All Russians Love Birch Trees (21 page)

When I arrived at the office I felt drained and sticky. On my desk were three folders to be translated. A Post-it was stuck to the one on top. Urgent. Reports from a few Israeli-Arab groups, each of which received major financial support from the foundation that employed me. They’d finally sent over the reports on their cultural activities. A Jewish-Arab celebration for senior citizens, attended by fifteen people. A writing group for Bedouin women—number of participants: five. The project coordinator delivered a rhapsodic report of the women’s meeting with an Israeli writer who wrote novellas about cats. Then the words dissolved into lines and dots and my shortage of breath was back, a hand tightening over my throat. I thought it belonged to Elias. I ran out and locked myself in a bathroom stall, swallowed a few benzodiazepines and calmed down again. I called Ori but he didn’t answer. I left a voicemail and asked him to pick me up from work. He called back an hour later and asked if it was urgent. I told him about Elke’s letter.

At six on the dot Ori was waiting for me in front of my office. He seemed tense. By way of greeting he kissed my cheek. Nothing had happened between us after that first night, but something had grown anyway. Maybe even friendship.

“Are you hungry?” I asked him.

“No,” he said gruffly.

“Would you mind keeping me company?”

“OK. I know something close by. Let’s go.”

We got on his Vespa and he drove us to a cafe on Allenby Street.

The cafe was part of a popular chain and in front of the counter was a long chaotic line of customers, all waiting to leave with their to-go cup of coffee.

Ori had spotted a free table in the far corner of the room and purposefully walked toward it. I would have preferred to go somewhere else but something in Ori’s face—a hardness I had never seen there before—made me sit down. The two men at the table next to us were having a loud conversation about Hapoel’s chances of moving up to the next soccer division. But I only understood bits and pieces and didn’t care at all about soccer anyway.

The waiter gave me a weird look when I asked for the Arabic menu. He considered my request a joke
and continued speaking Hebrew with me. When I answered in broken Hebrew his expression turned condescending. There was no Arabic menu.

“I’ll translate for you,” Ori said.

“Nice, for a change!” I said.

Ori looked at me, irritated.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go somewhere else?” I asked.

Ori closed the menu and threw it down on the table. “You’re becoming more and more like Tal.”

“There are at least two hundred restaurants on this street.”

“And I guarantee you, none of them will have an Arabic menu. Can’t you pull yourself together, just for one night?”

“What’s up?” I asked.

Ori leaned on the table and fixed me with his gaze. “I was out with the guys from my unit today. We were invited for dinner.”

“Did the food disagree with you?” I asked.

“We were at one guy’s mother’s house. We’d served together. Before he got killed in Lebanon. I’d planned to have a drink with them, but then you called in that tone of yours. Like you’re about to burst into tears.”

My voice shook. “I’m sorry. If you want to go, you should.”

Ori took a bill from his pocket, put it under the ashtray, and stood up. I didn’t know what to do and remained seated.

“Come on,” said Ori. “Let’s go.”

We got onto Ori’s Vespa again and drove a few streets farther. A tall, gangly man opened the door, greeting Ori with a handshake. Then he led us to the balcony. Five guys were sitting on worn-out couches, all barefoot and in shorts. Three of them had guitars on their laps but only one was playing. Ori introduced me to each of them and I was promptly offered a beer and a joint. I took both, said thanks, and sat down next to Ori on a free couch.

We sat in silence. From time to time someone brought beer or rolled another joint.

After a few hours we said goodbye.

“You’re driving,” Ori said and threw the keys my way.

“Seriously?”

“I’m drunk,” Ori said. He had a point. I’d watched him down one beer after another on the balcony.

We put our helmets on. Ori sat behind me, his hands on my waist. I started the engine, revved it briefly, then drove out onto the beach promenade. On our right lay the sea, dark and calm. On our left shone the lights of the city. Only a few cars were on the road.

I accelerated, leaned forward, and we drove faster. Ori’s grip tightened. But I couldn’t resist speeding up even more, and only in the last second veered out of the way of cars that came toward us. Or just waited for them to do so.

When I slowed down and came to a halt at the edge of the road, Ori jumped off, yanked off his helmet, and yelled at me, “Were you trying to kill us?”

Maybe, I thought to myself.

Ori sat down on the curb and put his face in his palms. His shoulders were shivering. I sat down beside him, took his hand in mine and pressed it. But he didn’t react.

14

Tal sat on the edge of my bed, nervously playing with the corner of my bedspread. I had no idea how she’d gotten into my apartment.

“What’s up?” I asked her.

“Aren’t you happy to see me?”

“I just woke up!”

“Should I leave?” She got up and pulled the curtains open. Hard, bright light flooded the room. She turned back toward me, her lips pursed. Her eyes shone combatively. She was waiting for me to make the first move, but I didn’t want to do her the favor.

She stubbornly refused to love me. I didn’t mind that—just didn’t understand why. Tal said that she
didn’t believe in relationships, least of all romantic ones between two people. When she wanted to tell me something unpleasant she always started her sentences with
Motek
or
Mummy
, which means sweetheart in Hebrew. And so almost every day I heard, “Sweetheart, I don’t love you.” Or “Mummy, I don’t want to see you today.” On the other hand, she was still here. Here, with me.

I sat up in my bed and watched as she paced the room, nervously pulling out one hair after the other.

“Do you want to spend the day with me?” she asked and coldly looked around the room.

“Why? So I can swallow tear gas?”

“Would you rather while away the day at the beach?”

“I wouldn’t mind that.”

The last time I joined Tal for a protest, we’d stood at a bustling intersection and yelled rallying cries. We were about thirty people, almost exclusively white and Jewish. Standing around us were at least as many people who berated us and called us traitors and sons of bitches. One spit at us and another wanted to throw his heavy shopping bag at Tal. A couple of police officers held them back. I’d been at the edge of the demonstration, next to two guys who were quietly discussing in Arabic which leftie they wanted to fuck next. The lefties were the only ones who spread their legs for an Arab,
said the younger of the two. A shame that they always wanted to talk politics afterward, said his buddy.

“Masha, what kind of life do you want to lead?”

“A quiet one.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

Tal remained standing and crossed her arms. Her eyes rested on my mouth, calculating. I wouldn’t give in. I was going to play all my cards. But she wouldn’t be convinced as easily—nor as quickly—as Elisha.

“You just want to sit out your time here and enjoy the sun, the good food, and a bit of sex? Nothing else matters to you, does it?” Tal sat down and pulled her knees toward her.

“Exactly. My place in the sun.”

“I don’t believe it.” She got up and started pacing again. Her movements were erratic.

“What I want is running water, electricity, and a place where no one is killed,” I said.

“You were in a good place in Germany then. No reason to come here.”

I hadn’t told her about Elias or his death. I crossed the room barefoot. The floor was full of the sand that Tal must have brought in from the beach. She was always barefoot, in the stairway and the garden, too, and all the dirt stuck to her heels and ended up on my floors and, finally, in my bed.

“My grandmother still has memories of a peaceful Germany,” Tal added.

“You think mine doesn’t?”

“The demonstration is in Sheikh Jarrah. We should get going.”

15

I had spent the weekend with Ori and Tal at the house of their parents, who had gone to Europe. We wanted to take advantage of the time to talk things through. Ori and Tal’s parents are something like the Israeli
Mayflower
generation. Their father had grown up in a kibbutz in the north of the country, their mother in a spacious apartment in Tel Aviv. If something in the state went wrong, they took it personally. Their grandparents had illegally immigrated from Eastern Europe, prior to the state formation. Israeli pioneers who had personally drained swamps.

Their father had served in a unit of parachutists and was not what you would call squeamish. Up until the
day his sister and her husband were killed in an attack during the second intifada. They had been on their way to Ori’s bar mitzvah. This tragic event changed the entire family. Tal became angry and Ori skittish. Their parents didn’t entertain any feelings of revenge, but instead bought a small winery in the north of Israel and withdrew—hoping to take their kids as far from the intifada as possible. They only produced a few thousand bottles per season. The family business was real estate that they rented out to tourists.

The winery was the perfect idyll, but Tal and Ori discussed politics nonstop. Because they fought in Hebrew I wasn’t clear on the details. I knew that Ori had had it with realpolitik. Anyway, he was convinced that it was too late to divide the state. Tal was Tal. And their parents, who had once gone to demonstrations in favor of the two-state solution, blamed the Israeli right and the settlers, and had stopped believing in anything. The whole family knew that more people would die.

The conflict had reached its climax when Tal noticed that Ori used a shaving cream produced by an Israeli company in the Occupied Territories. She had found the cream in the bathroom and brought it out to the yard where Ori and I were playing badminton. Tal held up the cream in about the same way she would have held up a dead rat.

“Whose is this?” Tal asked.

Ori calmly dropped his racket on the grass and asked, “What’s your problem?”

Thereupon Tal delivered a long and passionate speech that we would have also found on the Web site of Who Profits, had we been looking for it. Tal talked herself more and more into a frenzy until Ori took her in his arms and shook her firmly.

“That’s enough,” he repeated over and over. “That’s enough. That’s enough. That’s enough.” Tal burst into tears and beat her fists against his chest. She beat and he held and she beat and he held, and I was standing in the corner, clutching my racket. At some point Tal softly placed her forehead on Ori’s chest and sobbed.

Later, I watched her from the doorway, sitting on the sofa, staring at the TV. Ori was upstairs, in his room. Finally, I sat down next to Tal. She didn’t say a word. Her hands had chronically bad circulation and were therefore always cold, but today they seemed even colder than usual. I made her tea, which she didn’t drink. I folded her hands around the mug to warm them and brushed a strand of hair from her face. But I knew all was lost.

In the evening she took a bath while I sat on the rim of the tub. Despite the warm water her body wouldn’t stop shivering. I kept watch to make sure her head stayed upright. When she got out of the water I carefully dried her off. Goose bumps covered her
body and her legs were still quaking slightly. She collapsed into my arms, her body suddenly very heavy, and I brought her to bed. I dressed her in her mother’s pajamas and lay down beside her. In the middle of the night I heard her get up, but I pretended to be asleep and let her go.

The next morning Ori announced that he would fly to India that same day. Actually, in three hours. Tal was gone. She had left a note on the kitchen table: “I’m in Sinai. Have to think things over.”

The sun was blinding. I had forgotten my sunglasses and squinted at the crowded street as we slowly crept forward. In the other cars commuters yawned.

Ori was beside me, quiet and focused, changing the radio station every two minutes. His body was tense. A Jeep with soldiers approached us. Ori waved at them. They waved back.

We were late. I parked the car and Ori stormed out. I trudged behind. In front of him in line was a group of Bulgarian tourists. Most of them wore hats with their travel organization’s logos, name tags, and big golden crosses. Ori disliked all Slavic languages. The line didn’t move. The tourists spoke a lot, and quickly. They bustled like confused ants, exchanging their impressions. A little girl wailed to be held by her father.

Ori cast a grudging glance. His gaze darkened as it wandered from one face to the next. Boarding was to begin in fifteen minutes. He stroked my cheek and said, “I’ll try to get past them.” He dug around in his bag, took out his passport, and kissed me on the cheek. His right hand lifted my chin. He looked at me as if he wanted to memorize my features.