Again the lawyer was furious. Again he felt the same quickening of his heartbeat, the same desire to slit her throat, to tear open the veins of her neck. With trembling hands he lit another cigarette, trying to make order of his thoughts. After all, he had a plan, and an alternate plan. He was a criminal lawyer and though he had never handled any divorce cases, he knew the difference between Israeli family court and Sharia court. He knew that whoever filed first decided where the case would be held, and he knew, as did every Muslim man, that he would be better off in the Sharia courts, where a man, if he can prove his wife’s infidelity, can strip her of everything she has. What’s more, barring any unusual circumstances, the kids stay with the father. If he was able to prove to the judges that she had cheated on him, she’d never see her kids again. The letter he’d found was insufficient, but he’d find other evidence, incontrovertible, and as soon as he did, he’d rush to the Sharia court in east Jerusalem. In the meantime, she had to remain completely unaware. She could not have even the slightest sense of his suspicions, because if she realized what he was up to and filed first — in an Israeli family court — she’d get it alclass="underline" alimony, the house, the kids.
The lawyer put out the cigarette. He took a piece of paper with his wife’s handwriting in Arabic and the incriminating note and placed them in his briefcase, clicking the combination lock shut. She can’t have the slightest indication, he thought, and immediately shoved the damned Kreutzer Sonata back into the briefcase, too. He padded out of the study and climbed the stairs, putting her phone back in its place and her bag by the foot of the bed. He listened to his son’s breathing and cast an involuntary glance at his wife, saw her sleeping on her side, her legs bare to the thigh, and felt a surge of passion that he had been sure he had long since lost.
ALARM
The lawyer left the house at five in the morning. He wasn’t sure if he wanted his wife to be aware of this or not, but still he slammed the door behind him. On the one hand, he’d already decided that he should act as though all was normal. On the other hand, he wanted to vent, to express his rage, for her to know just how much he hated her. Walking toward his car, he hoped that she had been jolted awake, that she was in the process of fumbling toward the door and would come chasing after him, wondering why he had decided to leave so early. That didn’t happen. Instead, he sat down in the cold driver’s seat, started the car, and pressed hard on the accelerator, hoping the growl of the engine would wake her. Maybe it did, and maybe she had decided it was best not to pursue him and not to ask too many questions. It was rare for him to go into the office on a Friday and rarer still for him to go in this early. Throughout the commute to work he waited for her call, eager to hear the tremor of worry in her voice, but his phone did not ring.
He parked in the usual spot. The lot was empty and the guard had not yet arrived. He walked down the steps to King George Street. A police car, lights flickering in silence, coasted down the empty street and a municipal sanitation crew picked up the stray garbage. Cartons of bread and boxes of vegetables were stacked against closed restaurant doors. Weekend editions of the papers, lashed into knee-high cubes, waited outside convenience stores. Milk crates were parked in front of cafés. The scene was pleasing to the lawyer, who walked down the street in a short-sleeved shirt holding a black leather attaché case in his right hand, the morning chill toying with the hair on his arms, and he shivered once in pleasure.
Friday was a day off at the office. Most of the businesses downtown worked a half day on Friday but the lawyer, whose clients were generally Arabs, decided to keep his office closed on the Muslim holy day, not least because on Fridays the security forces tightened the ring around Jerusalem, keeping worshippers from the West Bank away from the al-Aqsa Mosque, making it that much harder for his clients to sneak into the city. The old stone office building was dark and he turned on the light and went up the stairs to the first floor. A few seconds later he heard the alarm spring to life. For a moment he was nervous because he had no clear recollection of the code, but without thinking he punched in five digits and the alarm stopped. He flipped the lights on in the office and had the feeling that he was not alone. He walked toward the conference room, opened the door hesitantly, and peered in, looking at the oval hardwood table, the couches, and the long decorative rows of law books that were never opened.
The lawyer peeked into Tarik’s office and knocked on the bathroom door. Then, just to make sure, he looked inside. He unlocked his own office and scanned the room. He checked the windows to see if they had been broken and whether the security bars were still in place. Once he was sure that he was alone, he laid his briefcase on the table and went to make himself a cup of coffee. He had been in the same office for five years and even though it had never been broken into he was sure that the first burglary was imminent. The offices and businesses in the area were frequently burglarized, and he, as an outsider, was sure he was being targeted. He’d already had to replace the Hebrew, Arabic, and English brass sign outside the building several times because his name, and later Tarik’s, too, had been spray painted over, a thick black stripe through the Arabic.
It was five thirty. Why was she not calling? He was pretty sure that this was when his son started to wake up. Had she gotten up at all when he left the house or had she slept through the whole thing? She had been tired last night. The guests had left late and she, of course, had to put the dishes in the dishwasher, tidy up the living room, and mop the kitchen floor. She must be exhausted, the lawyer told himself, looking at his watch and deciding to give her a little more time.
He opened his briefcase, took out The Kreutzer Sonata, and felt another stab of pain. He felt like an idiot waiting for her call, thinking that if only he heard some worry in her voice then everything would be all right. Nothing would be all right. Nothing would be as it was. His hand trembled as it held the note written by his wife. He reminded himself that he had to remain calm, to give her no indication, but he didn’t know how he could do it. How would he temper his rage, stifle the urge to harm her, and still plot her ruination? Because that is precisely what she had done to him, ruined his world. He had to be calm and collected, and he reminded himself that he had always been a reserved and calculating individual, the kind of strategist who plotted his each and every move.
The lawyer considered himself someone who was always prepared for the worst. He was prepared for the death of his parents, even though both were in good health. At first, as a child, the notion that they might die was awful, unbearable, until, with time, the expectation of their deaths became somewhat more tolerable and, perhaps once he became a father, even inconsequential. The lawyer went so far as to envision losing his children, preparing himself for that eventuality, too. He imagined what would happen if one of his children was struck by disease, or SIDS, or an accident at school. The thought of enduring such a thing was particularly gruesome, rather like his childhood thoughts about the loss of his parents, but he knew he had to be prepared. Of course, he had devoted some thought to the death of his wife as well, and to be perfectly honest that thought was not as painful as the other ones, the wound was of a far more tolerable variety, the kind that can be overcome, but when he screened those images in his mind, there was no escaping the image of his children weeping for their lost mother, and so, at this stage, when the loss of either parent would be a debilitating blow to the children, he hoped that they would both retain their health. That said, he had an unformed feeling, from somewhere deep inside, that once his children reached an age where the loss of their parents would not be that awful, he would consider the loss of his wife to be a desirable eventuality. Even when their relationship seemed solid he would occasionally, perhaps before sleep, imagine a brighter future without her. And now, for the first time, he was shaken by the understanding that she apparently felt likewise. Before sleep, she, too, longed for the death of her husband.