The Debt of Tamar

by Dweck, Nicole

  She began to doze while she worked, painting in a dream where paints never dried or dripped and fathers only slept and parents never died. Hannah pressed her tubes frantically to get the last drops of paint. She stood while she worked, her canvas propped upon a splintered, wooden easel. “Almost done,” she whispered late one evening. Selim had yet to say a word to her. She breathed heavily as she worked. Even in the darkness, he could tell that her face was moist and her cheeks flushed. His eyes had been on her throughout the night and for the first time, she looked at him directly. “It’s done,” she said as she moved the canvas over to Selim’s side of the room. “It looks like him doesn’t it?”

  “It does.”

  She nodded slowly as though his response required some prolonged measure of contemplation, then sat in the chair beside his bed. “I’m Hannah,” she mumbled as her tall frame sunk low into the chair.

  For the first time that evening, Selim turned his bandaged face away from her. His right side, still exposed, was irritated by the rough, cheap, pillowcase it was pressed up against. He felt warm tears make their way down the side of his face, dampening the fabric, making it a little less intolerable.

  “Goodnight, Hannah,” he whispered.

  “Goodnight.”

  She awoke in that hard wooden chair with a stiff neck. As she stood, she turned to examine the canvas in the daylight. The paint, just hours before wet and dreamy, had to her exhausted surprise, finally dried. The portrait was complete. She awoke and Davide Herzikova had died.

  Jewish law dictated that the dead should be buried as soon as possible, and so the next day, over a hundred people gathered under the leaves of wild oaks and cedar flurries to say goodbye to Davide Herzikova. In the overarching forests of the Jewish cemetery, dozens of friends and family members stood quietly as the Rabbi recited the mourners prayer, the Kaddish. Every so often, the crowd would chant “amen” in muffled unison.

  Twenty yards away, a black town car was parked on the side of the glistening tar road that wound through the cemetery. Two of the four tires were up on the grass as the motor ran quietly all throughout the procession. No one but Hannah seemed to notice the car, or the barely visible silhouette of a man seated beyond the tinted windowpane. She examined the shadowy figure in the distance. He lifted some sort of cloth to his face. After a moment, he leaned back and disappeared from view. As they lowered the wooden casket into the ground, the black town car slipped away and Hannah said goodbye to her father for the last time.

  Back at the old house on stilts, she and her mother sat shiva. Hannah’s mother, Nastasia, took a sip of her black coffee and looked out of the living room window at the shallow lake that passed beneath her stilted home. The tall windows, cloaked in a sunlit mist, appeared as florescent light panels against the dark walls. It was unusually humid weather. The room dripped with moisture and Nastasia, feeling claustrophobic, made her way to the window on the far end of the room. She pressed her fingers against the windowpane. She examined the bare grass outside. “Where have the orange groves gone?” A small measure of panic rose in her voice. “Who would cut down my trees?” She turned around and examined all the people gathered in her living room. “What are they all doing here?” she whispered to Hannah.

  Hannah knew that her mother was somewhere else entirely right now, back in Tiberius, in the small cottage she’d once lived in, atop a hill, overlooking the Sea of the Galilee.

  As the visitors arrived, Hannah led her mother to seat cushions and high piled pillows laid out on the floor. Jewish law strictly forbid mourners from sitting on couches or chairs.

  Visitors offered their condolences as they munched on cashews and dried dates. All throughout the room, neighbors and friends exchanged memories of Davide Herzikova. While he was loved throughout his community and had gathered good friends throughout his years living in America, Davide’s past was shrouded in mystery. Large blocks of his life had been kept private, shared only with his wife Nastasia, who could not recall much of the past now anyway. Davide Herzikova was a man of secrets- Secrets that were now buried six feet underground.

  31

  Sensing someone there, Selim turned and let his black eyes fall on the sliver of body exposed through the crack in the door. A few degrees of isolation waned between them as the door yielded an inch or two exposing the full breath of her scoping frame. Dark shadows ran the length of her cheekbones and high slinking neck as her bright eyes glistened like jade against her ghostly complexion.

  “Can I come in?”

  He nodded, just barely.

  She made her way to the shades.

  “Don’t,” he called out, but she’d already opened the blinds allowing the sunlight to pour in. He lifted his hands to shield his face from the light.

  Despite his objection, she didn’t spare him her gaze. In him, she detected all the elements of a cruel Picasso painting, like Les Mademoiselles d’Avignon, where a face was not a face, but was contorted into something stunningly painful, beautiful and stubborn. “I’m sorry, I can put them back down if you want me to.”

  He kept his hand covering his cheek. “It’s just, I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

  Her eyes fell to the hole in his throat, his puss-filled eye, and the swollen mass of his left side. That the right side was perfect in every way only made the left side that much more devastating. “It doesn’t bother me.”

  He cast an incredulous glance in her direction.

  “It doesn’t.”

  “All right.” He turned his face away. “If it starts to bother you…”

  “You’re one of the stubborn ones aren’t you?” she cut in, then offered up a sympathetic smile.

  “I’m not sure what I am,” he said, before turning his attentions toward the task of smoothing out creases in his bed sheets.

  She approached the chair by his side, the long pleats of her dress rustling curiously over narrow hips. Her broad, bare shoulder sloped casually as she slid her oversized tote down the length of her arm letting it fall to the ground with reckless ease.

  The curtain that had divided the room was now pushed back and the bed that her father had once occupied was empty. The portrait of Davide Herzikova was still leaning against the wall facing Selim’s bed.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.” The tide of his breath heaved as the movement of air scuffed along the insides of his lungs.

  Her eyes welled up and for a moment it looked as though she were going to walk out.

  “Hannah?” he said quietly.

  She turned and forced a smile.

  “You left the painting here. Why?”

  As she burrowed her fists into her pockets, she looked up and shrugged. “Because it’s not very good.”

  “I disagree with you.”

  “You’re quite the contrarian, aren’t you?”

  He glanced up at her with wide, red-rimmed eyes. “I already told you. I don’t know what I am.”

  She bit her lip then looked away hurriedly. “So what do you like about the portrait?”

  “A lot of things.”

  “Like what? Specifically?”

  “Maybe, the eyes.”

  “The eyes?”

  “I think you captured his eyes very well.”

  She took a moment to catch her breath. “Really?”

  “You seem surprised.”

  “It’s just …I was having a hard time...” Her voice trailed off as she dropped her chin and dragged shaky fingers through her sand-colored hair.

  “They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. I imagine a soul is a difficult thing to paint…”

  “That’s exactly right.” She lifted her head as her hands fell to her sides.

  “You did good,” he said quietly.

  She shook her head. “There were so many things I didn’t know about him.”

  “You knew him.”

  She tore her gaze away from the glossy tiles, looked up and scowled. “What makes you think you can tell a thing like that?
”

  Selim studied the portrait for a long moment. “Well here I am, staring at his eyes. They seem to be staring back at me, too. You couldn’t have done that, you couldn’t do that, without knowing a person.” A moment passed before he was overtaken by a coughing fit.

  She reached for the cup by his bed and held it to his lips.

  Covered in tubes and tape, his hand jerked around her fingers as he tried to gain control of himself. He took a few shallow sips before his cough was lulled to silence.

  Hand to hand, skin to skin, they were suspended in the frozen current of the static air between them.

  His eyes met hers.

  Hannah let her hand slip away as she stepped back clumsily.

  He studied her for a long moment. His eyes, like drills, bore through her mercilessly.

  She tore her gaze away and let it escape to the clock on the wall.

  “You have somewhere to be?” He stared on unflinchingly.

  Footsteps shuffled in the hall as the soft jingling of keys and pocketed loose change grew bolder. In the doorframe, a tall man with sharp, angular cheekbones stood with his head hung low over stacked papers resting in an open manila folder. A stethoscope hung from around his neck.

  Dr. Rosen, a senior member of the hospital’s oncology unit, stood in the doorway with his thick brows forming a “V.” He leaned his tall frame against the door panel, as he shuffled through papers stacked neatly in the manila folder.

  “Selim, how’re you today? The nurses say you barely touched your morphine drip this weekend—That’s great to hear, so the pain is going away?”

  “I’m ok.” He smiled.

  Dr. Rosen loosened the stethoscope from around his neck and plugged his ears with the instrument.

  “Deep breaths,” he instructed, as he slid the metal tip beneath the opening of Selim’s gown. “I want to wait a few days before we begin the radiation.” He wrote something in the folder, capped his pen, and returned it to his pocket. “We should talk about what’s going to happen as we move forward with the treatment.”

  Hannah reached for her bag and headed for the door. “I shouldn’t have barged in like this. It’s obviously a bad time.”

  “Hannah,” Selim called after her.

  She turned and was still in the doorway.

  “Same time tomorrow?”

  She swallowed hard then nodded. “See you then.”

  32

  The next day at noon she was back as she’d promised.

  Her blond hair hung loose in waves that fell to her elbows. Cloaked in the luminosity of her white linen dress, she appeared to Selim, strikingly bare. She wore no bracelets, no watch, no polish on her hands. Her only adornment- the crimson ruby ring bright against her ivory complexion.

  The room became saturated with a cool, misted memory. For a moment, he was transported seven thousand miles away, back to his home on the shores of the Bosphorus. Selim looked up at her, astounded. Her scent filled his memory. It came to him as though it could break through walls and through layers of time.

  “You smell like the sea,” he whispered. They had closed up the hole in his throat and he was beginning to get his voice back.

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?” She pulled back her hair then sank into the chair by his bed. “The sea where I live has cigarette butts and garbage floating in it—probably a few dead bodies too.”

  She smelled familiar. Fresh and cool, but damp and rich. She smelled of the Bosphorus. He closed his eyes and took a deep, long breath. “Not that sea.” He envisioned her through the blank canvas of his imagination. She was beautiful. “Why haven’t you been painting?”

  “How do you know I haven’t been painting?”

  “That scent, it usually comes with you.”

  “That’s the smell of the paints. My hair and clothes soak it up when I’m in the studio for too long. Most people don’t like it at all, I don’t know anyone who misses it.”

  A stocky attendant in an ice blue uniform appeared offering Selim a selection of snacks laid out on a purple plastic tray. He frowned, then waved the tray and the nurse away with his bony hand. He turned his attention back to Hannah. “I do.”

  “You do what?”

  “I miss it. That smell you were talking about. I miss it very much.”

  The rough strap of her leather bag whipped against the glossy floor as she let her purse slip from her lap. She sat unmoved as the contents spilled throughout the room.

  “And it’s not at all toxic,” he continued. “Not to me.”

  She swallowed the knot in her throat then looked around at the mess she had made. The ruby, rich and sumptuous as molasses glistened as her lean fingers grappled along the floor for a lipstick, a few scattered coins, and an antique mirror from a lifetime away. When she’d gathered her belongings, she rose and stood in her place. She stood as though she were waiting for instruction. She stood as though she were waiting for a purpose.

  “Hannah?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you ok?”

  She frowned then swept the tip of her shoe against the floor. “Do you mind if I stay?”

  “I’d mind if you left.”

  “I’m not going to bother you. Brought something to read here with me.” She held up a book as she spoke.

  He nodded but said nothing.

  She sank back into the seat of the chair and buried herself behind a thick wall of literature.

  He examined her curiously as the minutes passed.

  Her tentative gaze, met by his inquisitive eyes, crept over the edge of her book.

  “Hannah?”

  She placed the book in her lap.

  “You’re not reading?”

  She fidgeted in the chair then slouched low in the seat.

  “You seem, I don’t know—unsettled?”

  She looked over at the portrait of her father then turned her attentions to the steady drip of I.V fluid bagged by Selim’s side. It seemed to tick with each and every drip. Leaning forward, she slid the book under her seat. “The truth is, I don’t want to read anything right now.”

  As he peered into her slinking emerald eyes, the sound of silence gushed throughout the room like a seething, scalding wave.

  “We could talk?” he said after a time.

  She dropped her chin and looked away. “I don’t want to talk.” Her bright eyes sought refuge in shadowy crevices throughout the dark room. “I don’t want to talk,” she said a little more loudly this time. She wielded her words as one might wield a weapon.

  He raised his hands. “Fair enough.”

  So they sat quietly for the next few minutes, their whispering eyes saying more to one another than their clumsy words ever could.

  At some point during that stretch of silence, he tore away the monitoring device clipped to his finger.

  She eyed him curiously.

  He reached for her hand, turning it over so that her palm was exposed. Cautiously, he dragged his finger across her skin drawing an invisible “H” over her palm.

  As she tried to pull away, he tightened his grasp around her wrist.

  “A.” Her wide eyes trailed his precise movements as he carried on with his whimsical pursuit.

  “P.” She shivered as though she were being touched by nothing more than the weight of that ethereal letter.

  “P.” His finger continued to glide across her pale skin.

  “Y.” The muscles in her hand loosened until her palm melted into his.

  Selim looked up- eyes serious and alert. With his fingers wrapped around her wrist, they sat there suspended in that moment.

  Outside, clouds were simmering in the hot grey sky. A wet wind jettisoned past through a narrow crack in the window as he loosened his grip and let her hand slip away.

  Her eyes sparkled peculiarly while her lips came to a part. “Selim?” she whispered.

  He brought his finger to his mouth and hushed her with his eyes. Their bodies were still and their breathing slowed to a stop.
Only the world’s breath breathed for them.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  The moment was complete.

  33

  Something strange was happening to Hannah. Her father was gone, her mother a ghost. She was grieving for her losses, yet a new energy had taken her by force, a stranger from room 301.

  More than ever before, Hannah began spending long hours in the studio, late into the night. She would come home with her hair covered in red and blue splotches of paint. She would bring her paintings to his hospital room and cover his wall with every scene the eye could capture.

  Selim’s once sterile cubicle had started out as a unit of solitary confinement. Then slowly, over the next few weeks, portraits and landscapes began to cover the walls. Hannah’s oil paintings hummed in hues of pastel violets and blues. The room became a gallery of countless portraits, fiery sunsets, lovers kissing, children laughing. She took bits and piece of the outside world to give to him.

  She spent the mornings by his side. They laughed and talked about life and politics and faith. She read to him from the works of Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese philosopher who believed happiness could not be contained without the carvings of sorrow deep within one’s soul. He recited his favorite verses of Voltaire. “I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms,” the words came to him in waves. Musings of the wise ones, Emerson, the Afghan Rumi, the eleventh century mystic Ghazali.

  In the afternoons he slept, dreaming of sweet halvah and sugar coated pineapples sliced and glistening like yellow half-moons. He dreamed of bundles of licorice stems Mother had brought home from the sweet shop. His dreams took place in days gone by, when Mother still smelled of lemon and cinnamon spice, when she still loved him. He had silent dreams, dreams where nothing happened at all, dreams of a white bliss and nothingness, sheer and pure and fair. A dream without a sound, sight or smell. A dream of empty space and peaceful nothings.