“Come on. You’re talking to a friend about your problems. I just talked about mine for like, an hour, and they don’t seem quite as important as yours.”
“What about you?” she says.
“What, children?” I snort. “You’re kidding, right? Look around you. Why would anybody want to raise children in this country?”
She looks at the street, fingers the silver chain around her neck—its pendant buried under her collar—and says quietly, “God has a plan.”
Natalie had always had some sort of faith. When we were travelling in India, it was the holy cities where she wanted to stay the longest. In Varanasi she started meditating; in Pushkar she went on a silent retreat. All I wanted to do in India was get high, preferably on a tropical beach. Natalie found solace in yoga, meditation, a bit of Buddhism, a dash of Kabbalah. She believed in a supportive universe, in things like manifestation, karma and tikkun: the kabbalistic idea of repairing or correcting past mistakes in order to achieve balance in the world. A part of me admired her for that; I loved that it was her own thing, that it wasn’t rooted in religion. Another part of me thought it was a hippie mishmash of spiritual nonsense, with holes large enough to drive a truck through.
“Maybe I don’t have the believer chip,” I tell Natalie. “I’m just not wired that way, I’m too cynical. Don’t know if I can change it.”
“You can’t force it,” she says.
“Can I get you guys anything else?” Shelly saunters over, a whiff of cocoa butter and coffee beans. “A halvah Danish?” She winks at me.
“Not today.” I smile.
“Just the bill,” Natalie says.
We watch Shelly walking away and Natalie says, “She likes you.”
I shrug it off, examine the hardened remains of my coffee, finding patterns in the muddy grounds. An ambulance speeds through the street, and everyone on the patio turns to look. Natalie’s neck lengthens, revealing a Star of David pendant hanging on her silver chain.
“Do you ever think about our time together?” I say.
Natalie turns her head quickly, giving me an alarmed look. “Don’t do that, Lior.”
“I’m just curious,” I say.
She holds her cup in both hands, choosing words. “To be honest, I don’t think about it much. Sometimes I remember things, but it’s like remembering a dream, something that happened in a movie. To a different woman.”
I swallow; my mouth is dry. I feel like such an idiot.
She glances at her phone and says she must go. “It was good to see you, Lior. Take care of yourself, will you?”
I stand up, raise my hand to touch her and then tuck it into my pocket instead. “Good luck.”
“Be’ezrat Hashem,” she says. God willing.
I watch her disappear into the crowd, and my heart crumples in my chest. Shelly strides over, piles our plates and coffee mugs on a tray. “What was that about?” she asks.
“What?”
“You and this … dossit.” She raises one eyebrow.
“Long story.” I smile tightly.
“So … I’m almost done.” She shifts on one hip, the tray perched on her arm. “Want to grab a drink?”
“At this hour?” I laugh.
“I thought you were from Tel Aviv.” She stares at me without blinking.
I eye her, contemplate the possibility. She has warm hazelnut eyes, and she’s wearing a vintage blue dress with a gold belt and gold ballerina shoes. She’s probably twenty-two, in her experimental slutty phase. I try to pretend I’m single; slip it on like a new shirt. I’m curious if I still have it, if I can do it without feeling guilty, if I’d think about Efrat at all.
“Here.” She grabs my wrist, pulls a pen from the pocket of her apron and scrawls a number. “If you change your mind.”
The bus is full of passengers with their grocery bags. It smells like cilantro and fish. I stand by the back door, a quick escape route, and watch through the smeared glass as the city lets up, gives way to valleys and hills. It’s hard to believe Jerusalem is only forty minutes away from Tel Aviv because it feels like another world. Efrat hates it, says it’s too busy and dirty and rundown, the streets too crowded, the people too intense. She gets migraines whenever she’s here.
The bus is almost empty by the time it drops me at Ein Kerem, the rush and chaos of Jerusalem left behind. Ein Kerem, tucked up in the city’s sleeve, is bathed in warm afternoon light. I walk to my new home, sit on the couch outside and watch the valley, spread open like the palm of one’s hand. I turn on my cell, glancing at Shelly’s number on my wrist when the phone rings.
“Thank God,” Efrat says. “I was going crazy. Your phone was off.”
“Sorry,” I say.
“You can’t do that. There was a pigua in Jerusalem. And your mom was looking for you. She didn’t even know you were in Jerusalem.”
“Shit,” I say. “I forgot to tell her.”
“Well, it’s irresponsible, Lior. The least you can do is leave your cell on.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
She’s quiet. I can hear her sucking cigarette smoke. “I miss you,” she says.
“Efrat, we talked about this. I just need time to figure shit out.”
“I just said I missed you. Why do you have to be such a jerk?”
I sigh, suddenly exhausted. “I came here to take a break. Please.”
“Fine,” she says. “Whatever.”
It’s almost evening by the time I drag myself off the couch and decide to go for a walk, be a tourist, anything to distract me from my head. I climb up the path to Hama’ayan Street, where three narrow roads meet at Mary’s Spring. It’s quiet before sunset, the pilgrims and tourists and idling buses all gone. A mosque towers over the spring, with a crescent and a star perched on its spire. I follow the trickling sound of water under a stone archway, disturbing a nun who’s bent over the shallow pool, washing her face in the stream from the rock-hewn tunnel. It’s musty and cool underneath the curved, low ceilings. On the wall, a sign advises visitors against drinking the water many of them consider holy. I have seen pilgrims fill plastic bottles with this stuff. I wait until the nun leaves and lean over, let a few icy drops into my mouth. It tastes like rain: earthy and fresh.
I hike up the wide, stone-paved stairs to the Church of the Visitation. The road is empty, except for a young souvenir vendor leaning against his modest stall: wooden crosses and rosaries dangling from hooks, fluttering scarves tied over a pole, postcards stacked on a rotating stand. He nods at me and continues to play on his phone. The valley yawns to my right, lush with olive and cypress trees, and the hillside is terraced and capped with clusters of stone houses. The setting sun is bouncing off distant car mirrors and water heaters on roofs.
I’m breathless by the time I make it all the way to the top of the stairs, where a large wrought-iron gate leads to a stone courtyard, a church and a bell tower with a spiky tip. A huge mosaic covers the front wall, rimmed with gold: three flying angels, a woman riding a horse, her arms crossed against her chest. The place is breezy and graveyard-quiet, the kind of quiet that hums, that clings to you the way humidity does in the city. I think I’m alone but then I notice a monk—his face warmly lit by the setting sun—sitting on a bench in what I realize is an actual cemetery: a few graves laid between trees and bushes. He’s looking over the valley; doesn’t move, doesn’t see me, like a statue.
I walk up a few more stairs, drawn to the sound of voices singing in some language I can’t make out. The visitors spill out just as I reach the door to the chapel and I lower my gaze, afraid they can see through me, know I don’t belong. Once they are gone I peer in. The high ceilings are covered in murals, depicting scenes I don’t recognize from stories I don’t know. The setting sun tints the paintings a rich orange, drawing long shadows on the tiled floor. I sit in a pew and try to feel something that isn’t discomfort. I shift in my seat and the wood creaks, then echoes, amplified. Maybe God is here. Maybe I’ve never felt him beca
use I’ve looked in all the wrong places. I close my eyes and try to concentrate, breathe, meditate. I try. I really fucking try. I feel nothing.
My phone rings. A priest I haven’t noticed before glares at me. I apologize and hurry outside to answer, surprised to hear Natalie on the other end.
“Lior.” Her voice is choked. “Have you heard?”
The pigua. “Where?”
“Café Rimon. Seven dead.”
“Oh my God.” I skitter down the stairs to the courtyard, past the cemetery, through the gate. “When?”
“About twenty minutes after we left. I just found out.”
Shelly. I glance at her handwriting on my wrist. Did she make it out in time?
“There are no names yet,” Natalie says as if she can read my mind.
“I can’t believe it. Twenty minutes?”
“I’m in Ein Kerem,” she says. “I got in the car and drove here, then I realized I don’t even know where you’re staying.”
“Park by the spring,” I say. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
I race down the path. The sky over the valley has grown darker, bruised blue, red and purple. The setting sun has sucked the warmth out of the air, and the mountain breeze feels cool on my skin, billowing out the back of my T-shirt as I run down the stairs to Hama’ayan Street.
Natalie is washing her hands in the drizzle of the spring, and then turns and sees me. “Oh, Lior.” She grabs my hand—touches me—squeezes it with wet, cold fingers. Her eyes are pink. “We were just there.”
“I know.”
“I keep thinking, what if we’d stayed a bit longer?”
Street lights click on along the street, their warm beams offsetting the fading daylight’s bluish tones. I look around. The neighbourhood appears new, sharper and clearer somehow, as if it had just rained.
“It was weird, like I suddenly felt I had to go,” she says. “I just felt like it was time.”
“I wanted to stay,” I say. “I wanted to talk more.”
“It was weird,” she repeats.
“You saved me,” I say, the words strange in my mouth, my hand—still in hers—breaking into a sweat.
“I didn’t do anything,” she says.
A car drives down the hill, its headlights blinding us, and Natalie squints and pulls her hand away. She has that swimming look in her eyes, before tears. I cross the street, stop and turn to Natalie. She hesitates but then follows. We walk down the path to the house, where we are hidden from the road, lower than the asphalt. We stand by the pomegranate tree. I don’t invite her in.
“I’m sorry I came here.” Her voice shakes; her shoulders quiver. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
“I’m glad you did,” I say. I picture the patio in my head; summon up the faces I memorized. “Remember the couple that was sitting next to us?”
“They spoke French,” she says. “I was admiring her head scarf. I remember thinking it looked expensive. And there was that old guy …”
“With the fedora. By the door. He was writing.”
“Oh no.” She puts her hand over her mouth. “The mother with the stroller.”
“She left right after you did.”
“Thank God.” Her eyes fill with tears. “It was so close today. One more coffee and we’d be dead. And instead of thinking how dangerous it would be to have a child in this place, like you said, it just makes me want one more.” She cups her face with her palms and breaks into sobs.
I watch Natalie with my hands tightly curled inside my pockets, going against my instincts, which tell me to hold her, touch her, console her. But then she bows forward, as though she may fall, so I open my arms and catch her, and she buries her face in my chest, her tears soaking through my shirt. I stand there, stiff, my hands like slabs of dough on her shoulder blades, my head pulled back, looking up at the stars blinking between the clouds, at the valley, now dotted with flickering lights, and I’m not breathing her in, not wiping away her tears, not saying a word, just being a rock she can lean against. After a long while, her trembles subside and she sniffles into my chest, and we remain still, breathing. Her body hardens against me, so slowly that at first I think I must be imagining it, then her arms tighten around me, and she’s clinging to me as though we’re suspended over a cliff and I’m the one at the end of the rope. I can feel her breasts through her shirt, the heat from her body. My heart starts going double time; my erection presses against the fabric of my jeans. “Natalie,” I breathe out.
She pulls me down onto her and we fall, knees buckling, onto the earth, which smells sharp, warm, moist, like blood. She has a determined, focused look in her eyes as she scrambles to open the zipper of my pants, lifts her skirt and leads me inside her, her wetness and warmth, and it’s like our bodies have memory, like they have never been apart. I try to kiss her but she moves her face and I kiss her neck, drink in her scent—body lotion and coffee and milk—and I remember: this is how love feels. So many times over the years I’ve pictured this, fantasized about it: her body beneath mine, her breath tangled in my breath. She clutches my shirt with her fists, whispers, “Deeper, deeper,” and I move up and in, the way I know she likes, and she arches her back, and cries out when she comes, a quick sharp yelp, and I come too, collapsing onto her in tremors, and she’s closing on me, holding me in, and it’s a moment without doubt or question. There’s a reason we didn’t die in the pigua. Natalie is smiling, her cheeks glistening with tears. “Don’t pull out yet,” she whispers. “Stay.” She squeezes me in. I feel her heartbeat against my chest, soft and fast like a fluttering bird.
When I finally pull out, I roll over and stretch out on the ground next to her. Through the pomegranate tree branches, the moon swims in and out of clouds. Natalie tilts her hips up and raises her legs, folds her knees into her arms like a fist. I turn on my side, lean on my palm and take all of her in, the curve of her hips, the line of her neck disappearing into her blouse. I’m feeling greedy. I want to follow that line; I want to touch her hair, those black ringlets starting to break free from her head scarf. I want to feel the skin of her breasts, take them in my mouth one last time. I want to at least glimpse them. I slide my hand under her shirt, stroke her warm belly.
She puts a firm hand on mine and shakes her head no.
“I love you,” I say.
She smiles like she’s sad. “Aw, Lillosh,” she says, using the nickname she’d given me. She gets up, buttons the top of her shirt, glides a hand over her skirt, tucks in strands of hair into her head scarf. I memorize her, etching her image into my brain. I know it’s the last time I will see her. She bends down beside me and caresses the stubble on my cheek, tipping her head to look at me. “Thank you,” she says.
I stay on the ground after she leaves, listening to the roar of her car fading away. I don’t remember when the last time was that I lay on the earth, felt its pulse, the heat of the day emanating into my core. I dig into the soil with my nails, let the gritty roughness sift between my fingers. The night air is crisp and still, but my body is vibrating: warm, alive, as if I’ve been turned inside out. A long time passes and I feel I am becoming a part of this earth, this tree, this night. It feels a little bit like prayer.
SAY IT AGAIN, SAY SOMETHING ELSE
The day Lily meets Lana is her two-week anniversary in Israel. She’s lying on her belly in the dried grass outside the apartment building she now calls home, watching insects through her macro lens. She’s sweating in her faded blue jeans and Converse high-tops. Then a shadow eclipses her sun.
“You’re new here,” the girl says. “Where did you come from?”
Lily squints up. Ripped black stockings underneath an acid-washed jean miniskirt. A white sleeveless tank top. Blonde hair in a high ponytail. “Canada,” Lily says.
“Cool. We moved here from Belarus two years ago. I’m Lana.”
Lily looks up again, this time intrigued. She doesn’t know where Belarus is.
“I live at entrance C. You live at B?”
Lily nods. She wonders if the girl is her age. If she’ll be starting grade nine in the fall too, if she goes to the same school.
“Aren’t you hot in those jeans?” Lana says. Lily shrugs.
“You should cut them. Make them into shorts.”
“I don’t wear shorts.” Lily presses her eye against the viewfinder. A ladybug navigates her way through giant leaves.
“Can you take photos of me?” Lana says. “I need some portfolio shots, for this modelling agency in Tel Aviv.”
Lily clicks the shutter. “I’m not that kind of photographer.”
“We can barter,” Lana says. “I can cut your hair for you. I’m good at it.”
“Why do I need to cut my hair?”
“You can’t even see your face like that.” She watches Lily. “Do you have a boyfriend in Canada?”
Lily shakes her head.
Lana shifts her balance from one foot to the other. Silvery strappy sandals. Chipped blue nail polish. “Hey, a bunch of us are going to the beach tomorrow. Do you want to come?”
Lily raises herself onto her elbows. “Really? I mean, sure.”
“Cool.” Lana turns and walks away, into the dark stairway that leads to entrance C.
Up the stairwell to entrance B, Lily lives in a small apartment with her aunt Ruthie and her cousin Talia, who is a soldier in the army and only comes home on weekends. The apartment building—a long, tawny three-storey with three entrances and rows of laundry strung between windows—is opposite a falafel stand that reeks of oil and chickpeas and garlic and cigarette smoke. At night, when the air is juicy and the street lamps paint everything a warm, forgiving colour, men with beer bellies and women with hennaed hair sit on their small balconies, cracking sunflower seeds and spitting the shells into the hibiscus bushes with their red trumpet flowers. Through the open windows of the buildings on the block, Lily can hear TVs blaring and dishes clanking, kids crying and couples fighting and having sex. Teenagers hang out on the metal barricades in front of the building, smoking cigarettes and laughing. Some evenings they bring down narghile pipes and set them on the sidewalk, and the smell of apple tobacco sweetens the night air.
The Best Place on Earth Page 2
