Cafe Nevo (26 page)

“Could we stick to the business at hand?” she said.

“Certainly.”

“Why did you do it?”

“Because I was angry,” Arik told her. “Because while my men were being shot at and killed in Lebanon, that bastard was profiteering in the West Bank. Once when I was home on funeral leave, I stopped by Nevo to see Sternholz. Gordon comes up to me, dressed in a suit, and grabs my hand, pumps it, and says, ‘Good work, my boy, keep up the good work.' ‘What's with you?' I say to him—this was in the beginning of the war, when everyone was called up. ‘Deferred for essential business, old son,' he says, winking, ‘but I'm doing my bit anyway. What you're doing to them in Lebanon, I'm doing to them in Judea.'“

Sarita made a retching noise in her throat; Arik nodded and boldly crossed the room to sit beside her on the bed.

“I wouldn't have done it to anyone else, but in Gordon's case,” he said, “I enjoyed it.”

“Was he home when you broke in?”

“Yes.”

“And his wife?” Sarita asked. “He
is
married?”

A shadow passed over Arik's face. He looked away from her. The wife was the single irritant in that otherwise pleasing memory. Terrorizing women was not his idea of manly behavior, even if the woman was one who lived high off the spoils of her husband's carpetbagging. Toward Gordon himself he felt no regret. The man was a leech; he got off easier than he deserved.

“His wife?” Sarita prodded gently. She had turned toward him.

“She was there. No one harmed her.”

She stared at his face, his downcast eyes no barrier. “But you frightened her,” she said, with the certainty of one who had been there, and at that moment Arik saw how like his mother she was. Women of relentless discernment, though Sarita's gift was encased in gentleness and Rina's in boldness, and Sarita expressed hers through a medium while Rina favored direct action, political manipulation.

Arik looked into Sarita's emerald eyes and confessed: “We did frighten her.”

Then for the first time Sarita touched him. She laid her slender hand on his brown forearm and let it rest there while she seemed to study the contrast in texture and color. Inhaling sharply, Arik turned toward her; Sarita's hand flew off his arm and to her mouth. “Don't,” she said, and backed away. Arik put his hands on his thighs and tried to smile.

In a clear, bright voice Sarita said, “What makes you think that Gordon's going to tie you into this thing?”

“Only that he saw my face,” Arik replied diffidently.

“That was careless of you.” Suddenly her eyes widened. “I hope you don't imagine you can hide here.”

“Of course not. I'm leaving town for a day or two. I need to talk to some people.”

“Won't you want to show them the papers?”

“I've made copies. It's the originals I want to leave with you, for safekeeping.”

“I suppose you're going to your father,” Sarita said.

“Not necessarily.”

“
I
would. No offense, but who knows more about blackmail than a politician?”

“Good point,” Arik said, suppressing a smile because she was so serious.

“All right. I'll keep the papers for you. Good luck,” she said briskly, holding out her hand. Arik brought it to his lips and kissed it.

“Do I have to leave now?”

Blushing, she drew back her hand. “What do you mean?”

“Since I'm here, I wondered if you might show me your paintings.”

She looked at him as if he'd surpassed her wildest imaginings.

“I know you've exhibited them,” he said beguilingly. “Couldn't I have a private showing?”

Sarita picked at a loose thread in the Indian cotton bedspread, raveling the cloth. “I have work to do,” she muttered.

“Maybe next time. When I come back.”

“When you come back,” she said, her voice faintly questioning.

Arik reached over and took her hand, resting his on her knee. She felt a line of fire leading from her knee directly to her groin, and she made her face a blank.

“You never asked, ‘Why me?'“ he said. “That was your only mistake. It means you already know.”

“Don't get the wrong idea,” she said. “I'm happy to help in such a worthy cause, and maybe I did enjoy talking to you; but I'm not looking for anything more... personal. We could be friends.”

“Whatever you say.” Arik smiled. His thumb made little circles in her palm that radiated in waves to the pit of her stomach.

“It's nothing against you,” Sarita said weakly; “it's just that I've got no time or energy to waste on”—but then he silenced her with his lips. At first she was stiff in his embrace, though not resistant: more as if she were steeling herself for an injection. But slowly she melted, her body softening against his, her lips parting.

A moment later she broke away and hung her head and would not look at him. Arik stood up with a little groan. “Don't be afraid,” he said. “I'm going. But I'll be back. I'm telling you now, so you can start getting used to the idea. I want you, Sarita, and when I get out of this mess, I'm coming for you.”

 

His rubber-soled shoes made no sound, but the stairs creaked as he ran downstairs. Sarita picked up the folder gingerly; it was still warm from his body. She looked through it briefly, then hid it under her mattress.

She went back to the easel and turned it around, knowing as she did that it was no good: the sketch told her where she'd been, not where she was going. She'd lost her destination. Knowing that visions, like dreams, return sooner if not pursued, she gathered up the used cups and carried them into the kitchen. Next to painting, warm water running over her hands was the most comforting feeling in the world, and Sarita was in need of comfort. Arik Eshel, she thought, was an impudent, conceited, presumptuous person. If he thought he could force his way into her well-ordered life, he greatly overestimated his powers and underestimated hers.

He did have a certain charm about him, she conceded, drying her hands. His countenance spoke well of him; his body was at ease with itself. She could have painted him, leaning back in that chair, looking perfectly at home when he should have been, anyone else would have been, dreadfully embarrassed. He had a masculinity that did not question itself, a wolvine grace; her painter's eye saw nothing wrong with him, and much that was right, but her mind was set against him. Coming into the bedroom, Sarita met her mother's eye. Yael seemed to be laughing at her.

“It's not funny,” she said indignantly.

She often talked to the portrait, and it to her—not in words (she was not mad) but in looks. Her mother's eyes followed her about wherever she went, and though Sarita herself had created the effect, it was out of her control.

It was strange, she thought, how you could make something up out of whole cloth, and all the while you were making it, it was yours; but as soon as you were done, it separated itself from you and claimed autonomy—like Pinocchio, running away from Gepetto.

Now her mother's eyes were twinkling.

“Don't give me that look,” Sarita said. “I only did what I had to. In fact, I did what you did, Mama, that time in Nevo. You never even thought about it, did you? You were passing Nevo, you saw what was happening, and without stopping to think, you plunged right in. You were brave, Mama.”

The sun passed over the roof of the house, and the light softened; so, too, Yael's eyes.

“I know you think you got your reward,” Sarita said. “A husband and child came out of what you did that night, though you never planned it.

“But it's not that way for me. You had just your own life to live, your own work to do. I have mine, and yours, and Daddy's. You were cheated of life, and life was cheated of you, and whose job is it to make up for that if not mine? I don't have room for a man in my life. I don't have time.”

Sarita ended the argument in the only way she could, by leaving the room. Leaning on the roof's parapet, she watched the busy street below, filled with women shopping for their families. Sarita knew that she was right. She was a woman apart, cut off from the general course of women's lives. She had a special purpose, which had sustained her through times of unbearable sorrow and would continue to sustain her for as long as she kept up her side. If she were susceptible to men, Arik might have been a contender; if she were seducible, he might have been dangerous. It was her good fortune to be neither.

 

 

 

Chapter Sixteen

 

 
Caspi was holding court in the center of Nevo, where his remarks, ostensibly addressed to his companions, could be heard by all.

“I went through half a dozen translators,” he was saying; “and fired them all. I felt sure they were not doing justice to his work, yet I found it odd that all of the samples had a common failing, which was lack of cohesion. The poems contained some beautiful images, juxtaposed in a manner that made no sense at all. I knew the poems must have some sort of center—after all, the man is the leading poet of his benighted generation—but for some reason the translators were missing it. So I decided to have a go, at the expense of my own work.”

Appreciative murmurs came from his audience, Rami Dotan and two girls. Caspi held out his hands to ward off their praise.

“It was the least I could do,” he said modestly. “My whole conception in doing this anthology is to try to put forward and support struggling Arab writers. It would be criminal to burden them with poor translations on top of all their other natural disadvantages.”

“Their natural disadvantages?” said Sternholz, serving a round of beer. Caspi ignored him.

“I took the first poem to hand,” he continued. “My Arabic is rusty, but I knew as soon as I read it that something was wrong. Not only was the imagery old and tired, phoenixes rising from ashes and that sort of thing, but the poem totally lacked coherence. It simply made no sense. It
sounded
as if it meant something, the title—'Rebirth'—promised something, and yet the poem itself was like a baby's babble. Every so often a few meaningful words would emerge from the midst of nonsense. It was ironic: I set out to be a midwife and ended up participating in a miscarriage.”

The girls giggled. Rami Dotan murmured wamingly, “Enough said, Caspi.”

“What's your problem?” he growled.

“We still have a book to do together. Don't forget you have an interest in that.”

“A great interest,” said Caspi. His eyes gleamed. “Money being the least of it.”

“For you, maybe,” the publisher muttered.

“I have been writing my introduction,” Caspi announced. “We owe these people the respect of telling the truth about their work. I hope I have done so kindly. After all, it is hardly their fault. They are a people without a land; little wonder their poetry lacks grounding. As the Arabs lack cohesion, so, too, their thoughts and writing. You will find that in my essay I have leavened honesty with compassion and a generosity which, I'm sorry to say, is sorely needed.”

Rami said nothing but stared down at the table with an embarrassed expression. The two girls exchanged a look. Then Muny barreled over and shook his finger under Caspi's nose.

“You should be ashamed,” he scolded. “That's nothing but racist slander dressed up as literary criticism. I never thought you'd stoop so low, Caspi, even if your wife
is
screwing Khalil.”

Caspi turned white beneath his tan. He stood, towering over Muny; he clenched his fists. The café was dead silent. Muny held his ground.

“I'm glad it was you,” Caspi said in a carrying whisper. “If it was anyone else, anyone in his right mind, I'd have had to kill him.” He grabbed Muny by the forearms and effortlessly raised him onto his toes, shaking him and spitting into his face as he shouted, “My wife doesn't sleep with Arab filth!”

 

At that very moment Vered was looking at the watch which was all she wore, lying naked on top of an unrumpled bed. She was thinking about Daniel, whom she had dropped at Jemima's, wondering what she would give him for supper, since there was no food in the house; and she was worrying over the subject for an unstarted column that was due in two days. Her lover sat hunched over a table with his back to her, typing in rapid bursts punctuated by bouts of giggles.

They had not yet made love. When she first arrived, Khalil had risen from the table, embraced her excitedly, and asked her to strip for him. As she did so, blushing, he pressed himself against her and ran his hands up and down her body, as if he meant to have her on the spot, against the wall. “Beautiful, beautiful,” he murmured, leading her by the hand to the bed. But when she lay down, he looked once more, sighed, and returned to his typewriter.

At first she was astonished, then embarrassed, but as Khalil continued working, seeming to have forgotten her presence, she forgot his. Her mind drifted away on a tide of things forgotten and postponed.