“I’m sure he’s fine,” Mustache says. His voice sounds convincing. It’s the voice that got him the Ra’anana branch and now the one in Ramat Aviv.
“I’m scared,” Pnina says, just as he’d imagined her saying it the first time he saw her that evening. She’s so beautiful when she says it.
Mustache leans forward and kisses her dry lips. Her lips move away from his. He doesn’t see anything, doesn’t even notice her hand move, but his cheek feels the slap.
When Eyebrows gets home, his wife is already asleep. He doesn’t feel the slightest bit tired. His body is exploding with adrenaline. Eyebrows’s mind knows that all the fainting and waiting and weird arguments tonight were all about nothing, but his body is stupid enough to take it seriously. Instead of getting into bed, he sits down in front of the computer and checks his e-mail.
The only message he has is from some jerk who went to elementary school with him and found his e-mail address through an Internet site.
That’s what’s so frustrating about all that technology, Eyebrows thinks. The ones who invented the Internet were geniuses and probably believed they were advancing humanity, but in the end, instead of people using all that ingenuity to do research and gain knowledge, they use it to harass some poor guy who sat next to them in the fourth grade.
What exactly is he supposed to write back to that Yiftach Rozales? You remember how we drew a line right down the middle of the desk? How you used to elbow me in the ribs when I crossed it?
Eyebrows tries to imagine what Yiftach Rozales’s life is like if all he has to do in his free time is search for some kid he never really liked who was in his class thirty years ago.
After a few minutes of feeling superior to Rozales, Eyebrows starts thinking about himself. And exactly what is he doing with his life? Bending over smelly mouths, drilling and filling cavities in rotten teeth.
“A highly respected profession,” that’s what his mother always says when she talks about dentistry.
What’s to respect? What actually is the difference between being a dentist and being a plumber? They both work in smelly holes, drilling and filling openings to make a living. Both earn decent money. And it’s highly probable that neither one really enjoys his profession.
Except that Eyebrows’s work is “highly respected,” and to gain that respect, Eyebrows had to leave the country for five years to study in Romania while the plumber probably had to invest a little less time.
Today was really the worst, operating on the gums of that old man who never stopped wailing and bleeding, practically choking on the suction. And Eyebrows, who kept trying to calm him down, couldn’t stop thinking that it was all for nothing. That it would take that old man at least a year of suffering to get used to the implants and probably two days before or after that he’ll die of a heart attack or cancer or a stroke or whatever it is people his age die of.
There should be an age limit for patients, he thinks as he takes off his shoes. You just have to say to them, “You lived long enough. From now on, think of what’s left as a bonus, a gift without an exchange slip. It hurts? Stay in bed. It still hurts? Wait: Either you’ll die or it’ll pass.”
That age, Eyebrows thinks to himself as he brushes his teeth, is on its way to me, galloping like a wild horse spraying foam from its nostrils. Soon it’ll be me lying in that bed, not getting up. And something about that thought comforts him.
The last time, the only other time that Pnina ever slapped someone, it was Avner. That was seventeen years ago. He wasn’t rich yet, or bitter or balding, but he already exuded that confidence that everything was his. It was their first date and they went to a restaurant.
Avner was nasty to the waiter and made him take back his food, which wasn’t fantastic, but decent enough. She couldn’t figure out what she was doing at the same table with that arrogant guy.
Her roommate had fixed them up. She’d told Pnina that Avner was brilliant and she’d told Avner that Pnina was charming, which was actually her way of saying that she was pretty without feeling like a chauvinist.
Avner spent the whole evening talking to her about stocks and derivatives and institutional investors and didn’t let her get a word in edgewise. After dinner he drove her to her apartment in his battered white Autobianchi. He stopped in front of her building, turned off the engine, and suggested going up with her.
She said she didn’t think that was a good idea. He reminded her that he knew her roommate and that he just wanted to go upstairs for a minute to say hello to her. Hello and thanks for introducing them.
Pnina smiled politely and said that her roommate would be back late because she was working the night shift. She promised to give her his regards and pass on his thanks and already had the door open to get out, but Avner closed it and kissed her.
There was no hesitation, no wondering how she felt there on the other side of the kiss. It was just a kiss on the mouth, but it felt like rape.
Pnina slapped him and got out of the car. Avner didn’t try to follow or call her. From the apartment balcony, she could see his Autobianchi standing there, not moving. For maybe an hour. It was still there when Pnina went to sleep.
In the morning, a delivery guy woke her with a huge and slightly tasteless bouquet of flowers. There was only one word written on the card.
Sorry
.
“I’m sorry,” Mustache says, “I didn’t mean it.”
And Pnina could have been tough on him, could have asked him what exactly did he mean, kissing her? Taking advantage of her weakness? Driving all the way to Herzliya with her in a car that smelled of coconut air deodorizer mixed with sweat? But she doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t have the strength. She just wants Mustache to take her home.
“Maybe we should go to the police,” Mustache says, “just to be on the safe side.”
But Pnina says no. Avner will come home in the end, she just knows it, he’s not the kind to commit suicide or shoot someone. After Band-Aid said that, it scared her at first, but now when she tries to picture Avner sticking the gun in his mouth or pressing it against his temple—it’s just not him. When she looks at her hands she can see they are shaking, but her mind has already decided that Avner is all right.
Mustache doesn’t argue, he just drives Pnina home.
The catering truck is parked outside with two wheels on the sidewalk, still blocking the street. Poor guys, they’ve been waiting there the whole time. Mustache says he’ll get out and talk to them. He wants to help her with something, to make up for what happened. But she doesn’t let him. Not to punish him; she just doesn’t have the energy.
After Pnina gets out of the car, he calls after her. The rage she felt earlier is gone now. She’s not angry at him anymore, really. He actually seems like a nice person. And that kiss—maybe his timing was a little off, but she sensed how much he wanted her from the moment he arrived, and for most of the evening it made her feel good.
Mustache gives her the gift for Avner and his business card, explaining that his cell number is on the card too and she can call him no matter how late. She nods.
She won’t call him, not today.
Band-Aid finds a parking spot right outside his building. But instead of going up to the second floor, putting his key in the lock, taking off his clothes in the dark hallway, and creeping quietly to his side of the bed, he starts to walk. At first, he has no idea where he’s headed: Shtand Street, King Solomon, King George, then Dizengoff Street. Only on Dizengoff does he realize that he wants to go to the sea.
He keeps walking till he reaches the promenade, and from there he goes down to the beach. He takes off his shoes and socks and just stands there, scooping up the sand with his toes. Behind him he can hear the noise of traffic, and trance music probably coming from an all-night liquor store. In front of him, he hears the sound of the waves crashing against the breakwater not far from there.
“Excuse me,” a young guy with an army buzz cut says, appearing out of nowhere, “you live here?”
Band-Aid nods.
“Great,” Buzz Cut says, “so maybe you know where to go for some fun?”
Band-Aid can ask him what kind of fun he means: Alcohol? Girls? A mysterious blast of warmth flooding your chest? What’s the point, he doesn’t know where to find any of those things, so he just shakes his head.
But Buzz Cut persists. “You said you live here, right?”
Band-Aid doesn’t answer, just looks to the distant point where the black of the sea meets the black of the sky.
I wonder what happened to that Avner, he thinks. I hope that in the end, it all worked out.
The sentences I’m writing now are for the benefit of the German Public Television viewers. A reporter who came to my home today asked me to write something on the computer because it always makes for great visuals: an author writing. It’s a cliché, she realizes that, but clichés are nothing but an unsexy version of the truth, and her role, as a reporter, is to turn that truth into something sexy, to break the cliché with lighting and unusual angles. And the light in my house falls perfectly, without her having to turn on even a single spot, so all that’s left is for me to write.
At first, I just made believe I was writing, but she said it wouldn’t work. People would be able to tell right away that I was just pretending. “Write something for real,” she demanded, and then, to be sure: “A story, not just a bunch of words. Write naturally, the way you always do.” I told her it wasn’t natural for me to be writing while I was having my picture taken for German Public Television, but she insisted. “So use it,” she said. “Write a story about just that—about how unnatural it seems and how the unnaturalness suddenly produces something real, filled with passion. Something that permeates you, from your brain to your loins. Or the other way around. I don’t know how it works with you, what part of your body gets the creative juices flowing. Each person is different.” She told me how she’d once interviewed a Belgian author who, every time he wrote, had an erection. Something about the writing “stiffened his organ”—that’s the expression she used. It was probably a literal translation from German, and it sounded very strange in English.
“Write,” she insisted again. “Great. I love your terrible posture when you write, the cramped neck. It’s just wonderful. Keep writing. Excellent. That’s it. Naturally. Don’t mind me. Forget I’m here.”
So I go on writing, not minding her, forgetting she’s there, and I’m natural. As natural as I can be. I have a score to settle with the viewers of German Public Television but this isn’t the time to settle it. This is the time to write. To write things that will appeal, because when you write crap, she’s already reminded me, it comes out terrible on camera.
My son returns from kindergarten. He runs up to me and hugs me. Whenever there’s a television crew in the house, he hugs me. When he was younger, the reporters had to ask him to do it, but by now, he’s a pro: runs up to me, doesn’t look at the camera, gives me a hug, and says, “I love you, Daddy.” He isn’t four yet, but he already understands how things work, this adorable son of mine.
My wife isn’t as good, the German television reporter says. She doesn’t flow. Keeps fiddling with her hair, stealing glances at the camera. But that isn’t really a problem. You can always edit her out later. That’s what’s so nice about television. In real life it isn’t like that. In real life you can’t edit her out, undo her. Only God can do that, or a bus, if it runs her over. Or a terrible disease. Our upstairs neighbor is a widower. An incurable disease took his wife from him. Not cancer, something else. Something that starts in the guts and ends badly. For six months she was shitting blood. At least, that’s what he told me. Six months before God Almighty edited her out. Ever since she died, all kinds of women keep visiting our building, wearing high heels and cheap perfume. They arrive at unlikely hours, sometimes as early as noon. He’s retired, our upstairs neighbor, and his time is his own. And those women—according to my wife, at least—they’re whores. When she says
whores
it comes out natural, like she was saying
turnip
. But when she’s being filmed, it doesn’t. Nobody’s perfect.
My son loves the whores who visit our upstairs neighbor. “What animal are you?” he asks them when he bumps into them on the stairs. “Today I’m a mouse, a quick and slippery mouse.” And they get it right away, and throw out the name of an animal: an elephant, a bear, a butterfly. Each whore and her animal. It’s strange, because with other people, when he asks them about the animals, they simply don’t catch on. But the whores just go along with it.
Which gets me thinking that the next time a television crew arrives I’ll bring one of them instead of my wife, and that way it’ll be more natural. They look great. Cheap, but great. And my son gets along better with them too. When he asks my wife what animal she is, she always insists: I’m not an animal, sweetie, I’m a person. I’m your mommy.” And then he always starts to cry.
Why can’t she just go with the flow, my wife? Why is it so easy for her to call women with cheap perfume “whores” but when it comes to telling a little boy “I’m a giraffe” it’s more than she can handle? It really gets on my nerves. Makes me want to hit someone. Not her. Her I love. But someone. To take out my frustrations on someone who has it coming. Right-wingers can take it out on Arabs. Racists on blacks. But those of us who belong to the liberal left are trapped. We’ve boxed ourselves in. We have nobody to take it out on. “Don’t call them whores,” I rail at my wife. “You don’t know for a fact that they’re whores, do you? You’ve never seen anyone pay them or anything, so don’t call them that, okay? How would you feel if someone called you a whore?”
“Great,” the German reporter says. “I love it. The crease in your forehead. The frenzied keystrokes. Now all we need are an intercut with translations of your books in different languages, so our viewers can tell how successful you are—and that hug from your son one more time. The first time he ran up to you so quickly that Jörg, our cameraman, didn’t have a chance to change the focus.” My wife wants to know if the German reporter needs her to hug me again too, and in my heart I pray she’ll say yes. I’d really love my wife to hug me again, her smooth arms tightening around me, as if there’s nothing else in the world but us. “No need,” the German says in an icy voice. “We’ve got that already.” “What animal are you?” my son asks the German, and I quickly translate into English. “I’m not an animal,” she laughs, running her long fingernails through his hair. “I’m a monster. A monster that came from across the ocean to eat pretty little children like you.” “She says she’s a songbird,” I translate to my son with impeccable naturalness. “She says she’s a red-feathered songbird, who flew here from a faraway land.”