The Girl on the Fridge: Stories (6 page)

Davidoff, the regiment commander’s driver, was the first to see him. “Here comes trouble,” he said, getting up from the empty ammo box he was sitting on.

“He’s just a Border Police officer,” said Stein, completely focused on the backgammon board.

“You know what that means,” said Davidoff, still standing there and staring at the officer in the strange olive green uniform.

“No, I don’t know,” Stein muttered impatiently, “so how about sitting down already. It’s your turn.”

“It means they’re going to move one of our guys over to them, ‘personnel reinforcement’ they call it. This isn’t the first time.”

“So they’ll move someone over to them, big deal. Shoot the dice already, Davidoff.”

“Maybe for you it’s no big deal, but for the poor—”

“I swear, Davidoff, if you don’t shoot the fucking dice, I’ll go to the personnel officer right now and ask him to send
me
. Maybe with those guys, I’ll at least be able to finish a game.”

“You know, Stein,” Davidoff said, ungluing his eyes from the Border Police officer, “sometimes you can be such an asshole. One day with them”—he pointed at the officer—“one day with them, and you’ll sing a different tune. You never met guys like that, they’ll eat you alive. Especially an Ashkenazi putz like you.” Davidoff gave a dry laugh. “They’ll have to scrape you off the bumper of their jeep.”

“Fuck it, we’re never going to get through this game today,” Stein said, pissed off. He’d just stood up when Shaharabani, all sweaty, came over and said the personnel officer wanted to talk to him.

“Those Border Police pricks, they’re a different army, they don’t think like us at all. They’re wild animals,” the personnel officer said, digging around in his ear with his pen. “And that’s exactly why I have to send them a good soldier who won’t react to their provocations, not a hot-tempered one like Ackerman or Shaharabani who, best-case scenario, ends up in jail, worst-case in the hospital.”

Stein packed his things and got into the jeep with the officer. He could’ve done without that compliment. “It’s not so bad. Only a week,” he thought, trying to cheer himself up. He could see Hamama’s you-have-my-condolences face in the distance as they drove off.

“Okay, who’s the prick that stole my commando knife?” asked the squat, hairy guy who was walking around the tent buck naked.

“Cool it, Zanzuri, I just took it for a second to cut the duct tape.” A sweaty black soldier handed him a huge knife with a compass on the handle. Zanzuri snatched the knife and, in the same gesture, pressed it against the black guy’s throat. “Shafik, you Bedouin asshole. You put your sweaty hands on my things one more time and I’ll stick this knife up your black ass. You hear me?”

The officer who came into the tent ignored the incident. “Your bunk’s over there,” he said, pointing to the far end. “What did you say your name was?”

“Stein, Shmulik Stein,” Stein mumbled.

“Your bunk’s over there, Stein.” He pointed to the same bed again. “Patrol in two hours, be ready.”

Whenever he went out on patrol in one of those armored, rock-resistant jeeps, there were always riots. They couldn’t drive down a single street without a brick flying at them. But now, from the open Border Police jeep, Gaza looked like a ghost town. There were four of them. Zanzuri drove, and apart from Stein, there was the sweaty black guy and a redhead. The redhead took a piece of Bazooka out of his vest pocket, put it in his mouth, and threw out the wrapper.

“Hey, Russki, toss a piece over here,” Zanzuri demanded when he saw him in the rearview mirror.

“All gone,” the redhead said and smiled, showing rotten teeth.

“Fuck,” Zanzuri said and spat a wad of phlegm over the side of the jeep. “The first Arab I catch today is going to be one sorry son of a bitch!” The second jeep passed them. The driver was a skinny, scar-faced soldier, and the officer was in the passenger seat. A hundred meters in front of them, an old Arab man was trudging down the road. Stein saw Scar Face spin the wheel sharply to the left, lunge onto the sidewalk, and hit the old Arab, who landed on his face a few meters away and lay there motionless. “The mute’s all hopped up today,” Zanzuri said with a snicker. “Did you see how he sent the towel-head flying?” Stein, not understanding what exactly had happened, turned and saw the body on the sidewalk, saw Zanzuri laughing and the Russian chewing gum. He tried to put all the images together into a single, coherent reality, but he couldn’t. The other jeep stopped at the corner of an alley, and Zanzuri pulled up right behind it.

Stein jumped out, ran over to the mute, and grabbed him by the shirt. “You ran him over on purpose, you psycho, you ran over a human being on purpose. He didn’t do anything to you.” The Russian grabbed Stein from behind with an iron grip and pulled him away from the mute.

“He didn’t run over a human being,” Zanzuri corrected. “He ran over an Arab, so what the fuck is your problem?” Stein felt the Russian’s repulsive, hot breath on his neck and knew that if he opened his mouth to say something, he’d burst out crying.

“That roof there,” the officer said, pointing, ignoring everything that had happened, “there’s someone on it. I want Zanzuri and the Russki to bring him down here.”

The Russian let go of Stein. He and Zanzuri disappeared into the alley the officer had pointed to. They were back two minutes later, dragging someone with his hands tied behind him and a wide strip of duct tape over his mouth.

“I shut him up,” Zanzuri said. “I hate it when they start begging.”

The mute sighed in agreement and nodded. He went over to the trussed-up Arab and pretended to bend down but straightened abruptly and butted him in the face.

“Did you find anything on him?” the officer asked in a bored tone.

“This!” Zanzuri said, proudly holding up a bottle of root beer with a soaked rag tied around its neck. “And he had a brick, too.” The mute kept punching the Arab, who was now lying on the ground, moaning faintly.

“Enough!” Stein shouted, stepping toward them. The mute stood up, pulled his truncheon out of his vest, and glared at him.

“You’re starting to get on my nerves, Stein,” the officer muttered, an unlit cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He put the crushed pack of unfiltered Ascots into his pouch and rummaged around for something in his pocket. When he didn’t find it, he went on: “What are you, Stein, the Red Cross? Those scum have only one thing on their minds—killing you. It’s their only reason for living. Get that into your head. They might look like us on the outside, but they’re not.”

The Arab’s bound body writhed on the ground, and Stein tried to go over and help him. The mute blocked his way.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” the officer said. “Okay, like they say: a picture is worth a thousand words. Russki, pick him up,” he ordered. The Russian stood the Arab up from the back and held on to him so he wouldn’t fall. The Arab’s face was caked with blood and dirt. “Zanzuri, the knife,” the officer said, holding out his hand, the unlit cigarette still between his lips. Zanzuri took the knife out of his vest and slapped it into the officer’s outstretched palm. The officer looked at the knife for a minute and tapped the handle with his finger. “The compass on the handle isn’t working,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” Zanzuri said with a nod. “That asshole Bedouin broke it.” He pointed at the black soldier, whose sweat-soaked uniform looked darker than the others.

“Fuck it,” the officer said and ripped open the Arab’s shirt. The buttons scattered on the ground, and Stein saw a hairy chest rising and falling rapidly.

“No!” Stein yelled, managing to take a step toward the officer. The mute smashed the back of his neck with the heavy wooden truncheon, and Stein fell to the ground.

“Hold him with his head up,” Stein heard the officer command.

“Not the Arab, you moron,” said the Russian, “the bleeding heart.” He snickered.

Stein was on his knees now, the mute supporting him under an armpit with one hand, pulling his hair back with the other. Three meters away from him, the officer was moving the knife to the Arab’s trembling stomach, and there was nothing he could do. With a quick slice, the officer cut the stomach in two, and rolled-up flags, flyers, candy, and phone tokens came spilling out of it.

“Don’t touch the candy,” the officer warned them. “It’s poisoned.” He handed the knife back to Zanzuri. The Russian unrolled one of the flags. It was a PLO flag. Zanzuri and the black soldier filled their pockets with phone tokens. The Russian stripped the Arab, who was lying on the ground flat as a sheet after being emptied out. He folded him in eight and laid him on the jeep’s spare tire.

“Hey, Russki, what are you going to do with him?” Zanzuri asked.

“A cover for my motor scooter, a cape, who knows,” said the Russian, and he shrugged. “It must be good for something.”

“Man, those Russians are stingy,” Zanzuri whispered to the black soldier, the tokens jingling in his pockets. Even though more than five minutes had gone by since the mute had hit him with his truncheon, Stein decided that the time had come to faint.

Stein woke up on his bed in the tent, wearing his clothes and shoes, the pain so agonizing that he could barely move his neck. Everyone was sleeping now. The needle of the broken compass on Zanzuri’s knife handle glowed brightly in the dark. Stein got up quietly, pulled the knife out of its sheath, and started walking where the phosphorescent needle led him.

Suddenly I could do it. I’d say “Freeze!” and everyone would freeze, just like that, in the middle of the street. Cars, bicycles, even those little motor scooters delivery guys use would stop in their tracks. And I’d walk past them looking for the hottest girls. I’d tell them to drop their shopping bags, I’d walk them off a bus, then I’d bring them home and fuck their brains out. It was great. Beyond great. “Freeze!” “Come here!” “Lie down on the bed!” And kablooey. These girls I had were knockouts, centerfolds. I was on top of the world. I felt like a king.

And then my mother started getting involved.

My mother told me she wasn’t completely happy with the whole business. I told her there was no reason not to be happy. “I tell the girls to come and they come. It’s not as if I rape them or anything.”

And my mother said, “No, no. God forbid. It’s just that there’s something very impersonal about it. Unemotional. I don’t know how to explain it, but I have this gut feeling that you don’t really connect with them.” So I told my mother that she could keep her gut feelings to herself. I told her that she could live her life and I’d live mine. I told her “Freeze!” and left her like that in the middle of Reiness Street in the pouring rain.

It pissed me off, her sticking her nose in my business.

Since then, it hasn’t been the same. What she said bothered me, the part about not connecting. Now I fucked the girls like before, but I didn’t really feel connected. Everything was ruined. At first I thought it was the sounds. So I’d say to the girls, “Make sounds.” And they’d make all kinds of sounds: Mickey Mouse, jackhammers, politicians. It was a nightmare. I had to demonstrate the actual words I wanted them to say. “Oh yeah.” “Do it to me, do it to me.” “Harder.” That kind of stuff. And they’d repeat them when we were fucking, but always in my intonation. “Don’t stop. I’m coming,” they’d say as they lay there motionless, eyes glazed. I knew they were lying, and it made me so mad I could’ve strangled them. “If you don’t mean it, don’t say it.” I’d yell that a few times, but what was the use? It was depressing. Beyond depressing.

But then it came to me, what was fucking everything up. The problem was I was micromanaging. Once I figured that out, I started telling them more general things like “Act like you’re really enjoying it,” and when the feeling they were faking it started to bother me, I’d just say, “Enjoy it.” It was terrific. Beyond terrific. They’d scream. They’d dig their nails into my back. They’d say, “You’re the best.” Can you picture it? Models, flight attendants, weather girls, in my bed, telling me I’m great.

Except that then, knowing they were there just because I said so started to bug me. It hit me out of the blue, like lightning. I was walking past Reiness Street, right where it hits Gordon. My mother was still standing there with that apologetic look on her face exactly where I left her, and I suddenly understood: this wasn’t the real thing, it never would be. Because none of those girls really appreciates me. None of them wants me for who I really am. And if they’re not with me for who I am, then fuck it. Right then, I decided to stop and to hit on girls the regular way.

Boy did that suck. It was a flop, a fiasco, beyond terrible. Girls I used to fuck right in the street, right up against a mailbox, suddenly refused to give me their numbers. They started saying things like my breath stinks or I’m not their type or they have a boyfriend. It was grim. It was beyond grim. But I wanted a real relationship so bad that, even though the temptation to go back to fucking like I used to was enormous, I resisted.

After three months of torment, I saw the girl from the cider ads in the middle of Ibn Gvirol. I went up and tried to start a conversation, I told her a joke, I picked up a bouquet and ran after her with flowers in my hand, but she didn’t even stop. Waiting for her in the lot beside the mall was this sporty little Mazda driven by another model, a guy model, the one from the potato chip ad. She was about to get into his car and drive away. I didn’t know what to do, and without even realizing it, I yelled “Freeze!” She stopped in her tracks. Everyone did. I looked around at all the people frozen there like that, at her, as beautiful as she was in the commercials. I didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, I couldn’t, I just couldn’t let her go. On the other, if she was going to be with me, I wanted it to be for who I am, because of my inner self, not because I ordered her to be. And then it came, the solution. Like an epiphany. I held her hand, looked into her eyes, and said, “Love me for who I am, for who I truly am.” Then I took her back to my apartment and fucked her like a freak. She screamed and dug her nails into my back and said, “Do it, oh yes, do it to me.” And she loved me, she loved me so much. Just for being me.