by Sayed Kashua
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. His son? 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 thi
n delicate hand, in blue ink, the name: Yonatan.
PART
TWO
ELECTRIC RADIATOR
Yonatan is dead. I buried him last Thursday. I paid two Arab teenagers to carry the coffin. Aside from me, no one else came to the funeral. No one was invited. He was a twenty-eight-year-old man, just like me.
“He could die at any moment”—that’s what I was told when I first laid eyes on him. That was six years ago. I had just graduated from Hebrew University with a degree in social work and gotten a job at the east Jerusalem bureau for outpatient substance abuse treatment run by the Ministry of Social Affairs. I knew the place well; it was where I’d done my internship during my final year of school.
I was twenty-two years old and had spent the last three years living in the student dorms. After graduation, I managed to stay on for three more months, but in late October, when the new students started to arrive, I was forced to find someplace else to live. I took a number off a notice that had been posted outside the dorms—seeking third roommate, it said in Arabic—and called from a public phone.
That evening I turned my keys in to the dorm monitor and made my way to the Nusseibah housing projects, in Beit Hanina row 3, building 1, apartment 2.
“You’re right on time,” Wassim said. “I have to go to work. I got a friend to cover me until six. I’m leaving you a key, but make your own copy, okay? My shift’s over at nine and I’ll be home by nine thirty, so if you have to go out or anything leave me the key in the electrical cabinet downstairs.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Okay,” he said. “Welcome.”
The sun was setting and it was freezing in the apartment. I’d come with all my belongings. They were stuffed into three bags: one backpack, which had been used for school and then for work, and two identical gym bags with the emblem of the German national soccer team. They were the bags my mother had bought for me when I first left home.
In the bedroom, a neon light flickered continuously without ever coming to life. There was a damp, moldy smell, but I didn’t dare open the window. I buttoned my coat all the way up and tucked my head into the collar. It seemed like it was colder inside than out, and winter was just beginning.
The metal-framed bed groaned when I put my bags on it. Wassim had made sure there was a mattress for me, just as he’d promised over the phone, but it was smaller than the frame of the bed and it was very thin, the kind Arabs use for divans. I switched on the hot water heater outside the shower. The toilet looked as though someone had tried to clean it but it was still dirty and the water at the bottom of the bowl was black. I made a note to myself: get sodium chloride. From our phone conversation I had learned that Wassim lived in the apartment with his cousin Majdi, that they were both from Jat, that Wassim was a special-ed teacher, and that Majdi was in the middle of his internship at a law office. What kind of special-ed classes was Wassim teaching at this hour, I wondered.
There was a small heater in the living room, the kind with a screen and two electric coils. As soon as I plugged it in the lights in the apartment dimmed. The heater made a sizzling sound. I brought the heater with me and sat down on the wicker couch. The coils burned a pale yellow and I had to practically sit on top of it to feel any heat. I put my hands in front of the metal screen, which was blackened with dust and charred pita. The coffeepot on the table was flanked by two dirty glasses and the contents were cold. In the dorms at least there were radiators.
I did not call my mother. I’ll talk to her tomorrow, I thought. That was the longest the conversation could be put off. And anyway there was no phone in the house, and for all I knew no pay phones at all in Beit Hanina. Tomorrow, I told myself, I’ll call her from work.
Once I’d warmed up a bit, I went into my room and started to unpack my clothes. I didn’t have much, and most of what I had was dirty. It had been more than three weeks since I’d last been home and if I didn’t go back over the coming weekend, I’d have to find a laundry. There had to be one somewhere in the neighborhood.
I put the clothes in the closet without sorting them and went back to the electric heater. Once I’d warmed up, I returned to the room and unpacked my kitchenware: one plate, one cup, a tablespoon, a teaspoon, a fork, a knife, and a frying pan. I set it all out on the plastic table in the bedroom. Then I took out my sheets and the heavy comforter that my mother had insisted on buying for me. I hoped it would get me through the first night in the apartment. The next day, I decided, I’d buy an electric radiator. Call Mom, then buy radiator.
An hour after I’d turned on the boiler, I went to check for hot water. I tried the faucet with the red sticker, gave it some time, and then tried the other one. Nothing. I figured the water heater must need a little more time. In the meanwhile I took off my shoes, left my jacket on, and crawled under the covers. I shivered for a while but then felt the heat begin to spread through my body and my eyes begin to close.
I was startled awake by the sound of a door slamming and it took me a few seconds to remember that I was in the new apartment. I sat up in bed. A head and shoulders poked through the doorway.
“Hi, did I wake you? I saw the light was on and . . .”
“No, no, I was just taking a little rest.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, still standing in the doorway. “I’m Majdi.”
I got out of bed and walked over to him, feeling the cold rise up from the floor, seeping through my socks and into my feet. I introduced myself and shook my roommate’s hand.
“Wow,” Majdi said, “I can’t believe we let you freeze in here like this. He didn’t tell you we have a heater?”
“Sure, I turned it on in the living room.”
“Not that one,” Majdi said, turning around and motioning me to follow. He walked through the kitchen and out to a little box of a balcony. “We’ve got an amazing kerosene heater. I can’t believe Wassim didn’t tell you.”
“He was in a rush to get to his shift,” I said, “and I got here late.”
“How did you survive in this cold? The house is freezing! We keep the heater on the balcony because it emits toxic fumes when you shut it off.” Majdi pulled a lighter from his coat pocket, leaned over the heater, unscrewed a little domelike lid, removed it, and then threaded his hand in from the bottom and lit the wick. “We’ll let it burn for a little while out here. It’s only really dangerous when you light it and extinguish it, that’s why we always do it on the balcony. This window stays open, too. Anyway, how are you doing?”
I nodded and Majdi pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his coat and offered me one.
“I don’t smoke, but it doesn’t bother me,” I said. He lit one for himself and looked over toward the bathroom. “What, he fixed the boiler?” The red light was still on.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I turned it on at around six and an hour later there was still no hot water.”
“Motherffff . . .” Majdi started to say, walking into the bathroom. He turned the faucet on, let the water run, and then put his hand in to check the temperature. “That bastard,” he said, striding toward the door. I heard him knocking somewhere upstairs, and then the sound of his angry voice and the soothing tone of an elderly man.
Majdi came back to the apartment, still pissed off and still smoking the cigarette. “That son of a bitch said he was going to fix it today. For the last week we’ve been heating water the way they used to twenty years ago, on the stovetop.” He walked through the kitchen to the living room and returned with the kerosene heater. “I can’t believe you sat here without this thing. You must have been freezing.”
“No, I was fine.”
“By the way, the guy I just spoke to is the landlord. Have you met him?”
“No.”
“The asshole lives on the top floor. He owns a few apartments in the building. He tried to tell me he didn’t k
now it hadn’t been fixed and that first thing tomorrow he was going to have a talk with his handyman. In the meantime, do you still have your hundred dollars for the rent?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said, reaching for my wallet.
“Good. Keep it. Don’t give him a cent. I told him that if tomorrow morning the boiler isn’t working, we’re going out to buy a new one with the next month’s rent. If he asks you for it, don’t pay him, okay?”
“Okay, sure.”
Majdi put out the cigarette and went into the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator door open. “Don’t tell me you didn’t eat anything either,” he yelled from the kitchen.
