A Remarkable Kindness (4 page)

Emily stared hard at the border and took a deep breath. “At least the zigzag slash in the hills looks like the mark of Zorro.”

“It's the army patrol road,” Lauren said.

A
FEW WEEKS
later, just as Emily entered the lobby of the Garden of Eden Hotel, the manager, Yoram Kluger, called out, “
Boker tov,
Emily!”

“Good morning to you, too.”

“Emily!” Yoram looked at her from under his shock of white hair. “Meet Boaz Lichtenberg, one of the best farmers in the village. And Boaz, meet Emily Freulich, an artist from Boston.”

“An artist is stretching it a bit.” Emily blushed. “I worked in an art gallery.”

“I gave her the job at the reception desk only until she finds something else,” Yoram said decisively. “But even Chagall wouldn't be able to find a job around here.”

“I'm open to anything.” Emily turned to Boaz, who was wearing a black T-shirt with a thistle stuck to his left sleeve. His face was ruddy and broad, and his eyes were the color of the sea. Not the morning sea, when the water was turquoise laced with jade, but the late-afternoon sea, when the sun hung low and the water took on a wistful shade of blue.

“It's nice to meet you,” Boaz said in hesitant English.

“Emily, you want to improve your Hebrew, and Boaz, you want to improve your English!” Yoram walked away. “Perfect for both of you!”

Emily stepped behind the reception desk and hung her pocketbook on a metal hook by the office door. She sat down and studied the expected arrival times of the guests, unaware that Boaz was still standing there until he asked in English, “Do you like working here?”

Emily looked up. “Well, it's not at all like the kind of job I had in America, but meeting tourists is interesting.” Since she'd come to Peleg, she'd kept to herself, except for hanging out with Lauren and David. But Boaz seemed harmless enough, so Emily added, “I'd only hope the original Garden of Eden had nicer rooms.”

“The breakfast is great.”

“It's like a wedding buffet with all the cheeses and breads and salads.” Emily dropped her voice. “To tell you the truth, I'm not so wild about the hot lunch.”

“It's that goulash—Yoram's mother's recipe.” Boaz smiled at her, as though letting her in on a secret. “Have you gone to see the banyan tree on the side lawn?”

Emily was about to reply that she hadn't when the telephone rang.

“Garden of Eden Hotel, shalom!” Emily made a point of saying that last word clearly, breaking its two syllables right down the middle, the way Rob used to take hold of a Granny Smith apple, breathe in deeply like a yogi, and split it in two. Emily felt pathetic, still obsessing over someone who had betrayed her, discarded her, and no longer wanted her. She pushed him out of her brain with an image of her mother walking through temple saying, “Shalom, y'all!” Emily smiled even as the woman on the phone said something in rapid-fire Hebrew.

“Do you speak English?” Emily asked.

“I said
pil-lows.
Room 212 wants more pillows.”

“Room 212.” Emily jotted it down. “We'll bring some right up to you.”

“So,
nu,
do you want to practice Hebrew with me?” Boaz asked in English after Emily hung up.

“
Lamah?
” Emily replied. “Why? You don't think Hebrew School in West Virginia taught me enough?”

“What about what I learned in Western Galilee High School?” He smiled. “I can come here tomorrow evening after you finish work and we can practice.”

“You already want to start tomorrow?”

“How old are you?”

“I'm thirty-four. Why do you ask?”

“Because I'm forty and I have less time.”

Emily's eyes followed his hefty, decisive frame moving through the lobby and out the door.

When Emily's shift finally ended, she cut across the hotel lawn as light trawled over the dusky grass, headed for the banyan tree Boaz had mentioned. It took her breath away. It was feral-looking, with silvery rope-like roots rising up out of the earth—or were they diving down into it? Birds sang out at the top of their lungs within its glossy leaves. Emily stepped in close, spotting graffiti carved into one of the huge trunks. Underneath a geometric design she knew was Arabic writing were three Hebrew letters: an
alef,
a
lamed,
and the final
yud
that looked like an accidental scratch, and at the bottom was the name Ali, written in English.

E
MILY GLANCED UP
from behind the reception desk one night the following month as Boaz walked in, whistling and freshly shaved. He wore a blue-and-white-plaid shirt with lapels that were way too wide, his sleeves rolled up just above the elbows.

“Very dressed up, you,” she said. “What's going on?”

“Tonight is our tenth lesson,” he said. “Instead of staying here, can I take you out to dinner?”

“I've been wondering when you'd ask me that since our fifth lesson.” Emily thought of how she'd come to look forward to their lessons and the ease with which they spoke to each other in a mixture of English and Hebrew, what she called Engbrew. After being in a marriage that revolved around Rob and his constantly changing schedule—and how she felt he squeezed her into it—she liked looking up from the reception desk to see Boaz patiently waiting for her to finish her shift, proving that for her, he had all the time in the world. She liked his sunburned neck, his hairy forearms, his worn-in work shirts, his reticence. She liked how he patiently answered her questions about life in the village. She also liked imagining how it would be to sink into his bearish frame, and the comforting way she thought he'd hold her.

Emily stopped her reverie to study the hotel list. There was a wedding scheduled for the following night, which meant ten wake-up calls for five thirty
A
.
M
., three for six thirty, dry cleaning pickup for rooms 114 and 122, and extra vases for the newlyweds' room. “There's a wedding for eight hundred people tomorrow,” she told Boaz.

“Who knows eight hundred people? Who even likes eight hundred people?”

Driving along the main road in his burgundy pickup truck, Boaz pointed out the sights. A stone aqueduct from Ottoman times—“They were smarter than we are because they figured out how to build the aqueduct at just the right angle to bring water down from the hills”—towering eucalyptus trees—“The early Jews planted them to drain the swamps”—and the Bahá'i Gardens—“The founder is buried right in there. Don't ask me why everyone calls this place the Holy Land.”

“But it could be.” Emily thought of her father.

“Holy as in
holes
.” Boaz frowned. “Have you been to Akko before?”

“With my parents and my brother, Matt,” she said. “But I won't tell you how many years ago that was.”

“You don't must to.”

“Have to.”

“Have to what?”

“
Must
and
have to
are tricky.” Emily spoke patiently, the same way she used to explain English grammar rules to her father. “You don't need
to
with
must
. You could have said, ‘You don't have to.'”

“I don't have to what?”

“It's really not important!” Emily was exhausted, and by that time they'd reached Akko, anyway. Boaz parked the truck. They got out and stood by a rampart wall as thick as a fortress, overlooking the inky black Mediterranean. Behind them, the city looked ancient and mysterious, layers upon layers of stone buildings huddled together on the precipice of a peninsula that jutted out over the sea. Centuries of salty air and rains and desert winds had faded the structures to weather-beaten tattered
gray, left them pocked with holes and almost crumbling. But still standing.

“They built this city thousands of years ago.” Boaz patted the impenetrable wall in front of them. “Even Napoleon couldn't conquer this place.”

“I can see why.” Emily breathed in the salty, damp air, encircled with time like the rings on a tree. Then she and Boaz made a sharp left turn and then a sharp right, walking deeper and deeper into the warren of dimly lit alleyways. The faint sounds of televisions and voices drifted out of apartments ensconced deep within the serpentine passages.

Emily wore a black satin Chinese jacket decorated with gold dragons and a black wrap-around skirt, and she could hear her high-heeled pumps click against the weathered cobblestones. The dense stones rose on both sides of them like a cave, trapping the briny air, as if the same darkness had lurked there for millennia.

“It's like an eerie maze,” Emily whispered, leaning into Boaz.

As they passed shuttered shops nestled in arched alcoves, Boaz said, “In the daytime, the souk is packed.”

“Yes, I remember it.” Emily could picture the noisy, lively market crowded with shops selling long robes and glittery belly dancer costumes, water pipes, kitchenware, incense, exotic spices and weird tchotchkes (her brother, Matt, had bought real birds' eyes and a tortoise shell that the salesman said would bring good luck). No matter where they were in Israel, her father served as their impromptu tour guide, pointing out in his slow, careful English things that Emily, Matt, and their mother might have missed. She could hear her father saying, “If you don't look at the
Bruce Lee videotapes, you can imagine how this place looked long ago. Remember, it's not our time, it's God's
—
”

“I don't care whose time it is,” her mother would have interrupted, “I'm hungry as all heck.”

“Jews, Christians, and Muslims have all lived here over the years and built synagogues, churches, and mosques to leave their mark,” Boaz said softly, as though not wishing to disturb the quiet.

“And now?”

“It's still a mixed city.”

“That's unusual.”

Boaz navigated them down one dark alley, then another. He told a story about how, when workers were repairing the septic system a few years ago, they accidentally dug into a passage dating from Crusader times.

Emily and Boaz crossed a stone plaza surrounded by curved arches, and then he held open the door to a restaurant for her. They followed the maître d' out to a glass-enclosed terrace decorated with candles on the tables and little white bulbs strung across the ceiling. Emily sat across from Boaz at a table by the window, overlooking the harbor. The air smelled of grilled fish, cigarette smoke, and the salty sea air, and the lights were soft on the water.

“Do you know what you'd like?” Boaz asked.

“Tell me what's good.” Rob might be a respected chef in Boston, but he wouldn't have known what to order here, Emily thought smugly, focusing on Boaz and the way he gave their order to the waiter.

“Tabbouleh. Arugula salad. Hummus and tahini
,
” Boaz said. “Tomato salad. The fennel salad. Smoked eggplant and toasted pita bread. Two of your freshest fish on the grill. And two glasses of good white wine.”

After the waiter left, Emily asked, “Do you believe that things happen for a reason? Or do you think everything just happens?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Lauren and I have a running argument about that. And because now I'm sitting here with you and I used to be married to a chef in Boston.”

“I used to be married to a social worker.”

“What happened?” Emily asked curiously, because this was the first time they'd ever talked about their private lives.

“She went folk dancing every week.”

“And?”

“And nothing. She left me for another folk dancer.”

“That's weird. My husband left me for a dancer, too. A ballet dancer with the—” Emily stopped. She had promised herself she would not talk about them. It was bad enough thinking about them. She quickly asked, “What was your wife's name?”

“I don't remember.” Boaz turned it into a joke and they laughed as the waiter brought the wine.

“How about a toast?” Emily said.

“L'chaim.”

“
L'chaim.
” To life. Not to her old one, but to her new one. Maybe a new one with Boaz? The waiter set out the array of appetizers and the pita breads, opened like full moons and coated with olive oil, oregano, and garlic. She took a bite of the garlicky
tomato salad. “This is all so delicious.
Ta-im,
right? I'm going to stuff myself on all the salads. And I'm really trying to watch my weight.” She thought of beanpole Taylor with a twinge of pain.

“Why? You look fine.”

She smiled at Boaz, who caught her eye, grinned back, and winked. After one glass of wine, the waiter returned with fresh grilled fish, French fries, and more toasted pita bread.

“I really do want to know what you think about whether things happen for a reason,” Emily said. “My father said there are no mistakes in life. It's all fated even if we don't understand why.”

Boaz rubbed the side of his face. “One time during the war in Lebanon, I went into a toilet stall and when I stepped out, another guy went in, and then, just seconds later, a missile exploded and he was killed. He was as close to me as you are now. Why him?
Lamah lo ani?
Why not me?”

Emily sat very still—her father would have done the same thing—and let the weight of Boaz's words sink to the bottom of the sea. She put down her fork on the side of her plate and let her hands fall into her lap, linking her fingers together. Boaz raised his bushy eyebrows as if to apologize for something and she smiled at him, trying to convey the message that whatever he wanted to tell her, he could tell her.

She sat for a long time, waiting for him to say something more. He seemed like a wounded soul, someone her father would have tried to comfort and befriend. Emily felt relieved that she no longer had to be entertaining and amusing all the time, the way she had to be with Rob or some of the other guys she'd dated in Boston. She gazed down at the sea. The water was drizzled with
squiggles of light coming from the harbor lamps. It was a calm evening and the boats swayed gently.