‘No . . .’ He laughed. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, nothing. I was just thinking.’ A slight, satisfied smile passed over her lips. Assaf wondered if his photography could be considered art. Perhaps, yes. The teacher of his photography course thought so; at the exhibit they put together at the end of last year, five of his photos were shown. But he never thought of himself as an ‘artist.’ There was something almost distasteful when he thought about it; perhaps because Reli insisted on introducing herself as an ‘artist’ and it had always seemed fake to him. Real artists were Cartier-Bresson, or Diane Arbus, and all the others whose works he adored and studied; but who was he compared to them?
A screaming bundle was shoved in front of his eyes. Samir returned, with a sigh of relief, passed off to Leah one angry little girl, and explained that she had been napping when he got there and screamed all the way here.
Assaf guessed that she was two or three years old. She was tiny, with ivory skin and very black, straight hair, and black slanted eyes that were now screwed up angrily and almost hidden. He shifted his eyes from her to Leah and back, trying to connect the big dark woman with the scarred face and the little girl with the slanted eyes, and suddenly understood – it was all so simple.
‘Leah,’ a voice called from the kitchen, ‘what about the marinade?’
Leah stood up, the screaming girl in her arms. She hesitated for a moment in front of the kitchen door, turned, and thrust her onto Assaf’s lap. Now he had a little girl on his hands. She was surprisingly light; she seemed to weigh about half of what Muki did. Muki was, as his mother said, ‘a girl with two thighs on the ground.’ And this little one was like a feather, and she smelled good and was so beautiful – from the little you could see through the tantrum she was having, screaming and beating her tiny fists in all directions. He smiled at her, and she screamed. He licked his lips like Dinka’s, and she kicked. He barked, and she went silent. She looked at him, surprised, expectant. He barked again and wiggled his ears. She glanced slyly from him to Dinka. Something started popping up from between the tears; he held his finger in the air, she sent out a finger and touched his. She still had a few hiccuping sobs in her smile; he nodded yes, and so did she. He shook his head no, and so did she. This way, without words, with nothing more than looks and winks and making faces, they said hello; and all his yearnings for Muki unfolded and swelled up, aching. Noa sent her little hands out to touch his face. She ran a hand over his eyes, his swollen nose. She touched the blue bruises, and Assaf sat, his eyes half-closed, and allowed it, and rejoiced inside. When he opened his eyes, he saw Leah was back, and he wanted to give her child back to her, but Noa wouldn’t let go of him.
‘I see Noa is fond of you,’ Leah said gravely. ‘Now –’
But Noa wouldn’t share him with anybody, either. She held his face with her two hands and aimed it toward her, and began telling him excitedly about a hamster they had in nursery school that got caught in broken glass and bled . . . Assaf repeated her half-words, and decoded them one by one. When Muki was that age when children say only one syllable of each word, Assaf had prepared a special dictionary so that her nanny could understand her. Leah sat to the side, listening to their conversation, and her big face shone. ‘Now listen’ – she said, when Noa finally agreed to let go of him for a moment and started playing on the floor with Dinka – ‘I want to tell you something.’
He dropped his smile, instantly sat at full attention. She crossed her hands, creating a little finger-tent in front of her mouth; above the finger-tent, her eyes stared at him, narrow and sparkling. ‘You should know that if you ever, I mean, ever, do anything bad to that girl, I will chase you to the ends of the earth and strangle you with these ten fingers – did you hear what I just said?’
He choked out some answer. He remembered Theodora telling him something similar, but sitting here with Leah, he could easily imagine that she had actually done such things before.
‘I may not be the smartest person in the world,’ she began, with the strange festivity of the opening of a speech. ‘And God only knows how many stupid things I’ve done in my life –’ She unconsciously touched the long scars – three bastards from a rival gang had slashed her with a razor stuck in a potato. ‘And I don’t exactly have a college degree. I only finished ninth grade. But I understand a little about human beings, and I’ve seen you for an hour now, and I know what I need to know.’
Assaf didn’t understand what all this was leading to, but he didn’t want to interrupt.
‘This is the situation,’ she said, and spread her hands on the table. ‘Tamar got mixed up in something.’
Drugs, Assaf thought.
‘Something very bad, involving all kinds of shady characters, even criminals.’
He listened. Until now, nothing she had said surprised him. (One thing did surprise him: that he was able to sit here, with all his tension and fear, and speak this easily and naturally with a person he had only just met; Assaf felt like someone who, without paying any attention, had mastered the steps of an extremely complex dance.)
‘It’ll be just like how they chased you when you came here,’ Leah continued. ‘And so let’s say, let’s just say that I tell you where she is now – and suppose you go there. They’ll be on you again before you know what hit you, and as smart as you’d be about it, you can’t run away from them. They’re better than you are at these things. Now do you understand what I’m worried about?’
He didn’t say anything.
‘That’s why I think you’d better leave the dog here.’
‘Why?’
‘This is what I’m thinking: They’re looking for a boy with a dog, right? If you leave here without the dog, I bet you no one will even look twice at you – I know how their minds work.’
Assaf was thinking.
‘What do you say?’
‘I’m taking Dinka and will keep looking for Tamar.’
She sighed, looked at his bruised face. ‘Tell me’ – she asked what people used to ask her a million times, fifteen years ago – ‘aren’t you afraid of anything?’
‘Sure I’m afraid.’ He laughed and thought, You should have seen how I shook in front of those guys at the swimming hole, and how I shook on the way here. ‘But I’ll find her.’ He didn’t know where he had gotten this confidence from. He felt that he, too – like that old man with the rifle – was now talking as if he were a hero in a movie. ‘No, I’m sure of it,’ he muttered, sailing off into his thoughts, forgetting himself for a moment. ‘I’ll find her sooner or later . . .’
She watched him with a strange pleasure: the way he leaned forward in his chair, putting his knees together without putting his feet together; his hands so awkwardly clasped, each finger turning in a slightly different direction knitted with the others in a dreamy, childish gesture, as if he were making a wish; his shy internal smile that hovered on the outside, leaving two spots of light in the corners of his mouth. Leah was overcome.
‘Yes . . .’ she whispered, oddly weak, as if answering his thoughts.
‘I’ve walked after her so far, I feel as if I already know her,’ he muttered, to his own surprise – the words simply fell out of him.
‘That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking from the moment we started talking,’ she said quietly.
‘What?’ He pulled himself together, surprised by their dreamy conversation.
‘Come on,’ she said, and stood up. ‘We’re going on a little trip.’
‘Where?’
‘You’ll see in a minute,’ and as she stood, said another thing, this time to herself: ‘Us girls have to help each other out.’
She gave a few instructions to the cook, prepared a bottle of water for Noa, and wrote something on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope. Assaf didn’t ask a single question. When they walked out the front of the restaurant, he looked carefully right and left. The alley was empty. He noticed Leah looking to both sides as well; even Dinka inspected the terrain. In th
e parking lot, Leah introduced him to her old yellow VW Bug and strapped Noa into a high-tech safety car seat that seemed at least as expensive as the car itself. They drove through the little streets for some time. Occasionally, Leah would pull over to the side and wait for several minutes, and only then drive on. At one point she braked suddenly in a street that seemed completely empty, turned sharply into a little parking lot, and waited. After a moment, two men passed them, running; Assaf recognized one of them, the skinny one who had chased him before. He looked at Leah, impressed, and couldn’t understand how she had guessed where they were before she saw them. ‘A dog knows another dog.’ She chuckled, and drove off in the other direction. And against traffic. They drove this way a long time, her senses dictating how they drove. Assaf noticed she was looking in the rearview mirror more than through the windshield and didn’t ask a thing.
‘Listen,’ she said after a while, ‘don’t be offended, but I want you to close your eyes. It’s better if you don’t see where we’re going.’
He understood immediately and closed his eyes. He heard her say, ‘So that even if, God forbid, they ever caught you, you wouldn’t be able to tell them where you went.’
‘Do you want me to blindfold myself?’
‘No.’ She laughed. ‘I believe you.’
It was pleasant for him to be riding in the car like this, to relax a little after a day of running, and before what was waiting for him. Noa had fallen asleep in the back, and Assaf thought he wouldn’t mind taking a quick nap either.
‘Do you want to listen to music?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want to hear a story? Don’t open your eyes!’
‘Yes.’
So Leah told him about the restaurant, and about the hard years of her apprenticeship in France; along the way, she had to say something, only a hint, of course, about her previous incarnation, and glanced at him to make sure he wasn’t horrified. He wasn’t. She took a deep breath and straightened both her hands on the wheel, continuing to speak quietly, in the same manner she sometimes used with Tamar. She didn’t even try to struggle against the strange urge that had come over her, to open herself up to this boy – on the contrary, she abandoned herself to this pleasurable, addictive element that was in the air around Assaf. For a moment, she hesitated over whether to tell him about Shai, but she decided she had already said too much, and even for what she’d said, she would probably get a piece of Tamar’s mind. Anyway, it was better for him to discover the rest on his own. Every now and then, she looked over at him and thought that she could see exactly what he would look like, in ten years, and in twenty, and in thirty. There were moments when she thought he had fallen asleep, and she would stop talking – he would then emit a light ‘Hm?’ and she would continue. She told him about Noiku, that she was the greatest gift life had ever given her, and that it was thanks to Tamar, in more ways than one, that she had been able to take that step. Suddenly she laughed. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You probably think that I tell my life’s story to everyone I meet?’
‘Sure. Tell me more.’
The road continued. Noa sighed a little in her sleep. Leah spoke. Then she was silent. Even without opening his eyes, he could feel her growing tense. They drove down a bumpy hill; the orange light of the late-afternoon sun rested on his eyelids. Leah was now driving very slowly. ‘If you’d’ve asked me,’ she abruptly said in a different voice, ‘I probably would have told you.’
‘What?’ Assaf asked.
‘That this is where I dropped Tamar off two days ago.’
He opened his eyes. He saw they were standing by an empty bus stop. A cardboard sign swayed on a near electric pole: TO SIGI AND MOTI’S WEDDING. Leah raised her sunglasses, scanned the place, looking carefully in the rearview mirror. Noa woke up and started to cry. She saw Assaf and smiled at him. He traced his finger along her delicate cheek. She held his finger and said his name.
He got out of the car, and Dinka, who had slept all the way there, jumped out after him and shook herself. Leah took out an envelope and gave it to him. ‘Give this to Tamar, from me. It’s a letter to explain everything so she won’t hate me. Take good care of yourself.’ She blew him a kiss. ‘Good luck, Assaf. And take good care of her.’
She turned around and drove off.
He immediately stepped off the road, into the valley, and curled up behind a rock. He waited to make sure that no other car was stopping. Complete silence. No engine and no footsteps. He was all alone, and no one had followed him. But he felt uncomfortable not knowing where he was.
A path curved between the rocks. Assaf began walking down the path; Dinka grew alert again, sharp. Again and again, Assaf had to call her to him. By a bent oak tree he stopped her, went down on his knees, and whispered in her ear, ‘We have to be very quiet. Don’t bark now, okay? Not a sound, until we see what’s going on. Promise?’
They descended farther. The valley was much deeper than it had seemed at first. They passed over a narrow creek, treading slowly and quietly. When they were between two small hills, they heard the voices.
He didn’t know where they were coming from. There were the sounds of struggle, and shouts and moans. A very young man, maybe even a boy, was screaming hysterically: It won’t help you, you can’t keep me here, I’m not your prisoner. And a girl was crying, or begging for something.
Dinka broke away from his hand, and only before the peak of the little hill did he manage to grab her and lie on her. They both gasped. Assaf whispered to her, pleaded for her to be quiet: Dinka, quiet, not yet. He didn’t know what to do now, confused and scared as he was. Perhaps because of this, he removed his belt and tied Dinka to the thin trunk of a tree by her collar. She looked at him, so terribly insulted that he could hardly do it. Then he crept to the peak of the hill. Below, behind a thick tree, he saw something dark that looked to him like a big mouth. It turned out to be the mouth of a cave. A very young guy was standing there, sweating and panting, his hands shaking at his sides. He was tall, very skinny, and swaying on his legs. After a moment Assaf noticed someone else there, lying on the ground, motionless at the guy’s feet. Assaf thought it was a boy with very short hair – now he was completely confused: Who were they? Where was Tamar? But the guy noticed him over the edge of the hill; his eyes lit with fear and he started to run off in the other direction. Assaf ran after him, confused. The chase took only a few seconds; the boy ran slowly, weakly, but every time Assaf almost touched him, the boy’s fear pushed him a few steps farther up the valley. Assaf knocked him down and lay over him near a clump of bushes, and immediately twisted his arm back, the way they had done to him so many times over the past few days. The guy lay under him and cried, and begged Assaf not to kill him. Assaf thought vaguely that this was strange and irrational: it was impossible for someone this frightened and frail to be one of the people threatening Tamar. The guy tried to get up – his body twisted and curled. Assaf pushed him back down and yelled at him not to move. At that moment he heard quick steps in the bushes behind him. He turned, too slowly, saw something coming down on him from above, and the sky cracked in two and fell apart. After a moment, he started to feel the blow to the side of his head, a hard blow. Then he felt nothing.
VI
‘DON’T MOVE! DON’T GET up! If you move one inch –!’
Assaf heard it, but he had to move; he was afraid that if he continued to lie down, his brains would leak out of one of his ears. The pain now pulsing through his skull, joined with the pain from the beatings he had gotten in the morning, now powerfully reawakened by the most recent blow; the agonies danced all over his skull, as if cheering the new pain on and welcoming it.
‘Who are you?’ Tamar screamed. ‘What do you want?’
Assaf looked at her, trying to put together the picture in front of him; but the short hair he saw refused to go with the voice he heard. A thought filtered in through the fog in his head: It’s a girl . . . no, a boy . . . who is that?
And
suddenly another sharp pain passed through him – it’s her. But where is her hair? Where is the black mane?
Barks rang out over the hill; Tamar – perhaps because she was so intent on Assaf – didn’t hear them. Assaf wanted to tell her, ‘It’s Dinka,’ but before that, he would have to sit up, to lighten the pain in his head. He rose a little, and Tamar leaped up, stood above him, and swung a big piece of two-by-four. The next time he looked up, his eyeballs hurt, too. A row of rusty nails was sticking out of the wood, and Assaf hoped they hadn’t cut him. He touched his head above the ear – he couldn’t feel any blood. Just another big warm bump to add to the collection. The skinny guy was sitting on the ground, not far from him, leaning against a rock, his eyes closed.
‘Why did you come here?’ her voice choked out, shrill with tension and fear. ‘What do you want?’
Assaf started to understand: she thought he was one of the men chasing her. She needed an explanation. Heavily, he tried to stand.
‘If you even dare try to get up –!’
He didn’t know what to do. She was flickering in front of him, coming nearer, then moving farther away, seeming wild and scared and dangerous. He looked at her and thought that even like that, twitching in anger, with her short hair, a piece of wood in her hand, and wearing filthy overalls, even like that, she was a lot prettier than what he had imagined. Or at least, than what she had written about herself in the diary. He simply sat and looked at her, trying to match up how she looked with everything he knew about her; and to everything he had imagined and hoped for, secretly, in his heart. She was still very different from all that; her eyes, for example. Theodora had mentioned them, something about her bold, teasing look – but she hadn’t said a word about their unique color, that mixture of blue and gray (he had once photographed a similar color – autumn clouds in the skies above Hatsofim Mountain at dawn). Also the way they were placed so far apart from each other, her eyes, as if there was room between them, quiet; space.
Someone to Run With Page 14