Look for Me (2 page)

“Give me a sign, darling,” Angeline said. “Give me a sign that you will stand by me. Anything at all, that I can keep next to my heart.”

“Take this ring,” Pierre said, removing the gold and emerald ring from his own finger. “Wear this ring around your neck and each time your heart beats my sword will—”

I listened to music as I wrote, the songs Daniel and I loved, and also new ones that had come out since he left.
Mercy, mercy on us all.
Or funny songs that Daniel would have enjoyed singing.
Why did you tell your mother I come too fast? Why didn’t you tell her about that time in the car, or about the tattoo I got just for you?
More cynical songs had also come out in recent years.
Back in high school they shared you in the shed like a package from home, but they’re not the sort who get caught, they’re the sort who get medals.

At eight-thirty Odelia knocked on the door. I saved the few paragraphs I had written and we walked to her car.

I followed Daniel to his small, tinny-looking car, the kind you expect will shatter, cartoon-style, into a thousand pieces, leaving
a heap of metal in the middle of the street. But miraculously it worked.

“I don’t know,” he said as he drove down the dark streets. “You’re sort of young. Is this even legal?”

“You can’t be much older than me!”

“I’m twenty-nine.”

“Really? You don’t look it. I guess because you’re a singer— performers always look young. Anyhow, I’m nineteen. Nineteen and two months. My birthday is March 15. The Ides of March.”

He smiled. “The band’s just a hobby—a way to earn some extra cash. I’m an architect. I’m saving up so I can build my own house, one day when I’m eighty. I live with my grandmother, by the way, so be warned. But she won’t bother us.”

“Oh.” I was disappointed. A grandmother wasn’t as bad as a girlfriend, of course, but could definitely put a damper on my plans.

“She’s nearly blind,” he reassured me. “And I’m sure she’s asleep by now.”

“How come you live with her?”

“She doesn’t want to go to a residence, the idea terrifies her. She was in the camps; I guess she’s getting a bit mixed up and she thinks we want to take her back there. We drove her to see a residence, it was such a nice place, but she had hysterics the whole time. We can’t afford a full-time nurse, of course, so I look after her. I don’t mind, it’s better than living with flatmates. What about you, Dana? Where do you live?”

“Oh, it’s a long story. Nowhere, really.”

“Nowhere?”

“It’s a long story—I’ll tell you another time.”

“The mystery soldier from nowhere.”

Daniel’s grandmother lived in a four-story apartment house on a quiet street lined with palm trees.

“It’s a bit cramped,” Daniel warned me as we climbed the stairs to the third floor.

I watched him unlock the door, and it seemed to me this was the most erotic and exciting thing I would ever experience, no matter how long I lived and no matter how many wonderful things happened to me. Daniel unlocking the door at that moment, unlocking it for the two of us, his beautiful hand on the key, the key turning: the entire universe was compressed into this small motion, and I was the person who’d been chosen to witness it.

All the lights were on in the flat. A narrow hallway lined with old books opened onto a living room decorated with ugly, flimsy furniture from the fifties. It was the sort of furniture I always found heartbreaking: the square, bright orange sofa cushions, the sofa’s thin wooden arms, rickety side tables, matching scarlet and green horse-head lamps, the shortwave radio from the Mandate period, the mandatory maroon carpet on the stone floor. There were two doors along the wall on the right. The farthest one was half open and evidently led to a bedroom: soft, irregular snores drifted out of the room like crooked musical notes. Daniel smiled at me. “No need to whisper,” he said. “She sleeps like a log.” Even there, where Daniel’s grandmother was sleeping, the light had been left on.

The second door, closer to the entrance, was a two-paneled folding door with horizontal slits, painted white; beyond it lay the kitchen. The toilet and bath were adjacent to the hallway, also on our right. The flat smelled of a hundred years of chicken soup; I was sure no amount of paint and plaster and detergent could remove that smell, and who would want to? This way you’d always know where you were.

“Cute place,” I said. “Where’s your room?”

“Off the kitchen. It was a balcony—I turned it into a bedroom. I thought I would have to chop off my feet in order to sleep there, but in the end it worked out fine, I got to keep my feet.”

“Don’t say things like that. I visualize everything.”

“That must be hard.”

“Sometimes. How come all the lights are on?”

“It’s the only way my grandmother can see anything. Even with the lights on she can just make out the outlines of objects.”

“Do you read to her?”

“I’ll make coffee and then I’ll answer all your questions.”

I followed him into the kitchen and sat down at what appeared to be a bridge table. Daniel struck a match and lit the stove, put on water to boil. “What did you say your name was?” he asked.

“Dana.”

“Dana, Dana, Dana. I don’t know how I’m going to remember that name. I might get it wrong the first few times, don’t get offended. I might call you Lana by mistake, or Tina.”

I laughed. “How am I going to know when you’re joking about things?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe we could have a code. I could pull my earlobe, for example.”

He made regular coffee for me and
café et lait
for himself, then sat down facing me at the bridge table. I asked to taste the
café et lait
, and I liked it, so he spilled my coffee into the sink, handed me his mug, and made himself another cup. “You’re my first convert,” he said.

“What’s in it?”

“Cheap instant coffee, cinnamon, cocoa powder, hot milk, honey.”

“This is a bridge table.”

“Yes, my grandparents were obsessive bridge players, it was their whole life, practically. They got tired of folding up the table all the time, so they decided to sell their kitchen table and use this for everything. Would you like cookies? Pastries? Pretzels?”

“Don’t even mention food. I’m absolutely stuffed from the wedding. I may never be able to eat again. I like all this fifties furniture. It’s touching, you know? Those horse-head lamps! They’re funny,” I said.

“I think in my last nightmare the horses came to life and began reciting passages from Proust.”

“I think they’re nice.”

Suddenly we were both embarrassed. We had no idea what we were doing there, sitting at Daniel’s grandmother’s bridge table, drinking
café et lait
and discussing furniture.

“I hope you don’t think I’m crazy,” I said. “I just …liked you.”

“Have you changed your mind?” he asked, worried.

“No.”

“Maybe you should call your base, tell them at least that you’re sick.”

“No, I can’t, they’d never believe me. I’d have to bring a letter from a doctor saying I was in a coma or something before they’d believe me.”

“You’re going to get into huge trouble.”

“It can’t get any worse.”

“It can always get worse. What’s going on there?”

“Oh, I’m not getting on too well. I’ll tell you about it another time.”

“More mysteries. Another time as in …?”

“As in, after …”

“After you know me better?”

“Yes.” I rose from the table, opened the door that led to his room. Daniel’s bed took up nearly all the available space in the converted balcony. The upper third of the walls consisted of sliding glass panels; the sky was visible through the glass and I was reminded of a medieval triptych, except that here the scene changed all the time. Now, against a black background
tinged with the yellow glow of city lights, a single white star or satellite shone like a jeweled belly button. The only decoration in the room was a movie poster for
Stranger Than Paradise.

“I loved that movie!” I said. “I saw it a million times. You’re the only person I know who also saw it.”

Daniel made a noncommittal sound, something between “mmm” and “huh.”

“‘I am the winner,’” I said, in English with a Hungarian accent.

“‘He is my main man,’” Daniel said, also in English.

“‘Poor guy, can you imagine working in a factory?’”

I pulled off my uniform, then my underwear, and lay down on the bed.

Odelia always looked neat and delicate. She was wearing a beige knee-length skirt and she’d tied her hair back with an elastic band. She was the only one who came to these demonstrations wearing a skirt; it was a disguise. “The soldiers have a different attitude if they think you’re religious,” she would tell people.

There were no traffic jams on the highway because it was the weekend. “What’s happening today, do you know?” I asked her.

“I’m not sure. I heard three towns were put under curfew, Mejwan and the two towns next to it.”

“Three towns? Last I heard it was two.”

“I heard three. Some people went down there to stay the night, in case they don’t let us in. Better than nothing.”

“I forgot to bring an onion.”

“The organizers are bringing a whole crate. Don’t worry!” She smiled at me. She was a calm person, though her permanently wrinkled brow made her look like a high school student
trying to work out a complicated math problem she’d been assigned for homework.

“How are you, Dana?” she asked.

“I’m okay. I’m fine.”

“How’s your father?” When my father comes to visit, he stays with Odelia, in her guest room.

“Happy. He sends his regards, by the way. How are things with you?”

“Another lay-off at work, someone we really liked. We’ve been depressed about it all week. I think I’m next …How’s Vronsky?”

“Same as always.” Odelia was convinced that my friend Vronsky, a bone specialist with whom I had dinner every Wednesday, was in love with me and that we should get married.

We drove for an hour. As we approached the capital, the landscape widened into mute green hills and incongruous sprinklings of small, distant neighborhoods, sterile and symmetrical, which had sprouted on the hills in recent years. We entered the city and headed for Liberty Bell Park, our usual meeting place. Odelia tried to remember the way and her wrinkled brow became slightly more furrowed than usual. The streets were full of Hassidic families, the men brisk and determined in their long black coats, the women strolling leisurely amidst broods of children. I tried to repress my hostility toward them; I knew it was wrong and irrational. Our problems were not their fault.

After a few uncertain turns and a phone call to a friend who lived nearby, we found the park. We were a little late, but these activities always started later than planned. Odelia parked her car on the street and we walked to the graveled parking lot. Five sturdy-looking tour buses stood side by side at one end of the parking lot and two minimalist army Jeeps were stationed on the other. Between them, a large crowd of demonstrators
mulled around, waiting for instructions: they all looked scrubbed and relaxed, as if they’d just stepped out of a shower and discovered that while they were soaping themselves the conflict had nearly resolved itself, and only needed this one last push.

The soldiers had deserted their Jeeps and were talking to the organizers, trying to persuade them to cancel the demonstration: the towns were under curfew, the entire area was sealed off. It was the usual ritual, the army on one side, the demonstrators on the other. No one expected a new and startling outcome:—
Yes, you’re right, we’ll cancel the demonstration, we’ll change our plans and go home, because you’ve asked us to.—Yes, go ahead, we’ll lift the curfew and let you through, good for you that you’re making these efforts
. We boarded the buses and set off.

The army Jeeps followed the buses as we drove through the city. We didn’t take the main road to Mejwan; we knew it would be blocked. The hired bus drivers were instructed to drive instead to a barren field on the outskirts of Ein Mazra’a, the town adjacent to Mejwan. Everyone got off the buses and pulled out signs from the baggage compartment, which slid open at the side of the bus like the belly of a whale.
Arise, go to Nineveh.