Текст книги "Second Person Singular"

Автор книги: Kashua Sayed

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

He shook himself free of his thoughts and tried to follow the twists and turns of the discussion, which had veered into the nature of the curriculum at the school that many of their kids attended. “We have to look really closely at the kind of values that are being instilled there,” Nili, the gynecologist’s wife, said. “All week long my son’s been singing ‘On Rosh Hashanah, On Rosh Hashanah.’”

“What’s wrong with that?” the gynecologist asked, turning to his wife. “It’s a good song.” Everyone laughed, and then Anton, who was on the school’s steering committee, said, “We’re working on that, though,” adding that the school administration had been told in no uncertain terms to beef up the Palestinian nationalist dimension of the studies, which, he conceded, was lacking in comparison to that of the Zionist Israeli narrative.

“It’s true,” Nili said. “I see that the kids are constantly singing about the Land of Israel and Hanukkah and Passover, but other than that one poem by Mahmoud Darwish they haven’t learned a thing that qualifies as Palestinian. There has to be equality. It can’t go on like this. We have to do something.”

“Why is that?” Tarik asked, drawing all the eyes in the room. “I’m sorry. I don’t really know anything about this and I don’t have kids yet, but why exactly do they need to strengthen their Palestinian nationalism?”

Tarik’s question was met with silence and an edgy bewilderment.

“What do you mean, why?” Samir asked. “Because they’re Palestinians. A child needs to grow up with a sense of national and cultural awareness. Look at the Jewish kids, from age six they know all about the wars and have a good sense of where they want to serve in the army when the time comes.”

“Yes, I know,” Tarik said, somewhat bashfully, feeling as though he had butted into a conversation that did not include him. “But when you see that kind of an Israeli kid, how does it make you feel?”

“Bad,” Samir spat, earning nods all around. “Because they don’t teach them about us. They purposely pave over the Palestinian side of the story. They learn the Israeli narrative, as viewed through the lens of the Zionist industry.”

“Yes, I understand that. But why respect either side of the story?” Tarik inquired, plodding on even though his face showed that he already regretted it.

“What do you mean, that’s the history of our people you’re talking about. Our roots, our culture. Children have to understand and internalize these things, otherwise how will they plot their own futures?”

“That’s true,” Tarik said, preferring to avoid an argument. “You’re right.”

The lawyer knew where Tarik had been headed. He had worked with him for long enough and he regretted that Tarik felt too shy to continue to make his case.

“You know what,” the lawyer said, quoting a line he’d heard from Tarik, “I also don’t buy catchphrases like, He who has no past, has no future.”

“How can we raise a proud generation,” the gynecologist’s wife asked, “if we don’t teach them to be proud of their forefathers, their history, their people? I don’t get it.”

“I don’t know,” the lawyer said. “It just seems to me sometimes that we – not just us Arabs, but all of us – don’t have that much to be proud of in terms of our pasts.”

“That’s nonsense,” the gynecologist said, gathering a fistful of cashews. “Honestly, I’m surprised at you. What’s a man worth without his roots? It’s just like a tree, how can it grow without strong roots? It’s the same with kids, with nations.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” the lawyer said, smiling as he distributed more ice and whiskey. “Sometimes I think a tree is a tree and a man is a man.”

BED

“Tarik can forget about Faten finding him a match,” the lawyer’s wife whispered, mindful of the baby in the nearby crib. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing cream into her hands while the lawyer took off his clothes, stripping down to his boxer shorts. “What was that about?” she asked her husband, “I thought Tarik was a nationalist.”

“He’s all right,” the lawyer said. “They just didn’t get what he was saying.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s a bit of an anarchist,” the lawyer said, knowing his wife wouldn’t understand him. “He doesn’t buy into the system. He’s not willing to play the nationalist game.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think they liked him.”

“It’s probably better that way,” the lawyer said, heading into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He had known all along that the assistant professor at the teachers’ college would not be the one to find Tarik a bride. He knew Tarik well, and he knew that he was in a tight spot as an Arab-Israeli bachelor in Jerusalem, where there were few matches to be found for those no longer in school, and Tarik had been out of school for five years. Nor was he in the habit of frequenting the humanities department cafeteria, as the lawyer’s wife had advised. Which all explained why, when the lawyer saw that three of the best candidates for the internship in his office were female, he had immediately hoped they were pretty and decided that he’d hire the one who seemed most suitable for Tarik.

“Are you coming to bed?” his wife asked as he left the bathroom. The lawyer was expecting the question, even though he was hoping, on account of his exhaustion and the book that awaited him downstairs, that he would be given an exemption. But it had been two weeks since they’d been together, and the wine she’d drunk during dinner was surely having its effect.

The lawyer shut the bedroom door, fearing that their daughter would wake up and stumble in, and then slid under the covers beside his wife. He knew that she was embarrassed about her body and that even on the hottest summer nights she preferred to conceal it beneath the blankets. They kissed quickly and without passion, and the lawyer set himself to the task at hand.

It would be wrong to say that the lawyer did not enjoy sex, but there was something about it that always bothered him. He found the whole thing to be more of a burden than a pleasure, a situation he knew to be perverse.

He recalled the early days after their marriage, during their honeymoon. He had been twenty-five but it was the first time he had come into physical contact with a woman. He remembered the feeling of shame at the speed with which it had all happened. He knew that something was wrong, and that his wife had not been fully satisfied. She never mentioned it, never said a word about it, but he knew that this was not how it was supposed to be. He remembered his apprehension at the time, the articles he had combed through, the sex-advice columns. After thoroughly researching the matter of premature ejaculation, he had tried to put the techniques to use, relaxing his muscles, pulling his testicles back, dulling his senses with alcohol, even smoking marijuana before coming to bed, but none of it helped. In some articles it said that sexual partners had to learn one another, give their bodies time to get acquainted, to achieve a natural harmony, but the lawyer blamed himself. After a few months of failed attempts, he tried to increase his endurance by summoning sad images from his youth. This worked, and he could tell by his wife’s moaning that some progress had been made. It didn’t happen all at once but he felt, at last, that he was moving in the right direction.

The first time he was sure that his wife had been fully satisfied was after he had screened the footage of his grandfather’s funeral in his mind. The lawyer was eight years old when he saw his grandfather’s dead body. Years later, he lay on top of his wife, thrusting gently, eyes wide open, trying not to be distracted by the sounds of her pleasure. He recalled how the entire family had shown up at his parents’ house and how the body had arrived on the back of an orange pickup truck. He recalled how he had stood off to the side while the adults washed his grandfather’s corpse, which lay prone on an elevated wooden plank. He thought about the prayers the sheikh had intoned and the way the men had shaved the pallid body. And he remembered his grandfather’s wrinkled, flaccid penis and the white sheets with which the men wrapped him as they called out “Allahu Akbar.” He saw himself running in order to keep up with the brisk pace of the funeral procession, saw them raise the coffin up in the air, saw the opening on one side and the way it was tilted down till his grandfather’s white-robed body slid into the grave. He recalled the sound the body had made upon impact, and realized that he had just given his wife her first orgasm. She clawed his back and planted warm kisses on his face while he remained above the grave, aware that he would never again be the boy he had been.

LETTER

In his office, the lawyer found a pack of cigarettes. He lit one just as the baby began to wail. His wife’s measured steps moved toward the crib. The crying subsided. He took a few long drags, then ground the cigarette out in the ashtray and, after a moment’s hesitation, poured water over the blackened stub. Satisfied that no gust of wind would come through the open window and breathe life into the dead ashes, he took a long gulp of water, picked up The Kreutzer Sonata,and left the room.

The lawyer didn’t like getting out of bed once he was settled for the night, which was why he went to the bathroom even though he didn’t have to, and tried, without success, to urinate. Then he went to his daughter’s room, stacked two pillows up against the headboard, turned on the pink bunny lamp, and lay down in her bed, cradling the book.

Although it was a used copy and had likely been passed from hand to hand, the book was in good condition, practically new. This, the lawyer felt, spoke to the character of its previous owners. Clearly they valued it, protected it. The lawyer also knew how to care for a book. He never dog-eared a page, never wrote in the margins, never broke the spine. He looked at the rather ugly cover. Two thick black lines dissected it into three unequal parts. The uppermost part was yellow and bore the author’s name, Tolstoy. The lower, green section was home to the title, The Kreutzer Sonata,and the middle one featured an ugly pastel illustration. On the right side of the drawing there was a man with fiery eyes, a hooked nose, and a set mouth. His hand was balled around the handle of a dagger. On the other side of the drawing was a faceless woman whose body was curled and indistinct, her hand feebly raised before the murderer. Had he not known who the author was, the lawyer thought to himself, he would never have bought this book.

He flipped to the front page, where the author’s full name was written, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy. He went over the name several times, embarrassed that he hadn’t known it, imagining himself as a contestant on a game show, “What are the first and middle names of the famous Russian author Tolstoy?”

On the contents page, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the book consisted of four stories and not just one, as the cover seemed to imply. Other than the first story, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” there was also “The Devil,” “The Forged Coupon,” and “After the Ball.” The lawyer had an aversion to long books, both because he didn’t have time and because he liked to check off the boxes on the long list of books he felt he should read.

In the upper left corner of the page he saw the name Yonatan,delicately printed in blue ink. The previous owner’s handwriting gave the lawyer pause. Many used books had someone’s name printed on the inside flap but for some reason this name, or rather this man’s handwriting, soft and feminine, begging for help, almost like the cowering woman on the cover, caught his attention. Never mind, he said to himself, start reading. He knew he didn’t have much time. The guests had kept him up late and the wine was taking its toll.

The lawyer read the quote on the first page of the book. “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28) He chuckled to himself. If that was the case, he was the undisputed king of adulterers, even though he hadn’t had sex with anyone besides the woman whose bed he had just left. The quote took him elsewhere. He hadn’t even started to read the book and already he found himself transported. He was back in the café on King George Street, reviewing all the women he had seen – young, old, secular, religious, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Arab, and Jewish. He recalled how he had looked the women up and down, the ones coming toward him, the ones beside him, and the ones in front of him, how he had sized up their behinds, evaluated them in pants and in skirts, how he had examined their thighs, imagined their precise shape, and how he had known that no one was onto him, that he was not the kind of person who got caught ogling – he was quick about it, and yet none of the details evaded him. In a few split seconds he could attain all of the pertinent information. His eyes were trained to spot cleavage, panty lines, bra straps. He registered the way they walked, the way they moved their bottoms, the size and sway of their breasts. The lawyer had no intention of acting on this information. More than anything else, he was trying to figure out his own taste. He knew that his wife, widely considered to be a good-looking woman, did not attract him the way he would have liked, and this he attributed to the shape of her body, her stout thighs, and the stretch marks along her abdomen, which had appeared once their son was born. At times the lawyer felt he was attracted to all women aside from the one he was married to. And at times, while walking behind a woman on King George Street, watching her and lusting for her, he realized that her body was remarkably similar to his wife’s.

The lawyer shook his head free of these thoughts. He tried to go back to the book, but knew that his eyes would not stay open for more than a few minutes. No sense in starting, he decided. He was too tired. It would be better to begin reading the next day. Before turning off the light, he checked to see how long the title story was. He flipped through the pages, taking pleasure in the gentle breeze and the familiar scent they produced. He reached page 102, where the story ended, and just as he was about to shut the book a small white note fell from the pages. The lawyer started to smile as he read the note, written in his wife’s hand, in Arabic. I waited for you, but you didn’t come. I hope everything’s all right. I wanted to thank you for last night. It was wonderful. Call me tomorrow?

KNIFE

The lawyer leaped out of his daughter’s bed to kill his wife. He’d stab the bitch, cut her throat, gouge out her eyes, butcher her body. Or maybe he’d strangle her. He’d sit on her stomach, straddle her, pin her to the bed, and wrap his fingers around her throat, thumbs pushing deep into the flesh. He saw her writhing, gasping, her eyes popping out of her head, and saw himself staring at her, meeting her pleading and fear with furious derision. He’d throttle her while she tried to resist him, her fingers scratching at his arms as he clamped down on her windpipe, squeezing even harder, puncturing the skin of her neck, soaking his fingers with her blood, keeping up the pressure long after her body had gone slack.

He bounded up the stairs. A fog moved through his mind. He saw an image of his wife, stark naked, laughing uproariously beside a strange, faceless man – a lowlife, the lawyer was sure, a petty criminal, perhaps the man on the cover of the book, the one with the dagger. In his mind’s eye, he saw her as he had never seen her before, moaning, kneading her own suddenly shapely thighs, clinging to the stranger, who lay on top of her, his face filled with scorn and malicious mirth, maybe it was someone he knew after all. His wife’s eyes shone with a passion he had never seen, scratching the man’s back with nails she didn’t have and whispering words of love as she arched up toward him.

The lawyer felt like he was choking. Pain ripped through his head. His heart thumped. His breath was short. Quick. He could not draw enough air. He’d kill her. He’d wake her up without saying a word and he’d kill her, or maybe he’d wake her up, tell her that he knew everything, and then kill her. He turned toward the kitchen, opened a drawer, and looked for the right knife. He grabbed the biggest one, wrapped his right hand around the handle, and headed for the bedroom.

His wife lay on her stomach, a thin summer blanket covering one leg, the other stretched diagonally across the length of the bed, completely bare. She looked at ease, her breathing rhythmic and calm. She was wearing green panties and a simple white tank top. Her face was turned to the right, covered by her hair, which fell across her ear and cheek. This was not the woman he wanted to murder. This was a different woman, one who had a one-year-old baby by her side.

The lawyer’s muscles relaxed. The hand that wielded the knife fell to his side, his head slumped forward, and he began to sob softly at the foot of the bed, realizing that his wife would not have dared were she not so certain of his cowardice.

He moved the pillow that his wife had placed alongside the baby. He’d told her a thousand times to stop doing that. The pillow would not stop the baby from falling out of bed if he rolled over in his sleep. On ordinary nights, when the lawyer woke up in a terror and raced to see that his children were safe, he would pick the baby up and carry him over to his crib, but on this night he was scared of rousing him. He placed another pillow on the floor, where he imagined his son’s head might strike if he fell out of bed. Then he tucked his son back in. Hisson? A flash of pain surged through his chest.

What would he do now? Wake her quietly so that the baby would stay asleep and tell her to come downstairs, where he’d confront her with the note? Shove it in her face and demand an explanation? What would he do if she said the handwriting wasn’t hers? And maybe she’d be right, maybe it really wasn’t. The lawyer tried to cling to his former life. Of course it was her hand that had written the note. He knew it was. And anyway, what was he expecting, that his wife, who up until a few minutes ago had seemed faithful, almost foolishly so, would just burst into tears and come clean? After all, he reminded himself, he had no idea who she really was. They’d been living together for years and only now did he realize that he did not know her. What if she did admit her guilt? Would she cry, accept responsibility, beg for her life? Promise that she’d melt away without so much as a single demand? The whore.

And what would he do? The coward. The despicable coward. If only he could do the deed. But what about the kids? He couldn’t live with the notion that his kids would see their mother’s lifeless body sprawled before them. He’d get them out of the house. He’d kill her when they were away. Then he’d call the police. And what about him? What would he do? Sit in jail? Commit suicide? He should have killed her right away. He should have done it before he started thinking. But how would he do it? And what about the kids? They’d grow up with no mother and a father behind bars, living with his parents, maybe hers? Oh, God, what had she done?

No matter what, he’d be the laughingstock of his peers and his village. Even if he killed her. He winced at the thought of being ridiculed behind his back. He imagined his friends, including the ones who had been over for dinner, smirking at him, the fancy lawyer laid low. He saw the man to whom his wife had written the note, imagined him sitting with his buddies and regaling them with the tales. Oh, God, what had she done? The bitch. She’d trampled him. Made him a character in one of those stories he was constantly hearing from his clients, about naive husbands who let their wives run rampant. Again he saw clusters of men convulsing with laughter. The lowlife that his wife had taken to bed was sitting with his buddies and telling, precisely, what she had been like, detailing all the things she had done to him, things that far exceeded what the lawyer had thought his wife was capable. It was clear that the fornicator did not hold his newest conquest in high esteem. Or did he? Maybe they were in love? Maybe they planned to live together? How old was the guy anyway? Did he know him? And how long had this been going on?

The lawyer left the bedroom. Once a coward, always a coward he thought. He put the knife back in the kitchen drawer and went to his daughter. She’d tossed off her blanket but he didn’t cover her. It wasn’t cold. It was hot. Stifling. Sweat beaded up over his body.

He went downstairs, looked for the note in the bed, and didn’t find it. He searched furiously through the folds in the blanket. For a second he entertained the notion that he had been mistaken, that he had imagined the whole thing, that fatigue had authored the note. He flipped through the book again, thinking that perhaps he had tucked it back where he had found it, but it wasn’t there.

Then he saw it beside the bed. He picked it up, wedged it deep inside the pages of the book, and took the evidence to his study. He eased the door closed behind him, lit a cigarette, and tried to organize his thoughts. He took a long drag, then exhaled slowly. He might be a coward, but a chump was something he had never been. And he definitely did not plan on being her chump. Who the hell did she think she was? He didn’t even know her. That had to be the basis of his plan, that he did not know her. In the end he would kill her, that much was clear. Maybe not with his own hands, because he had no intention of paying the price for her crimes, but he would bring about her death, of that there was no doubt. At the end of the day, the husband was not responsible for the wife’s honor. Her family members—father, brothers, cousins – were the keepers of the family’s honor; it was their blood, and it was on them alone that the dishonor would rest if they did not take it upon themselves to obliterate it. Not on him, not by any means.

He shivered, put out the cigarette, and opened the book. There was something he wanted to check. Up on the top left-hand side of the contents page he found it again, written in a thin delicate hand, in blue ink, the name: Yonatan.