What?! Moshe and I asked at the same time.
That Arab, Noa said. Madmoni’s worker. The one who tore Gina’s bags. He knocked on the door and wanted to know where the old man and woman who live upstairs were, why they’re not at home. I asked him what he wanted with them. He said he needed something from the house.
That’s it, Moshe said, I’m going over to talk to Madmoni right now. What does he mean, he needs something from the house? It’s his house all of a sudden?
Really, he looks pretty pathetic, Noa said, trying to calm him down. He’s an old man.
Pathetic my foot, Moshe said and put his coat on again. I don’t want him here hanging around the children.
*
Amir already knows how it’ll end. One day, when he takes his eyes off the road to fiddle with the radio, he’ll swerve right into an oncoming truck. And smash. That’ll be it. Over in a flash. The radio will stop on the classical music station and the sounds of a requiem will fill the air. An ambulance siren will blare. Traffic will pile up in the opposite lane because of drivers slowing down to stare.
He’s already been saved from similar scenarios at the last minute. He’s managed to pull the wheel to the right or the left. And prevent disaster. But he knows it doesn’t matter. He can follow all the safety rules and drive slowly all the way: in the end, it’ll happen anyway. He can see the headline in his imagination: ‘Died Trying to Change the Radio Station’, or ‘Musical Death’ (if the editor doesn’t have enough space). Yes, it’s no use fighting it. It’s a lost cause. Even if they send him to Gaza on reserve duty, even if he gets a disease that has no cure. It’ll end because of music. That’s certain.
(And, he thinks, there’ll be a circular justice to it, because music is what saved his life twice in the past. Well, saved his life is a slight exaggeration, but whenever his spirits had sunk as low as they could go, in basic training, for example, he grabbed on to a song that was being played on the radio at the time, or a tape that Modi had edited for his twentieth birthday, and let the sounds flow through him, to start the countdown from the beginning again, to remind him that he didn’t have to be so sad, that not everything in his life was bad, not everything was black.)
As for Noa, she’d already visited the cold side. And come back.
When she was sixteen, she’d had enough and taken almost a whole bottle of Advil. And thought: a few minutes of nausea, and I won’t have to suffer any more. I’ll just lie down and die. And thought: Mum won’t cry. Not even when she finds me dead in my bed. And her conscience? Half a pang at best. And her dad? I wonder how many days it’ll take before he’s out the door. Two? Three? No more than four. And the people at her school. For two years, they’ve been acting as if she isn’t even there. They think she’s weird. She dances like a boy, philosophises about everything. And the whole world — evil at its core. Hopeless. Corrupt. Why live in such a world any more? A world without love.
In the end, her stomach was pumped. The doctor agreed not to put ‘suicide attempt’ on her file so the army would take her (funny, he thought he was doing her a favour). Her parents sent her and themselves to the most expensive psychologist they could find. And agreed that it would be best not to let the story get around. People wouldn’t understand, and they might put a label on her. They’d have to waste energy on an explanation instead of dealing with the real situation.
Even six months later, no one could define the real issues. They formulated a few rules. Made promises. Her mother surprised her by wetting a few tissues. Then they bought the psychologist a plant, a farewell gift, and spoke about the subject as infrequently as they could. Her parents went back to their comfortable routine. Suddenly, without a word of complaint, they had enough money to buy her materials and she started to paint. She splattered the canvas with all the colours bubbling inside her.
For hours, she’d sit in front of her easel, dipping her brush, drawing a line, losing her sense of time. There was always another painting to finish. Another painting to start. Another reason to leave the Advil bottle in the bathroom and focus on her art. Meanwhile, the boys in her class started showing an interest. Her beauty, which was beginning to show, saved her from loneliness. Her eyes looked straight ahead into other eyes. Her dresses got shorter and shorter, showing her thighs. In no time at all, she didn’t have to hide behind trees at breaktime. In no time at all, the boys were showing off for her every day. Pimply-faced teenagers hanging on every word she had to say.
Of course, she didn’t tell anyone what she’d done. She preferred to pretend the Advil night had never happened. If she could keep up the pretence that life was great, maybe she’d really start feeling that way before it was too late.
(It wasn’t until years later, when she and Amir were lying on top of the blanket in a rented bungalow, that she suddenly had a feeling that made her happy and frightened at the same time. She had to be totally open with him, he had to know. So she said: there’s something else I haven’t told you. And he said: so you’re really a man who had a sex change operation that really worked? She laughed and said, don’t be an idiot. Not that kind of something. She moved closer to him so she could whisper the rest. And spoke the words. Straight into his chest.
*
Rami the contractor said that if I show my face around there one more time, I can forget about all the money coming to me, even though he likes me and even though I’m his best worker. I don’t know what your story is, he said, but it has to stop, tifham? Rami likes to mix Arabic words into his speech, ya’ani, to show that he’s an ordinary guy. And no one corrects him, even though he makes a lot of mistakes every time he opens his mouth. OK, I told him. You have nothing to worry about, Rami. You won’t hear any more complaints. Anyway, I said to myself, the old man’s in the hospital and the old lady’s with him, and I don’t want to sneak into the house like a thief. I want to walk in and say: hello, the land you’re living on is mine. Your cooking, your fighting, your lovemaking — you do it all on my land, fahmin?