The Wanting (7 page)

“How could you possibly know what I’m thinking about?”

“I really don’t. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Of course I want to go back to work. You have no idea what I’ve lost.”

“Lost in what sense?”

“Lost in the sense of money. I had several important projects. Now, I don’t know.”

“Your clients have abandoned you?”

“Well, no. Well, I don’t know.”

“You haven’t called them?”

“It’s all up in the air.”

“Tell me about your employees.”

I closed my eyes. “Just two. Both are architects. And also we have someone come in to do the books. But she wasn’t there.”

“Where?”

“There.”

“Were they hurt?”

“Who?”

“Your employees.”

I kept thinking I saw something on the ceiling. It definitely looked like a bloodstain. But flying heads don’t come inside, do they? The next thing I heard her say was, “What wasn’t?”

“What?”

“You said it wasn’t your fault. We know that. That’s why we’re trying to help you.”

“No, I didn’t say that. You misunderstood.”

“What were you saying then?”

“I thought you were asking about my employees.”

“Are you concerned about them?”

“Who?”

“Your employees.”

“No, not really. I don’t know.”

“You want to go back to work, but you haven’t called anyone. You’re desperate about your projects, but you haven’t gone in. You don’t even inquire about your staff. Are they working? Are they well?”

“What do you want of me?”

“I just want you to see for yourself that you are not at your best right now. You need help. I think I can help you.”

“How?”

“Well, for one thing, I can probably get the charges against you dropped.”

“But what if I don’t want them dropped?”

Instead of replying, she took out her cigarettes. Carefully, as if she were contemplating a great philosophical question, she struck a match. From my little plastic chair, I watched her every move. In the old days, I had been invited to the Ministry of the Interior and also to the Committee for State Security—the KGB; I had undergone similar cross examinations at the Office of Visas and Registration, even at the local police station; I had been in a courtroom, too, and I had been in a prison—in the visitors section, I mean—where they stole all the food I had brought but strangely allowed me to deliver the book I’d thought would surely be confiscated. Of course that was a long time ago. Another universe, really. So there was no reason to distrust—I realized I couldn’t remember her name; I’d been thinking of her as Golda. She peered at me over the smoke that slithered around her eyes.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I demanded.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think I’m looking at you in some specific way?”

I sighed. “I hate the shrink thing, so please stop doing it,” I said.

“It must be hard,” she went on, “to come all this way from the Soviet Union only to have this happen to you. In Russia it wasn’t so easy to be a Jew.”

“Here it’s suicide,” I said.

She smiled. “Look, try telling me how it felt.”

“How can I possibly explain it?”

“Why don’t you start with how you are feeling right now?”

“You know,” I said, “there was this lady in our building. Actually, our first building, when we still lived in the communal apartment. Do you know what that is?”

“I do.”

“I don’t think you really do,” I said, “but anyway, there was this neighbor, Raya Cherbuka. I liked to go near her because
she had this scent—it was dark and lush and I found it unnerving, exciting—I can still remember the shiver that went up my legs whenever I was near her, and when she spoke it was with a creamy Ukrainian accent that somehow reminded me of the caramel candies my grandfather kept in his vest pocket. I don’t know, I was probably four years old, it’s one of my earliest memories. She would be standing at the one stove—we all shared the stove, you know—and I would come up to her as close as I could, and she would bend down and pinch my cheek, or my thigh, or my tummy, and say, ‘You play with your sausage, don’t you? It’s all right, you can’t help it, you’re a Jew. You love doing that, right? Almost as much as you love money, that’s your fate, poor thing. You’re a Jew. What can you do about it? You know how you will die? We’ll hang you from a tree by your little penis until you bleed to death.’ I swear to God, that’s what she said. I never told anyone, especially since my mother forbade me to go near any of the neighbors, but I couldn’t help myself, so I ran back to our two rooms and there was my grandmother who was always so kind and loving. ‘Babushka! Babushka!’ I cried. ‘Am I a Jew? It’s not true, is it?’ I swear to God. And she said, ‘Well, of course, my sunshine.’ That’s how she talked. And I said, ‘But I don’t want to be!’ And she asked me, ‘Why not?’ And I screamed at her, ‘Jews stink!’ I don’t know, maybe she saw the shadow of that neighbor, Raya Cherbuka, or just heard the slam of her door. Anyway she grabbed me up and hugged me. And she said to me, ‘Didn’t you know that I’m Jewish, too? Am I stinky? I hope not.’ I remember her laughing. ‘Papa is Jewish, did you know that? Mama is Jewish. Yes! Dyedushka is Jewish, too. And Uncle Max and Aunt Rita. Everyone!’ ‘What about the baby?’ I asked, because my sister Katya was at that moment asleep in her stroller. ‘Baby, too,’ my grandmother said. And she even said, ‘We’re all very proud of being Jewish.’ But it was just at that moment my mother sat up on the couch upon which she had been sleeping. She called me over. I went to her very slowly because it was so dark in that corner. And then she just laid it out for me as only my mother could do. One, keep away from the Cherbukas, and two, just don’t tell anyone you’re Jewish.
I told her I didn’t tell anyone. But she grabbed me and shook me, I mean really hard, and with this voice of stone said, ‘What’s the matter with you, Roman? Just don’t tell
anyone
.’ And then she turned around on her couch, presented me with her back, and closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

“I now understood being Jewish was a miserable fate. I thought about it constantly, day after day, months on end. I could no longer enjoy anything—a stroll in the park, an excursion to the toy store—what was the point? Everyone knew. You didn’t have to tell them. Finally, some years later—I must have been in school by then—I was walking down the street by myself; it was an autumn day, and I was kicking the leaves, thinking how much, in spite of everything, I loved to kick leaves, how deeply satisfying it was to bury my foot deep in the muck and send a great cloud of color wafting into the air in all directions—and I said to myself, Well! Being a Jew, it’s terrible, really terrible, a real disability. But it could be so much worse. I could lose my foot! I could lose my whole leg! I sent another pile of leaves flying. How much worse, I told myself, if I lost my leg! And that, Doc, is how I see being Jewish.”

Golda took a drag on her cigarette and smiled. “Do you think this is such a unique experience?”

“I was so fucked up,” I said. “I was on the side of the Arabs in the Six-Day War.”

“Sorry?”

“I remember coming home from school, and the whole family was crowded around the radio trying to figure out what the news was, and my grandmother was crying and my father was white as a ghost, and I put my arms around them and said, ‘Oh, don’t worry. We’ll beat the Zionists. They’re just pawns of the Americans. America can’t even beat a little country like Vietnam! Socialism is stronger! Don’t worry!’ ”

“It was confusing for you,” Golda said after a long pause.

“My grandmother gave me this crazy look, and I told her—I swear to God—‘Don’t be afraid, Babushka. We’ll beat back the Jews!’ You know what she said?”

“What did she say?” said my Golda.

“She said, ‘What’s the matter with this child?’ ”

After a moment, I took a deep breath and slid down in my chair and sighed. “I realize I didn’t answer your question.”

“What question was that?”

“How I’m feeling. You asked me to tell you how I am feeling. I don’t know how I got into all of this. I don’t know why all these memories are gushing out of me.”

My eyes wandered to the posters on the wall—about safety, about watchfulness, about CPR.

“I know you’re not Golda Meir,” I said.

“Well, that’s a start,” she replied.

“Listen,” I said, “there is something you can do for me.”

She lowered the cigarette. “Okay.”

“In your rounds of us victims—you probably met this person. Her name is Dasha Cohen. She’s in a coma.”

“Ah, yes.”

“She’s young. Not much older than my daughter.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t know what she was doing on that corner or anything, but I was wondering if maybe you could tell me how to get in touch with her.”

“You can’t get in touch with her. She’s in a coma.”

“What I mean is, where is she? I want to visit her.”

She waved off the smoke, rested her chin on one fist, took another drag, and blew it out of the side of her mouth. “All right,” she said. She fetched her ballpoint and wrote something down. “On this side is me. This is my private number. I expect you to call and set up an appointment. And when the time is right, on the other side I’ll write down the information on the Cohen girl. But you have to see me first, you understand?”

I nodded.

“I’m going to recommend they drop the charges against you.”

“Even though I want them to charge me?”

“Even though.”

I examined the card. Only now I saw her name was Sepha Katsir,
not Golda Meir, just as it was when she’d introduced herself in the hospital. Katsir, Meir. Anyone could make that mistake.

“Don’t you want to know why I want to see her?” I asked.

“Do you want to tell me why?”

“I don’t know why.”

“Then perhaps we should find out.”

And with that, she crushed her cigarette in the ashtray and waved me out of the room.

Is it me who has lost his head, Roman Guttman, or is it you? Is it my heart that has been blown into jelly, or are those bits of aorta that can still be found mashed into the pavement not far from your office, actually yours?

You look at me but don’t see. That’s what all you Jews do. Oh please, yes, come, take my land because, after all, I do not exist. That’s your story, isn’t it?

I also have a story, and if this blown-up brain can recall it, I will tell it. Allah, Creator of All Tales, give me the power to speak!

It was in the school yard—yes. The school yard with our teacher, Mr. Nashir.

We kicked the ball, always keeping him in our sights. He was standing to one side, watching us, ready to hit any boy with whom he was displeased, which was all of us. He rode up and down on his heels, his white vest and blue shirtsleeves pressed and shining, his tie rigidly knotted even on that hot day. “Uzair Nazari!” he shouted. “Tie your shoe!… Yahir Zayad! Straighten your shirt!”

Suddenly, though, he raised both his arms. “Boys! Boys!”

We all stopped and looked at him. He held his arms aloft, waiting.

And then we heard the sound. You can’t mistake it. Even the young ones know it. The sound soldiers make as they walk, so laden with metal and leather they creak and rumble like rusty machines.

Four or five of them entered the playground. They spread out a little as if on reconnaissance, their weapons twitching in their hands. Their boots were as large as a boy’s face.

“You!” one of them yelled. “You!

Mr. Nashir stepped forward, his back bent in just the way we bent ours when he called us to his desk. “Yes, sir,” he said to them. “You understand this is a school yard? This is a school.”

“And what’s that?” the tall one said, pointing with his white fingers to the third floor of our building. We all turned.

“Oh!” gasped Mr. Nashir. “Oh no!”

Someone had hung a flag from the window of the science room. Not a real flag exactly, just something someone painted on a small piece of burlap. We hadn’t even noticed it.

“That flag is illegal,” the smallest soldier barked in his perfect Arabic. He was an Arab Jew. They were always the worst. “You,” he said to the fat kid, Mu’ad Shafri, “take it down.”

Mu’ad was two years older than I, but he froze into some kind of rock, a rock of fat flesh, shivering like an olive branch. His eyes flew about like two crazy mosquitoes, but his feet would not move.

Mr. Nashir said to him, “Go ahead, Mu’ad. It’s in room 305. Yes, yes, go ahead. Just lean out the window and pull it in. Go, my child.”

“Run!” cried the soldier.

And Mu’ad ran. He ran so hard it seemed to us we could hear him clanking up the staircases with his heavy feet, his breath coming in shorter and shorter gasps. You could almost feel the sweat running down his sides into his underpants, and you had to resist the urge to tug at your own.

Then the little soldier said in Arabic—it wasn’t so perfect after all, maybe it was Iraqi, maybe Moroccan—“How is it you have a PLO flag? Are you hiding terrorists here? What are you teaching
them, you son of a bitch? We’ll have to search the whole goddamned building.”

“It’s just boys,” Mr. Nashir said. “Just boys. You know boys. They do pranks.”