I sat on the ground next to him, with my back against the wall, and for a second my blue eyes met the dark eyes of the Arabs. I was panting. I panted hard and closed my eyes! I heard my good friend Ulises speaking English, but I couldn't understand what he was saying. The Arabs were speaking English, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. My good friend Ulises laughed. The Arabs laughed. I understood their laughter and I stopped panting. I fell asleep. When I woke up, my good friend Ulises and I were alone. A guard led us to our cell. They brought us food. With my meal they brought two tablets. For the fever, they said. I didn't take them. My good friend Ulises told me to throw them down the hole. But where does that hole lead? To the sewers, said my good friend Ulises. How can I be sure? What if it leads to a warehouse? And what if everything ends up on a huge, wet table where even the smallest things we throw away are cataloged? I crushed the tablets between my fingers and threw the powder out the window. We went to sleep. When I woke up, my good friend Ulises was reading. I asked him what book he was reading. Ezra Pound's Selected Poems. Read something to me, I said. I didn't understand any of it. I stopped trying. They came for me and questioned me. They looked at my passport. They asked me questions. They laughed. When I got back to my cell I got down on the floor and did push-ups. Three, nine, twelve. Then I sat on the floor, by the wall on my right, and I drew a dwarf with an enormous penis. When I was done, I drew another one. And then I drew the stuff coming out of one of the penises. And then I didn't feel like drawing anymore and I started to study the other inscriptions. Left to right and right to left. I don't understand Arabic. My good friend Ulises didn't either. Still, I read. I found some words. I racked my brains. The burns on my neck started to hurt again. Words. Words. My good friend Ulises gave me water. I felt his hands under my arms, pulling me, hauling me up. Then I fell asleep.
When I woke up, the guard took us to the showers. He gave us each a piece of soap and told us to shower. This guard seemed to be a friend of Ulises's. They didn't speak English together. They spoke Spanish. I kept careful watch. The Jews are always trying to trick you. I was sorry to have to keep watch, but it was my duty. When something is your duty, there's nothing you can do about it. As I washed my face I pretended to close my eyes. I pretended to fall. I pretended to exercise. But the only thing I was really doing was taking a look at my good friend Ulises's penis. He wasn't circumcised. I was sorry I'd made a mistake, sorry I'd doubted him. But I only did what I had to do. That night they gave us soup. And vegetable stew. My good friend Ulises gave me half his food. Why won't you eat? I said. It's good. You have to feed yourself. You have to exercise. I'm not hungry, he said, you eat. When the lights went out, the moon came into our cell. I looked out the window. In the desert, past the yard, the hyenas were singing. A small, dark, restless group. Darker than the night. And they were laughing too. I felt a tickle in the soles of my feet. Don't mess with me, I thought.
The next day, after breakfast, they let us go. The guard who spoke Spanish walked my good friend Ulises to the bus stop for the bus to Jerusalem. They talked. The guard told stories and my good friend Ulises listened, then Ulises told a story. The guard bought a lemon ice cream for Ulises and an orange ice cream for himself. Then he looked at me and asked me whether I wanted an ice cream too. Do you want an ice cream too, poor bastard? he asked. Chocolate, I said. When I had the ice cream in my hand I felt in my pockets for coins. I felt in my left-hand pockets with my left hand, and in my right-hand pockets with my right hand. I handed him a few coins. The Jew looked at them. The sun was melting the tip of his orange ice cream. I went back the way I'd come. I walked away from the bus stop. I walked away from the road and the desert café. It was a little farther to my rock. Quickly. Quickly. When I got there I leaned on my rock and took a breath. I looked for my maps and my drawings and I couldn't find anything. There was only the heat and the noise the scorpions make in their holes. Bzzzz. I dropped to the ground and kneeled. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Or a bird. What could I do but watch? I hid among the rocks and listened for the sounds of Beersheba, but all I could hear was the sound of the air, a puff of hot dust that burned my face. And then I heard my good friend Ulises's voice calling me, Heimito, Heimito, where are you, Heimito? And I knew I couldn't hide. Not even if I wanted to. And I came out of the rocks, with my backpack in one hand, and I followed my good friend Ulises, who was calling me to the path that fate had determined for me. Villages. Vacant lots. Jerusalem. In Jerusalem I sent a telegram to Vienna asking for money. I demanded my money, my inheritance money. We begged. In front of hotels. In the places where tourists went. We slept in the street. Or in church doorways. We ate soup from the Armenian brothers, bread from the Palestinian brothers.
I told my good friend Ulises what I'd seen. About the Jews' diabolical plans. He said: sleep, Heimito. Then my money came. We bought two airplane tickets and then we didn't have any money left. That was all the money I had. Lies. I wrote a postcard from Tel Aviv and demanded it all. We flew. From up above I saw the sea. The surface of the sea is a trick, I thought. The only real mirage. Fata morgana, said my good friend Ulises. In Vienna it was raining. But we're not sugar cubes! We took a taxi to Landesgerichtsstrasse and Lichtenfelsgasse. When we got there I punched the taxi driver in the back of the neck and we walked away. First along the Josefstädter Strasse, quickly, then along the Strozzigasse, then the Zeltgasse, then the Piaristengasse, then Lerchenfelder Strasse, then Neubaugasse, then Siebensterngasse, to Stuckgasse, where I live. Then we walked up five floors. Quickly. But I didn't have the key. I had lost the key to my apartment in the Negev. Relax, Heimito, said my good friend Ulises, let's check your pockets. We checked them. One by one. Nothing. The backpack. Nothing. The clothes in the backpack. Nothing. My key, lost in the Negev. Then I remembered the spare key. There's a spare key, I said. What do you know, said my good friend Ulises. He was breathing hard. He was sprawled on the floor, his back against my door. I was kneeling. Then I got up and thought about the spare key and went to the window at the end of the hallway. Through the window there was a view of an inner courtyard of cement and the roofs of the Kirchengasse. I opened the window and the rain got my face wet. Outside, in a little hole, was the key. When I pulled my hand back there were wisps of cobweb on my fingers.
We lived in Vienna. It rained a little more each day. The first two days we didn't leave the apartment. I went out. But not much. Only to buy bread and coffee. My good friend Ulises stayed in his sleeping bag, reading or looking out the window. We ate bread. It was all we ate. I was hungry. On the third night, my good friend Ulises got up, washed his face, combed his hair, and we went out. In front of the Figarohaus I went up to a man and hit him in the face. My good friend Ulises searched his pockets as I held him. Then we went off along Graben and lost ourselves on small, busy streets. In a bar on the Gonzagagasse, my good friend Ulises wanted a beer. I ordered an orange Fanta and made a phone call from the phone booth at the bar, asking for my money, the money that is legally mine. Then we went to see my friends on the Aspern Bridge, but no one was there and we walked home.