“It cost six and half thousand euros,” I announced proudly.
“Really?” she jiggled around even more vigorously. “So what can I do for you?”
“Well, nothing really,” I answered pathetically.
“Nothing!” she shouted. “Are you some kind of tease? You ring me up in a state of panic, ask me to come round and tell me it’s a good moment because Jessica is out. I think we know what we’re talking about here.”
I blushed and decided to bluff myself out of my confusion. “What are we talking about here? You tell me.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you! It’s blindingly obvious: you want to go to bed with me.”
Why would this embarrass a sophisticated man of the world like me? Such was the psychosis… “It’s true,” I said at last. “I do, I do terribly want to go to bed with you. This, I’m afraid, is a minor passion.”
“Only a minor one? Well, I don’t think you’re for me then.”
“No, no. What am I saying? A major passion. An all-consuming passion. A passion that has completely taken hold of me and makes me disregard things I hold most dear.”
“By ‘things you hold most dear’, I assume you mean Jessica. Some credit to you for that, but I don’t think you should refer to her as ‘things’, do you?”
I was baffled for a second or two. “No, no, I don’t mean Jessica,” I smiled, “I mean ‘things’ – like my Chinese vase and my sofa.”
“Oh,” said Elena, looking a little baffled herself.
“God, yes! What I feel for you is in a completely different category from what I have ever felt for Jessica. Elena, I really think that you are the love of my life. I know it now.”
“But you’re still struggling to put me before your ‘things’, aren’t you?”
“Not at all,” I cried. “I said that I disregard them. That really is unique, I promise you.”
“What can I say? I’m very moved. I’ll have to think about it, though.”
“You mean you’re not rejecting me? It’s not out of the question? Thank you, thank you,” I enthused.
“If I come, I’ll come at two o’clock tomorrow,” she dictated, “so make sure Jessica’s not going to be around. No nasty surprises, my friend.”
“Oh Elena, my sweet.”
Did I see Elena’s lip curl, as she leapt off the sofa. “I have to be going,” she said and very soon she was quickly and carelessly lifting her coat off the vase and fishing around inside it for her umbrella.
“Elena, give me at least the warmth of your embrace.”
Again her lip moved. What a strange lady she was! “Let’s leave that until tomorrow. I’m in a hurry.”
“Yes, yes. Anything you say. Until tomorrow!” I moaned. Do you see the degradations a man can heap upon himself? This is my warning.
I have to confess that I did slightly neglect my work over the ensuing twenty-four hours. We are all made of flesh, and just occasionally I fall below my usual professional standards. In the evening Jessica didn’t help matters by acting strangely. She was untypically grumpy and left our plates on the dining-room table. In the end I had to wash them up myself. However, she didn’t put up any resistance to my idea that, as part of her ongoing education, she should visit the art gallery in L***, which is an hour’s journey from here. Even when I said, “Make a really good day of it!” and gave her four hundred euros, she did not appear to be placated. She didn’t even thank me, and this is another lesson you must always hold dear: women are an ungrateful sex, and that is pretty much a universal rule.
I was at home before two, waiting for Elena and making a few last-minute adjustments, including the removal of Jessica’s photograph, which I put in a drawer for safekeeping. She was punctual, which you wouldn’t have expected of her. She breezed in carrying several bags, and went straight to the bedroom, where she undressed. This was almost instantaneous, and she just slipped off her dress, kicked off her sandals and was wearing no underwear.
She then produced a nurse’s uniform. I have never understood the attraction of these things, but with Elena I was willing to try anything that took her fancy. “Are you going to wear that?” I said.
“No,” she replied, “you are.”
Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking: how could I humiliate myself still further? There are no depths to which we will not go when we are a prey to this psychosis. That is the most important lesson in this letter. Never form a permanent relationship with a woman; never give your heart as I did to Elena.
But it did not end there. She then pulled out a dog suit. God knows where she got it from. I was entirely covered in this suit, except for my face. She asked me to kiss her feet, her tits and her buttocks, and in each she angled herself in a certain direction, for what reason I could not be sure.
I won’t tell you all of the humiliating poses, positions and postures she inflicted on me that afternoon. I eventually tired of her arrogance, and demanded we went to bed. To my surprise, she agreed demurely and jumped under the covers, but even then I sensed her expression of expectation to be more humorous than amorous. The phone rang. I intended to leave it, but she looked at me and said, “It might be important.”
I lifted the phone just to get rid of whoever it was.
“Robert, where have you been? I have been looking for you everywhere.” It sounded like Pierre from Human Resources. What could he have wanted with me? He had no right to bother someone of my seniority.
“I’m at home. Whatever it is can wait for the morning,” I replied testily.
“But this is important. The green tea market is in freefall.”
“Which means exactly,” my head began to race. If this were at all serious, I would have been facing ruin, not only at work but also personally, because so sure was I of the upward trend in the foreseeable future that I had been betting on this and not covering it in the opposite direction.
“Well, it looks as though the bottom has fallen out of the market. The Chinese have just dumped huge quantities.”
“What is it with the Chinese? Always the Chinese. Pierre, I’m coming over to the office straightaway.” I dressed and rushed out of the house. Instinctively I did not stop to kiss or say goodbye to Elena who was maintaining her bemused smile.
On arriving at the office, I rushed to see the colleagues on my section, who I expected to find in a crisis meeting. Instead they were chatting and laughing over cups of coffee. I soon realised that the market was, if anything, rather bullish. I went to see Pierre who denied having made the phone call. Threatening to speak to his superiors as soon as I returned, I rushed back home, now fearing the worst and uncertain as to what Elena’s game might be.
They had acted with great alacrity. I have to admit that Elena is an operator. By the time I got back they were gone. As was my Chinese vase. My sofa had been ripped with a knife. Apart from that, there was little damage. Perhaps I should say there was little other damage to my house and property – to me the damage was colossal. Everywhere they had strewn photographs of myself and Elena in absurd positions. A letter on my persecuted sofa made the blackmail explicit: “Your silence will earn our silence. Sorry about the sofa and the vase, we know how much you cared for them – more than you did for Jessica.”
Further examination of the flat revealed the plot. A hole in the wardrobe must have been used by Jessica for photographing us. Pierre was looking relaxed because he knew that I would never report him. I was obliged to swallow my bile, and look on as they spent their ill-gotten gains.
After selling my vase for over 800,000 euros – a much higher price than the half million I had paid and yet another demonstration of the range of my business acumen – Elena and Jessica bought a large restaurant and adjoining building in a run-down part of the city. They turned it into one of the most chic establishments we have, and converted the rest of the building into a theatre and arts centre. The dregs of society all collect there and criticise wealth-creators like myself. They married and their “gay” wedding was th
e society event of the year. I rarely see them, but Jessica is a changed woman. I have to admit that she looks even more attractive, although these days she has the same neglected air as her partner. You probably wouldn’t want to get too close.
I am very conscious that I have a highly evolved sensitivity and harmonisation to the civilisation in which I live. I realise that there is no woman worthy of sharing my space. I am happy to spend the occasional night with different women. This is part of being a healthy man. Every week I have a game of squash and every week, usually on a Friday, I go out to get myself a woman, which is not difficult. I perhaps owe that higher form of consciousness to my terrible experience with Jessica and Elena. They taught me the utility of the one-night stand. I of course threw Jessica’s photo away and put one of myself on graduation day in the genuine silver photograph frame. I was on my way to the top and to immaculate solitude.
Gottfried, I urge you to follow this same route towards the only state of consciousness and knowledge that can make us happy.
Yours fraternally,
Robert Finnick
A Dream of Justice
(or of as much justice as we can ever expect in this world)
“That’s right! We Jews were complete bastards,” Leon says with weary sarcasm, although no one can be sure that he has thought out his reply; it seems more likely that he has simply responded with an instinctive verbal reaction to a matter he considers both tiresome and unimportant.
“That is not what I’m saying,” his father-in-law Mustapha mutters with the irritation of the misunderstood. “But the Israelis were bastards; they really were and they made my childhood a misery. A misery I tell you. If you had told me at the time that my daughter would marry a Jew and that my grandchildren would have some fancy European surname, I would have spat in your face.” And then in a lower tone half to himself, “I would have died of shame.”
“Shame, father. That is a terrible thing to say,” his daughter Fatima says with a complex laugh that expresses embarrassment, impatience but also a tiny part of solidarity and respect for the old man.
He brightens and apologises, “Of course I have no shame now. Leon is Leon. I don’t think of him as a Jew.”
“But I am.”
“Of course you are. But for me you are my son-in-law, the father of my grandchildren, and the husband of my only surviving daughter. I have got used to you and your strange ways. We speak Hebrew in this house. That is how the dice landed. I have no problem with that, but …”
“… but leave it alone, Old Man,” Leon interrupts. “It’s history now. No one cares. This is the new Palestine. Arabs and Jews live together – if not in complete harmony – at least without blowing each other up. It’s best not to revisit all that stuff. There must have been faults on all sides, but now it’s in the past, and we need to forget.”
“You need to forget. Of course you do. But I can never forget. I can forgive, but I cannot forget. I cannot forget the people they crushed under their tanks on the most important …”
“Crushed under tanks? Come on, you tottering old fool.”
“Leon, show a little respect!” says Fatima.
“Yes, but crushed under tanks? Let’s get real.”
“I know because I was there, and the tanks that crushed over three hundred non-violent protesters lying on the ground stopped just next to me. If the tanks had moved just six more inches they would have started to crush me.”
“He has finally lost his head,” Leon guffaws.
“No he hasn’t,” his wife turns on him angrily. There is suddenly a light in her eyes, and Leon, who is normally happy to dictate to his wife, albeit in a manner he considers loving, sensitive and even solicitous, knows that he can go no further. He senses there is an area that always divides them and which they have very sensibly decided to avoid. “Tell him,” she shouts at her father. “You tell him what happened.”
The old man adjusts himself and his clothing in his chair, settling in for a long story that needs to be told patiently, because he believes that his listener will be hard of hearing. “It was back in 2012 and there was a Palestinian leader – a Christian who believed in non-violence. His name was Ibrahim Safieh, who you have heard of.”
“Of course.”
“Well, you know that he was run over by a tank, but you don’t know the circumstances. He came out of nowhere and he had a way with words. Now, I think that he was perhaps a fanatic and that many people died for his principles, but then again, he did change things. Or he started the changes. He was a tall man with a long beard, and he always wore robes. At first some people thought he was ridiculous. He was full of his own importance and yet he had a funny voice. It was shrill, and he was always telling us what God had told him to do. But in spite of this, many young Muslims like myself, as well as Christians of course, started to follow him. He seemed to offer an alternative to the endless fighting against an enemy we could not possibly defeat. He held rallies in Ramallah. They grew bigger and bigger. The Israelis did not like him, but following the massacres in the Gaza Strip, they were beginning to be a little more careful about international public opinion. America was broke and less inclined to bankroll the country. They let him speak. It was odd, because he used a lot of references to Judaism, to what Christians call the Old Testament. He said he was the new Moses and that he would take the Palestinian people out of their captivity and lead them back to their own lands. But he was also very vague. I don’t think we will ever know what Ibrahim would have done with Palestine if he had ever had the power. In spite of his non-violence, I think there was an edge of intolerance in him – in his manner and his absolute self-belief.”
“But he is our national hero?” says Leon.
“And quite rightly. He brought about the Change. I am just trying to tell you what really happened, because I was there.”
“Go on, father,” come Leon’s respectful words.
“Well, one day there was a huge rally – perhaps two or three hundred thousand. This was quite unheard of. People could not easily meet together even in much smaller numbers or move around. In many towns and villages most of the men had been picked off the streets and imprisoned. That was why so many young women were somehow coming in from the surrounding towns and villages. Ramallah was even then a continuously built-up area reaching to East Jerusalem, and where most of the intellectuals lived. Everyone thought that day would be like every other day. Who knows if Ibrahim already had plans or if, as he claimed, he had awaited the word of God? He spoke at length, and once he got going, you no longer heard his squeaky voice. He spoke well, but as I say he was very vague about what he wanted to achieve and how he was going to do it. He used to speak of our sufferings and say that everything was God’s will. God would not make his people suffer forever, and we were being tested. If we believed in God and the goodness of his deeds, we would not only survive, we would prosper. But on this occasion and after having spoken at length, he suddenly fell on his knees and screamed that he had had a vision. His face was white, his eyes turned skyward and his lips were trembling. If he was acting, he was a convincing actor. An angel had told him that we should all march northwards to Jenin. This may not seem strange now, but at the time the Israelis had military checkpoints all over the place. A great wall extended far into what were called the Occupied Territories. We would have to pass through highly populated areas and barren desert, through areas reserved for Jewish settlers who wanted to murder us and through these checkpoints which were manned by well-armed soldiers. It was folly. And yet we set off.”
“This was the March of the Hundred Thousand.”
“That’s correct. For a while the Israelis let us pass. They thought we would get hungry and turn back. Perhaps they thought that was the time to punish us – when we fragmented into small, vulnerable groups. Ibrahim’s entire plan, in as much as it existed, was based on the assumption that the Israelis could develop a conscience over their treatment of us Palestinians. Nothing had ever happened that
could have given us the slightest hope of their even beginning to empathise with us. Leon, I have to say that, with the exception of a few very unusual and courageous individuals, the Israelis were wholly racist in their attitude to us. Their views may have varied: some would have liked to annihilate us, some would have liked to drive us out from what remained of our lands, some would have liked to bludgeon us into submissiveness and that was pretty much what they did, but almost all of them considered us a problem simply because we existed. They could not and would not perceive us as human beings with rights. That was heresy, and the few who tentatively argued our case were treated as pariahs – as ‘self-hating Jews’. So when we set off for Jenin, we did so in a state of desperate elation. Elation because Ibrahim’s words – his irrational dreams and simplicities – seemed to be our last hope, after everything else had been tried. Life was so miserable, the injustices so enormous and the world’s silence so total and unfathomable, that death held few fears, especially for us young people who had all grown up with jangled nerves – witnesses and often victims of Israeli violence.”
The old man stops and studies his listeners: one who knows the story by heart and the other who hears it for the first time. She is nervous; he is gloomy. Leon has agreed to suppress his instincts and resents the imposition. Nevertheless he listens attentively. He does not intend to either encourage or discourage the old man’s story, and only stares to show a continuing sense of annoyance.
“We walked for twenty miles – a long way in a small country. The Israelis abandoned their checkpoints, but they monitored our movements from the air and their military vehicles were never far away. But we kept going and the people came to give us food, blankets and clothing. We camped and built fires to keep ourselves warm through the early spring night. We sang. We ate a little food. Not much of course. We were many, and even the generosity of the Palestinian people was not enough.”
Can the Gods Cry? Page 7