They were standing in the backyard of his building. Robbie moved the stone aside, lay down on the damp soil, and pushed his arm all the way into the hole. Natasha was standing over him. He held out his other arm and said, “Hold on tight.”
Natasha looked at the man stretched out at her feet. Thirty-something, good-looking, in a clean, ironed white shirt, which was already slightly less clean and much less ironed. His one arm was stuck in the hole, his cheek was glued to the ground.
“Hold tight,” he said. And as she held out her hand to him, she couldn’t help wondering how it was she always wound up with the oddballs. When he’d started with that crap by the car, she thought maybe it was a cute way of hitting on her, but now she realized that this guy with the soft eyes and the bashful smile really was a nutcase. His fingers were clasping hers. They stayed that way, frozen, for a minute or so, him on the ground, and her standing over him, slightly stooped, looking bewildered.
“Okay,” Natasha whispered in a gentle, almost therapeutic voice. “So we’re holding hands. Now what?”
“Now,” Robbie said, “I’ll turn the handle.”
It took them a long time to find Igor. First they met a hairy, hunchbacked lie, evidently Argentinian, who spoke nothing but Spanish. Then, another of Natasha’s lies—an overzealous policeman with a yarmulke, who insisted on detaining them and checking their papers, but he’d never even heard of Igor. In the end the person who helped them out was Robbie’s battered niece from Natanya. They found her feeding the litter from his most recent lie. She hadn’t seen Igor for a few days, but she knew where to find his dog. As for the dog, once it finished licking Robbie’s hands and face, it was glad to take them to Igor’s bedside.
Igor was in pretty bad shape. His complexion was sallow and he was sweating heavily. But when he saw Natasha, his face lit up. He was so thrilled that he hauled himself up and hugged her, even though he could hardly stand. At that point, Natasha began to cry and asked him to forgive her because this Igor wasn’t just one of her lies, he was also her uncle. A made-up uncle, but still. And Igor told her she shouldn’t feel bad, the life she invented for him may not always have been easy, but he’d enjoyed every minute of it, and she had nothing to worry about, because compared to the train crash in Minsk, the stickup in Odessa, the lightning that struck him in Vladivostok, and the pack of rabid wolves in Siberia, this heart attack was small change. And when they got back to the gumball machine, Robbie put in a one-lira coin, took Natasha’s hand, and asked her to turn the handle.
Once they were back in the yard, Natasha found herself holding a plastic ball, with a trinket inside: an ugly, gold-colored charm in the shape of a heart.
“You know,” she said, “I was supposed to be going to Sinai tonight with a friend, for a few days, but I think I’m going to call it off, and go back tomorrow to take care of Igor. Would you like to come too?”
Robbie nodded. He knew that if he wanted to join her, he’d have to come up with another lie at the office. He wasn’t quite sure what it would be. All he knew was that it would be a happy lie, full of light, flowers, and sunshine. And who knows—maybe even a baby or two, and they’d be smiling.
Have you ever wondered what word is most frequently uttered by people about to die a violent death? MIT carried out a comprehensive study of the question among heterogeneous communities in North America and discovered that the word is none other than
fuck
. Eight percent of those about to die say “What the fuck,” 6 percent say only “Fuck,” and there’s another 2.8 percent that say “Fuck you,” though in their case, of course,
you
is the last word, even if
fuck
overshadows it irrefutably. And what does Jeremy Kleinman say a minute before he checks out? He says, “Without cheese.” Jeremy says that because he’s ordering something in a cheeseburger restaurant called Cheesus Christ. They don’t have plain hamburgers on the menu, so Jeremy, who keeps kosher, asks for a cheeseburger without cheese. The shift manager in the restaurant doesn’t make a big deal out of it. Lots of customers have asked her for that in the past, so many that she felt the need to report on it in a series of detailed e-mails to the CEO of the Cheesus Christ chain, whose office is in Atlanta. She suggested that he add a plain hamburger to the menu. “A lot of people ask me for it, but at the moment, they have to order a cheeseburger without cheese, which is cagey and a little embarrassing. It’s embarrassing for me, and, if you don’t mind my saying so, for the whole chain. It makes me feel like a technocrat, and for the customers, the chain comes off as an inflexible organization they have to trick in order to get what they want.” The CEO never replied to her e-mails, and for her, that was even more embarrassing and humiliating than all those times customers asked her for cheeseburgers without cheese. When a dedicated employee turns to her employer with a problem, especially one related to the workplace, the least he can do is acknowledge her existence. The CEO could have written her that it was being handled or that, while he appreciated her turning to him, he unfortunately couldn’t make any changes to the menu, or a million other bullshit replies of that kind. But he didn’t. He didn’t write anything. And that made her feel like she was invisible. Just like that night in New Haven when her boyfriend Nick started hitting on the waitress while she herself was sitting next to him at the bar. She’d cried then, and Nick hadn’t even known why, and that same night, she’d packed her things and left. Mutual friends had called a few weeks later to tell her Nick had killed himself. None of them openly blamed her for what happened, but there was something in the way they told her about it, something accusing, though she couldn’t even say what. In any case, when the CEO didn’t answer her e-mails, she thought about quitting her job. But what happened with Nick stopped her from doing that, and it wasn’t as if she thought the CEO of Cheesus Christ would commit suicide when he heard that the shift manager of some crummy branch in the Northeast had quit, but still. The truth is that if the CEO had heard she’d quit because of him, he actually would have killed himself. The truth is that if the CEO had heard that the African white lion had become extinct because of illegal hunting, he would have killed himself. He would even have killed himself after hearing something more trivial, for instance, that it was going to rain tomorrow. The CEO of the Cheesus Christ restaurant chain suffered from severe clinical depression. His colleagues at work knew that, but were careful not to spread this painful fact around, mostly because they respected his privacy, but also because it could have instantly sent stock prices crashing. After all, what does the stock market sell us if not the unfounded hope of a rosy future? And a CEO with clinical depression is not exactly the ideal ambassador for that kind of message. The CEO of Cheesus Christ, who totally understood how problematic his emotional state was, both personally and publicly, tried medication. That didn’t help at all. The pills were prescribed to him by a doctor from Iraq who had been granted refugee status in the United States after his family was accidentally blown up by an F-16 trying to assassinate Saddam Hussein’s sons. His wife, father, and two small sons were killed, and only his older daughter, Suha, survived. In an interview on CNN, the doctor said that despite his personal tragedy, he wasn’t angry at the American people. But the truth is that he was. He was more than angry. He was boiling with rage toward the American people. But he knew that if he wanted a green card, he had to lie about it. As he lied, he thought about his dead family and his living daughter. He lied because he believed that an American education would be good for her. How wrong he was. His daughter became pregnant at fifteen by some fat white-trash kid who was a year ahead of her at school and refused to acknowledge the baby. Due to complications at birth, the baby was born retarded. In the States, just like almost anywhere else, when you’re a fifteen-year-old single mother of a retarded child, for all intents and purposes, your fate is sealed. There’s probably some made-for-TV movie that claims that isn’t the case, that you can still find love and have a career and who knows what else. But that’s only a movie. In real life, the minute they told her that her baby was retarded it was as if a GAME OVER sign in neon lights was flashing in the air above her head. Maybe if her father had told the truth on CNN and they hadn’t gone to the States, her fate would have been different. And if Nick hadn’t hit on that bottle blonde in the bar, his situation and the shift manager’s would have been much better too. And if the CEO of the Cheesus Christ chain had gotten the right medication, his situation would have been just great. And if that crazy guy in the cheeseburger restaurant hadn’t stabbed Jeremy Kleinman, Jeremy Kleinman’s state would be alive, which in most people’s opinion is a lot better than the dead state he now found himself in. He didn’t die right away. He gasped, tried to say something, but the shift manager, who was holding his hand, told him not to speak, to save his strength. He didn’t speak, he tried to save his strength. Tried, but couldn’t. There’s a theory, also out of MIT, I think, about the butterfly effect: a butterfly flutters its wings on a beach in Brazil, and as a result, a tornado starts up on the other side of the world. The tornado appears in the original example. They could have thought up a different example in which the flutter of butterfly wings causes badly needed rain, but the scientists who developed the theory chose a tornado, and not because, like the CEO of Cheesus Christ, they were clinically depressed. It’s because the scientists who specialize in probability know that the chance of something detrimental occurring is a thousand times greater than the chance of something beneficial happening. “Hold my hand” is what Jeremy Kleinman wanted to say to the shift manager as his life leaked out of him like chocolate milk from a punctured carton. “Hold it and don’t let go, whatever happens.” But he didn’t say that because she asked him not to speak. He didn’t say that because he didn’t need to—she held his sweaty hand till he died. For a long time after that, actually. She held his hand till the paramedics asked her if she was his wife. Three days later, she got an e-mail from the CEO. That incident in her branch had made him decide to sell the chain and retire. The decision brought him far enough out of his depression to make him start answering his e-mails. He answered them from his laptop, sitting on a gorgeous beach in Brazil. In his long e-mail, he wrote that she was absolutely right and he would pass on her carefully reasoned request to the new CEO. As he pressed SEND, his finger touched the wings of a butterfly sleeping on the keyboard. The butterfly fluttered its wings. Somewhere on the other side of the world, evil winds began to blow.
Two people were standing at the door. A second lieutenant wearing a knitted yarmulke, and behind him, a thin officer with sparse, light-colored hair and captain’s bars on her shoulders. Orit waited a minute, and when she saw that they still weren’t saying anything, she asked if she could help them. “Druckman,” the captain tossed the word, part command, part reprimand, at the soldier. “It’s about your husband,” the religious soldier mumbled at Orit. “Can we come in?” Orit smiled and said that this must be some kind of mistake because she wasn’t married. The captain looked down at the wrinkled note she was holding and asked if her name was Orit, and when Orit said yes, the captain said politely but firmly, “Could we come in for a minute anyway?” Orit led them into the living room of the apartment she shared with her roommate. Before she had a chance to offer them something to drink, the religious soldier blurted out, “He’s dead.” “Who?” Orit asked. “Why now?” the captain rebuked him. “Can’t you wait a second for her to sit down? To get herself a glass of water ?” “I apologize,” the religious soldier said to Orit, clenching his lips in a nervous twitch. “This is my first. I’m still training.” “It’s all right,” Orit said, “but who’s dead?” “Your husband,” the religious soldier said. “I don’t know whether you heard, but this morning there was a terrorist attack at the Beit Leed junction …” “No,” Orit said, “I haven’t heard. I don’t listen to the news. But it doesn’t matter anyway because this is a mistake. I told you, I’m not married.” The religious soldier gave the captain a pleading look. “You’re Orit Bielsky?” the captain asked in a slightly impatient voice. “No,” Orit said, “I’m Orit Levine.” “Right,” the captain replied. “Right. And in February two years ago, you married First Sergeant Simyon Bielsky.” Orit sat down on the torn living-room couch. The inside of her throat was so dry that it itched. On second thought, it really would’ve been better if that Druckman had waited till she got herself a glass of Diet Coke before starting. “So I don’t get it,” the religious soldier whispered out loud, “is it her or isn’t it?” The captain signaled him to shut up. She went over to the kitchen sink and brought back a glass of water for Orit. The water from the faucet in the apartment was disgusting. Orit always thought water was disgusting, especially the water in the apartment. “Take your time,” the captain said, handing Orit the glass. “We’re in no rush,” she said, and sat down beside her. They sat like that, in absolute silence, until the religious soldier, who was still standing, started to lose his patience and said, “He didn’t have any family here, you probably know that?” Orit nodded. “They all stayed in Russia or the CIS, or whatever they call it now. He was completely alone.” “Except for you,” the captain said, touching Orit’s hand with her own dry one. “Do you know what that means?” Druckman asked, sitting down on an armchair across from them. “Shut up,” the captain hissed at him. “You idiot.” “Why an idiot?” the religious soldier asked, insulted. “We’ll have to tell her in the end anyway, so why drag it out?” The captain ignored him and gave Orit an awkward hug that seemed to embarrass them both. “Have to tell me what?” Orit asked, trying to extricate herself from the hug. The captain let go, took a slightly theatrical deep breath, and said, “You’re the only one who can identify him.”
She’d met Simyon for the first time on the day they got married. He was serving on the same base as Assi, and Assi always used to tell her stories about him, how he wore his pants so high that every morning he had to decide which side to put his prick on, and how every time they listened to the regards-to-soldiers radio program, when the announcer said something like “To the cutest soldier in the army,” Simyon would always tense up, as if the message was 100 percent for him. “Who could be sending regards to that shmuck?” Assi would say, laughing. And that’s the shmuck she married. The truth was that she’d suggested to Assi that he should be the one to marry her so she wouldn’t have to serve in the army, but Assi said no way, because a fictitious marriage to a boyfriend was never completely fictitious, and it was a sure way to mess things up. He was also the one who suggested Simyon. “For a hundred shekels, that moron would even make you a baby,” Assi said with a laugh. “For a hundred shekels, those Russians would do anything.” She told Assi that she had to think about it, even though in her heart she’d already agreed. But he’d hurt her feelings when he said he wouldn’t marry her. She was just asking him for a favor, and a boyfriend should know how to help when he’s needed. Besides, even if it was only fictitious, it was no fun being married to a shmuck.
The next day, Assi came home from the base, planted a wet kiss on her forehead, and said, “I saved you a hundred shekels.” Orit wiped the saliva off her forehead and Assi explained: “That moron will marry you for free.” Orit said that seemed a little suspicious and they had to be careful, because maybe that Simyon didn’t really understand what the word
fictitious
meant. “Oh, he understands all right,” Assi said, and started foraging around in the refrigerator. “He may be a complete idiot, but he’s cagey like you wouldn’t believe.” “So why did he agree to do it for free?” Orit asked. “How do I know?” Assi said, laughing and taking a bite of an unwashed cucumber. “Maybe he figured out that it was as close to being married as he’d ever get in this life.”
The captain drove the Renault and the religious soldier sat in the back. They were quiet almost all the way, and that left Orit a lot of time to think about the fact that she was going to see a dead person for the first time in her life, and that she always found herself bastards for boyfriends and that even though she knew it from the first minute, she still always stayed with them for a year or two. She thought about the abortion and about her mother, who believed in reincarnation and insisted afterward that the baby’s soul was reincarnated in her scrawny cat. “Listen to the way he’s crying,” she told Orit. “Listen to his voice, it’s like a baby’s. You’ve had him for four years already and he never cried like that.” Orit knew that her mother was talking crap and that the cat was just sniffing food or some female cat out the window. Except that his yowling really did sound a little like a baby crying and he went at it all night. Her only piece of luck was that she and Assi weren’t together anymore, because if she’d told him something like that, he would have burst out laughing. She tried to think about Simyon’s soul too, and where it had been reincarnated, but she reminded herself that she didn’t believe in any of that. Then she asked herself why she’d agreed to go to the morgue with the officers, and why she hadn’t mentioned that the marriage was fictitious. There was something weird about going to a morgue and identifying a husband. Scary, but exciting too. It was a little like being in a movie—having the experience without paying the price. Assi would probably say that it was a terrific opportunity to get a lifetime widow’s pension from the army without even lifting a finger, and no one in the army could do anything against a marriage contract from the Rabbinate. “It’ll be fine,” said the captain, who must have noticed the thought lines in Orit’s forehead. “We’ll be with you the whole time.”
Assi came to the Rabbinate as Simyon’s witness, and throughout the ceremony he made faces, trying to get Orit to laugh. Simyon himself looked a lot better than the stories about him made out. Not a world-class hunk, but not as ugly as Assi’d described him. And he wasn’t such an idiot either. He was very strange, but not stupid, and after the Rabbinate, Assi took them out for falafel. That whole day, Simyon and Orit didn’t exchange a word except for
hello
and the words they had to speak at the ceremony, and later at the falafel stand, they tried hard not to look at each other. That made Assi laugh. “Look at how pretty your wife is,” he said, putting his hand on Simyon’s shoulder. Simyon kept his eyes fixed on the dripping pita bread he was holding. “What are we going to do with you, Simyon?” Assi said, still needling him. “You know that now you have to kiss her. Otherwise, according to Jewish law, the marriage isn’t valid.” To this day, she doesn’t really know whether Simyon believed him. Assi told her later that of course he hadn’t, and that he was just taking advantage of the situation, but Orit wasn’t so sure. In any case, he suddenly bent forward and tried to kiss her. Orit jumped back, and his lips didn’t touch hers. But the smell from his mouth did, blending with the smell of frying falafel oil and that moldy smell of the Rabbinate that clung to her hair. She took a few steps away from them and vomited into a flower box, and when she looked up, her eyes met Simyon’s. He froze for a minute and then started to run, to get away. Assi tried to call him back, but he didn’t stop. And that was the last time she saw him. Till today.
On the way to the morgue, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to identify him. After all, she’d seen him only once, two years ago, and he was alive and well then. But now she knew right away that it was him. A green sheet covered his body up to his neck. His face was completely intact, except for a small hole no larger that a one-shekel coin in his cheek. And the smell of the corpse was just like the smell of his breath on her face two years ago. She’d thought about that moment many times. While they were still at the falafel stand, Assi had told her that it wasn’t her fault that Simyon had bad breath, but she always felt like it was. And today, when they knocked on the door, she should have remembered him. It wasn’t as if she’d gotten married a million times or anything. “Do you want us to give you a minute alone with your husband?” the captain asked. Orit shook her head. “Really. It’s okay to cry,” the captain said. “There’s no point in holding it in.”