Chains of Sand

by Jemma Wayne

  Even the driver wears a look of disgust when he spots the blood streaming from between her legs, contaminating the seats meant for men.

  ***

  She will not weep.

  She tells nobody. Except for Ezra who weeps for her. For them.

  She does not write. It is the first time she has withheld her life from public consumption and she knows that on the one hand this is the time she should most thrust it forwards. This is the event that should make her voice impossible to ignore.

  But then Udi would stay.

  And now she wants him to leave. To escape. To be rid of this place overrun by religious zealots who are taking over government, and taking over the army, and taking over buses.

  She cannot stop placing her hand onto her stomach. Though it is empty.

  It is the first time she can remember that Ezra stays home from shul on Shabbat.

  They do not visit her parents that Friday. Her daytime imaginings are no longer full of her father.

  And she cannot see her mother who she knows she will tell if she does. Besides, there are bruises. And her mother’s eyes upon them will make Avigail see what she does not want to see. And then she will weep.

  And she will not weep.

  She will stay.

  And one day, she will write.

  ***

  Now

  11

  Orli is coming to London for my birthday. I haven’t seen her in over a month though we speak daily, usually twice. Sometimes I get a call from her mother, or occasionally from Ittai. They let me know when Orli is down, more down than usual, because she won’t tell me herself. She began a new series of paintings the day after the shiva ended but she won’t let me see them, won’t let anybody see them.

  Safia tells me not to push. We have finally got back to normal, sort of. I suppose it could have been difficult – my coming back from holiday with a girlfriend. But Safia was the one who didn’t want to complicate things between us, the one who enforced this, and she was right, it would have been far, far too complicated. If Gaby’s example wasn’t enough, being with Orli’s made me see that. Orli challenges me but our relationship is not the challenge. What we have is uncomplicated. As though she pushes me but from behind, from my side. Whereas with Safia it is like jousting. In any case Safia’s been fine, more than fine. We have been coffeeing. I am again the recipient of her daily anecdotes. She is again the analyser of mine. It was she who told me to send the plant. An idea she got from a TV programme apparently, but specifically a plant, not flowers, not a quick fix but something that would need care and take a while to bloom, when it did bringing that long awaited freshness. I wrote something to that effect in the card and Orli loved it. I didn’t tell her it was nicked off TV.

  After the funeral I stayed in Israel for another two weeks. Orli didn’t ask me to be there, but during those first seven days of shiva she gripped my hand as she greeted the constant stream of friends paying their respects, wishing her long life. I’ve always found that an odd thing to say to the family of the deceased: I wish you long life. It’s handy to have a proscribed script, something to say, but it feels sometimes like rubbing salt in the wound. After Papa died I remember watching my Nana closely. People kept wishing her this long existence and I could see all she wanted to do was curl up next to her not-existing husband and join him in his sleep. But as I stood next to Orli that week I uttered it in my head again and again – I wish you long life, I wish you long life, I wish you to get through this, to look to life not death, to remember to live. Orli’s eyes revealed that she had not yet remembered. Her heart was with David, and on the morning after the seventh day of prayers, she told me to go.

  I took her at her word. I told her I was there, that I would be there, but I drove her to her apartment and hugged her goodbye and for the whole of the following week I didn’t call. Robert had gone home by then and I spent my time looking at antiques in Jaffa, examining graffiti, stumbling across vast modern sculptures and ancient fortress ruins, eating sushi in the middle of wide boulevards, and walking, walking, walking along the river, watching people cycling and boating and running, noticing how landscaped and green the banks were, marvelling at the life, life sprung from desert. Towards the middle of that week I thought about going North for a night, or South, visiting a border town, swept up in a compulsion to see everything. But while I was fondling a map in a Jaffa bookshop, an American nurse peered over my shoulder to encourage the trip. He worked in Gaza, he said. He was buying the book in his hand for a young Palestinian girl who lived there. ‘Bright as anything,’ he told me. ‘Farah. Mother’s a cleaner. Father’s just released from an Israeli prison. Bright as anything. And without a hope in hell, to get out of hell, you know? You should venture out of Tel Aviv,’ he urged again. But I didn’t then. It felt precarious and too ambitious. Besides, Tel Aviv had plenty more for me to see. And of course I didn’t want to be far from Orli. One day I visited her apartment and stood for a while outside her door listening to the sad music that seeped from under it, smelling fresh paint. I didn’t knock, but I stood there.

  She finally called on the day I was leaving for home. She insisted on driving me to the airport in her green Corsa and when we arrived, we sat together until the last moment possible, drinking coffee, slowly, allowing the caffeine to quicken our pulses, the hot liquid to loosen our tongues. I tried to give a humorous account of my week detailing an exaggerated version of my forensic hunt for the perfect hummus, my encounter with a clowder of wild cats, and my failed attempts to navigate the purchase and setting up of an Israeli phone. Occasionally, Orli’s face would illuminate in the way it had been as a matter of course before, and two weeks later when I flew back for the weekend I noticed that these periods of illumination were growing. When I was there at the beginning of March it had lasted a whole day.

  Safia wants to meet her. We talk about it over our reinstated Sunday coffee. Same café, same newspaper, a little less brushing of thighs and leaning on each other’s shoulders. We have tactfully turned the page on a story about the floundering peace talks between Israel and the PA. Israel has failed to release the last batch of prisoners, rockets have been fired from Gaza, and now Hamas and Fatah are reconciling, apparently. Bibi says Abbas has a choice between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas. Safia says I have a choice between introducing Orli to her, or her turning up unannounced with pictures of me stoned out of my mind at Warwick.

  “Okay, but you can’t do your interrogation thing,” I say, turning another page of the newspaper.

  “What interrogation thing? I don’t interrogate.” Safia smiles from behind her coffee cup.

  “No question mark eyebrows.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I realise I’ve never actually articulated to Safia that her raised eyebrow reminds me of a question mark. “You know, that one eyebrow thing you do,” I say offhandedly. “Weirdo.”

  “I will be perfectly polite,” Safia promises.

  I give her a sceptical look. It feels like flirting, so I stop.

  Safia scoops the foam off the top of her second coffee. She looks at me while she does this. Our eyes lock for a little too long. “Dan, you love her, right?”

  I nod.

  “Okay. So I want to know her.”

  On the morning of my birthday and Orli’s arrival I wake up at 5am and crane my neck every few minutes to see the clock on my bedside table before finally allowing myself to get out of bed. It’s a Saturday and Robert is still asleep. Not even my parents will be up this early. It is like being a child again, counting down the minutes before I am allowed to drag everyone down to the kitchen for birthday pancakes and presents. But Orli is not due until 11. The plan is to go straight from the airport to lunch at my parents’. Mum has invited Gaby and Pete. Also Nana. And Robert and Debbie though they can’t make it. I think she wants as large as panel of judges as possible. Over the past months she has expressed a mixture of enthusiasm and contempt for the girl I’ve descri
bed. Orli is beautiful, smart, talented, Jewish; but Mum is convinced she’s the only reason I’m talking again about Israel.

  For the sake of her sanity I’ve tried to tone it down, but I can’t help it. Every time I return to London it gets harder and harder to tread the dreary streets, to concentrate on pointless work, to muster enthusiasm. I find my mind wandering to beaches, to coffee houses, to relaxed, unstuffy art exhibits, to exciting new architecture, concerts, museums, markets, to Hebrew words that are alive, vital, and mean something. And yes, to Orli’s bed. But she hasn’t once pressed me to come. She is determined to fill the void around her with light of her own making.

  When she rounds the corner of the arrivals gate at Heathrow, the triumph of this is all over her face. She carries a single bag that looks heavy – and even when I lift it from her shoulder she remains just slightly weighed down – but she holds this load now as though she controls it. And her eyes are ablaze. In the car, she gazes keenly out of the window. Her eyes dart left and right. Looking. Looking. Finally we pull up in front of my parents’ house.

  “So,” she smiles, squeezing my hand. “Should I get my own drink?”

  Gaby’s wedding is planned for June. Mum seems to have lost the will to do battle with what seems an inevitable course – she does after all have only one daughter for whom to plan a wedding – and Pete is back at family gatherings. Still, she can’t help dropping occasional clangers. “You seriously don’t want a chuppah?” she is asking Gaby as Orli and I nudge through the front door. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Pete, but Jesus was Jewish, even he would have had a chuppah.”

  “As far as I know, Jesus hasn’t sent out his wedding invitations, as yet,” Pete parries. He is getting the hang of our family dynamic. Dad laughs.

  “He didn’t get married, he just got it on on the sly with that Mary Magdalene didn’t he?” Gaby chips in. “We could always do that Mum. Just skip the wedding.”

  “Oh ha blooming ha,” Mum retorts. “Fine, no chuppah. I’m just saying, all of our friends are going to find it pretty strange. No rabbi, no shul, now no chuppah. It’s only like making a little stage for you anyway. Your lot wouldn’t even notice, Pete. Just a little canopy with flowers, nice no?”

  Pete grins at Mum with amusement. “I don’t mind a chuppah, honey,” he says to Gaby, managing to pronounce the guttural ‘ch’. Gaby throws up her hands in exasperation. “This is like a master class in negotiating,” Pete whispers to Dad.

  I cough to announce our arrival.

  Everyone turns to face us. I notice the communal approval that sweeps across each of their faces at their first sight of Orli. She is wearing simple skinny blue jeans, flat shoes, and a long beige silky coat cardigan thing. Her hair is loose, her face fresh – I can never tell if girls are wearing makeup unless it’s obvious, but it is not obvious. She looks effortlessly lovely. I remember the first time Hayley came to our house for dinner. To be fair we were 17, our dress sense less cultivated, but Gaby was particularly scathing of Hayley’s teetering heels and too-heavy eyeliner.

  “Anne Hathaway had a chuppah,” Orli ventures. “So did Drew Barrymore.”

  “I love Drew Barrymore,” says Gaby.

  By the end of the afternoon, not even Gaby or Mum can fake resistance. Nana is at home with a cold but the rest of the panel are won over. She has them laughing, listening, talking, confiding. Then come the presents. Gifts are funny things. I know you’re meant to try to think of something the receiver will like, something they would want, nothing to do with you, but it never works that way. There’s always a not-so-subtle hint of the giver in there, an intimation of their perception of who the receiver is, or who they wish them to be. Dad’s indictment of me comes in the form of an Arsenal season ticket, with another for him, Mum has selected a variety of smart dress shirts, and Gaby and Pete present me with a briefcase, perfect for a continued existence in the city. Orli goes to the car for her contribution. She digs into the bottom of her holdall for a thick green tube and allows me to spread the canvas out on the dining room table. I have examined her work extensively, spent time browsing her website, clicked through all her old pieces, read her blog. But I am unprepared. The vast painting is an enlargement of the sketch she made of me that day in the park, the etching that even when she hardly knew me caught so marvellously the unease in my smile and the entire dichotomy of my life. Now it is even better. It is as though with brushstrokes she has revealed me. Nobody speaks.

  “I added colour,” she says when even I say nothing.

  For a while the silence continues and I notice that Orli, who I have never seen seem nervous, is looking at my family with what I’m sure is anxiety. But then Dad claps his hands onto the table and stares deliberately first at the canvas, and then at me. “Well then,” he says. “When will you go?”

  There is no need to explain the reference. “I’ve been thinking about September.”

  “You’re coming?” Orli asks. “To Israel? To live?”

  “Of course he is,” Mum answers. “Look at your painting. He’s already there.” She cannot hide her resentment but puts her hand on Orli’s arm despite it. I could kiss her for that gesture, and do.

  “Not September though,” says Gaby. “Dan, promise to wait a year okay? Wait until you’re 30. Until you’re exempt from the army.”

  She taps Pete’s shoulder to indicate she is ready to leave and they stand up, hovering next to Mum and Dad who are waiting casually for me to assent to this small, reasonable condition.

  But I don’t want my new year to begin with a lie. I’m starting to feel that that’s part of what the whole thing’s about – finding my true self, a true path, one I’ve actually chosen. “I’m not waiting,” I say.

  All eyes shoot towards Orli, but she holds up her hands. “Danny, it makes sense,” she says. “If you come before, you may not have to serve but you’ll still be in the reserve pool. If there’s a war you may really have to go to the army.”

  “I’m going to volunteer anyway,” I tell them. “I want to fight for Israel. Remember what your dad said, it’s part of being a true Israeli, it’s something everyone does for everyone. It’s something I owe.”

  “Not to me,” she replies quickly. “You don’t owe it to me.”

  “I’m not waiting,” I say again.

  ***

  As we drive back to my flat, I can feel Orli brewing. With Hayley, by the end, I’d only need hear the slightly shallower intake of breath to know she was angry, or see the almost imperceptible flaring of her nostrils to know she was about to ask a favour, or weigh the heaviness of a silence to realise that I was about to get sex. I like that I’m beginning to navigate Orli in this way. She’s had me pegged from the start, but I’m catching up. Now, she has cocked her head ever so slightly to the left, as though balancing an emerging thought on her jaw. I wait.

  “Don’t do this for me,” she says at last.

  “The army?”

  “The army. Israel. You shouldn’t do it for me.”

  “Don’t you want me to come?”

  “Not for me.”

  This isn’t quite what I’d expected. “Hang on. You don’t want to be with me?”

  “Of course I do. But…Things are… I don’t want to be your reason.” She puts her hand over mine and I like the warmth of it, the electricity from it, but I’m forced to shrug it off as the road narrows, littered with parked cars, and I have to shift into first gear, flashing my lights to tell the oncoming car to go.

  “I’m coming for me,” I tell her.

  She pauses. “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “But, Danny…” She stops. Silent but still thoughtful.

  But Danny what? Do I want to be with her? Yes. Do I want to live in Israel? Yes. So what, what? What more is there? Is she the reason I want to live in Israel? No. Yes. Partly. Why does it matter? “What?” I prompt finally, but she shakes her head, brushing away the dangling deliberation. Her jaw straightens.

  We drive in silence.
It is not awkward. With Safia it’s all about the back and forth, the repartee, with Hayley there was endless chit-chat, but Orli and I…there are jokes, there’s lightness, but we tend also to say a lot of stuff that matters, and we punctuate that stuff with this: calm, quiet. Orli stares out of the window and I find myself regarding the familiar North London streets in a new light. Her light. Or how I imagine it to be. The buildings, I suppose, have their own history, interesting for a foreigner. London will never be the land of the living bible but the architecture is an eclectic mix of generations, colours, styles, a fascinating fusion organically grown atop each other. For all its flashing lights and cutting edge technology, not even Tel Aviv can replicate this. There, the epochs, millennia apart, blend nevertheless into a pale panorama, and everything seems to have emerged from of a pile of sand.

  “Take me to the Eye,” Orli says suddenly, as though I’ve been talking out loud. “I want to see the whole of London.”

  “You mean the wheel? Now?” I’ve never been on the London Eye. I don’t even know how to get there.

  “Yes, why not?”

  Hayley would never have suggested something so spontaneous. Not at this hour. I type London Eye into my Sat Nav and we drive. Past my road, through Regent’s Park and across the river. Orli points out most of the sights on route that for me are ordinary and so invisible. As we arrive, I point out Big Ben. The line is short and when we reach the front, Orli insists on buying the tickets, counting out her carefully acquired currency.

  It is almost dusk and there are only a few other people in our capsule – presumably the views are better in daylight. But the city is illuminated by a million tiny dots of different hues: street lamps, brake lights, stark neon office windows and soft bedroom glows. It looks magnificent, magical, elegant, and in the calm of our capsule, 450 feet above the emptying, rain-cleansed streets, it is possible to forget the plague of people that will emerge in the morning, swarming into tunnels, across pavements, up and down buildings, all over each other, like rats. And that I am usually one of them. And that the city feels like a giant cage. With Orli, up here, it is possible to forget this.