Faithful and Other Stories

by Daniel Karasik

  So I’m sitting there having a beer, laughing with my friends about our belligerent boss, when I notice that Joe and Aaron are staring past me. I stop talking, I look where they’re looking and I see this guy, around my age, standing by our table. He’s been waiting for a chance to cut in. He’s tall, pretty thin, brown guy with dark hair trimmed close, could be Pakistani, Lebanese. Dressed neatly, crisp white shirt and black slacks, loud red cufflinks. Don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.

  “You don’t remember me,” he says.

  And I’m like, “Sorry, we know each other?”

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Good of you, but why would you do that?”

  “For old times’ sake.”

  So now I’m thoroughly confused. I can tell that Joe and Aaron have their guard up. There’s something provocative in the guy’s tone — half ingratiating, half ironic. I don’t understand it, don’t like it. “Do we know each other,” I say to him again.

  “Yorkhill.”

  And then I know who he is.

  My heart starts to hammer, I’m cold and I’m hot and I don’t want my friends to see something’s fucked, so I get up and go, “I’ll be back in a sec,” with as much of a wry glance as I can muster.

  I walk ahead of him to the bar. We sidle in among the schmoozers, he asks me what I’m drinking and I reply mechanically, I’m so distracted, shaken by him. I’m like, “What are you doing here?”

  “I work nearby.”

  “Yeah? Doing what?”

  “Insurance,” says Mohammed. And he pays for our scotch.

  Mohammed Khan. Terror of the sixth grade. I wasn’t a tough kid, I was openhearted and trusting, he was the product (I knew even then) of a family life fraught with emotional violence and other violence, and he paid that violence forward to me. He forbade the others in our class to be friends with me, and they obeyed him, such was his power. He belittled me, he insulted me without provocation and without end, after a while he had me convinced of his superiority, and whatever sense of self I had at twelve began to crumble. I was a case study in preteen anxiety and depression, and I think he knew it, revelled in it. I dreaded going to school, my parents sent me to a shrink, didn’t help, nothing helped till I switched schools and never saw him again, till today.

  But look at me now, I think, I’m not that frightened little boy anymore, I’m a grown-up, I’m married, I have a child of my own, I make a good living and dress well and laugh deeply, there’s no way in which I’m vulnerable to Mohammed Khan anymore, so get a grip, I say to myself.

  “I know you work at Gowlings,” he goes. “Mitchell Klein told me. I’ve followed your career.”

  “Oh yeah? And you’re in insurance.”

  “Sun Life. Risk management.”

  “I thought you were going to be an actor.”

  He flashes that thin, ironic smile.

  “I hear you’re married,” he says.

  “Mitchell Klein tell you that too?”

  “Yes, actually.”

  “I haven’t seen him in years.”

  “He’s an architect. His company did the new condo developments near Fort York.”

  “Pillars of society, our class.”

  “Cheers.”

  We drink.

  “You married?” I ask him.

  “No.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “You were the only one in our class who had a girlfriend.”

  “Was I?”

  “Diane,” I say. “You flaunted it like crazy. You’d go everywhere together, holding her hand.”

  “I remember very little about that time.”

  There’s a pause. We drink, watch the flow of others mingling, flirting.

  “I was very unhappy,” he says. “I didn’t believe there would ever be a future. I was sure I would die before I turned into my parents, whatever, I’d kill myself. I thought grade six, grade seven, maybe grade eight, that would be the rest of my life, and I’d better make the most of it. I wanted to unleash my shitstorm on the world, I wanted to give the world a beating. I was not a normal boy.”

  “Oh yeah?” Sadistic, vain, a cruel wit. That’s what I remember. “I think you were perfectly normal.”

  “I’m not saying I …”

  I down the rest of my scotch. “Thanks for the drink, man.” And I turn to go back to my friends. He puts his hand on my arm. I stare at it. He removes it. “Did you not hear what I said? Thank you for the drink, have a nice life — ”

  “My first wet dreams were about you.”

  He hasn’t said it quietly, but nobody around us is paying attention.

  “I hated you. I was twelve years old and I was convinced I was a monster, I knew my parents would kill me if they so much as suspected … they would kill me, no figure of speech, my father would take me by the neck and strangle me till I was dead.”

  His hands are shaking.

  I watch him. I watch him drink. I notice for the first time how narrow his shoulders are, how frail he is, all jagged edges, nerve and bone. I think of him at twelve, alone in his parents’ house, terrified, crying himself to sleep at the thought that there might be something horribly wrong with him. I pity him. I do.

  And then I think of my daughter. I think of my beautiful daughter. Starting school in the fall.

  And what I do then is I gather a wad of phlegm, I clear it from the very back of my throat, and I spit my great wad of phlegm in Mohammed Khan’s face. Plastered across his face, along with my spit, is a look of astonishment and — I’m sure I see it — childlike fear. Before he can say anything, I’m walking away. I call back over my shoulder: “Likely story.”

  Aaron and Joe are waiting for me, eager to hear. They’ve seen none of it.

  Joe’s like, “Who was that?”

  “An old friend.”

  Fifteen minutes later I’m still shaking all over.

  All That Flies from You

  Last time I watched from in front of Diesel Jeans, the shop closest to the action. Young, both of them. Him: twenty at most. Her: a mature eighteen. They took a long time. Big floor-to-ceiling window behind them; three planes took off on the nearest runway in the time they took. I could hear a bit. Her: promise me you’ll e-mail, soon as you get there. Him: I’ll never forget you. A close dynamic. As though almost equals in affection. If possible.

  They’re in front of security. His arm is comfortable around her hips, she squeezes his waist, there’s something of habit there, you get the sense that even if this was a fling it’s one that’s had a bit of longevity. My guess: both boy and girl American. Or Canadian. She speaks too softly for me to pin down an accent. Possible scenarios for meeting: they could’ve been on one of the subsidized tours for young diasporic Jews (but too shortterm for the intimacy on display); working with Sar-El, the military volunteer service (but too much that’s tentative, almost fragile in his manner); volunteers on a kibbutz. That last one seems to me most likely. It’s how I met my first girlfriend, as a Canadian volunteer on Kibbutz Dan. A hundred years ago.

  She touches his face. He kisses her, gently. This is a pattern I’ve observed before. First the couple will share a small, chaste kiss, as if parting is a delicate matter. One or both will then recognize the absurdity, the vanity of such restraint and kiss the other with passion. So it happens here. He, the flyer, heads into security without a backwards glance. She, the remaining, waits and watches for a few minutes as he passes through the metal detector. Then a few minutes more. Eventually she moves from the gate. She sits at a table and stares at her hands. If you watch closely, if you’re a man like me who has trained himself to watch closely, you can see her shoulders tremble.

  I’m tapped on the shoulder. The Diesel Jeans clerk, tall Sephardi girl, frowns. Ata rotzey mashehu? What is it I want. I want a one-way ticket to Hawaii. I want two decades returned to me in mint condition. I want my dog to be loyal to me and quit running away. B’seder, I say, and leave the store, leave the
terminal, go find my car in the lot.

  Each week this is my Sunday afternoon.

  A Sunday late in May. I’m seated outside the airport McDonald’s. I’ve ordered a coffee. You’ve got to order something; otherwise they harass you. I recognize this is the same the world over, but in Tel Aviv when you talk harassment you’re talking almost bodily.

  Already today I’ve seen an extraordinary goodbye. Identical twin brothers, embracing, crying, one says: When will I see you again? The other touches his brother’s cheek, says: When will I see you again? They were closer than lovers. Nothing in sight interested each man more than the other’s face, all but indistinguishable from his own.

  A few more swing by in quick succession. A mother and daughter: mom bristling with protective nerves, girl straining to break loose. An elderly couple: reserved, aware of people watching, how public a place this is for demonstration. A whole extended Asian family, probably Thai, sending off their university-aged son, who walks through the gates with shy pride. I sip my coffee. There’s a lull in traffic at security, a lull in goodbyes. My thoughts drift to ancient history.

  Around noon, two girls arrive, only one of them carrying luggage. My reveries break. They’re young girls, eighteen or nineteen. They stand and talk, their backs to me. Can’t hear a word, though I can tell their rapport is easy, low-key. They kiss each other on the cheek and part. The remaining girl lingers at the gate. As soon as she turns a fraction of an inch, I know without a doubt she is my daughter.

  She sits at a table, pulls out a cell phone. My daughter Hailey. My daughter who lives now with her mother in New York. Who I had no idea was in Israel. Whom I have not seen for two years, five months, and fourteen days. And who, though so close, does not see me. The phone is to her ear, but she’s not talking. Checking messages. My daughter to whom I haven’t spoken in six months. She used to call me when she got lonely. Now there’s a boyfriend. My daughter who didn’t speak to me for a year after she and Liza left. Who, when finally she called, told me I should get a dog. For company. Which I did.

  As soon as she puts down the phone, before she has a chance to leave, I approach her. I’m not a coward. I tap her on the shoulder, say: Hi stranger. She turns and sees me, takes me in. An unsure smile. Oh wow, she says, hi. I didn’t know you were here, I say, you didn’t call. I’ve been busy, she says, sorry. I ask how long she’s been in Israel. Since the beginning of the month, she tells me. An organized tour. She stayed an extra two weeks, flies home today. She looks healthy, has gotten some colour. When’s your flight? I ask. Later this afternoon, she says. I ask her what she was planning on doing till then. I dunno, she says, sit around I guess, read. I tell her I’ll buy her lunch. There’s an awful moment when I’m not sure if she’s going to agree. But she nods. Cautious. As though considering what harm there might be.

  We have shwarma together in a corner of the waiting lounge. I thought she was a vegetarian. She says she stopped. Why should we be kinder to the cows than to the plants? We talk about how she’s enjoying school. Brown University, philosophy major, art history minor. We talk about her boyfriend, Robert, a nice guy, pre-med, two years older. Discuss her mother, who’s unhappy, not interested in changing. As before. As ever. We don’t say a word about her brother, my son, whose death on duty in Nablus precipitated their move back to America. There would be little point. Why spoil a nice lunch? Why pretend as though a chance meeting on a Sunday afternoon in May might change anything? The grounded way she looks at me gives me great pleasure. She doesn’t feign closeness, but neither does she lash out. When she asks me if there’s a woman in my life these days, she does so with an adult equanimity that bowls me over. I’m proud of her. I don’t know her at all. I couldn’t be prouder of her. Her question I deflect. It’s nice that you met this Robert, I say. When I ask her what it’s been like to return to Israel after so long, and not as a child now, she tells me she thinks it’s a beautiful country, really fascinating, though she doesn’t think she’ll ever live here again, she’s not religious, religion makes her uncomfortable, she doesn’t really believe. Me neither, I say. I know, she says. I remember.

  We’ve talked for almost two hours. She has to make her way to her departure gate. I walk her from the restaurant to where I first noticed her, by security. She looks at me. As if to say: Here we are, this is it, now we say goodbye. My daughter will go back to the States, to her studies and her boyfriend. I’ll go back to my apartment, to my dog. I won’t get a kiss on the cheek. Anyone watching would think us acquaintances at best. Maybe distant relatives. Bye, says my daughter. I don’t walk away. I don’t smile and send her off. I am incapable of it. I am incapable of parting. Hailey, I say. Just her name. Don’t make it complicated, Dad, she says. But I’m not trying to. I’m not trying to at all. And anyone watching would know it. Anyone watching would recognize at once this rarest of sightings: the animal failing itself. The man, placed in a situation most primal, like sex, like holding his newborn child, not having the faintest idea how it’s done.

  The Baker’s Apprentice

  The boy wanted to be a baker. He loved baked goods and the idea of creating simple, essential things. On a whim, he left a résumé at his favourite bakery, an old family business downtown. To his surprise, he received a call. Could he come for an interview, maybe Thursday?

  He arrived punctually for his appointment. The baker, an elderly Jewish man, short and bespectacled, led him through the store: through the back, by the oven, the tables for kneading, bags of yeast; and through the front, where racks overflowed with bagels, challahs. How long have you been here? asked the boy. Since the forties, said the baker. My father, he started this bakery when he came over. He built it up, he had no help, he was a real mensch. I worked here when I was about your age — how old are you, eh? Sixteen, said the boy, but he said it like Twenty. Sixteen, said the baker, I worked here when I was sixteen, summers, wished I was doing something else, there were girls around, we lived nearby — sixteen, I remember that. My own kids, they worked here when they were in high school too. You’re in high school? How’re your marks, you a good student? The boy nodded. The old baker looked at him, sized him up, less like a judge than like a tailor, and said: Come tomorrow morning, 4:30. We’ll make challahs for Shabbat.

  The boy stared at his hands on the subway ride home, imagined them kneading moist, puffy cords of dough. His fingers were long, a bit knobby at the tips. Challahs, thought the boy, a mythical bread, loaves pregnant with occasion. His mother picked him up at the subway station and wanted to know how the interview had gone. Fine, he said. I’m going to make challahs. Really, said his mother. She laughed gently, as though tousling his hair, which he wouldn’t let her do. Do you know how? she asked. He gazed out the window, at the endless succession of tidy suburban houses. I’ll learn, he said.

  The boy arrived at the bakery the next morning as the pale dawn broke. The baker demonstrated — how to mix eggs, flour, yeast, how to knead the dough into strips, how to weave, layer, smooth — the boy imitated in turn. Hands pressed down on hands. Nu, okay, like this, said the baker. They loaded tray after tray into the oven. Later they wiped down the soiled countertop, brushed away crumbs, and the boy thought: there’s nothing profound in this, I can’t imagine anything simpler — and to think I built it up so much. After the oven was loaded, the baker invited the boy out to the back porch for a smoke. The boy didn’t smoke, didn’t much want to, but was prepared to accept if the baker offered. The baker didn’t offer. It’s nice, said the baker, to see somebody take an interest. Most of the young people I meet today aren’t interested in anything. Wouldn’t get off their asses if people weren’t pushing and shoving. I have kids your age, a little older, twins, she’s at the university, he’s trying to start a business with his friends, he’s on the Internet, twentytwo this kid, he wants to start his own business? Used to be a guy would bust his tuchus a little first, pay his dues. The boy nodded. And at the appointed hour they went into the bakery, pulled up the blinds, and unloc
ked the door, ready for the day’s first customers.

  The boy rose at 3:30 AM on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, baked the morning’s goods with the baker, helped to open the shop, and ran to catch the streetcar, the subway north, the bus towards his high school. He came to class haggard; his teachers and classmates thought him disinterested, aloof; he cultivated the impression and didn’t properly button his shirt. They think my nights are wild, he imagined. They think I’m with an older woman. They think I mix with crooks and drug dealers, I’m part of the underworld, they’ll get the police to raid my locker. As he sat, exhausted, in his English class, he felt a certain satisfaction at how he was different, how the eyes that searched him on his entrance saw only what he chose to show them. His idea of himself on those days buoyed him till classes’ end.

  It was only later, as he walked home, shut the front door of his parents’ house, settled at the computer with a cup of microwaved noodle soup, that he’d be overwhelmed by a sudden melancholy. He’d imagine the older woman he didn’t know and didn’t sleep with, the dangerous, thrilling life he didn’t lead, and, as he nursed his soup for lack of anything to do once he’d finished it, would say to himself: I’m passionate about nothing, I act on little whims like this baking thing, but nothing drives me besides curiosity … so what happens when my curiosity has been satisfied in every way? Can you reach that point? Do people roll over and die when they reach that point?

  At dawn the next day he asked the baker, who was not young: Does curiosity dry up? His rolling pin in motion, hands twisting, relaxing, twisting, the baker replied: it turns into disbelief. I was curious about the world too, I wanted to travel, I wanted to sleep with women, I was restless. Now it’s not curiosity, now I’ve been with women and I can’t believe they exist, I’m filled with amazement — I love women, I’ve been married to three of them, still I’m in disbelief. I can’t believe my children are able to have businesses on a computer screen and make more money than I do. It’s hard enough to believe I’ve got kids at all. I probably wouldn’t believe it at all if I didn’t come in here every morning. I have kids, therefore I work; I work, therefore I have kids. Funny logic, but that’s how it goes. So what, thought the boy, does this work mean for me? Instead he said: And that you’re a baker, are you in disbelief about that too? The baker placed a finished loaf into a row, completing the tray. No, said the baker. That’s a curiosity.