Dinner at the Centre of the Earth

by Nathan Englander

  Farid obliges, sailing them back quickly and in silence. It’s as they pull into their slip at the marina, and weighed down by some adopted Germanic sense of comportment, that Farid says he could take Joshua out again next week.

  “Only if you let me tack and jibe,” Joshua says, chipper. “Only if I can prove that I’ve learned.”

  2002, Paris

  She stays the night and the next day, and then stays on for another. She tells Z she has roommates in an apartment not even fit for one. There is only a standing shower. She has a very uncomfortable bed.

  She tells him this to make clear that he shouldn’t take her staying as a compliment. It isn’t him. It is that deep, giant tub.

  She takes long baths, and then, after running out for supplies, she takes them with bubbles, and after the bubbles, she starts taking them with him.

  She goes home on the third day for some clothes and better shoes. This is also when she starts grilling him over his very strange hermetic life. “I’m an out-of-work waitress,” she says. “A professional bohemian. You have no excuse for living in Paris and hiding at home. Also, when you think I don’t see, you make a face that looks like you’re going to die.”

  “Problems,” is what he tells her. “I have problems that I’m trying to solve.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “They aren’t contagious. They’re troubles of the ethical sort.”

  “You have ethical troubles?”

  “It’s more that I don’t have ethical troubles. What it is, is I got myself into a bind trying to fix the world.”

  “That sounds mad.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  “Like pazzo-mad. Like, insane. It does not sound like what you say if you’re well.”

  “Okay,” he says, again.

  “You’re not going to tell me? With us all cozy, and me practically living here, doing whatever it is we are doing together?” She stares at Z, and he stands there, resolute, as if, no, he isn’t going to say.

  “Fine!” she says, studying the man before her, deducing. “This isn’t a drug dealer’s house. Of that I’m sure. Even a bad one lives better than this. And I know you’re not in the Mafia, because I know what that looks like too.” She squints and takes a spin around the apartment, before settling in front of him once more. “You’re not running weapons.”

  “You can tell that from the apartment?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Because I once dated a man who sold submarines. You should have seen what his house looked like.”

  “You dated a man who sold submarines?”

  “That is not the issue right now. The issue is you, being loving, and kind, and looking secretly miserable, and hiding out. If we’re supposed to be falling in love—are we supposed to be falling in love?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “All right. Then I want to know, right now, what it is you do.”

  Z goes to talk, and before he utters a word, she, with her hands on her hips and her lips pursed, shakes her head.

  “No,” the waitress says. She’s not having it. “I can see already that I’m going to get nonsense. I want the truth. If you’re going to trust me, trust me now, or I go. I learned this lesson with the submarine man, too late.”

  Z already can’t picture being without her. Not just out of love, but at the thought of facing a loneliness that was often greater than the fear.

  Oh, how he has been dying to tell her. Oh, how nice it would feel. He could cry just imagining the relief.

  Z takes a deep breath. The waitress, taking it to be a sincere action, relaxes her body and drops her hands.

  “It’s what I think it is, then?” she says.

  “What do you think?”

  “It really is crazier than I first thought,” she says. “Right? There’s only one thing I can guess in a house with no personal details of any kind, and a man who tells me only stories from when he was young. You’re a spy? Yes?”

  “Sort of,” is Z’s unsatisfactory answer.

  “Sort of?”

  “The term. It really gets misused.” And trying to appease her, Z says, “I mean, colloquially.”

  “So you’re a smart spy, who cares about grammar?”

  “To me, a spy is more someone who spies against his or her own country. I’d never do that. That’s treasonous. Or, it’s the wrong kind of treasonous.”

  “Is there a right kind?”

  “I’m saying, it’s wrong. But that some wrong things, in certain circumstances, are inherently right.”

  “But you are a spy?”

  “I’m an operative. More or less.”

  “For who?”

  “For whom?”

  “You’re very annoying for someone asking a great amount of understanding from the new woman in his life.”

  “Sorry. Precision, when I’m under stress. I know it’s an issue.”

  “It’s annoying.”

  “You said, and I apologized.”

  The waitress puts her hands back on her hips, she taps a foot, and she considers Z, in his new, spy-ish form.

  “It still sounds crazy,” she says. “But it also makes some sense.” Then, at least fleetingly passing judgment in his favor, Z thinks, she kisses him for a good, long while.

  2014, Jerusalem

  The Shabbat siren sounds, and Ruthi yells at her secular son to turn off the TV. “Go stream nonsense on your computer in the bedroom,” she says, “and put on a shirt with buttons for dinner.”

  Ruthi lights the candles on the tiny patch of open counter next to the sink. The table, they carry back and forth to the balcony, depending on the height of the sun in the summer and the rain in its season. So she does her lighting in the kitchen, as, during the Sabbath, the candlesticks are not to be moved.

  Ruthi waves her hands before the flames and then presses them to her eyes for the blessing. It is in this window where a mother’s wishes are made.

  She first prays for her son’s good health and good fortune. Then she prays for the General. Let him find his way back. Let him finish what he started. Let him return to lead this country to safety and final borders, and a peace that will usher them into the future, even as the countries around them burn. She adds a prayer for the poor children of those countries, and one for the parents who shield them. On and on her wishing goes, until she stops herself, circling back to her son, so as not to over-wish her weekly allowance while welcoming the Sabbath into her home.

  It may be the first time in his life that the General can sit in his den and read the paper in peace and quiet, but for that shot, like the player’s needle endlessly spinning.

  That sound, it never seems to go away.

  The General heaves himself up, as if the air raid sirens were suddenly screaming, dumping the bowls in his lap to the floor. The General runs outside, taking the path behind the burn barrel, his dogs darting after him in a lather.

  He runs the dusty track to the front gate, hanging ajar, and races out into the road. He stands in its center, not yet sweating in the heat, his system still catching up with the mad dash he has made. The General cries out, screaming his son’s name. He calls to the boy, though the boy is right there. His son, his legacy, the one for whom he fights all his battles, the one for whom he fought them, even before this child was born.

  Here he lies with a bullet to the head, and next to him the General’s prized rifle.

  The ivory stock is covered in dust and wet with blood, and still the General can see, it’s a treasure. Two treasures, he thinks, as he scoops up—and runs off with—his wounded and dying and already dead son.

  He knows, right then, for a father to survive this is unthinkable. For him to live even one second after gathering up what cannot be, something is not right. The General holds the boy’s bloody body close and he looks, carefully, around. Yes. Something in his universe has gone awry.

  2002, Berlin

  Farid takes the last tie and finishes flaking the mainsail. It is a beautiful evening
, and he is in no rush at all.

  Joshua waits for him on the dock.

  “I liked that a lot, today,” Joshua says. “I’m feeling more confident, if that counts for anything.”

  “That’s a big part of it. Also, you sail better late in the day.”

  “Maybe it’s you noticing fewer mistakes when it’s darker.”

  “Or it could be that.”

  When all is trim and neat, Farid accepts a hand from Joshua and hops out of the boat. “I do think some people do better at certain times of day—in all things. If you’re a night person, you should recognize that and do what’s most important when you’re most at ease.”

  “Life lessons and sailing lessons,” Joshua says.

  “I’m not kidding. It took me a long time to learn that.”

  Joshua nods and, already holding his keys, starts to walk off. He stops when Farid doesn’t follow.

  “I’m going to stay,” Farid says.

  “I figured you might.” And, as if it needs explaining, Joshua says, “I mean, that first week, I saw you here. Just, you know, watching.” When Farid says nothing in reply, Joshua waves goodbye, keys jangling, and heads toward the path to the street.

  Farid watches him, calculating, trying to get a read.

  Surprising himself, he calls to Joshua, feeling as he does so that he’s speaking way too loudly. Then, though he’d really thought he’d wait on a different opportunity, he says, “I wanted to ask you. What if Egypt wasn’t your worry anymore?”

  “What if what?” Joshua says.

  Farid’s question pulls him right back.

  “I reached out to some people about your Cairo deal. If you’re interested, I know a person who can solve your problem at port.”

  Joshua raises his hands in surrender.

  “Honestly, I wasn’t trying to involve you. I’m still embarrassed I brought it up. It’s been bothering me ever since,” Joshua says. “Anyway, it’s way too big a favor to ask.”

  “I wasn’t offering a favor. I was making a pitch.”

  Joshua keeps trying to wave the whole thing away. “I couldn’t bear dragging you into this mess. Even if you helped clear Customs, they’ll shut us out of the market. It’s a nightmare, no matter what.”

  “Which is, again, why I want to discuss it. What if Egypt wasn’t your nightmare anymore? If your figures are anywhere near what you say—”

  “They are,” Joshua says.

  “Then let me be your representative for merchandising there. You won’t have to bear the cost of inventory. I’ll pay based on the volumes you move.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Exactly,” Farid says. “You don’t understand. But I do. I have connections, powerful people, who really like the terms I brought them. Also, it’s not about Egypt for me. I want Gaza as a territory too.”

  “That sounds like even more of a nightmare than Egypt,” Joshua says. “No offense! Or, if it’s too late for that, what I’m trying to say is, I thought there’s a blockade on?”

  “Which is why my offer is so good. I’m making it so that these aren’t your worries. And if it works with the small stuff, then you and I can discuss going big. The utilities in Gaza, the sewage treatment, the power grid, it’s all been knocked out by the Israelis. We could do servers. There is no limit once we start.”

  “That is big.”

  “There is a lot at stake, for a lot of people.”

  “Does that mean I’ll be breaking Israeli law?”

  “Israel’s laws aren’t the world’s. And they definitely aren’t Palestine’s.”

  Again, Joshua concedes defeat. “Let’s not go there. I’m asking, how will you get merchandise through if the borders are closed?”

  Farid shakes his head, disappointed in Joshua’s ignorance.

  He points down, and Joshua looks down.

  “Underneath,” Farid says. “The same way everything gets into Gaza. Through the tunnels.”

  Joshua does some nervous foot tapping and, finally, wipes his nose on the back of his hand.

  “It does sound like you’ve got it covered,” he says. “And I need it covered.”

  “Is that a deal?”

  “It could be. Only, it’s not how I do business.”

  “Obviously, we’ll set written conditions. I’m not asking to do it on a handshake.”

  “It’s not your end I’m worried about. It’s mine. If we’re going to do this,” Joshua says, “I want you to send someone to my guy in Cairo. He has a couple of laptops and a whole mess of phones. I want to know that you really can get things into Gaza. And, before we start, I want you to know that everything is as tip-top as I’m promising.”

  “Even better,” Farid says.

  “Listen, I’ll get you the info before I fly to Mumbai on Wednesday. I’m back the Wednesday after. Talk to me then,” Joshua says, and puts a hand on Farid’s arm. “If it all still sounds good, we can draft some contracts. But first, I want to hear that you’re happy. It’s important that when you look at me you see the face of a man you can trust.”

  2014, Hospital (near Tel Aviv)

  Poised as the night nurse is, on the outer edge of the crush of people assembled around the General’s bed, it’s she—looking absolutely guilty—who is first to catch Ruthi’s eye.

  The doctors are in the room along with a team of nurses, and, because the General is an important man and a legendary figure, and because he is himself a bulldozer who raised a pair of bulldozers for sons, it seems that the family could not be convinced to lessen its swelling numbers.

  Stuffed in with the night nurse and the attendant hospital staff are those two sons and their wives, and their many children, whom Ruthi can’t help but count, even then, confirming that all the General’s grandchildren are in attendance.

  She has not even crossed the threshold when the night nurse hooks her arm and takes her back into the hall.

  “It happened right after Shabbat. The sons already here when I showed up.” She frees Ruthi’s arm so that she can turn her friend to face her, now grasping Ruthi’s shoulders firmly. “They made me promise. I obviously wanted to call. I was dialing already when they stopped me.”

  “None of that matters now,” Ruthi says, though it deeply and painfully does. If she could have, she’d already have killed the weekend aide—from the rotating cast of ne’er-do-wells, none of whom Ruthi trusted—who’d covered her shifts when she was home. “Only tell me,” Ruthi says, “what’s gone wrong?”

  “Everything. Whatever little was working isn’t anymore. First the lungs, then the heart, now the kidneys are going into failure, and the liver is on its way too.” She pauses to tsk-tsk the medical facts of it. “From the liver, it’s never long.”

  Dr. Brodie exits the room then, pushing past without a word. The extraordinary power that the doctor carries away with him draws the family’s attentions outward, where they see their sweet Ruthi coming apart (she is well aware) in the hall.

  They fawn all over her. From their manner, it would seem to any observer that Ruthi is also family, and that it is true tenderness and warmth that she receives.

  Rightly so. For not only has Ruthi been caregiver to an incapacitated father and grandfather, but for how long prior was she his beloved and loyal right hand? Back in those days, Ruthi was like another sibling to those sons and daughters-in-law: attendant at the family gatherings, in on the private jokes, unfailingly available to listen to, absorb, and allay their endless worries about a sizable, excitable man who was always stretched perilously thin.

  When the General was newly prime minister, and Lily still newly gone, Ruthi was like another grandmother, as well. She remembered the birthdays, spoiled the kids rotten, filling in wherever possible for the General’s love—always great and plentiful when he had time to give it—while he ran a country that was never not on the edge of destruction.

  The skinny son now hooks her arm, as the night nurse had, and escorts her over to the bedside. The littlest grandc
hild hangs off her free hand.

  Ruthi knows and keeps telling herself that the family’s tenderness is genuine, troubled as she is by the knowledge that the choice not to call her was equally sincere. She struggles to focus on the General while abashedly reconciling these contradictions in her mind.

  Ruthi leans over the side rail and, freeing her hands, presses them hard to the General’s, feeling him, still with them, alive.

  She stays there for no more than an instant before letting go and backing silently out into the hall. Because like family is not family.

  After all those years, Ruthi sees herself as no more than what she definitively is, an employee hired to do a job. Looking in upon that vigil, she watches the circle close up around the bed, the General hidden from view.

  2002, Paris

  They wake up twisted in the sheets. It is late in the day and Z and the waitress are both confused for a moment as to where they are. The waitress tells Z to get dressed, she’s going to treat him to a fancy dinner, a thank-you for all his generous hosting, since she basically moved in on their first date.

  When Z says that he doesn’t want any thanks and, anyway, he’d rather eat in, the waitress won’t hear of it.

  “You go out when you want to. You must. I met you out twice.”

  “Lapses in judgment,” he says. “Both times.”

  If Z won’t budge, the waitress says she’s going to make him a nice heimishe-Italian meal. She will see to it that he is thanked whether he likes it or not. “If you didn’t adore me before,” she says, “you will after I cook.”

  The waitress goes downstairs and returns loaded with groceries. Along with the food, she’s also bought him a pair of proper wineglasses and two very fine bottles of wine. “Open the white,” she tells him, “while I get to work.”

  She pokes through his cabinets, making do with the poor selection of pots and pans and the one passable broken-handled cutting knife.