign them with her Hebrew name. Vera? No. Tsvia . . . Yes, something like Tsvia . . . But it’s just not coming to me.”

  Adam squeezed the handset. He had to use all his willpower not to slam it against the wall. He spoke through his teeth. “Okay, thanks.”

  “If she contacts you, will you let her know I called? David Blumenthal. Are you writing this down? Do you have a pen?”

  “Yup.”

  Adam felt terrible about lying to a Holocaust survivor looking for an old friend, but he just didn’t have it in him to go fetch a pen.

  “I live with my son now.” He gave the phone number. “You can tell Dagmar that Bloomie said he should have listened to her, that he should have followed her to Palestine. You can tell her my brother died in Auschwitz. She knew him. He was also in Maccabi Hatzair.”

  “Got it.”

  “May I ask you why you’re looking for Dagmar?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “All right,” said the old man. “I really hope you find her.”

  Adam banged down the phone, hard, half hoping to break it, and stormed back to his room. Unaware Golda was following him, he slammed the door, nearly crushing her, but she jumped through in the nick of time.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. He kicked the dresser and looked around his room, heart beating too fast. Through the window he saw Ulya leaving her room, all gussied up in a short orange tube dress. He watched her teeter down the path in her stupid high heels.

  Where the hell did she go every night? What was the big fucking secret?

  He headed for the door. Golda made a dash for it too, but he couldn’t trail Ulya with the dog running ahead. He slipped outside, closing the door on her round pleading eyes.

  He hung back while Ulya climbed the back stairs out of the volunteers’ section. Once she’d reached the top and turned behind a wall of bushes, he started for the stone steps. He walked slowly to give her time to get ahead. When he peeked around the bushes, he feared he’d waited too long. She was nowhere to be seen. And then she reappeared for a brief second, crossing the gap between two white bungalows.

  He kept a good distance as he followed her down the path away from the kibbutz’s center. The kibbutz did feel different on Friday evenings. Serener. Women chatted on porches. An older man watered his modest flowerbed. A younger man headed home with plastic bags full of sodas and snacks. The way Ulya walked past these people, swinging her silver purse as she did that morning they set out for Tel Aviv, made her seem like one of them, just another person excited for the weekend, not somebody on her way to a second job.

  When she reached the dirt road encircling the residential part of the kibbutz, she didn’t turn in the direction of the nearby towns or the bus stop, as Adam had expected. Instead she made a left, toward the fields and orchards. This made no sense. Where could she be going?

  He waited, allowing the distance between them to grow long enough that if she happened to turn around, she might not spot him in the half-light. At this point, he’d have a hard time pretending he was going anywhere believable. She crossed the road, leaving behind the white houses to walk alongside the open fields.

  She continued along the road for a good five minutes before veering off behind a long shed. Adam jogged to catch up. When he reached the corrugated steel shed, he knew she couldn’t have gone inside it. The clamor behind its walls—high-pitched squawks, countless beating wings—was frightening, and the stench unbearable. Hand on his mouth, pinching his nose, he crept along the chicken house. When he reached the end, he saw Ulya walking across a dusky cabbage field.

  Grateful for the near darkness, he abandoned the cover of the chicken house and followed her down a path between the purple heads, ready to duck if she looked back. She seemed to be slowing, so he did as well. She ceased swinging her purse, and even from a distance, he sensed her mood had taken a downturn.

  She stopped, and Adam dropped to a squat, balancing himself with one hand on the dirt. She didn’t turn around. Head tilted toward the evening sky, she stood very still, reminding him of those scenes where an alien spaceship descends from the sky and lowers its ramp for one special human being. He hated to admit it after the way she had treated him, but he believed Ulya was special.

  She set off again. At the end of the field, she began ascending a hill covered with mandarin trees. Adam followed and, feeling safer in the shadows of the orchard, closed the distance a bit. A bright citrusy smell pervaded the darkness. He quietly plucked a mandarin and peeled off its rind as he walked down a parallel path through the trees, watching Ulya appear and disappear behind the trunks like a flickering film.

  “Hey.”

  Both Ulya and Adam halted, the crunch of the wood chips under their feet replaced by the faint squeak of bats.

  “I’m over here,” a man called. His accent was thick.

  What kind of accent was it? Not Russian. Or Hebrew. From behind a tree, Adam surveyed the clearing beyond the orchard, the uncultivated hillside strewn with limestone boulders and clusters of wildflowers. Two legs—dark jeans, brown shoes—extended from behind a large, white boulder. Ulya awkwardly stepped over collapsed cattle wire and sashayed toward the hidden man. His hand came out, and she took it. He said something—Adam couldn’t make it out—and she laughed and tried to tug her hand free. Why did she say she didn’t have a boyfriend? Was she being paid for this? Was he married? The man tugged back. Ulya stumbled toward him then leaned backward with all her weight. “Let go!” she said through more laughter. No, she wasn’t getting paid for this. This was real flirtation, not the sad imitation she’d been giving him, not some kind of tease. “Enough!” the man cried with that accent, yanking hard. Squealing, Ulya let herself fall forward onto her hands and knees. The man’s hand clasped her orange back, and they switched places; she lay on her back while he emerged from behind the boulder.

  Holy shit. It was the guy who’d been eyeing them in
the dining hall. Here he’d been wondering if he was too poor, too Jewish, and all the while she’d been screwing around with an Arab fieldhand.

  The Arab leaned toward Ulya, and she tweaked his nose. He smiled, and their lips came together. Adam held his breath while their faces remained locked as if they hadn’t seen each other for months. A mandarin fell out of the tree and landed beside Adam with a hollow thud. Jesus, were they ever going to separate? Their motionless kiss seemed unending.

  He emerged from the trees, stepping over the fallen cattle wire. “Hi.”

  The couple looked up.

  “Adam!” Ulya screamed, adjusting her tube top.

  Adam was as surprised as they were to find himself standing before them. He hadn’t planned on coming out of the trees. He just had.

  He stood over their maroon blanket, their shocked faces. The bottle of wine. “I thought you didn’t have a boyfriend.”

  Ulya clambered to her feet. “Fuck you, Adam! Get out of here!”

  In her bare feet, she seemed so much shorter, more vulnerable.

  “Funny. I thought you were stripping.”

  Farid had gotten to his feet and was looking from Ulya to Adam and back to Ulya.

  Ulya waved Adam away. “Get out of here! Go! Go where someone wants you!”

  Where someone wanted him? Nice. Adam cocked his head, pointed between her and the Arab. “So is this something I should keep to myself?”

  Ulya breathed heavily.

  “’Cause you’re definitely keeping this a secret, right, Ulie?”

  She shook her head, smirking as if he were so clueless, but her eyes gleamed with fear and hate. So different from the gleam he had wanted to see in them. He turned to the Arab.

  “If you think she takes you seriously, you’re crazy. You’re nothing to her. Soon as some rich guy comes along, you’re gone. You know that, right?”

  Ulya waited to see what Farid would do. Adam was right: in the grand scheme of things, Farid was nothing to her, but that was beside the point. He should still stand up for himself, but all the coward did was gape at Adam.

  She waved her hands. “Hello, Farid! Defend yourself! Tell him to get lost. Do something!”

  Barely making eye contact with Adam, Farid said, “Get lost.”

  Ulya looked from one man to the other, not sure whom she loathed more: the Jew, always feeling sorry for himself, but who at least had the passion to make this move, or the lazy, daydreaming Arab, standing like a frightened puppy caught peeing on the rug.

  “And if I don’t?” Adam opened his arms at his sides, a gesture that said, here I am, come and get me, though really he didn’t want to be come and got. He knew from too much experience that he was a sorry fighter. He’d had his lights knocked out more than once. Though getting his lights knocked out didn’t sound so bad right now. Sounded great actually.

  Farid glanced at Ulya. Ulya, realizing a fight over her was imminent, couldn’t stop the grin from blooming on her face. A duel—like in the novels she’d been forced to read in school. And why not? Why should her life be any less exciting than Pushkin’s wife’s? The threat of violence—violence over her—electrified the night.

  “Go on, Farid. Do something!”

  Farid raised his fists. Adam did the same, widening his stance, bending his knees. Farid brought one leg back. Waiting for the Arab to take a swipe, Adam changed his tactic; he straightened up and offered his chest, again daring Farid to punch it. Farid licked his lips and rocked his weight back and forth, back and forth. Adam had been right: this guy was never going to swing. And Farid, as if he saw Adam understand this, sagged.

  Trying not to sound too relieved, Adam said, “A real man you have there.”

  Ulya shot Farid a black look and charged at Adam. She pushed against his chest with all her might again and again. Adam stumbled backward as she shoved and shouted: “Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!”

  The Arab’s head was down; he wasn’t even watching. They were both losers now, but that didn’t make Adam feel any better. He turned. “Okay, I’m going.”

  Once he began his retreat, he couldn’t retreat fast enough. He headed for the orchard as fast as he could without breaking into a run. He climbed over the cattle wire and weaved his way down the darkness of the mandarin orchard and out onto the flat, open cabbage field again, where the moon beamed down on him like a spotlight. He’d been so focused on Ulya, he hadn’t noticed how enormous the moon was tonight. This must have been what she had stopped to look up at.

  Back among the white bungalows, he couldn’t stand the laughter and chitchat floating out of the cozy-lit windows. Everybody having a nice Friday night with everybody else. Coffee, cake, small talk, arguments about the peace process, thighs secretly squeezed under the table, please pass the sugar. He couldn’t be more alone. It was his fault: he killed his grandfather, hurt every girl who ever loved him, betrayed every friend. But that only made the loneliness harder.

  Descending the stone steps into the volunteers’ section, he nearly collided with Claudette. He looked up, and her painted lips formed a smile, the first smile he’d ever seen on her. She apologized and hurried past him. Even Claudette had plans.

  He dreaded the long night ahead, cooped up in his depressing dorm room. If only he could take a benzo and be out until morning. When he opened the door, Golda spun in circles and pawed at his legs, but he ignored her. He flipped on the light, but this only made the room appear more jail-like. Fuck it. He couldn’t do it: sit here all night with himself. Wished he could—it was the fate he deserved—but he couldn’t.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” he said, waving Golda out the door.

  He crossed the quad with the little dog hurrying to keep pace. He marched up the steppingstones and past the jasmine hedges and across the main lawn. He headed toward the bomb shelter, its door wide-open, insides glowing like a traffic light. Go.

  Adam hesitated in the doorway. The steel door at the bottom of the stairwell held back a pounding bass. He could still turn around. Turn around and go where? He needed distraction. That’s all. Not alcohol. The distraction. He’d order a Diet Coke. He did it in Tel Aviv.

  Inside, he was enveloped by a thumping techno beat and a haze of cigarette smoke streaked with green and blue lights. And yet the vibe in the concrete bunker was mellow. On a shabby couch, two army-aged guys bobbed their shaved heads to the repetitive beats. Some teenagers sat around a table, leaning precariously back in their chairs, cracking jokes. At another table four Russians played poker while a fifth stood over them like a referee. Did people hide in here from Iraqi scud missiles?

  He climbed onto a barstool and lifted Golda onto his lap. A skinny girl in low-slung jeans came for his order. An inked peace sign adorned her bony hip. Adam asked for her name.

  The girl rolled her eyes. “Talia. What do you want to drink?”

  Israelis really got on his nerves sometimes. He wanted to tell her to calm down, she wasn’t that hot. And that all he wanted was a Diet Coke.

  The girl crossed her arms when he failed to order. “Nu? Goldstar’s half price tonight.”

  He lowered his head and scratched the wooden bar as if it were a lottery ticket.

  “Nu?” she repeated.

  “Nu, nu, nu. Just go fucking get it already.”

  “Go fuck yourself.” The bartender walked off on her pin legs.

  Did that mean she wasn’t going to bring him a beer? That would make things easy. But no, she grabbed a bottle from the minifridge. That’s fine. He was still okay. No harm in ordering it. Only drinking it. He’d leave it sitting in front of him so he looked like a normal dude at a bar. What did he care if after he left the bartender found it full? Maybe he could empty it in the bathroom. Bomb shelters had to have bathrooms, right? People couldn’t be confined in here without a toilet.

  The girl popped off the cap and placed the bottle before him. Beads of condensation trickled down its brown glass and red and gold label. She leaned on the bar. “I’m going to kick you out i
f you keep being an asshole.”

  Adam nodded. “You’re totally right. I’m sorry.”

  The girl left to take someone else’s order and he eyed the bottle without touching it. Until he’d taken a sip, he hadn’t taken a sip. He’d just sit here with the bottle and his aching breastbone. Ten seconds. He still hadn’t taken a sip.

  Why don’t Jews drink? went the old joke.

  Because it interferes with their suffering.

  His heart pounded wildly as he clasped the bottle. So cold in his hand. So familiar, he could practically taste it by just holding it. His mouth dried.

  Was he doing this? He lifted the bottle, brought it to his mouth. Even with the cool glass rim against his lips, he wasn’t sure. Or maybe that was bullshit. Maybe the only thing he wasn’t sure about was whether he was truly unsure.

  Was he?

  Yes. Because he could still put down the bottle.

  He tilted back his head and the cold, fizzy lager poured into his mouth. He held it in there, tongue absorbing the taste, not swallowing. He still hadn’t swallowed, he still hadn’t swallowed, he—

  So fucking swallow and get it over with, you fucking loser.

  Done.

  Unsure of his unsureness? What a fucking joke he was. He knew he was going to drink from the minute he left Ulya and her Arab on the hillside. No, before that. He knew when he didn’t go get a pen for the Holocaust survivor. Bloomie. Jesus, was there anything more depressing than an old pet name?

  Yes.

  He chugged the rest of the bottle and called, “Another one!”

  He was going to get plastered tonight. Only tonight. Tomorrow, he’d stop. Tomorrow, he would be sober again, ready to push on. To think of a new way to find Dagmar. He just needed help getting through this one night.

  Claudette sat on her bed, the fax in her hands. The room had darkened in the two hours it had taken her to read it. She was supposed to have met Ofir at the car lot five minutes ago, but she couldn’t help but reread her sister’s note again.

  Salut ma chère Claudette,

  You must read this article from La Tribune! Didn’t I tell you it made no sense that you were certified insane at one year old? Call me collect as soon as you read this!