About the Night (5 page)

Before it was time to descend to the street and wait for him, Lila looked one last time in the mirror and decided to wipe away the eye makeup and most of the lipstick and settled for simply pinching her cheeks to bring color to their paleness. He would see her as she was. She knew almost nothing about him, only the pieces he had told her about his family, which had been living in Jerusalem for hundreds of years. In such a unified tribe, she thought, there are strong men and dominant women, and not one of them would open the gates for someone alien—a Jewess.

At the last moment, she folded a light sweater and put it in her bag. She did not want to be late; she did not want his car to be there in the street, prey for all the curious neighbors, or for Monsieur Hubert, her boss, to pass by in a taxi and observe her stepping into a waiting car and not her bed, where she had told him she was headed several hours earlier when she asked to leave work early.

When she walked out into the street, she saw Elias, his eyes watching the gate in anticipation. They lit up when he caught sight of her. He stepped out of his car and opened the door for her. She tried to catch her breath and still her beating heart.

“Have you been waiting long for me?” she asked.

“My whole life,” he said.

Perhaps he had said those words in the past to someone else, she thought, but in his eyes there was something warm and true. Her nose was gathering impressions: his scent, a faint lavender diffused by the smell of his body.

And then he said, “I’m happy you came.”

The drive was stunning: fields of wheat and ancient olive trees, a valley just plowed, and wild prickly pear bushes bearing ripe fruit. The road meandered through wildflowers in their prime, tall and full of color in the moment before summer would cause everything to wither. Through the open windows came a flow of fresh air straight from the blue sky, a magical hour when the light grew ever softer.

If only I knew I would be traveling this road with him again, she thought, her mind wandering between the beauty of the moment and the sadness of its slipping away and disappearing in its perfection.

When he smiled and his gaze rested on her, she believed he knew how to calm her without saying a word.

On a hillock carpeted with purple flowers, he stopped the car and asked her to join him at a spot from which they could see the view like a colorful fan spread open in all its glory, roofs and houses and the resplendent fields encircling them and a valley of a more modest green due to the angle of the sun’s rays. He explained that the better soil gathered on terraced earth, so the groves here were more fertile.

From where they were standing, they could see a monastery, tall and grand, and although she had seen it before, it appeared to have grown more beautiful that afternoon solely for them.

“Do you know why the monastery’s called Latrun?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“
Latronis
in Latin is a thief,” he told her.

Her eyebrows rose in surprise.

“When Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem,” he said, “at Golgotha, two thieves were crucified alongside him. One was a good man, the other, bad. The bad one was bad from his youth, a habitual thief. The good one had been caught up in thieving but was remorseful, and he repented while on the crucifix, before his soul departed. The good thief was born on the hill on which the monastery was built, and pilgrims to the Holy Land would ask to be taken to
domus boni latronis
, ‘the place of the good thief.’”

“A nice story,” Lila said. There was nothing patronizing about his knowledge, and Lila didn’t feel uncomfortable about being uninformed. He was spreading out his world, so utterly different from hers, with utmost generosity. Although the two were children of the same land and shared its earth, each possessed a different story about the place.

She was also aware of his body language. When he pointed to the surrounding hills, she watched his hands, which made a great impression on her. They were tanned, expressive, supportive of his words and enriching to them; she made a point of remembering them so she could bring them to mind when she was not with him. She wondered if she would ever see him barefoot.

She was surprised to discover that Elias was rooted here, part of this ancient landscape; he belonged to it with his body and his soul, with his appearance and the color of his skin, more than many Jews she knew.

Back at the car, they remained silent for a while.

He thought it was nice that she was quiet. The women he was familiar with filled the air with their voices and their thoughts, a compression designed to magnify their presence or hide their discomfort. In rare moments of quiet they asked him what he was thinking, but if he had wanted to tell them, he would not have kept it to himself. Lila, however, let the words lie. Her hair moved in the breeze, and she wore sunglasses against the dust. The sun was making its way to the west and colored the valley in bright, burning, sensuous crimson. He noticed that the color had returned to her cheeks, too. She only needs to feel more sure of herself, he thought, in order to glow.

Monks returning from a walk in the vineyards passed before them in single file, their brown robes rustling along the path. Elias waved hello and called out,
“Buona sera,”
and they responded with welcoming looks. She wished to steal a glance at him in profile, to see how he held the wheel, when suddenly he said, “You haven’t asked where we’re going.”

“That’s right,” she said, surprised at herself, since she did not like surprises; they undermined her self-confidence. He looked to her like someone who knew where he was headed, and at that moment, this took on a whole new meaning.

She thought that during this, their first journey together, they were learning to recognize each other. They were drawing close and pulling apart like shadow puppets, circling round each other, speeding up and slowing down, softening to the sound of music that was playing but could not be heard.

Elias offered her iced tea from the thermos he had brought, wrapped in cloth to keep it cold. She hesitated for a moment, then pressed her lips to the small cup. He regretted seeing only from the corner of his eye as she wiped away a droplet from her chin; he did not dare watch more closely.

A long-tailed ferret jumped into the road and frightened Lila, who started. Elias braked to let the ferret pass. He told her about the medicinal herbs his mother grew in the yard of their home. His mother’s big fear was animals that would destroy them. Ferrets, he told Lila, like to chew on the stems of anise plants.

This was how she was learning him, one piece at a time, gathering what he said and what he did not say and what he seemed to be saying into a picture of his life. She was not in the habit of asking questions; even with her clients she listened, pushing the conversation gently along and keeping silent when necessary.

Night fell on the unlit road. Only their headlights jumped around as they drove through Arab and Jewish villages. Here and there, a guard dog barked.

She would have been happy to be at his side even if they had been in a cave in the Negev desert or an African forest. It was their first time together by choice, not because they had happened to run into each other.

And yet a sliver of sadness wedged its way in with the darkness growing around her. Thoughts about his tribe, the hothouse in which he had been raised, saddened her. She figured that he was protected, surrounded by family ensconced in their homes and their lands, and this only served to heighten the difference between them. As they reached Jaffa, she thought about how they were members of different religions and different cultures and were dissimilar in one other way that was even deeper: his tribe vis-à-vis her solitude.

“We’re approaching the port,” he told her.

Her silence felt heavy to him. When he opened the door of the car and the sea air hit their faces, he looked into her eyes, trying to draw out her gaze as it sought to slip away, softening her face until he got her to smile. She leaned on his arm as they made their way down a path to the restaurant. The candlelight was pleasant, and the smell of fresh fish on the grill awakened their hunger.

If she’ll drink Lebanese arak with me, he thought, then she’s a woman for me. Arak will melt her sadness, and she will laugh, and no one will be happier than I.

By the time they left the restaurant, walking side by side on the path back to the car, it was clear that the invisible line had been crossed, the line where on one side stood potential and doubt and the putting out of feelers that could be revoked at any moment and on the other stood strong emotion, complicit smiles, and a romantic connection that exists on its own and has a presence that cannot be ignored. The world was no longer the way it was before this connection came into existence.

It is like plaster casts, she thought, the kind you put on a broken arm: at first they are soft and pliant and respond to every movement. A few minutes later, they become hard and take on the shape of the arm and close in on it until the plaster is firm and solid and can only be removed with a saw. She wondered if perhaps Elias had not come on the scene precisely to solder something that had cracked inside her.

It did not cross his mind to kiss her or draw close enough to touch her. Why run when one could walk? That was how he comported himself whenever possible, and with her, he found this more true and right than ever. So she took him completely by surprise when, next to the car, she kissed him. The kiss was soft and fluttery, just enough to feel the heat in her lips.

They got into the car, and Lila watched him as he started the engine and began the trip home to Jerusalem. She, too, was astonished. She did not know exactly how it had happened, only that suddenly she wished to feel him and, without premeditation, rose up a bit on her toes and brought her own lips to meet his.

She hoped the roads would lengthen, that they would have more time together, but the car swiftly devoured the road. Elias began to sing and persuaded her to sing along with him, and their voices blended nicely, harmoniously. They drove along in their bubble, the two of them and the car alone in the entire universe.

She thought it was entirely possible to know a man through his driving. Elias’s steady hands and the calm with which he drove were capturing her heart just as the texture of his voice and the way his chest moved when he laughed. During this first meal they had just shared, he ate heartily but in moderation, observing everything going on at their table, regarding her like a man who enjoys satisfying her. He urged her to taste the skin of the grilled fish and encouraged her to have a plate of bulgur with mint. He groaned from the spicy eggplant dish, praising the chef and pleading with her to join him in eating a sweet milk pudding for dessert.

“There is only one
muhallibieh
pudding left,” the waiter told them.

“You eat it,” Elias told her.

“No, you,” she said.

“Together?” he asked. She agreed.

The entrance to Jerusalem was swathed in darkness and something gloomy as well: the parting to come was weighing the car down like some third party in the backseat, the kind that no one wants and yet he is there, his presence oppressive.