‘What do you want.’
IV
SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHEN she would see Shai again. He didn’t show up for dinner the night after they first saw each other. Tamar didn’t know whether he was in Jerusalem or if he had slept in a distant town – or whether he was intentionally avoiding her. She sat eating her daily serving of mashed potatoes, her eyes drawn helplessly to the door. The next night, Shai came. He sat with his head bowed until the end of the meal, answering none of her piercing looks, none of the shouts from her fingers. He finished his meal and left, and the next day he didn’t come back.
But Pesach Bet Ha Levi came and ate with them, and was in a great mood. His thighs almost burst through his shorts. It occurred to Tamar that he probably never changed out of that net tank top – or washed it. He told jokes and for a long time waxed nostalgic over memories of his military service – he was the storage manager for some platoon band – and bragged about the wrestling meets he had competed in as a youth. Tamar thought if she kept waiting for Shai to decide to cooperate, if she couldn’t do something immediately, she would simply lose her mind.
She sneaked a look at Pesach’s rough face, a bit captivated by the brutal conflicts she found in it – the fleshy lips expressed corruption and bestiality; there was also an opaque tyranny in his heavy cheeks, in his dead eyes. Yet the face possessed a clumsy friendliness as well, a naked eagerness to be considered a ‘good guy,’ to be loved and worshipped by everyone. He got up, tapped on the pockets of his shorts, and said he had forgotten his pack in the car – and could he bum a smoke off anyone? Instantly cigarettes appeared from every side, tendered in his direction; Tamar despised their slavishness. But all at once – the motion of his hands in his pockets flashed in her mind a second time, and her heart pounded in her chest: his pockets. Empty. His net tank had no pockets. It was now or never.
She waited until someone, some lucky winner, lit his cigarette; he sucked in the pleasure of the first drag. She got up, told Sheli loudly that she was going to the bathroom for a minute and to leave her plate on the table. She left the dining room and ran with all her might.
The corridor was empty – one bulb, hanging by a cord, rocking its shadows against the walls. Tamar pushed on the knob – she was certain it would be locked; this was madness, she didn’t have a chance – and the door swung open.
Pesach’s office was dark, and she felt her way inside, circling around one chair and bumping into another. She found the table by what little early moonlight leaked into the room. She opened the top drawer – files and papers spilled out, it was a mess – but Tamar was looking for the red book, and it wasn’t there. What were you thinking, he’s probably stashed it in some money belt under his pants. She opened the second drawer – folders and old books and packs of parking passes for different cities.
She heard voices outside the door, in the corridor. Someone – possibly two people – was coming. They were walking fast. Tamar bent down and tried to hide under the open drawer. God, she thought, even though I don’t believe in you, even though Theo would laugh at how I broke down and cried out to you in a moment of fear, please, keep them from coming here.
‘You’ll see – in the end he’ll sell. I’ll make him sell.’ She recognized Shishko’s voice. ‘I got to get a motherfucking tape deck like that in my car.’
‘Show him a grand and he’ll sell,’ said the other voice, which she didn’t know. ‘He’ll give it up like a baby. What, he won’t sell? Of course he’ll sell!’
Their footfalls passed and faded down the corridor. She waited a little longer, exhausted by her terror. The bottom drawer had a lock. Of course! That’s why he doesn’t need to take the book with him, he’s satisfied with a key. Tamar pulled on the drawer without a single hope. Then she gazed for a moment and couldn’t believe what she saw: This is the first time in my life, she thought, that I’ve had more luck than brains.
The book was there, red and thick, its cover cracked, oily from Pesach’s fingers.
At first she didn’t understand any of it. The pages were full of lines and columns and initials and names and numbers. Everything was scrawled in tiny handwriting, surprising, considering the size of the hand that wrote it. She tilted the pages in front of the window, trying to get a bit more light. Her eyes scanned the lines, her lips parted in concentration: it looked like a code, and she knew she didn’t have the time to crack it. She closed the book, closed her eyes, pulled herself together. When she opened her eyes, she realized the lines were names of cities, the columns were dates of performances. The lines and the columns crossed each other, creating little squares. A pulse was beating hard in her temples, her neck, even behind her eyes. She looked for the column with today’s date. She found it. Then she crossed it with the line of Tel Aviv. In the box where they met, she found her name; she deciphered the initials: DS was Dizengoff Square, where she’d performed this morning, and SD was the Suzanne Dellal Center. The book shook in her hands. She tried to forget everything behind the door, anyone who could enter the room at any minute. Only now did she realize how brave Shai had been to make a phone call from here – or how desperate. It was ten at night, and their parents weren’t at home, and she almost fainted when she heard him after so long. He spoke in a choked, hysterical voice, telling her about some accident he’d had. It was hard to understand what he was saying. He begged for them to come and take him, save him, only without getting the police involved; if they brought the police, it would be the end of him. She sat in the kitchen, the evening before the trig exam, and listened; it took a long time before she could understand what he was saying. His voice was different; its timbre and rhythm had changed completely. He was a stranger. He said it was a horrible place, it was a kind of a prison, and that all the others were half free, only he was a prisoner for life. And in the same breath he told her to ask Father to forgive him, and said that the beating was because of momentary insanity; the boss here, he said, is someone – for six months I couldn’t decide whether he was Satan or an angel; it’s completely mixed up, it’s sick –
And while he was talking, she heard the squeak of a door under his words; she, in the kitchen, at home, heard it. Shai didn’t. He continued to say a few more words, and then fell silent, and started to breathe deeply, trembling, mumbling, ‘No, no . . . no . . .’ Then she heard another voice – inhuman, like the roar of a predator attacking, a roar from deep in the gut, and one after another they came, the blows, like a sack full of dirt being slammed into a wall. Once, and again, and a scream, and a cry that, for a moment, she thought might be the cry of an animal.
From here, from this room.
Don’t think about it. She flipped forward through the coming days. She searched for the lines where Jerusalem appeared, then she combed them for her name and his, and page after page she found nothing. From upstairs she heard the clanging of forks and spoons; they were starting to clear the tables. She had, perhaps, another minute, a minute and a half. Her finger ran over the days, stopping on next Sunday, and found only her name on the Jerusalem line. Shai would be in Tiberias. Her finger galloped along the lines, stopped on next Thursday. Her eyes widened: his name and hers, right next to each other. Shai would be performing in a place marked ‘HP’ and she’d be in ‘ZS.’ They would both be performing from ten to eleven in the morning. She closed the book and put it back in the drawer, and stood for a moment, shaking all over: in nine days, one week and two days, he would be in Hamashbir platform, she in Tziyyon Square. Only a few hundred meters away from each another. How could she make them meet? She would never succeed. She would get him out of here in nine days. All of her senses shouted, Get out – now! At least five minutes had passed since she’d left the dining room, and her plate remained on the table, and Pesach might send someone to find out where she had gone. But she still hadn’t finished what she had to do there. She hurried to the door, opened it a crack, and peeked out. The corridor was empty. The naked lightbulb swung, scattering murky beams of yellow light. Tamar
quietly shut the door and went back into the depths of the room, to the table, to the telephone. Her fingers shook so badly she pressed the wrong buttons. She dialed again; somewhere a phone was ringing. Please, let her be home, she prayed, with all of her heart. Please let her be home.
Leah picked up the phone. Her voice was alert, awake, as if she had been standing there waiting for this call.
‘Leah . . .’ Tamar whispered.
‘Tami-mami! Where are you, girl? What’s going on? Should I come to you?’
‘Leah, not now. Listen: next Thursday, between ten and eleven, wait with the car –’
‘One minute, not so fast, I have to write that down . . .’
‘No, there’s no time. Remember: next Thursday.’
‘Between ten and eleven, but where do you want me to be?’
‘Where? Wait –’ Leah’s yellow VW Bug flashed in front of her eyes. She tried to see the little streets of the city’s center in her mind’s eye. She didn’t know which ones were open to drivers and which were one-way and which would be the closest to Shai, so he wouldn’t have to run too far.
‘Tamar? Are you there?’
‘Just a minute. I’m thinking.’
‘Can I tell you a little something while you think?’
‘I’m so happy to hear your voice, Leah,’ she choked.
‘And I’m sitting here, biting my nails. It’s been almost three weeks since I’ve seen or heard from you! And Noiku is giving me hell! Where is Mami, where is Mami? Just tell me, sweetie, have things turned out all right? Did you find it?’
‘Leah, I have to hang up.’ She heard steps in the corridor. She hung up the phone, and folded herself into a little frightened ball under the table. She waited a few heartbeats more. Complete silence. It was probably the fear making those sounds. At least she had managed to pass the message to Leah. Now she had to get out of here, quietly.
But when she reached the door on her tiptoes, she was overwhelmed by the urge to call someone else. It was crazy. It was the most unnecessary slalom between logic and madness. But the urge to talk to another person from her previous incarnation was burning in her. She was already at the door; she touched the knob and stood, for a long moment, torn. She had to get out of there – and who would she call? Her parents? She couldn’t, not yet, she would fall apart if she spoke to them. Idan and Adi are in Torino right now; and even if they’d already returned, what would she talk to them about? Who was left? Halina and Theo. Halina or Theo? Like a sleepwalker, she turned back to the phone. Leah, Halina, and Theo. Her three girl friends. Her three mothers. Theo is the mother of the brain, she once wrote in her diary, Leah, of the heart, and Halina, of the voice. Without noticing, she picked up the receiver. Wild alarms rang in her ears, but she had no power to resist this desire. Talking to Leah had aroused in her everything she had suppressed and buried deep inside during the past weeks. And Tamar was awash in emotions, carried away by the memory of her other life, her everyday life, the freedom and simplicity of it, what it was like to do everything without checking seven times over that you’re not being watched or followed; what it was like just to talk, to say whatever comes to mind. As if she were dreaming, like a drug addict craving warmth and love, she dialed another number.
There was a ring. Tamar imagined the black old-fashioned telephone with the round dial and the soft, quick, padding steps of the cloth sandals.
‘Yes, hallo?’ asked the sharp voice, with its deep, ancient accent. ‘Hallo? Who’s there? One moment . . . is it Tamar? My Tamar?’
A hand. Red and heavy. With a square black stone in a gold setting. On the telephone, cutting the connection.
‘I wouldn’t have guessed,’ Pesach said. He flicked on the lamp and flooded the room with light. ‘From you, of all people. Making private calls from the home phone? Who’d you call? Anyone we know? Daddy? Mommy? Or someone else? Sit down!’ he shouted, shoving her into his chair. He paced back and forth behind her. The nape of her neck turned to stone. She was fucked, just like Shai; she blew it in the same room.
‘Now you have two choices. Either you tell me, of your own free will, who you spoke to, or we will make you. You decide.’ He leaned his full weight on the table in front of her. Violence radiated off him like strong waves of heat; the muscles of his arms rippled under his skin like cubs in the womb. Tamar swallowed. ‘I was talking to my grandmother,’ she whispered.
‘Grandma, huh? So now we have two more options,’ he said slowly, and she was amazed to see how, in an instant, the folds of fat on his face were absorbed into him and his bones stood out, like the ghostly outline of a bare skull. ‘Either I ask you for the number you dialed and you give it to me, of your own free will –’
Tamar was silent.
‘Or we have the other option: I press redial.’
She looked at him, expressionless. Just don’t show him you’re scared, don’t give him the satisfaction.
He pressed redial. Pesach held the receiver to his ear. There was silence, and one ring. Through his cheek, Tamar heard Theodora’s sharp ‘Hallo,’ now sounding worried and afraid. Pesach held still and listened carefully. Theodora shouted again: ‘Hallo? Hallo!! Who is this? Tamar? Tami? Are you there?’ and then he hung up.
His mouth twitched a little, in hesitation.
‘Well,’ he said eventually, his face twisted in disgust. ‘That just happened to sound like a grandmother.’ Tamar’s shoulders dropped a little in relief. How such a stupid mistake could turn into a life preserver – Damnit! she thought, I didn’t tell Leah the street! Her fingernails dug into her palms: she had managed to name the day and hour, but not the street. What a horrible mistake – Pesach was walking around her, with menacing steps. Now he leaned over her, with all his size, his mass, his violence. ‘Get up. You got lucky this time. It stinks to the sky, but you got lucky. Now open up your ears real good’ – She sat, frozen, unable to stand, thinking of all the trouble she had fallen into from the first moment she came here, when she sang ‘Don’t Call Me Sweetie,’ then when she called Miko a thief, and when she gave the money to that Russian woman. Again and again, she had acted according to her urges and against her own interests – ‘one more time, if you so much as tickle the edge of my edge, you’re finished. Even if you sing like Hava Alberstein and Yoram Gaon put together, when you leave here, you won’t be able to sing anymore, for the rest of your life. Take my word for it. And listen good, sweetie’ – of course he called her sweetie – ‘I still don’t know what you’re doing here. Got me? This whole time, something smells fishy about you. I have a sixth sense, and I’m feeling it about you, and I’m never wrong about these things, never.’ She felt it melting, moment by moment, the mysterious material that was supposed to stabilize and hold together all her organs and the features on her face. ‘So let’s be very clear. The man who can fool Pesach Bet Ha Levi hasn’t been born yet. Do we understand each other?’
Tamar nodded.
‘Now get the hell out of my sight.’
She did.
After she finished her last song, the audience applauded with shouts of ‘Bravo!’ and started to scatter. Some of them approached her, praising her and thanking her, asking about this song or that. She answered in detail, which she didn’t usually do, talking at length – from the corner of her eye, she saw Miko approaching a nearby shwarma stand. She scanned those standing around her quickly; who would be the most appropriate? Whom could she trust? She saw two young women, tourists from some northern country, who spoke English to her with a rolling r. They wouldn’t work. A tall, lean man with a goatee and a face that looked slightly Chinese moved toward her and spoke about the purity of her voice. ‘This clarity,’ he said. ‘When you started singing, I was on the other end of the street – I thought I was hearing a flute.’ Something about him rang false – or perhaps he put her off only because he made her feel false. Next to him was a slender woman with translucent skin, who rubbed her hands with restrained excitement and said she had something absolutely exquis
ite to tell Tamar but would patiently wait her turn. And then – an older, heavy man, who held a worn brown attaché case in his hand. He had the look of a humble, dedicated bookkeeper; he had good, big round eyes behind his glasses and a small drooping mustache; he wore a wide tie that had gone out of style years ago, and his shirt was falling out of his pants. She saw him hesitate, and there was no time for hesitation: she turned to him, flashed her most dazzling smile. He was instantly dazzled, shone back at her, and told her that even though he was ‘a complete ignoramus in matters of singing,’ yet when he’d heard her voice, he felt something he hadn’t in many years. His eyes grew moist, and he grasped her hand in both of his. Then, quickly, before he had the chance to say anything else about her purity, she gave him her other hand as well, and her eyes suddenly gazed deeply into his, begging him. She saw him squinting in amazement, his eyebrows shrinking, when he felt the piece of paper shoved into his palm. Over his shoulder, ten meters away, Miko was lifting a pita above his mouth, obliquely licking the yellowish sauce that dripped out of it. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her since the morning, and she knew that Pesach had given him special instructions after last night’s incident. The short man finally grasped her despair and pulled himself together. He closed his hand over the paper, smiled a frozen smile. ‘Goodbye,’ she told him, firmly, and her hands almost pushed him away from her.
He probably had understood something. He walked away quickly. Tamar’s eyes followed him, worried. The slender, translucent lady, who had been waiting patiently, now stormed in: Tamar’s singing reminded her of someone; ‘You have to hear this, you’ll understand me exactly: there used to be a great singer, her name was Rosa Raisa; she ran away from Bialystok, a Jewish girl, Rosa Bruchstein – now don’t laugh, many thought her to be the greatest singer in the world after Caruso. Puccini and Toscanini both wanted her –’ Tamar listened through her, looked through her, nodded to her like a puppet’s head on a string; she saw the squat man marching off energetically. He had already passed by Miko, and neither of them had noticed each other. His round bald spot was flushed with effort, perhaps with excitement as well. She prayed she had chosen correctly, had bet on the right person. Someone laughed in front of her – the delicate lady was trembling from the pleasure of her own anecdote – ‘so one day Rosa Raisa happened to be traveling through Mexico by train, and Pancho Villa, with his bandits, attacked her car and started shooting! She told them she was a singer, and they did not believe her; but when she opened her mouth and sang ‘El Guitarrico’ in the middle of the car, during the robbery, they not only released her, they gave her a little Mexican tequila, too . . .’ Tamar smiled and thanked her. She picked up her money and tape player, called to Dinka, and went to Miko’s prearranged meeting place. From the corner of her eye, she saw that the man with the brown attaché case had already reached the top of the street; she was glad that he didn’t stop to read the note, that he didn’t turn his head backward even once. She had prepared two more notes just like the first last night. She had thought to give them to three different people; but of all the people she sang in front of today, he was the only one she trusted. She had the strange intuition that he was the right person.
Someone to Run With Page 9