The Inbetween People (2 page)

She waits for me to speak.

You will be released on the twenty-ninth of November, she says. That is the date, isn’t it?

I nod.

I’ve thought it all through, she says. All of it. It’s a Thursday. They think I’m in class on Thursdays. That’s how I’m here now. By the time they notice I’m gone we’ll be on the way to England. We’ll get married so that I’ll be legal. We’ll both work, have money maybe for the first time in our lives. She falters, hesitates, recovers, the words come again. We’ll settle somewhere nice, in a little house with a garden. I’ll take your name. They’ll never find me.

And where exactly will you work? I say.

I’ll work anywhere.

Do you think you’d be happy living with me?

What? She hesitates. Of course.

She doesn’t look at me when she says this. There is silence then and the voices of the couple in the next cubicle come to us. The woman’s voice is raised, the man’s soothing.

I
MET
her husband, Saleem, on a beach by a lake on a July day. I’d been to the lake before, and there was a specific beach in my mind that day, a deserted place. I had a blinding headache that afternoon, so that every side track appeared the same. And as I drove through the reeds, on and on, it seemed like I was going further away from the water and that I’d never find a beach, but then there was one before me, rising out of the rushes, seemingly deserted and very beautiful; small and isolated, reflecting the stillness of that July afternoon.

I got out of the car and stood there, examining the beach with the sun on my back.

I resented the fact that he came up behind me and I didn’t hear him. Sometimes I still resent it, our very introduction never went away. He had a quiet way of moving, as if the world he walked in was very fragile, and everything he touched was brittle.

He tapped me on the back, and when I turned to face him he smiled. I later came to know that smile, but I read then that this was his beach and I was intruding though he was too courteous to say so.

Sorry, I said.

He shrugged and pointed to his fishing line. Then he sat on a rock and began to fish. I understood what he meant and I wouldn’t have parked there had I known he was already on the beach, but part of me wanted to stay, the same part that was annoyed at him creeping up behind me.

He was a natural fisherman, I saw it straight away. He stood on a black rock, his shirt stuck to his body, and I remained there for some time watching him catch small silver fish, one after the other. In the end he turned to face me.

I’m Saleem, he said.

I smiled at him, though I didn’t feel it, not then, and I told him my name, Avi, before I plunged into the water. It was cold, so cold, after the heat of the afternoon, and I swam until the heat was gone and I no longer felt the glare from the sky; and when I came out he was still sitting on the rock. I’d decided I was going to stay.

I took a mattress from the car and lay down in the shade of the rushes. I was tired for I’d just completed my compulsory annual army reserve service. I slept.

Sometimes here, when I need to sleep, I imagine that I am there on that beach, sleeping, and he is fishing, and I can hear the ripple of the water and the thud of the silver fish landing on the black rock. I feel the heat of the sun, and my weariness that day, and I sleep.

S
ALEEM WOULD
want you to take me there.

I open my eyes and Sahar is in front of me, her hair black against the wire gauze. There is triumph in her eyes, and something else that I don’t care to analyse, a cunning that I’d glimpsed in her before.

I’m not sure, I say.

She drops the keys onto the table. Why are you making this so difficult? she says. You said you’d give it some thought. Do you really think he’d want me to marry Karim, to be a prisoner in the home he created for me? Didn’t you know him at all? Her voice is raised.

My time is nearly up, she says. She nods towards Zaki, the warden. He will come soon, she says. Can you think about it, Avi?

Will you stay with me? I say.

What?

Will you stay with me? After you get your citizenship. Will you stay with me?

Of course.

How do I know you don’t have other plans? How do I know you’ll stay? I’m not Saleem.

The woman in the next cubicle is sobbing now. Please do your army service, she says. Can’t you imagine what people will say? Have you thought about the children? I haven’t told anyone you’re here. Please stop this ridiculous farce. The man is uncomfortable, he glances at me, then they lean closer and whisper, her hair almost falling into his face.

Sahar moves her foot towards a cockroach. It is quiet, immobile, placed exactly between our two sets of feet. I’ll stay, she says. You have to trust me. You do this for me, Avi. You do this for me and I’ll never leave. Where else would I go, she says?

I light another cigarette. I know something about the dead, something she does not yet know, I know how they cling on and somehow remain, how they refuse to leave. I shrug. Come next week, I say. Come next visiting day. I’ll give you the answer then.

She presses her face up against the wire gauze that separates us, reaches under it and squeezes my hand.

Thanks, she says. Thanks for thinking about it. Zaki the warden is moving towards us. She stands in front of me, next week, she says, I’ll come again. You can tell me then. She clutches at the gauze, you must tell me then, she says.

Are you done? Zaki says.

She nods but turns away from him. Avi, she says, her voice is urgent, you must apply for the passport this week, no matter what. I’ve given you all the papers you need for a successful application. Even if you later decide you won’t come.

Zaki reaches his hand out to her elbow, come, he says, and she turns to him, she pushes her hair back from her face. She walks with him, towards the open doorway, the sunlit afternoon; the sun has reached inside and is casting narrow flames of light across the floor. She walks into the sunlight and for a time after she has gone, it seems that I can still see her shadow in the doorway.

M
Y
MOTHER
left in July. Father told me a little about that day, years later, that it was hot, the hottest day that year. When she woke that morning she cried and begged him to take her to England. He explained to her that he could not leave because there was work to be done on the kibbutz where they lived, and he believed in that work and in the future, not just for him he said, but for the country, for future generations.

It’s not about individual happiness, he said. It’s about the collective happiness of the community. You must remember that.

When he came home that evening there was a note on the table. It said that she had fallen in love with a Dutch man, a man who came to volunteer to work on the kibbutz for six months. He was bringing her to Holland. She was sick of living in the countryside on a kibbutz, tired of everyone knowing her business, tired of the heat and the sweat. She didn’t want to leave, she would have stayed with us if it was possible, if we could have left too. She never wanted to see another field, nor an orchard, not even an ear of corn ripening in the sunshine. She wanted to concentrate on her art, to see more of the world. Take care of my Avi, it said.

I asked him once if I could see the letter, but he said that he hadn’t kept it. He said, you’re too young to remember. You were only five.

But I remembered her: her smell of summer flowers, the way her hair blew across her face on windy days. And her laugh, a tingly sound that came from the very heart of her. I waited for her for years—my eyes wandering to doorways at my birthday parties, at Rosh Hashanah, Passover and all our holidays—because for a long time I believed she would come home, walk through one of those doorways, into one of those rooms, home to me. And at night, just before I slept, I would feel her lips kissing my eyelids. Sometimes even now I feel her breath on my skin.

Z
AKI
,
THE
warden, is coming for me. I stand to meet him and I walk away from that room and I don’t look back. The sobbing of the other woman follows me through the grey windowless corridor, all the way back to my empty cell.

C
HAPTER
3

I
write. A soft light creeps across the morning sky, as my words take shape upon the page. The desert is alive with reds and oranges, the sky gentle at this hour, the breeze cool.

All stories have a beginning, you said. And that is not necessarily the obvious beginning. It’s not always like David Copperfield, you said, things don’t always have to begin at the very beginning.

And so Saleem, just as once—when you asked me to tell you my story—I instinctively knew that it began with Mother leaving, so I know where your story begins: it is another July day, hot, but it’s always hot here in July. You are beside your grandmother on the backseat of your uncle Sabri’s minivan, on the way to Safsaf for the first time, forehead pressed against the window, seeing nothing new, only the curved white road before you, the trees laden with the dust of summer. Safsaf is part of your life, mentioned always with reverence and sadness, spoken of in heavy lifeless tones.