Cafe Nevo (20 page)

Caspi took the receiver from his ear and held it away, looking at it. Dotan's high-pitched voice vibrated in the air. After some time Caspi hung up, but continued staring at the phone.

It rang a moment later. He picked it up and said fervently, “You asshole.”

“The feeling is mutual, though I deplore your choice of expression. How did you know it was me?”

“I didn't, Jemima,” he said wearily. “I'm sorry, that wasn't intended for you. What do you want?”

“Vered, please.”

“Is something wrong with Daniel?”

“No, he's fine. He's sleeping. Where's Vered?”

“Sitting at my feet, gazing up adoringly. She says to tell you she can't talk now.”

“What a charming sense of humor you have,” Jemima said. “Put her on.”

“She's out,” he said curtly.

“Where?”

Caspi put his hand to his throat, where a tight bubble threatened to burst. He said, “Am I my wife's keeper?”

 

“You have Arab eyes,” he crooned, caressing her face. “Pitch-black wells, deep as sorrow.”

“I forgot you were a poet,” Vered said.

“I never forget you are a critic. Shall I expect a review of my performance in tomorrow's Y
ediot?”

She giggled. “Not bloody likely.”

His eyes grew solemn. “No, you are right. In this room we are only man and woman. We leave our other differences outside that door.”

“That's very romantic,” she said, a trifle drily; Khalil gave her a sharp look.

“Don't you want to be here with me?” He touched her breast, and she felt his heat through the sheet. Her nipple stiffened, brushing his palm, and he caught his breath.

She said after a pause, “I came to you.”

“You did.” His hand slid under the sheet and down her body. Vered's breath turned quick and shallow. She closed her eyes.

Sometime later, he paused on the verge of entry, to tease. “Say you want it, Mrs. Caspi,” he demanded.

“Don't play games!”

“It's no game. Say you want it.”

“God help me, I want it.”

“Allah Akhbar!”
he cried, and thrust home.

But once again he finished quickly and withdrew at once, leaving Vered with no more recourse than a dinner guest whose meal has been inadequate, unequal to her hunger. Khalil kissed her perfunctorily, then sat up and lit two cigarettes. He gave her one.

“Tell me,” he murmured, rubbing her shoulder, “is he impotent with you?”

She gasped and pulled the sheet higher.

“I've met a few of his women since we started working together. Isn't it strange that none of them comes close to you, neither in looks nor sensuality?” She looked at him in amazement. “There must be a reason.”

“What business is it of yours?”

Khalil showed his teeth. “Anything that concerns you, my love, concerns me.”

“How very odd that you should think so, on such short acquaintance.”

His grin faltered, then broadened. He bowed his head. “More and more I see that Caspi is a fool. But so, perhaps, are you. I wonder at your loyalty to such a husband.”

“Is this loyalty?” She waved her hand around the room, which was hot and sultry despite the open window. Neon flashes from across the street provided sporadic illumination, and the smell of fish wafted in on the breeze. It was a transients' hotel on the Jaffa waterfront, one step above a brothel; one of the few places, he'd explained to her, that a Jewish and Arab couple could take a room together unharassed.

“But you are so reticent,” Khalil said. “Don't you trust me?”

Vered looked at him. Stripped of his designer jeans, his corduroy jacket with the professorial patches at the elbows, and his Gucci shoes, clad only in the dusky skin of his race, he seemed more a stranger than ever. His smooth brown body was almost hairless, unlike the hirsute Caspi, whose chest and stomach were so thickly matted with silky brown hair that the skin underneath stayed white even in summer.

She had heard, and her limited sampling tended to confirm, that hairy men make better lovers. Caspi in bed was so different from Caspi out of bed as to suggest a split personality. Out of bed he was cocky, egotistic, and insensitive; in bed he seemed possessed of a genuine desire to please and an uncanny awareness of his partner's feelings. Hence his success with women, including, for too many years, Vered. She could not hate him in bed, so she stopped sleeping with him. Vered had not lain with a man in so long that her body felt dead.

Because no one touched her, except Daniel. Jemima was not a tactile person. Caspi was, but she despised him. She remained a woman only to her son, whose nurturing was the only womanly function she performed. Outside the house, competing in a man's world, she was careful to strip both her work and her relationships of anything that might be construed as femininity, discarding empathy, sympathy, tenderness, and even grace, choosing to display only the bare bone of intellect. Pain especially had to be kept hidden, for while certain vigorous modes of suffering—Caspi's vaunted inner torment was one example—were permissibly male in character, she was not capable of such raucous displays; her anguish was at once too quiet and too deep for expression.

Pity was the other danger. Because Caspi's much publicized philandering left her particularly vulnerable to pity, she could accept none, but invested tremendous energy in creating a persona that repelled, if not the emotion, then at least its expression.

Vered took pride and comfort in her ability to deceive. Even after the most bitter of quarrels, which left Caspi prostrated in his study or sodden in Nevo, she went about her business as usual, with the utmost composure.

So much effort left her drained. She felt empty, desiccated; hardly a woman at all. And because she felt sexless, she was treated that way; if any of the men she worked with had amorous impulses, they kept them strictly to themselves. Until Khalil.

When the Arab turned his dark eyes on her and let them travel down her body before raising them to her face, there wordlessly but openly to proclaim his desire, she was, all unwilling, jolted to the core. Her heart pounded, and her mouth went dry, and a pilot light rekindled in her belly. When their hands touched, his told secrets and asked questions to which hers replied.

But trust him? Trust a stranger? Trust (she was ashamed, but could not help thinking) an Arab? “No,” she said.

“Wise woman!” Khalil laughed, not only undaunted but delighted by her reply. “But seriously, what
is
his problem? Why isn't he writing?”

Vered hesitated. “He's not as good as he needs to be to write the kind of book he wants to write. He says he can't get it right.”

An odd look crossed Khalil's face, of recognition, almost of sympathy, but he said scornfully, “Is that why he tumbles everything in skirts?”

“No. That's been going on much longer than his writer's block.”

“Then why does he do it, with a woman like you at home?”

She shrugged. “It's his problem, not mine. I'm not my husband's keeper.”

“Ah! And you don't mind his screwing around. It doesn't bother you at all.”

“Does your wife mind?” she countered.

His face darkened; he did not like her mentioning his wife. “She doesn't know. Discretion is not only the better part of valor but also one form of respect I feel I owe my wife. Caspi, on the other hand, flaunts his tarts all over town.”

Vered said, “He's a bastard all right,” and shuddered deep within her body. She had undressed before this stranger, exposed her breasts, opened her legs: but only now, discussing Caspi with him, did she experience at last the sensual thrill of betrayal.

“He's right about one thing,” Khalil said.

“What's that?”

“He's
not
a good enough writer. I've been reading his stuff.”

She moved away. “Why?”

“For the introduction I'm writing. Didn't he tell you? I'm writing an introduction to Caspi's section of the anthology, and he's writing one to mine.”

“Oh my God.”

Khalil chortled. “Wait till you read it.”

“Rami Dotan won't publish anything critical of Caspi. Why should he? Caspi's still his meal ticket.”

“He has no choice. It's covered in the contract. If he cuts my piece, I can have the edition taken off the market.”

“Then he'll drop the anthology.”

Khalil's face was gleeful. “If he doesn't publish on time, I have the right to take the whole package to a West Bank publisher.”

“I can't believe Rami would sign a contract like that!”

“Caspi made him!” Khalil crowed. “Caspi, the great liberal, patron of the primitive arts, twisted his arm. I can't wait to see his face when he reads my piece; can you, Mrs. Caspi?”

“Why do you keep calling me ‘Mrs. Caspi'? You know my name.”

“Ah, but I prefer Mrs. Caspi,” he said. “It's so much more erotic.”

 

Caspi stood stiffly in the doorway of his study, arms by his side. His bulk filled the narrow space. “Where were you?” he said.

“The same place you always go. Out.”

“Don't spar with me. Where were you?”

Vered raised her head defiantly, glancing over his shoulder as she did. The blank white pages of his notebook glimmered in the lamplight. Crumpled balls of paper littered the floor. An impulse of pity raced through her and was gone before she noticed. “It's none of your business. Good night.” She turned toward her room.

Caspi's arm shot out. He gripped her shoulder and spun her around. Softly, he said, “Come in. I want to talk to you.”

He sat at his desk; she, legs curled beneath her, roosted in the armchair. Caspi stared into the space between them, working his jaw. In the harsh glare of the lamp he appeared, for the first time, his full age and more. He also looked sober, though she'd smelled whiskey on his breath. Vered devoured a cigarette, saying nothing.

“Were you with that Arab?” His loud voice startled both of them.

“What Arab?”

“Is there more than one Arab in your life?”

“No,” she said, “only one.”

Caspi sucked in his cheeks and chewed on them. After a while, during which all that could be heard was a ticking clock and Vered's mammoth inhalations, he said, “Were you with him?”

“I don't have to account to you.”

“Yes, you do. I always tell you.”

“Yes, that's the best part for you, isn't it? You really have no right to jealousy, Caspi.”

“My wife is shtupping an Arab, and I have no right to jealousy?”

“Why do you keep calling him ‘that Arab'?” she asked uneasily. “He has a name.”

“His name's not important. His race is.”

“I can't believe I'm hearing that from you.”

“Face it, baby, if he weren't an Arab, you wouldn't be screwing him. You knew you could never beat me in numbers, so when you saw a chance to even the score qualitatively, you jumped at it.”

Vered shuddered. “God, that's disgusting. Caspi, what's come over you?”

“You,” he said, “you've come over me. God,” he sobbed, hiding his face, “why don't you just get out of my life?”

“Gladly,” she said, on her feet, heading for the door.

Caspi jumped up and cut her off at the door. “Sit down!” he roared. She backed into her chair, and Caspi loomed over her, gripping the arms of the chair until his knuckles showed white. He's going to hit me, thought Vered, although he never had. In their quarrels it was always she who flailed out, with all the effect of a sea gull dive-bombing a schooner. His size and strength were so much greater than hers that they had imparted a kind of security: he would not dare.

Caspi looked at her eyes and then down at his hands. He moved away, put the desk between them. “You worked it out,” he said, more in sorrow than in anger. “One Arab dick outweighs a thousand Jewish cunts.”

“So the great liberal Caspi is a closet racist,” Vered taunted wildly. She wished he
had
hit her; at least it would have ended things; she would have had no choice.

Caspi said, “If liberalism means agreeing to share the land, I'm a liberal. But if it means sharing our women, then fuck, yes, I'm a racist, and proud of it.”

“This is horrible. I don't have to listen to this.” But she sat on, fascinated, her back pressed against the chair.

“You're playing with fire,” Caspi said gently. “I'm not the man to sit back and let some primitive wog cuckold me. He's probably laughing up his sleeve all the time he puts it to you. Do you make it in his car?”

“What?”