Tongues of Fire (10 page)

“What do you mean, what star?”

“The name of it. Don't they teach you the stars in school?”

“Sure. The Big Dipper.”

“What else?”

“The Little Dipper.”

“Any others?”

“I don't know.”

“Here's another one, then. Do you see that star? The red one?”

“It's white.”

“Look carefully.”

“It's white.”

The screaming came a little closer. He bent over the boy. “It's called Betelgeuse. That's an Arab word. It forms the shoulder of Orion, the hunter.”

“I don't see any hunter.”

“That's because the sky's too light.”

“What do you mean, light? It's nighttime.” The boy wiped his nose on his sleeve, looked at it, and wiped the sleeve on the leg of his jeans. He glanced curiously at Rehv, wondering if there would be a reprimand.

Rehv pointed again to the sky. “What's the name of the star?”

“I don't remember.”

“Try.”

“I don't want to,” the boy said. “I'm tired of looking out the window. I want to watch TV.”

“Try,” Rehv said again. Something in his voice seemed to frighten the boy. He took a step back, and his lower lip quivered very slightly, as though a tiny electric current had run through it.

“Beetle something.”

“Good, Josh.” He tried to speak in a quiet even tone. “Betelgeuse. Say it.”

“Beetle juice.” Another current ran through the thin lip.

“Close enough. Do you know any other Arab words?”

“No.”

“Yes you do. Zero is an Arab word. Except in Arabic it's
sifr
. Sifr. Say it.”

“No. I'm going to watch TV.” The boy turned. Rehv grabbed his arm.

“Sifr. Say it.”

The current ran stronger now, and didn't stop. Neither did the screaming. “See fur.”

“Sifr. Try again.”

“I don't want to.”

“Sifr.”

“Hey. What's going on?” Rehv and the boy turned. The boy's parents were standing in the doorway, wearing their coats. “What's going on?” Katz said again. Rehv took his hand from Josh's arm. The boy began to cry. Sheila ran across the room and lifted him in her arms.

“What's he done to you, my precious boy?” He was crying too hard to tell her.

“I didn't mean Josh any harm,” Rehv said. The screaming withdrew into the distance. His voice seemed to be someone else's, high and strained. He had to fight to make it his own.

Sheila looked at him with hatred. “His name is Joshua,” she said. “If we had wanted people to call him Josh we would have named him Josh, wouldn't we?”

Rehv had no answer. He looked down, and saw his bare, pale feet, with black hairs curling on the toes. He tried to remember how hard he had been gripping the boy's arm.

“He wouldn't let me watch TV,” the boy wailed between two sobs.

Katz came toward him, his broad forehead wrinkled in puzzlement from eyebrows to bald spot. “Why not, Isaac? You know he's allowed to watch TV after his homework's done. Was his homework done?”

“Yes.”

“He hurt my arm.”

“He did?” Shiela pulled up the boy's sleeve.

“The other one.”

She pulled up the other one. They all looked at it. On the biceps was a faint flush of pink, no bigger than a penny.

“Jesus Christ,” Katz said. “You'd better have some explanation for this, Isaac.”

He couldn't think of anything to say. The boy stopped crying, sniffed, and pointed a finger at him: “He tried to make me say bad words.”

“What kind of bad words, honey?” Sheila Finkle asked in a tone that had two distinct strata: sweetness above and menace below.

“Not English.” His cheeks and upper lip glistened with mucus and tears.

Sheila raised her voice. The sweetness broke off and fell away. “Have you been teaching him Hebrew? Joshua's religious education is none of your goddamned business. Quentin and I are atheists. We don't want any of your stupid mumbo jumbo.”

“I'm an atheist too,” Rehv said.

She ignored him. “You people have been here for a year now. When are you going to learn to stop dragging everyone into your petty little problems?”

Rehv found himself staring into her angry brown eyes. He saw the anger change to something else. She was scared. “Don't you touch me,” she said, withdrawing from him. Joshua began to cry again.

“Don't be silly,” Rehv said. “I was only trying to teach him a few Arabic words, that's all. I didn't mean to upset him.” He turned to the boy. “I'm sorry, Joshua,” he said. “I hope we can still be friends.”

The boy sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Joshua,” Sheila said. “How many times have I told you not to do that? It's disgusting.” Rehv noticed that mother and son pronounced the word with identical cadence.

Katz said: “If you want to teach so badly why don't you send in that goddamned CV?”

“I'm going to,” Rehv said, realizing that he meant it.

“I don't care what you do,” Sheila said. “From now on you'll have to make it on your own. You have until the end of the week to find somewhere to live.”

“Wait a minute, dear,” Katz said. “Maybe we shouldn't be so drastic.”

Sheila glared at him. “Very well, Quentin. You and I will go into the kitchen and discuss it. Joshua, it's bedtime. Go change and I'll come in five minutes to tuck you in.” To Rehv she said: “Stay here.”

She and Katz moved around the tall benjamina that hid the open doorway to the kitchen. “I don't want to go to bed,” the boy said.

His parents turned. “But it's bedtime, angel,” Sheila said.

“I'm not tired. I want to watch TV.”

“Just for fifteen minutes.”

Joshua returned to the television. Rehv stayed where he was by the window. Sheila and Quentin went into the kitchen. Rehv could hear them talking in low voices. They talked for a long time. The television screen showed gunfights, car crashes, and roll-on deodorant. Joshua seemed unaware of him standing there a few feet away. Clouds rolled across the night sky. Betelgeuse was gone.

Far below Rehv saw two men carrying a large chest across the street. They both seemed to be bearded, perhaps because of the way the streetlamp shone down on their faces. On the far side of the street they had difficulty with the wall of dirty snow the plow had made: The chest balanced on top, the men struggled on either side. After a few moments one man let go of the chest and walked away. The other man stood straight, and watched him go. Then he too let go of the chest, and ran after him. The chest remained perched on the snowbank. The second man reached the first and put an arm around his shoulders. The first man shrugged it off. The second man put his arm around the first man's shoulders again. This time it was not shrugged off. They walked back to the chest like that. They turned to each other, kissed, lifted the chest, and carried it off.

Rehv heard footsteps approaching behind him. He turned around. Sheila and Quentin stood side by side like jurors who have reached a verdict.

Katz said: “We've decided to allow the present situation to continue on one condition.” He paused, and looked at his wife.

“That you see a psychiatrist,” she said.

“A psychiatrist?”

“Yes,” Katz said quickly. “There's no stigma attached to it here, not at all. I don't know what it was like in Israel, but here everyone does it. It's nothing.”

“Do you do it?”

“No. But I would.”

He and Sheila were watching him carefully. To his surprise he realized he felt no strong opposition to the idea. He thought of the pink imprint on Joshua's arm.

“We think you have some problems, Isaac,” Katz said quite gently. “It's very understandable after all you've been through.”

“I can't afford a psychiatrist.”

Katz smiled. “There is a free psychiatric service for the refugees. We'll make all the arrangements.”

“All right.”

Isaac Rehv walked through the snow to his borrowed home. He thought of the boy: not strong enough, not smart enough. And far too literal minded. He was glad he had said nothing to the sarcastic man at the farmhouse in Vermont. “Where are you going to find the boy who can do all that?” he would have said immediately.

Nowhere. He thought of the pink mark darkening into a bruise. As he turned into his street he realized that he had forgotten his shoes and socks.

CHAPTER NINE

“Rehv,” the psychiatrist said. “What a nice name. It means dream in French, doesn't it?”

He looked at her for a moment, wondering if she would base her whole treatment on this fact. He saw no answer in her narrow eyes, which changed from blue to green as the gap grew between her question and his reply. She was short and dark, with a soft round body, heavy in the hips and thighs; a body that reminded him of Naomi's when she was careless about her diet. This slight resemblance of body, not at all of face, sent a brief pulse of uneasiness through his chest.

“And I think your name means spear in German, Dr. Lanze.”

“Does it?” The eyes stayed green. “I'm afraid I don't know any German. One of my great-grandfathers came from Austria, I believe.” While she spoke she watched him very carefully, whether looking for obvious signs of madness or to see if he believed her about the great-grandfather, he didn't know. “In any case last names don't matter here. There are enough barriers already when it comes to human communication. In this room it's first names only. Call me Madeleine.”

She raised her eyebrows, shaped by tweezers into two Roman arches, to show she wanted some sign of agreement. He nodded.

“And I'll call you Isaac.”

He nodded again, without being prodded, and waited for her to say what a nice name Isaac was, or to make some reference to the biblical Isaac.

“Take off your shoes,” she said instead, “and sit down.”

Rehv guessed that shoes were another barrier to human communication. He looked for a place to sit. There were no chairs on the thick brown broadloom, only a few large pillows of Indian design. He sat on one and pulled off his shoes, thinking of Joshua Katz-Finkle. He smelled no unpleasant smells, but saw that his socks were embroidered with hundreds of tiny golf balls. He could not remember wearing them before. He had a lot of socks: The refugees had been given large amounts of used clothing.

Dr. Lanze drew up a pillow and sat down facing him, closer than he would have liked. Her suede jeans bunched in tight wrinkles that looked very constricting. She pulled one of her high-heeled leather boots onto her opposite knee and tugged at it. She grunted. The boot didn't budge. She tried again, straining against the handicaps of tight clothing, short arms, round stomach. He heard a louder grunt. She looked up at him and said, a little out of breath, “God, I hate winter.” She straightened her leg, holding the boot over his lap. “Would you mind?”

Rehv pulled it off. Underneath, her foot was bare; it was short and broad and strong, the toenails painted bright red. He took in slightly more air than usual through his nostrils, and smelled leather mixed with something medicinal. He pulled off the other boot.

“Thank you, Isaac,” she said, setting the boots beside her on the floor. “I hope you like this room. Most people find it very relaxing.”

Rehv looked around. Three of the walls were painted white and had no windows. The fourth was brown to match the broadloom and had two large rectangular windows. The ceiling was brown too, like a low and dirty cloud. On a mushroom-shaped stand in one corner sat a small aquarium, full of algae. A single goldfish looked out at them, its transparent fins waving gently in the water. Two paintings hung on the walls: a Renaissance print of Adam and Eve on their way out of the garden, seething at each other—Eve quite hefty, like Dr. Lanze; and a modern oil that made him think of a Helmholtz contraction. He didn't find the room relaxing.

“What do you think of when you look at that painting?” Dr. Lanze asked.

“Is it part of the examination?”

“No.” She laughed, but not very hard. “And don't call this an examination. We're having a little talk.”

Then why do I have to sit on a pillow without my shoes, Rehv thought. He said: “It reminds me of a Helmholtz contraction.”

The round arches of Dr. Lanze's eyebrows narrowed to points. “Excuse me for a minute,” she said, rising heavily to her feet. “I've got to use the bathroom.” She crossed the room and went out the door, closing it behind her.

Rehv waited. He watched the goldfish. In the aquarium were plants to nibble at, a stream of bubbles to swim through, and a small conch shell to hide in, but the goldfish did not want to do any of these things. It watched Rehv.

Dr. Lanze returned and sat on her pillow. “Sorry,” she said. Her eyebrows had resumed their roundness. He realized he had not heard any sound of plumbing. “Now,” she went on, “where were we?”

“Helmholtz contraction.”

“Ah yes: It's interesting you should say that,” she said, and he knew she had gone to look it up. “The artist called it
Star-burst
.”

As long as they were having a little talk he thought of saying, “That would fetch a higher price than Helmholtz Contraction,” but then he remembered the four wooden booths and decided it might not be true.

“I think you're the first person who has guessed right,” Dr. Lanze said. “Not that it has to be about any specific subject, of course,” she added quickly. “Do you know what most people think it's about?”

“Death,” Rehv said, because he thought any abstract painting made most people think of death.

The eyebrows rose again to points. “You're right,” she said slowly. The green eyes regarded his face, then slipped down his body and back up again.

“Now then,” Dr. Lanze said more briskly. “We've had a chance to get to know each other a little.” She twisted around on the pillow to get more comfortable; the suede wrinkles loosened their bonds. “I should start by saying that Sheila has told me something about you. And I think I've found out quite a bit more during our chat. You're intelligent, well-educated, you know something about the stars, you know languages, you've been a university professor.” She looked at him to see if he was with her so far. He said nothing. “The question I think we should ask is this: Can a man like that be happy working as a waiter and a night watchman?”