The Lover (25 page)

So what if he was an Arab, and why was he unfortunate all of a sudden? Not because he was an Arab. Just like that … even if he was a Jew, and what’s the difference? Hell … she really offended me. Meanwhile, Daddy found a solution, he could put on the pyjamas that he brought with him, because Daddy gave him money this morning to buy pyjamas (what a weird idea!) and they didn’t even ask him if he was ready to put pyjamas on in the late afternoon, they just threw the pyjamas into the bathroom and now we were all waiting for him to come out. But he didn’t come out, five minutes passed, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour and he still didn’t come out. He must be preening himself like some grand duchess. It seems he didn’t realize we have only one bathroom and Daddy would need a shower before supper. At last Daddy opened the door and we saw him sitting there in the dark on the edge of the bath like a frightened animal, wearing pyjamas like I never saw before in my life. The bastard, to think Mommy was worried about him. He went and chose something really special, and expensive too I’ll bet, elegantly trimmed, with wide sleeves and a sash and shining buttons.

We were stunned, and looked at one another in amazement.
And then I began to smile, and such a silly embarrassed grin appeared on Daddy’s face I felt I was starting to shake inside, for some reason it struck me as awfully funny. My famous laugh that breaks out like a clap of thunder followed by a trail of hee … hee … hee … and it’s always infectious because anyone who’s nearby, whether he likes it or not, starts laughing and can’t stop, he’s carried along by it. And Daddy started laughing and Mommy with a solemn face started to cackle and I broke out with another thunderclap, not laughing at the pyjamas any longer but at their silly laughter. And the little Arab was blushing bright red, he tried to smile but suddenly, all at once, without warning, he began to cry. So bitterly, so deeply, an ancient Arab moan. Suddenly I stopped laughing. Honestly, I felt heartbroken. I knew how he felt. How could he stand it? In his place I’d have been wailing long ago.

But in the end I stopped crying because they were so
embarrassed
. And I let them take me into the living room and sit me down in an armchair and so there I was talking to them quietly, actually only to the woman, who began talking to me and asking questions right away to take my mind off what had just happened. And I’d never spoken to a woman like her. Not young at all, with a sharp face, chain-smoking but very friendly and clever too, knowing how to get on with people. Sitting facing me, her legs crossed, and behind her the sunset through the window, the sea spread out and the rain falling on the horizon like a rosy fan. It was nice and warm in the room, all around it was clean and tidy. And they didn’t know that I’d been there before, I knew all the little objects on the shelves. My bare feet on the carpet, sitting on the edge of the chair and answering questions. She asked me so many questions you’d think she worked for the Secret Service. What does my father do and what does my mother do and what exactly is Faiz doing in England and what do we think about it, and what did we learn in school, how many hours of Arabic, how many hours of Hebrew, how many hours of maths, how many hours of history and what kind of history. How long has my family lived in this country, for
how many generations that is, how many people live in the village, how many go outside to work and how many work in the village. And what do I know about Jews, have I heard of Zionism and what do I think it means. All the time she’s so serious and friendly like it’s really important to her. Looks like this is the first time she’s spoken to an Arab about things like this because till now she’s talked only to Arabs bringing her things from the supermarket or cleaning the steps.

And I answer her quietly, the tears are already dry. Making a great effort. Not moving from my seat, afraid of breaking
something
. I’ve done enough damage already. I tell her everything I know, everything I haven’t forgotten, careful not to annoy her. Looking only at the woman, not daring to look at the girl, who now I know is called Dafi not Dafna. She sits beside me all the time, staring at me hard, her eyes covering me like a hot wind, sitting and listening and smiling a bit. And so the conversation goes on and on and I see they really know nothing about us, they don’t know that we learn a lot of things about them. They don’t realize that we really are taught Bialik and Tchernikhovski and other saints and we know all about the Bet Midrash and the destiny of the Jews and the burning
shtetl
and all that.

“Poor things,” said the girl suddenly, “what have they done to deserve that?”

But the woman told her to shut up and laughed and I didn’t know if I was allowed to laugh as well so I just smiled a little twisted smile and kept my eyes on the floor. And suddenly it was quiet and I was afraid there’d be nothing more to talk about so I went on in a low voice without even being asked.

“We learned poetry by heart as well and I can remember … would you like to hear?”

And quietly I began to recite – “No pride of young lions shall hide there the eye of the desert nor the glory of Bashan and his choicest oaks fallen in splendour by the sombre tents sprawl angry giants amid the golden desert sands.”

And they were so impressed they nearly fell off their chairs. I knew they’d be surprised, I don’t know myself why I suddenly had to start reciting. I just felt like it. I wanted them to know that I’m really not stupid. And Dafi jumped up out of her seat and ran to call her father to come and hear and he came straight
out of the bathroom in a dressing gown with his beard wet and stood there staring with his mouth open like I’d grown another head.

Because I carried on, all excited – “We are heroes! The last generation to bondage and the first to deliverance our hand alone our mighty hand did cast off from our neck the heavy yoke and we raised our heads to the heavens and they were narrowed in our eyes … and who shall be our master?”

And the girl Dafi shook with laughter, running to her room to fetch the book to check if I’d got it right. Then in a cracked voice I went on a bit further – “In spite of heaven and its wrath see we have risen in the storm.”

Already it was dark outside, and in the room it was warm and quiet. I saw now how quietly they lived. And they played with me like I was a toy. And I can tell when people like me just by the way they look at me. I’m not exactly ugly and the girls in the village sometimes look at me for no special reason, thinking that I don’t see them looking. But in those red pyjamas with the tassels and the imitation gold buttons I didn’t know if I was just weird or a bit cute as well.

The girl fetched her slippers and put them down beside my bare feet. And they all smiled at me happily.

“What did you say your name was?” the girl asked suddenly. She hadn’t caught it the first time.

“Na’im,” I said.

Mommy of course could’ve killed me even though she was laughing herself but she quickly turned serious and took him into the living room, the tears still streaming down his face, made him sit in a chair and started asking him questions to distract him, an old trick from the days when I used to cry. Asking him about his village and his family, about his school and what he’d learned there and he answered seriously, his head bent, sitting on the edge of the chair.

I sat behind him and didn’t take my eyes off him. This little Arab really took my fancy. Daddy had brought us some
entertainment
for the Sabbath, Friday nights in our house are usually
so boring with all the heaps of newspapers. Sitting there in his pyjamas, combed and clean and fragrant, his cheeks rosy.
Suddenly
he looked small, reminding me of someone, not ugly, there’s lots of boys uglier than him.

Mommy frowned at me, because when she saw me staring at his face like that she was afraid I might be trying to annoy him or make fun of him, like sometimes when I sit and stare at one of the old women who come to visit us. But I didn’t mean to do anything like that, this Arab really interested me. He soon recovered himself and started giving clear answers, talking about himself, about his village, his family, about what he’d learned in school, they’d taught him Bialik and Tchernikhovski and all that boring stuff of ours, how strange, the swine, inflicting that crap on them as well.

Then I said quietly, “Poor things … what have they done to deserve it?”

And Mommy scolded me and the Arab was a bit puzzled too, because it seemed he really enjoyed Bialik, and straightaway, without anyone asking him, he began to recite some lines from Bialik’s
Dead
of
the
Desert.
I nearly fell off my chair. A young Arab, an assistant in Daddy’s garage, reciting Bialik, unbelievable. If that’s the general standard in the garage no wonder business is booming.

I ran to my room to fetch the poems of Bialik to see if he was reciting it properly or just making it up. I called to Daddy too to come out from the bathroom and listen, maybe he’ll give him a raise. And Mommy was impressed too. All three of us stared at him. And he decided to impress us some more and quietly and without a mistake he began reciting that bit that Shwartzy’s crazy about and sneaks in at every opportunity whether it’s appropriate or not. “We are heroes, the last generation to bondage and the first to deliverance, our hand alone …” sitting on the edge of the chair with head bowed, still not looking at us straight, in a low voice. And I watched Mommy and Daddy seeing how they stared at him open-mouthed and suddenly it hit me, it came to me in a flash. Of course. This boy looks a bit like Yigal, there’s something about him, some similarity, and they don’t realize it, they don’t understand. They don’t see what it is that draws them to him. Daddy doesn’t know why of all his workers he decided
to send this boy here to fetch the briefcase, or why he chose him for the job tonight. And if I tell them they’ll say, “Nonsense, what do you know about Yigal, you never saw him.”

And so in the stillness and the darkness of early evening I watched the quiet little Arab, his eyes bright with happiness. Now we were the ones who bowed our heads, seeing his swarthy bare feet on the carpet. And suddenly I felt like giving him something and I went and fetched my bedroom slippers and put them down beside him. Just for one evening let him wear a girl’s slippers. Then I realized that I didn’t actually know his name and I asked him and he looked at me straight, no longer evasive, and told me.

I didn’t know they have such simple names.

At last we sat down to eat. Since morning I hadn’t eaten anything and I was weak with hunger and maybe that was why I got a bit mixed up in the poem as well. And there was a white cloth on the table and two candles and a bottle of wine. I didn’t know they were religious. But they didn’t even pray, just started eating right away. I sat beside the girl, being very careful not to touch her, and the woman brought in the food. To start with it was sort of grey meatballs, so sweet they made me feel sick. Looks like this woman doesn’t know how to cook, she puts in sugar instead of salt, but nobody else noticed or maybe they thought it wasn’t polite to mention it. And I forced myself to eat it too so she wouldn’t be offended like my mother, who’s offended if you don’t eat everything. I just ate a lot of bread with it to try and kill the sweetness. And that Adam ate so fast, I hadn’t had time to look at the food and he’d already finished it all. They brought him some more and he gobbled that up too. And I was eating slowly because I had to be careful to eat with my mouth closed and luckily the girl was eating slowly too so the grownups didn’t have to wait only for me.

At last I finished those disgusting meatballs. I’ve never eaten anything like them before and I hope I never will again. I asked them what they were called so I could avoid them if ever I fell into a Jewish house again. They smiled and said, “It’s called
gefilte
 
fish.
Would you like some more?” I said, “No thank you,” in a hurry. And the woman said, “Don’t be shy, there’s plenty more,” but again I said quickly, “No thank you, I’ve had enough,” but she’d already got up and gone to the kitchen and fetched a full plate and again I said, as firmly as I could without offending her, “No, really, I’m full, no more, please.”

And she gave up and took away all the plates and I thought that was the end of the meal but since I was still hungry I quietly ate more and more slices of bread, too damn sweet also. And the woman was in the kitchen busy with the dishes and the girl was watching television, it was an Egyptian film with belly dancers, she was interested but she didn’t understand what they were saying, and Adam was reading a paper and I was eating slice after slice of bread and suddenly I saw that I’d eaten all their bread.

And then the woman came in with new plates and a dish of meat and potatoes. So the meal wasn’t finished after all, but what a mixed-up way, every man for himself. And I’d noticed that Adam and his wife, who now I knew was called Asya, never really looked at each other when they were talking.

So we sat down to eat again and this time the food was better, there weren’t enough spices in it but at least it wasn’t sweet, and there was brown bread as well. The girl ate only a little bit and her mother said something to her. Adam filled his plate and started eating in such a hurry you’d think he hadn’t eaten anything all week, taking a look every now and then at the newspaper that was folded on the table. This silence at meals. Such loneliness.

Suddenly he remembered something and turned to me.

“Tell me, somebody was saying in the garage that one of the terrorists in the attack on the university was your brother, or something like that …”

The woman and Dafi put down their knives and forks looking like they were really shocked. I blushed bright red, trembled, now everything was going to be ruined.

“What terrorist?” I pretended I didn’t quite understand. “The one who killed himself at the university?”

And they smiled a bit at the idea that Adnan might really have gone to the university just to do away with himself quietly.