“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” she said.
The more the place filled up, the faster the music got. Aviad played some soft Underworld, then switched to Plastic Man and then back to faster tracks from Underworld. Noa was a better drinker than I was, but she always waited for me to catch up. I struggled to keep the pace, which she thought was funny. I could see that off to the side of the bar the tiny dance floor was starting to fill up, people moving their bodies gently in front of the DJ, not wanting to be the first ones to really dance. I volunteered to buy the third round, and took my place in the crush around the bar. Noa smiled at me each time someone pushed past me. She wanted to get up and come help me but I signaled to her to stay put and save our seats. I was finally able to get two pints of Goldstar and make it back to the table.
I want to be like them. That’s what I thought when Noa said this was the only place she liked to go out in this ghost town of a city. “The nerd-in-disguise hangout,” she said.
Most of the people looked like they were students and I recognized many of the faces from the halls of Bezalel. I’d never been in a place like that, and I liked it. I’d been out to pubs before with Ruchaleh, but they were the kind of places that had soft light and cool jazz, nothing like what was happening here. I had to stop myself from shivering when I thought of Ruchaleh. What was she doing at this moment? How did she feel? I should have been with her. I shouldn’t have left. If everything was going according to plan, then the ambulance should have already left with Yonatan and taken him to the morgue in Shaare Zedek. They don’t check anything there, Ruchaleh had said, it’s just a refrigerated storage room where they keep the merchandise until it’s picked up. Anyone who asked about the funeral would be told that Yonatan, without her even knowing, had decided back in high school to give his body to science.
“What?” Noa asked. I couldn’t hear her.
“Nothing,” I mumbled, and I tried to return to her, to the pub, the music. “L’chaim,” I said, raising my glass, and she raised hers. “L’chaim,” I said again as I brought the glass to my lips and tried to remember that legendary hero from before the days of Islam, a-Zir, who was infamous for his love of women and alcohol. On the night that his father, the head of the tribe, was murdered, they came to the drunk poet and told him the news, to which he said, a pitcher of wine in his hand, “Ilyom hmar wa’ad amar.” Wine today, action tomorrow. The following day he embarked on one of the most brutal vengeance campaigns in the history of the Arabs.
Beer today, I said to myself and looked around. Today I want to be like them. Today I want to be one of them, to go into the places they’re allowed to go, to laugh the way they laugh, to drink without having to think about God. I want to be like them. Free, loose, full of dreams, able to think about love. Like them. Like those who started to fill the dance floor with the knowledge that it was theirs, they who felt no need to apologize for their existence, no need to hide their identity. Like them. Those who never looked for suspicious glances, whose loyalty was never questioned, whose acceptance was always taken for granted. Today I want to be like them without feeling like I’m committing a crime. I want to drink with them, dance with them, without feeling as though I’m trespassing in a foreign culture. To feel like I belong, without feeling guilty or disloyal. And what exactly was I being disloyal to?
“You coming?” Noa asked through the haze of house music.
“I don’t know how to dance,” I said.
She got out of her chair, leaned over the little table between us, and brought her mouth close to my ear.
“Neither do I,” she whispered, and I could feel her breath penetrating my ear, bringing me back to life.
PART SEVEN. HOT WATER
The lawyer couldn’t say definitively whether he was asleep or awake. He heard the morning noises of his wife and kids, as he did every morning, but they seemed to be coming from somewhere else, somewhere foreign and unfamiliar. He opened his eyes and hoped to see his daughter standing in front of him but she was not there. The lawyer tried, unsuccessfully, to put his mind in order, and then he gave up and went back to sleep. When he awoke again he wasn’t sure how much time had passed, seconds or hours, before the din of the house reached him again. This time he rose to a familiar world. He knew he was sleeping in a bed, in his daughter’s room, in his house, and he heard footfalls on the stairs, coming his way.
“You still sleeping?” his wife asked in a soft voice, laying a hand on his forehead to see if he had a fever. “You’re a little warm,” she said, even though the lawyer knew he wasn’t sick. All he was was tired, exhausted. He had started reading The Kreutzer Sonata, sure he would never get past the first line, but he had found himself drawn into the plot, which involved a train, a young man, a woman, talk of love, and a character who murdered his wife and starts to tell his story.
“Mommy,” his daughter said, her feet pattering behind her mother.
“I asked you to watch your brother for a second,” his wife said, raising her voice.
“I know,” the girl said. “But I’m tired, I don’t want to.”
“So?” his wife said to him. “What do you want to do? You want to take it easy at home a little today?”
“No,” he said, flipping the blanket off. “I have a hearing in court at eight thirty.”
“Mommy,” the girl said. “When are you going to brush my hair?”
“Give your hair a rest, okay? I’ll brush it in a minute. So, do you want me to make you some coffee before I go?”
“No, no,” the lawyer said, sitting on the edge of the bed and trying to limit his movements to the bare minimum so as to stave off the headache that had already announced itself. He looked over at the rabbit-shaped alarm clock and said, “You guys should get going. You’re late. I’ll head out after you.”
“Okay, take it easy,” his wife said and kissed him on the lips, a kiss the lawyer felt was genuine, not forced or apologetic or meant to conceal. “I really love you,” she said before leaving, and the lawyer gently nodded his head, to the extent that the headache allowed.
Water, first of all water, the lawyer thought as he walked up the stairs. He drank straight from the bottle, as he always did when no one was around. Then he called Tarik, who was on his way to the office. “I have a hearing on the Marzuk case at eight thirty. Please go down to the courthouse and ask for a continuance on account of illness. I’ll be in the office at nine. I have to take care of something first. Oh, and Tarik, we’re interviewing the new interns this afternoon and I may need you there. Could be you’ll be the only one there. Interview them yourself and choose yourself a bride at the same time, okay?” the lawyer said, laughing.
The lawyer made Turkish coffee and added milk and sugar. In the mornings he took his coffee with milk, which had an immediate effect on his bowels. He took the cup of coffee down to the study, lit a cigarette, and checked the Haaretz headlines online. Then checked to make sure that he had everything he needed, realized that he had forgotten The Kreutzer Sonata, left the cigarette in the ashtray, and went to his daughter’s room to get it. He was on page thirty and had been using the note as a bookmark.
Mornings in Jerusalem are cold, even in summer, which is why the lawyer had a gas-operated water heater installed in the house, ensuring that the shower water was hot as soon as it was turned on. He found the right temperature and then stood beneath the wide veil of water cascading from the eight-inch shower head. He brushed his teeth, shaved his face, washed his hair. Looking up at the shower head, washing soap off his body, he was struck by a long-forgotten childhood memory. He saw his mother boiling water on a gas stove on a cold winter night and he saw his brothers, naked, freezing, and his mother approaching with a pot of warm water, ladling it over their heads with a brass cup, one at a time, and then scrubbing them hard, an expression of great suffering on her face. Her children had to be washed every day, they would go to school clean, even in winter, even if it meant suffering. When the boys were done they shared a single towel. Then came their little sister. His mother washed her in a little tub, supporting her neck with one hand and washing her with the other, shampooing the fine strands of baby hair.