The Expelled (2 page)

“Yes, and you like your espresso extra short and you hate lattes.”

She looks back at me, she smiles, I can see that she starts liking this, she's intrigued.

We go to the café and order at the register, a very short espresso for her.

“Very very short,” she tells the waitress, and she specifies it again, “very very short.”

“A macchiato for me, but decaffeinated.”

“Seventeen shekels,” the waitress says.

We sit in the inner room, without light or windows.

“What else do you know about me?” she asks as she was sitting down.

“Everything, more or less, grosso modo. I even know your future. For example, I knew that you were going to say yes,” I lie.

“Yes to what?”

“To get a coffee.”

“Yes,” she lies. “I also knew that you knew, that's why I waited so long to answer. But, I mean, what else do you know about my life?”

“And you are not going to say: You're one of those maniacs stalking people and then you come and try to be funny...?”

“No, I am not going to say: You're one of those maniacs stalking people and then you come and try to be funny...”

“We should stop repeating that sentence.”

“What sentence?”

“You're one of those maniacs stalking people and then you come and try to be funny...”

She looks at me and I look back, she smiles and I smile back.

“I won't say it anymore,” she says.

“You won't say what anymore?”

“I won't say: You're one of those maniacs stalking people and then you come and try to be funny...”

“Alright then, I'll tell you what I know, or some of it, not all at once, the future can come as a shock.”

I just finished my coffee, people here don't sit for too long, they finish their drinks and leave the cafeteria, they're not one of those maniacs stalking people and then come and try to be funny. Something has changed. The music's changed. Mary Black, “No Frontiers, Heaven Knows No Frontiers...” a song written by Jimmy MacCarthy.

“Let's begin. I hope I'm right. You came to Israel when you were twenty, on your birthday, in October.”

She looks at me and opens her huge blue eyes, so huge that they almost dissolve the beauty of the color, but that's not what happens, it almost dissolves it but it stays on the border and her beauty remains, a bit like a Picasso, every angle of her face creates a different face, and yet keeps changing according to her mood. Now I see that she is excited, she likes this. It reminds me of how Gabrielle looked at me before realizing that being a writer was not just something romantic, but also a problem in the bank account. Then, she stopped looking at me in that way and began to see me as the husband who doesn't make enough money. Which, by the way, is true.

“Which October day?” She asks.

“The seventh.” Now all music that I hear is of Townes Van Zandt. “To live’s to fly. The game is only to lose, this is what he sings in my ear.”

“Want to come over for tea and then you can tell me everything?” Unexpected question, although it shouldn't be this way.

“Yes, sure.”

It's 9 p.m. I have to go back home, what do I do?

“But first I have to go to the bathroom.”

I go to the bathroom, I call my wife from my cell and tell her that I'm staying the night at Rami's in Tel Aviv, then I call him and tell him about it. He doesn't believe me.

“I'll explain later, it's not what you think, I don't think Gabrielle will call you, but just in case, tell her I was tired and I went to sleep, nothing else.”

“I live close by, in Najlaot, we can walk there.”

And right before leaving the station:

“What do you do?”

“I am a writer.”

“How original.”

Yes, I know that you've always dated artists, painters, poets, photographers, you are attracted by them, but I say nothing. Perhaps I shouldn't say too much. And let her ask a little.

It's cold. A frozen Jerusalem night, at the end of fall, the start of winter. We go out toward the Mahane Yehuda market, and on our way I suggest that we buy a bottle of wine in one of the kiosks on Yaffo Street a little further down the road. We take a few steps and I buy a bottle of Segal's Merlot. “And a snack,” she says. “Chips.” The bottle of wine costs me fifty-six shekels, more than double what it would have cost me in the supermarket near my house. Yes, I think about such nonsense when something is finally happening in my life. The chips cost me seven shekels, for that price I could get eight at the supermarket. On our way to her house, Gabrielle says that she wants me to one day read her one of my stories.

“I don't write short stories, novels, short novels or a little longer ones.”

“Alright, we'll meet one day and you'll read a short one to me.”

“The shortest,” I say.

We arrived at her house by the ministry of foreign affairs, a set of weird huts that look like an army camp. Her house is in one of those side streets of Najlaot, behind the restaurant called Imma, which means mother.

“In Hebrew. Well, Hebrew and Spanish. And a little in English.”

“And not in French?”

“No, not in French, not yet, although back in the day I wrote some French poems, I think I could if I really wanted to.”

“Well, then bring me something in Spanish, because in Hebrew I am not going to understand a thing.”

“Don't worry about it, it's an easy Hebrew, I don't write in a very complicated style.”

“I prefer in Spanish, I like the language better.”

I remembered the first time I went out with Gabrielle, I wrote her a poem in French. After that, she didn't want to see me for six months. I don't know if it's because the poem was so bad or so good. Whichever it was... six months...

I find it a very good idea to read a short novel to her. I have a half-finished one that I could add to this book and that way, poof, I already have a few more thousand words. A writer shouldn't think this way, but what do you want, to fill a book or to write it. I don't know. What I feel is an enormous urge to write and to be prepared to conquer Spanish Literature, once my novel sells a lot, I must already be prepared to attack with a lot of novels. But this is not a war... Who's speaking? Who said that? It's me, myself, the writer against himself, the silly one against the serious one, the story teller against the one who wants to save the world through his stories, that last one that no longer exists. Now we get to the music of David Munyon, I hear his songs ringing in my ears. We are in her house. A badly furnished house, a student apartment or of someone who doesn't want to stop being a student. I should be elsewhere, writing other things.

“What are you thinking about?”

“About how beautiful you are.”

She smiles.

“Do you want tea?”

She serves tea on a table in the tiny room, there are two chairs around, or something that looks like a chair and armchair, half-broken, from used furniture stores, or gifts from friends.

“Help yourself, make yourself comfortable. I'm going to take a shower and come back then we'll drink tea.”

I knew she would be back with a black robe with nothing underneath. I saw it in her eyes at the station, I knew those eyes, I knew them and I had already almost forgotten them. It didn't surprise me, but I wasn't expecting it either. Perhaps I was hoping for a surprise.

“You like men.”

“Who doesn't?”

“Well, but you like them a little more.”

She comes closer to me and kisses me. I remember that need to dominate the situation and not be swayed. I let her. Suddenly an idea goes to my head, that this may be a kind of adultery, and what if she lied when she told me about her abortion, what if she had a daughter instead of an abortion and left her in Paris at her sister's or aunt's, or someone adopted her, maybe she's the daughter of my wife, I should ask her for her name, but I don't. It is the same hand and the same feeling that has never changed, the same as when Gabrielle touches me, either the first or the second, the young or the adult. I immediately have a boner, as if it were an order. The Gabrielles wishes are a command to my cock.

Now she touches it, smiles, “I like it, it's big,” she kisses me on the mouth but not a deep kiss, she goes down on me for a moment, not very convinced, she's not nervous, she does it calmly, but quickly she takes off part of the robe and I see her right side and just like that, half naked, she climbs on top of me and moves up and down, screaming “oui, oui, oui,” and then she tells me that she likes my cock, “j'aime ton sexe,” which means, I love your penis, my cock and my sex, the way I make love but also my penis, all my male penis. Then she shuts up, she stands up and grabs my hand to take me to another tiny room in which lies a hard mattress. She throws herself on it, raising her hands and inviting me to penetrate her face up, but I turn her around and put her on her feet, this is what you love most, I don't say it, and I penetrate her from behind and there we both come at the same time, her screaming, “bring me the wine,” I don't know why, I lie down for two seconds and get up and I come back with the bottle of wine and two glasses, but we need a corkscrew she doesn't know where it is.

“It doesn't matter, put the bottle in bed,” the bottle, I lie down and start falling asleep, I don't remember very well when I took my pants and shoes off, I still have my sweatshirt on, and she says goodbye.

“What? Goodbye?”

“It seems a little exaggerated to sleep together the first night, and with a married man...”

“I never said that I was married.”

“You didn't need to.”

“Tomorrow we meet at four, and you read me your story.”

“It's a novel.”

I have no choice, I look for the boxers my mother-in-law gave me and I can't find them. In the end I find the pants, I wear them without boxers and then the socks, which my mother-in-law also gave me (she's very creative for gifts), then the Paul & Shark jacket that I bought in Turkey without knowing that it was so chic and that it was worth a fortune, although maybe it's a fake, and that it’s normal to have navy blue on one side and beige on the other and I leave.

It's only 12:30 a.m. and I decide to go back home. In my house everything seems fine, Gabrielle is asleep and did not take advantage of my absence to go see a lover, a lover I've suspected existed for a few months, or years, or forever, because I cannot believe that a woman who had many lovers before marriage becomes a saint after the wedding, or maybe because I'm just a jealous asshole or because I don't see that our sex has been fulfilling her for a while now. You see, if I was more literary, there should be a surprise here and the arrival of the husband and the finding of a man coming down the stairs, or lover in bed, but these things only happen in books. Especially in the bad ones.

At 2 p.m. Gabrielle Jr. calls me, that's how I start calling her, and she asks if I'm going at four and tells me not to forget the story.

“The short novel.”

“Alright, whatever. Whatever.”

“Wha´ever.”

I ask her to give me her address, but she refuses. I ask where she got my telephone number, I don't recall giving it to her.

“You're an idiot, I called from your cell to mine while you were in the bathroom and got your number.”

“And I thought that I was the intelligent one.”

“Everyone does it.”

“Are you going to give me your address or what?”

“You have to find the house.”

I make a few laps around the restaurant and I have some difficulties locating myself between the old streets with the old houses, but eventually I get there right on time, at four o'clock. I am punctual although I don't try to be.

I knock on the door, but she doesn't answer. I knock again. Nothing. I call her cell.

“Yes, you're very punctual, I'll be right there, wait up, I went out to buy eggs and milk.”

“Liar.”

“Ok whatever, I'll be right there, five minutes.”

It takes her fifteen minutes and she comes back with a bag of some supermarket. I can see that she had been to the hairdresser. She dressed well.

“You brought your story.”

I am tired of telling her that it is a short novel. She kisses me on the cheek. I try to get to her mouth, but she doesn't kiss me on the mouth.

“Yes, but you want it so much. The truth is I don't like reading aloud, I get bored, if you want I’ll leave it and you read it when you want.”

“No, no, no way, I want to hear your voice.”

She turns the key twice in the lock.

“Alright. Ok. I'll read it to you.”

You can't say no to a new woman, although she's only a replica of the other, made in China. Today you can copy anything, even women. A cloned woman. Cloned. But she looks very good. I feel like doing her again. I tell her.

“Not today,” she says as if nothing had happened. As if there were no yesterday, or tomorrow. “Not today. Today story, today Literature.” That happens to me for saying that I'm a writer. “I'll make tea and we'll sit down to start our literary evening.”

“I've been told that it's very common in Germany, not here.”

She comes back a few minutes later with the tea, the memory of yesterday gives me a boner, but I cool down quickly thinking about the tractors of a kibbutz.

She serves me tea.

“It's funny, I brought the last thing I wrote, and it's kind of funny because, it's a story where in the middle someone tells another story, but I'm thinking that if I write our encounter one day it'll be a story in which someone tells a story about someone who's telling a story.”

“Interesting.”

“Well, the truth is it's not completely done yet. It needs some adjustments here and there.”

“I'm listening.”

I start reading.

––––––––

T
he bus

1.

When the shooting occurred I was asleep, the shooting woke me up, so I couldn't say who took the shot. Later, it was said that it was Queta, who was sitting to my right, more or less in the middle of the front of the bus, in the photo it must be the sixteenth or fifteenth seat, but I didn't see her. The pistol wasn't hers, it was Domingo's, he was sitting in the front, that I'm sure of, at the entrance of the bus because he considered himself some sort of a king, in front of all the front people, although the one who's most in front was the driver even if he doesn't count, or maybe that was already clear that he didn't count.