She still hadn’t decided, but that night she told the doctor that when he finished, he should come there again. So furious was she about the expression of refusal on his face that she added a brief, spontaneous speech about her people and their needs. It had felt good, standing in front of him like that, although she knew very well that if he asked her more about “her people,” she would not have been able to answer. What actually made them hers? What made her theirs? The fact that they had stood together in line for water in a Bedouin camp? That together they scraped leftover food from plates in the kitchen? That they looked into each other’s eyes to see which deaths caused tears and which ones didn’t? They were from different villages, different tribes, different paths. If they had anything in common, it was the name given to them by others who were of a different color. What did she actually owe them, apart from the metallic rattle of the chains of the journey that bound them together? To emigrate is to leave one place for another, with the place you’ve left tied to your ankle with steel chains. If it’s difficult for a person to emigrate, it’s only because it’s difficult to walk in the world when an entire country is shackled to your ankle, dragging behind you wherever you go.
That night, when she finished talking to the doctor outside and went back into the garage, the man who had come from the border was sitting on the table and looking at her. His shoulders were broad, and somehow, despite the journey, still not stooped. It had occurred to her that being alone there with him so late at night could easily have become dangerous. But when she looked into his eyes, she saw something she had never thought she’d see in the eyes of a man looking at a woman. The awe of a person looking at someone stronger than he is. His broad shoulders and great height could not heal his injured hand, which was now clean and sterilized under a bandage as white as that goose’s feathers. The man reached into his pocket and took out a wrinkled note. If there had been a moment when she thought of telling him to leave his money in his pocket, it vanished when the awe in his eyes made her skin glow.
In the days that followed, the people began to look at her differently. And when they looked at her differently, she began to be different. The way she walked. The way she stood. There was even something different about the smell of her body. While her gait and posture were visible, no one was aware of the different smell of her body. Since the doctor had run Asum down, no one had been close enough to smell it. No one had gotten very close to her at all since the doctor hit Asum. They looked at her from a distance. Spoke to her from a distance. That “from a distance” had a name – respect. The people’s awe of her wafted around her like perfume. She immersed herself in their submissive glances as if they were a milk bath. An outsider would not understand it. Certainly not Eitan. Awe, respect and submission were not words Eitan concerned himself with because he took their existence for granted. Just as people pay no attention to the miraculous flow of electricity through the wires of their houses until the flow stops.
At the end of every night in the garage, when she walked to the caravan, exhausted, Sirkit stopped to water the rose bush. In the depleting blackness of the night, the scent of the roses was strong, almost mystical. She was careful not to inhale too deeply. Two-thirds of her lungs was fine, but more than that might intoxicate her. Might make her forget other smells. And she must never forget that even if that breath was all roses, the next one might be all something else. Or might not be at all. And also that bush, which was here now, could so easily not be here in another week. It might dry up and wither or be torn out and moved to different ground, leaving only the earth gaping in shock to suggest that there might have been something there previously, a fullness that had been plundered. The roses reached up to the sky and under the ground, the roots reached out as well, but not to the sky – to something different, yearning for some mossy, muddy truth the desert sky did not know existed. Above the roots, under the roses, lay a package made by human hands. Ants scurried along its outer sides. Damp earthworms rubbed against its corners. Blind worms bumped into it as they slithered along, and hurried to dig themselves another path. And the package stayed where it was, unperturbed. Three kilograms of white powder, carefully wrapped. Resistant to dampness, mustiness, worms’ anger and people’s investigations. The roses reached to the sky, the roots clutched the ground, and the package lay quietly, as packages do, indifferent to whether it would lie there for eternity or be pulled out to have its insides cut to pieces.
At the end of each night she spent in the garage, Sirkit would stop at the bush, water the roses and ponder the package under her feet. A great deal of money. Perhaps too much. Perhaps it had been a mistake not to take it to Davidson’s door that night. If she’d had a plan when she dug under the bush, it was a mystery even to her. It had been almost dawn when she decided that the hole she had dug was deep enough. Her body shook, but her hands were steady. She placed the package in the hole and it lay there, as plump and relaxed as a baby. And with that baby, as with any other baby, you had to wait to see how it would develop. Even if she never came back and squatted beside the bush, if she never dug out what she had put there in the depths of the earth, the pleasure of knowing the burial place of something everyone was searching for would be hers alone.
The days had passed, and with them the nights in the garage. The roses continued to reach to the sky, and from day to day their reaching became more daring, more brazen. Now they no longer bent their heads before the moon and the sun. They looked straight at them. And if the roses allowed themselves that, it was no wonder that the roots also became greedy. They demanded greater and greater depth, and the roses reached higher and higher. Sirkit watered the bush and listened. She heard the package which, until then, had lain as quiet as a sleeping, good-natured baby, begin to writhe. She lay on her mattress, tossing and turning when she should be sleeping. Trying to decide whether to dare to look around for buyers. To shed once and for all the dust of the woman she had been and expose the royal armor of glittering scales under it. As she tossed and turned, scores of people she had known crowded onto the mattress beside her. Her mother, her father, people from the village, the dead children, the goose that was all magnificent white feathers. She didn’t drive them away. On the contrary, it was amidst the din of their chatter that she managed to fall asleep. And then – white, dusty dreams visited her.
She was edgy and exhausted in the mornings. Stumbled out of the caravan and looked at the bush. Through the earth, the labyrinth of roots, the damp web of earthworms, the package hummed to her.
From one night to the next, the scent of the roses grew heavier. Now everyone was talking about it. Even when the caravan door was closed, the fragrance crept in through the cracks. Devouring people’s dreams. It might have been nice if it hadn’t been so aggressive. The bush demanded that its presence be recognized, forced you to inhale its scent deeply. If you could inhale it all, you shouldn’t dare to settle for less. Otherwise, you were just as stupid as that goose with the open gate, the untied rope and the feathers that had been plucked one by one before noon.
In the end, the Bedouins found her. Perhaps they had asked in the restaurant about Asum and someone had pointed to her and said: his wife. Perhaps someone had approached them at his own initiative. There was no lack of people who would snitch on you if someone convinced them there was a reason. It didn’t really matter. What did matter was that they came, and when they came they broke her nose, two teeth and two ribs and left her with a shiny purple ring around her left eye. But even through the broken nose, she could still smell the roses. In fact, their smell was even stronger than before. The scent faded only in the garage, when the doctor came and drove away the roses with the strong smell of his antiseptic. He spread it on her nose. Around her eye. Along the length of the cut under her ear. Her face burned, and even more, thoughts of the package burned in her mind. But all of that passed when she told him about the shipment. His disappointment infuriated her so much that nothing burned anymore but her desire for him to leave
.
*
Eitan also had a burning desire to leave. So he stood up and left. The simplicity of his steps boosted his spirits. This is where the garage floor ended. This is where the desert earth began. Here was the SUV. With every movement of his muscles – intoxicating freedom. To drive away from there and never see her again. Ever. He punched in the code. Buckled his safety belt. His brain was filled with pleasant emptiness. Not a single thought passed through it as he drove along the dirt roads except, perhaps, for the strangely persistent image of the purple stain around Sirkit’s left eye. A hand he did not know had aimed an accurate punch at it. Blood vessels tore. Capillaries burst. The purplish fluid had spread under the delicate skin, a glass of wine spilled on an embroidered tablecloth. And now it was that closed eye that stayed with him as he turned the wheel. What lived there, behind the lowered velvet curtain? If she had any tears, regret, question marks, even the possibility of compassion, then that was undoubtedly where they existed. For a moment, he allowed himself to roll up the purple velvet curtain and look into her closed eye. What he saw there, what he imagined he saw there, made him tremble.
A long moment later, he averted his gaze. Angry, almost furious. He was once again being drawn in. He turned on the heater though there was no need for it. Turned on the radio, though there was no real need for that either. He took a deep breath of the artificially heated air. He listened intently to two artificially produced songs. In another minute, he’d reach the main road. A female singer – he wasn’t sure of her name – moaned that they were meant for each other. He listened closely to her. Ready to believe. But by the second chorus, it was clear to Eitan that even the singer didn’t believe. Her voice was metallic and hollow, and Eitan thought she wouldn’t recognize love even if it punched her in the left eye. He switched to a station where female singers knew what they were talking about when they sang, “Baby, I need you”. It was Billie Holiday, and he believed her in a way he didn’t believe any other singer. Perhaps because she died a long time ago and her love was no longer something that could be measured, only sung about. Old songs about old stories. That was what he needed now. Even the story of that night would one day be an old story. It was definitely a comforting thought.
Right near the main road, a battered van passed the SUV. It drove off the asphalt just as Eitan was about to turn onto it, and the turn was so wild that he was shocked when there was no collision. Since he’d hit the Eritrean, he no longer considered himself a model driver where safety was concerned, but he was nevertheless stunned to see that it never occurred to the driver to stop and apologize. The van raced forward along the dirt road and Eitan muttered to himself, “Crazy Bedouins,” as he was about to drive onto the main road. Suddenly he braked. As the van moved further away, he followed its progress through the rearview mirror. Three hundred meters from where he stood was the junction where the dirt road that led to the garage met the one that led to the kibbutz. He prayed silently that the van would turn toward the kibbutz, although the voice in his mind was absolutely certain it would not. The van reached the junction and drove straight toward the garage as fast as a battered van could drive on such a rocky road. They were going back to finish what they had begun. They would get the shipment from her or kill her, or they would get the shipment from her and kill her anyway.
He turned the wheel some more before realizing he was doing it, and as he drove along a side road to the garage, he didn’t think even once about what he was doing. If he had, he wouldn’t have been able to do it. He would have sat there thinking, considering, debating, deliberating, agonizing, philosophizing, wavering – and meanwhile, the people who had broken Sirkit’s ribs, her nose and two of her teeth would break everything else that could be broken. (As a doctor, he was intensely aware of the myriad possibilities.) The side road was faster, and he had no doubt that he would arrive in time. The only question bothering him was what would happen afterwards. He couldn’t plan very much beyond going inside, grabbing Sirkit, putting her in the SUV and getting the hell out of there. It might not be an especially clever plan, but it was the best he could come up with, and in many ways it wasn’t a bad idea at all.
He stopped the SUV with a squeal of brakes in front of the back entrance to the garage and ran inside. She was lying where he had left her. Her left eye was even more swollen and purple than it had been earlier, and her right eye looked at him with such awe and astonishment that if he’d had the time, he would have been thrilled. But he had no time, so he roared at her, “They’re coming, get up!” and bent to pick her up himself. She didn’t protest. Perhaps she understood what he wanted, or perhaps she was just too surprised to object. He carried her as quickly as he could to the door, and then realized that although he’d managed to get there before them, that didn’t mean that he’d manage to get out before them. The sound of running and voices shouting in Arabic came from outside the garage. They were surrounded.
They didn’t look like bad people. Their faces were totally ordinary. Quite different from each other, as you would expect people’s faces to be – here a pointy chin and there a broad one, deep-set eyes in one face, protruding eyes in the other – but they shared the characteristics common to all members of the human family. The guy who blocked the back door of the garage reminded Eitan of his medic course commander, only younger. And the guy who blocked the front door looked like (and maybe he actually was) the security guard at the entrance to the Negev Mall parking area. There was something surprising about that, at least for Eitan. After the wild car race, he had expected something more impressive. More frightening. Muscular arms, thick eyebrows, the hate-filled expression familiar to him from images of terrorists on TV. The two young men at the doors and the one who came running a few seconds later reminded him more of high-school kids racing into class late, panting and stressed.
But they had a gun, and that changed the picture. When the kid who resembled his medic course commander pulled a switchblade out of his pocket (he did it with the practiced movement of someone taking out a pen to sign a receipt), Eitan understood that they were indeed in trouble. Because the people who didn’t look like bad people did look like working people. Their job was to get the shipment and apparently to kill the person who had ripped them off. And that someone, based on the conclusion the three had certainly reached, was Sirkit. And him.
The guy who looked like the security guard shouted something in Arabic, and the other two began to search the garage. Eitan wondered how much time had passed since he’d come in and sent away Semar and the other two Eritreans who had been staying with Sirkit, and what the chances were that one of them might decide to return to check on her. Not that they could do much, what with that gun the Bedouin was pointing at both their faces. He gestured for Eitan to put Sirkit down, and he put her gently on the floor, not convinced that she would be able to stand. She was able to stand, but her body shook from the strain, and perhaps also from fear. When Eitan saw that, his body began to shake as well. Uncontrollably. Because if Sirkit was afraid, then there was evidently a good reason to be afraid. The guy who looked like the mall guard noticed the shaking and laughed. He said something to his younger pal with the knife, who also laughed. Maybe they weren’t bad people after all. And maybe anyone would react the way they did when he finally caught someone who had evaded him for so long, someone who had stolen from him, got him into trouble and made his boss yell at him so loudly that he went deaf.
The younger guy who looked like his medic course commander asked Eitan where the shipment was. He had almost no accent, and Eitan recalled that, to break the ice, the commander had done fantastic imitations of Arabs speaking Hebrew.
“I don’t know.”
He guessed that the punch was coming even before it hit him, but nothing prepared him for its power. The last time he’d been hit was sometime back in the ninth grade. He’d already forgotten the taste of blood in his mouth, the explosion of pain into a multitude of small pieces. He almost fell onto the cement floor,
but steadied himself at the last minute. He tried to open his left eye, only to discover that he couldn’t. Perhaps it had been the same Bedouin who had smashed Sirkit’s face because he always aimed at the same eye. And now they had twin black eyes. Their faces, so different from one another, now had an identical swollen, half-closed left eye, and maybe a broken nose as well.
“Where’s the shipment?”
Eitan didn’t answer. It wasn’t that he was trying to act tough. He truly didn’t know what to say. The only person who might know was standing beside him now. Barely standing, but bravely silent. Eitan wondered if it was that insane composure of hers or actually a crazy sense of pride, the sort that would rather die here than give them what they wanted.
It was neither composure nor pride. She was silent because she knew that if she told them where the shipment was, they’d kill them. Or at least him. No one would believe that she was the one who had organized it all. Too stupid. Too black. A woman. Her doctor stood beside her wiping away the blood that had begun to flow from his nose. His movements were shaky, confused. He was undoubtedly more skilled at cleaning up other people’s blood. The guy with the gun lit a cigarette and said they had plenty of time, then gestured at the kid with the knife, who went over and punched Eitan again. Sirkit wanted to avert her eyes, but forced herself to keep looking. It was the least she owed him.
Eitan was already on the floor. He looked small. It was incredible how small he looked. That was why she couldn’t believe it when he suddenly straightened up and told the guy with the gun that he’d give him the shipment. The guy with the gun looked pleased. He took another drag of his cigarette, only to show Eitan and Sirkit that he wasn’t the least bit stressed and had all the time in the world. Then he said to Eitan, “Ya’allah, habibi. Where is it?” Eitan got up from the floor gingerly. She watched him walk toward the door. There was no way he could know about the roses, so what the hell was he doing? She watched as he stopped near the crate of medical supplies.
Waking Lions Page 29
