Cafe Nevo

by Barbara Rogan

  When you get right down to it, Arik thought, he’s right. Without another word he paid his bill and returned to the street, the folder warm against his skin.

  After wandering aimlessly a little longer, he found himself in front of Café Nevo. The door was open, but the tables were not yet set out. Sternholz dozed in a chair beside the bar.

  Suddenly feeling his fatigue, Arik went in and poured himself some coffee. He dropped money in the till and sat down next to Sternholz.

  He found the old man’s snoring restful, companionable. Sternholz sounded like the deep, distant roll of thunder in the mountains or a train, running on a circular track. Wearily Arik thought about hopping aboard, but he knew that if he tried, the old man would be up instantly to repel him, jabbing away with his stoking shovel. It struck him suddenly how fervently Sternholz tried to expel Nevo’s patrons, and how rarely he succeeded. He was always telling customers, “Go home, get a job, get out of here.” Sometimes they went, but they never stayed away. Whatever changes, growth, or petrification took place in their outside lives, they kept on coming back, as if Nevo were their spawning or their burial ground.

  Just then Mr. Jacobovitz, the busboy, stepped off a number five bus and stumbled to his knees on the pavement. A young woman hurried over to help, but the old man, after waving her off irritably, got up, brushed off his suit, and limped over to Nevo. With a glance and a sniff at Sternholz, Mr. Jacobovitz began noisily and laboriously moving chairs and tables out to the pavement, one by one.

  A man sat down in one of the pavement tables, facing the street. Arik nudged the waiter. “Sternholz! Hey, Sternholz!”

  The waiter stirred. He opened his eyes to Arik’s face and groaned. “Go home and shave.”

  “Good morning to you, too. Look what just sat down.”

  Sternholz peered outside, squinting against the light. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Could be the harbinger of a whole new clientele.”

  “He doesn’t want service. They won’t even drink the water here. It must be the heat.”

  “No, he’s looking for girls.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. But not in my café.” Muttering to himself, Sternholz hobbled over to the Hassid, who wore a striped caftan and a broad-rimmed fur shtreimel. The man’s chin hung down almost to his chest, and his black hat was pulled down over that part of his face not covered by a long red beard. “You want something, Rabbi? You want I should call somebody?”

  “A little wine,” the Hassid said breathily. “I am overcome by the heat; a little wine, my good Jew.”

  “But, Rabbi, the wine’s trafe here.”

  “No matter, my son. The Halachah tells us that when life is at stake, even the laws of kashrut must give way.”

  Sternholz had bent down and was peering into the Hassid’s averted face. Suddenly he grabbed the man’s red beard and yanked.

  Inside the café, Arik gawked. Had the old man gone mad?

  The waiter raised the beard, which had come loose, in one hand; with the other he swept the shtreimel off the Hassid’s head. His earlocks came away with it. Shorn and dehatted, Muny’s bulbous face emerged.

  “Bless me,” he said, rabbit eyes blinking up at Sternholz, “for I am saved.”

  “Muny, you’re beyond salvation.”

  Muny looked hurt. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “Where’d you get those clothes? Did you steal them?”

  “My friend, you wrong me.” He climbed up onto his chair and, waving his arms, proclaimed: “Yea, I have played the fool, and erred exceedingly; yea, I was one of those who rebel against the light. But hey, it’s never too late to repent.” He did a soft-shoe shuffle on the table, ending up on one knee. “God has redeemed my soul from the power of the grave. Behold, before you stands a new man, a phoenix risen from the ranks of the secular to soar through the heavens on the breath of our Lord, Blessed-Be-What’s-His-Name.”

  “Oy, Gott,” said Sternholz, sitting down at Muny’s table.

  “Arise, my son.”

  “What?”

  “Arise, and fetch me a beer. It’s thirsty work, getting saved.”

  “All right, already, we got the joke. How long are you going to keep this up?”

  “It’s no joke, Emmanuel.” Muny clambered off his chair and pulled it closer to Sternholz. He murmured, “Did you know that if a Jew wants to repent, the religious are obliged by Law to support him? And when I say support, I mean support, in style; I’m talking three, four hundred greenbacks a month, my dear, free, gratis, for nothing!”

  “Nothing?”

  “You’re supposed to study,” he said dismissively. “Hell, I know the Torah backwards and forward; I was reciting it by heart before those little Yeshiva pissers were ever born. It’s a hundred percent cinch! Emmanuel, I’ve got it made!”

  Sternholz freed his arm from Muny’s clutch and rubbed it testily. “They won’t have you.”

  “They have to, that’s the beauty of it! It’s the Law.”

  “They’ll change the Law before they’ll accept you.”

  Muny belched and sat back heavily, fanning himself with the fur hat. “You really think so?”

  “I just told you, didn’t I? They’d burn the synagogues, raze the cheders, dissolve the religion rather than let you in. And you’ve got to admit they got a point.”

  “Well, if that’s the way they feel, who the hell needs them? Emmanuel, these robes are killing me. Get me a beer.”

  “How about paying your bar bill? It’s been a month already; I’m not Bank Leumi here.”

  Muny snatched up the shtreimel and set it on his head lopsided, so that one earlock hung in back like Davy Crockett’s raccoon tail and the other lay across his face. Rocking back and forth in his seat, he said in a singsong voice, “But is the reborn man responsible for the debts of his predecessor? The great Rabbi Hillel of blessed memory said...”

  Sighing, Sternholz went to fetch his beer and to take care of other customers, who’d sprung up like mushrooms.

  Arik snagged his sleeve as he passed. “Sternholz, wait a sec.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Do you know where that girl lives?”

  “What girl?” he growled.

  “You know. Sarita.” Her name, still unfamiliar, tingled in his mouth. “Sarita Blume.”

  “What if I do?”

  “Please, Sternholz. Don’t fool with me. I need it.”

  The waiter looked him up and down distastefully, “Like that you’re going to see her?”

  “I can’t go home.”

  Emmanuel Yehoshua Sternholz did not ask why. He reached under his apron into his pants pocket and brought out a key on a silver chain. “Go upstairs and take a shower. Shave.”

  “I don’t have time now.”

  “You want the address?”

  “Yes.”

  “So go wash yourself. Use my razor. Take a clean shirt from the cupboard.”

  Laughing unwillingly, Arik accepted the key.

  “She lives at thirty-four Shenkin Street,” Sternholz said. “Leave the key under the mat.”

  “You don’t want to check behind my ears?”

  “Somebody should.” As Arik turned toward the courtyard staircase, Sternholz caught his sleeve and poked a bony finger at his chest. “Just a minute, boychik. In case you don’t know: for this girl you show a little respect”

  “I know that.”

  “She’s a lady.” Jab. “A lady.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The knocking when it penetrated sounded disheartened, as if it had been going for some time. Sarita hesitated, then stepped back for a critical look at her work. It was just a sketch, the first idea she’d had since accepting the commission to paint Nevo; there was a picture in her mind’s eye and she knew that if left alone, she could capture the outline before it disappeared. Sarita shook the cramp out of her right hand and, picking up the brush, would have continued—but the knocking came again, this time accompanied by
such a plaintive sigh that she gave in. Laying down her brush, she walked with quick, impatient steps to the door.

  It was that man from Nevo—the Eshel son. Arik. “What do you want?” she said.

  He sagged against the doorframe. “I thought you were out. I was cursing myself for waiting too long.”

  “You should have waited longer. I can’t see you now.”

  Alarmed, he looked past her into the room. “But you are alone,” he said. “I’m sorry to intrude, but could I come in for a moment?”

  She stepped back watchfully, waving him to the only chair in the room. With his legs splayed and his hands on his knees, he filled the room. Sarita skirted him, turning the easel toward the balcony as she passed it, and sat stiffly at the foot of her narrow bed.

  “I need help,” Arik said.

  She looked him over critically. His face was clean-shaven, but his eyes were bloodshot; and the shirt he wore was obviously not his, being tight in the shoulders and short at the wrist. Sarita felt an impulse to shove him back outside, before he could explain himself; but her mother’s eyes were on her back and so she said, rather grimly, “What can I do?”

  “Keep something for me.” He reached under his shirt and produced the brown folder.

  “What is it?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “If I didn’t want to know,” she said tartly, “I wouldn’t have asked. I won’t keep it if you don’t tell.”

  Arik shrugged. “They’re papers that document some land deals between Pincas Gordon and Minister Brenner.”

  She was silent for a moment, considering. “West Bank land?”

  He nodded, impressed.

  “What are you going to do?”

  But that very problem, which had loomed so large during the long night, had been supplanted by a greater. Arik had loved before, but those had been passing affairs of choice, not of compulsion. He had never been obsessed. He had never been seriously rebuffed. He feared that both experiences were about to come upon him linked, in the person of this strange female, this grown-up Lolita who wrenched his heart even as she fired every erotic trigger in his body. She wore a man’s long-tailed cotton shirt belted over snug blue jeans. The cotton shirt appeared to be her smock, for it was daubed with paint. Her figure, wide-shouldered and slender-hipped as a boy, was elegant; her bearing, forbiddingly reserved. He had observed within seconds of entering the room that she wore no bra.

  To restore his faltering composure, he looked about the room, which was neat and bright with bare floors and undraped windows. Dozens of paintings, their backs to the room, were stacked against the walls. One alone hung: above Sarita’s bed was an oil portrait of the beautiful Yael Blume, standing in a flood of light alone on a dark and empty stage. She seemed to be gazing straight at him with a mother’s suspicious scrutiny, a look not unknown to Arik, though rather bizarre under the circumstances.

  The resemblance of mother and daughter was at once striking and uncanny, for when he compared the two, he saw that feature by feature there was little basis for it. Sarita’s mouth was wider and more generous than Yael’s Cupid’s bow, and their noses were quite different. Sarita’s skin was darker than her mother’s, her hair a deeper shade of burnished copper. Though Yael in the painting was not more than six or eight years older than Sarita was now, her face was marked with lines of character and humor that were lacking, or latent, in Sarita. Only the cool green intelligent eyes and the fierce eyebrows were the same.

  He had been staring from one to the other. Sarita stirred restlessly under his scrutiny. “What are you going to do?” she repeated.

  “What would you do?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Why not? You came up with the right question, maybe you’ll come up with the right answer.”

  Sarita laughed grimly. “I’d expose them both. I’d throw them to the press. Yediot, HaAretz, Ma’ariv, Davar—I know some people from Davar, down the street. I could talk to them if you want.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Arik said. “I’m not sure it’s the best way.”

  “What is?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. That’s why I wanted to leave the papers here for a few days.”

  He paused hopefully, but Sarita only said: “I hope no one saw you come in here.”

  “I was careful. No one saw me, and no one will connect us. Only Sternholz knows I was coming here.”

  “Sternholz!”

  “He gave me your address. Not that he approved, you understand. Sternholz thinks I’m a bum.”

  “No, he doesn’t. He likes you.” She stood abruptly. “Would you like some coffee?”

  He followed her into the tiny kitchen. Although he carefully avoided touching her, and she ignored him, he had the sense of being enclosed in a small room with a trapped bird. In his state, this seemed encouraging.

  With her back to him she asked, “What are the alternatives?”

  “Blackmail,” Arik said. The cups rattled in her hands. ‘‘The nice kind,” he added. “Political, not monetary.”

  “I see.” Sarita sounded relieved. She carried both cups back to the bed-sitting room, waiting until Arik had resumed his seat before handing him one. She sat as before, on the corner of her bed farthest from him.

  “Were you in the army?” Arik asked.

  “Of course. I’m a reserve officer in Nachal. Why?”

  “It shows in the way you bypass trivialities and go for the heart of the matter.”

  Sarita shrugged. “If you mean trivialities like, how did you get these papers—I want to know that, too. I just hadn’t come to it.”

  “It’s not in your best interest to know.”

  “I’ll look out for my best interest.”

  “And so will I,” Arik said more vehemently than he had intended. She gave him a smoldering glance.

  “You asked for help; I’m giving it. Let’s leave it at that, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said agreeably.

  “So. Where did you get this stuff?”

  “I stole it.”

  “Who from?”

  “Pincas Gordon.”

  She gasped. At first he thought it was shock, but later he realized it was envy. “You robbed Pincas Gordon?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Just some bruised feelings.”

  “So you’re a thief and a blackmailer,” Sarita remarked.

  “Potential blackmailer.”

  “And actual thief.”

  “Yes. Does this change your feelings for me, Sarita?”

  “What feelings were those?” she asked sternly, but the corners of her mouth curved irrepressibly upward. Arik leaned back, well pleased.

  “You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile. You should do it more often.”

  “I’m surprised that in your situation you’ve got time to flirt.”

  “I’m not flirting. I mean every word I say to you.”

  “Cut it out.” She was blushing as if he’d made a crude pass. Quite suddenly it dawned on Arik that Sarita was not as insensible of him as he had believed, that there was something promising in the very fervor of her resistance. She avoided his enlightened eye.

  “Could we stick to the business at hand?” she said.

  “Certainly.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Because I was angry,” Arik told her. “Because while my men were being shot at and killed in Lebanon, that bastard was profiteering in the West Bank. Once when I was home on funeral leave, I stopped by Nevo to see Sternholz. Gordon comes up to me, dressed in a suit, and grabs my hand, pumps it, and says, ‘Good work, my boy, keep up the good work.’ ‘What’s with you?’ I say to him—this was in the beginning of the war, when everyone was called up. ‘Deferred for essential business, old son,’ he says, winking, ‘but I’m doing my bit anyway. What you’re doing to them in Lebanon, I’m doing to them in Judea.’“

  Sarita made a retching n
oise in her throat; Arik nodded and boldly crossed the room to sit beside her on the bed.

  “I wouldn’t have done it to anyone else, but in Gordon’s case,” he said, “I enjoyed it.”

  “Was he home when you broke in?”

  “Yes.”

  “And his wife?” Sarita asked. “He is married?”

  A shadow passed over Arik’s face. He looked away from her. The wife was the single irritant in that otherwise pleasing memory. Terrorizing women was not his idea of manly behavior, even if the woman was one who lived high off the spoils of her husband’s carpetbagging. Toward Gordon himself he felt no regret. The man was a leech; he got off easier than he deserved.

  “His wife?” Sarita prodded gently. She had turned toward him.

  “She was there. No one harmed her.”

  She stared at his face, his downcast eyes no barrier. “But you frightened her,” she said, with the certainty of one who had been there, and at that moment Arik saw how like his mother she was. Women of relentless discernment, though Sarita’s gift was encased in gentleness and Rina’s in boldness, and Sarita expressed hers through a medium while Rina favored direct action, political manipulation.

  Arik looked into Sarita’s emerald eyes and confessed: “We did frighten her.”

  Then for the first time Sarita touched him. She laid her slender hand on his brown forearm and let it rest there while she seemed to study the contrast in texture and color. Inhaling sharply, Arik turned toward her; Sarita’s hand flew off his arm and to her mouth. “Don’t,” she said, and backed away. Arik put his hands on his thighs and tried to smile.

  In a clear, bright voice Sarita said, “What makes you think that Gordon’s going to tie you into this thing?”

  “Only that he saw my face,” Arik replied diffidently.

  “That was careless of you.” Suddenly her eyes widened. “I hope you don’t imagine you can hide here.”

  “Of course not. I’m leaving town for a day or two. I need to talk to some people.”

  “Won’t you want to show them the papers?”

  “I’ve made copies. It’s the originals I want to leave with you, for safekeeping.”

  “I suppose you’re going to your father,” Sarita said.