Three Floors Up

by Eshkol Nevo

  I should have said no. But the truth was that I was on my way to Tel Aviv, to a meeting of Hungry Hearts. That’s the NPO I founded. I mean, I’m not the only one there, I recruited another few colleagues. Seriously? I never told you about it? Wow. We’ve really been out of touch for a long time. We collect all the food left over in Tel Aviv restaurants at the end of the night, and instead of letting it be thrown out, we repack it on trays and transport it to needy children in the south. Nice idea, eh?

  Anyway, I told Herman’s granddaughter yes, I was driving to Tel Aviv. I didn’t want to lie to her.

  As soon as we started to drive, she took off her flip-flops and put her bare feet on the dashboard.

  I should have told her to take them off. What the hell was she doing? But I have a weakness for small feet.

  The scent of her perfume filled the car. It was the same perfume she’d worn last summer, but something had changed in the way it drifted from her body.

  I asked her when she’d arrived in the country, and she said yesterday.

  I didn’t know what else I could ask her.

  And then she said, “Tell me, Monsieur Arno, maybe you know what happened to my grandfather?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My grandmother told me. I mean, she tells me one thing and I feel that she is hiding something else from me.”

  I asked her—casual like, you know—“What does she tell you?”

  “That he was walking in the street and fell. And he dislocated his shoulder. Then, the tests they did on him in the hospital showed that he had other illnesses. It doesn’t make sense to me. Besides, I can tell when people are lying to me. My father was a liar. My mother is a liar. I know all the signs.”

  I looked at her for half a second, then focused on the road again. I said, “I’d really like to know what those signs are.”

  “Alors…, first of all, the lips. This part”—I suddenly felt her finger touch my lower lip—“shakes a little bit when you are lying. And this part”—I felt a finger brush over my chin—“how do you say it in Hebrew…”

  “Chin?”

  “No…”

  “Jaw?”

  “Jaw, yes. It gets stiffer when you are lying. And of course, the eyes. It is not like people think, that when you are lying you do not look people in the eyes. That is actually when you do look them in the eye, so they will believe you are telling the truth, but there is a shade in their expression.”

  “Shade?”

  “Shade is the opposite of sun, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “So yes, shade.”

  “And your grandmother had shade in her eyes when she talked to you about what happened?”

  “Big shade. That is why I asked you, maybe you know something.”

  I thought to myself: I have to be very careful about how I answer her. She is a potential mole, and if I handle this right, she could get information for me. So I said, “I don’t know any more than you do. But I think you should keep asking her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you feel that someone is lying to you, keep pressing them until the truth comes out. That’s what life has taught me.”

  Then she laughed: “Oh la la, Monsieur Arno”—and pushed my shoulder lightly with her fist—“you are not only a hunk, you are smart too. How nice for Madame Arno.”

  “Where do you need to go in Tel Aviv?” I cut her off.

  “To the sea. I am going to tan myself topless!”

  I wanted to tell her to apply sunblock first. But I didn’t want to sound like her father. So I didn’t say anything.

  She said, “I have a new tattoo. You want to see it?”

  We were on the Ayalon Highway, where you shouldn’t take your eyes off the road. Every second matters. But I couldn’t not look. She lowered the strap closest to me, the one that was still on her shoulder, pulled it down, and exposed the upper part of her left breast. A Star of David rested there. A triangle lying on a triangle.

  She asked me if it was pretty.

  I said yes.

  She rubbed her feet together on the dashboard. They really were very small. Not much bigger than Ofri’s.

  She said, “You know, there is one good thing about my grandparents being in the hospital all the time.”

  We were in a small traffic jam at a spot near the beach where the breakwaters look like a hyphen between Tel Aviv and Jaffa.

  I looked at her. “Yes? What is that something?”

  She laughed. “The house is empty and…I can bring anyone I want there.”

  I said, “Wow,” and looked back at the traffic jam.

  “When I enjoy myself, I mean in bed, I like the guy with me to know it. He deserves it. For the efforts he is making. And it makes me uncomfortable when my grandparents hear everything in the other room.”

  She looked at me when she finished the sentence to see what kind of impression she was making on me.

  I didn’t look back at her.

  She opened the window and took a deep breath—you could actually hear her chest fill up. “There is nothing like the breeze in Tel Aviv. In Paris, the breeze is always…bad.

  I dropped her off at the Frishman beach. She kissed me on the cheek, even closer to my lips than the morning kiss had been, and said, “You have another meeting in Tel Aviv tomorrow, yes?”

  That was a week ago. And until yesterday, this was my life: every night after the girls went to sleep, Ayelet and I fought. About what? Ayelet said I’d lost it. That I needed therapy. That I’d been frustrated since my business collapsed and I had to work for someone again, and I was taking that frustration out on the whole world. She said I wasn’t the man she’d married. That the man she’d married wouldn’t have tried to strangle a sick old man. She said that I was imposing my view of reality on everyone. That I wanted them all to think like me, and anyone who didn’t accept my crazy theories was wrong. She said that I’d always been a little obsessive, and that’s why she took the six-month break back then, before we got married. This was exactly what she’d been afraid of. She said that my worrying so obsessively about Ofri was just a way of making her out to be a bad mother. And she was sick of it. Totally sick of it.

  What did I say to her? Go argue with a lawyer. If I just try to say something, she crucifies me in the middle of the sentence. So I didn’t say much. I pretended to listen, but I felt how every sentence she spoke pushed me further away from her. I heard the last few sentences of our fight as if I was in another country altogether.

  Then I’d watch the panelists screaming at each other on Grandstanders until I fell asleep on the living room couch. In the morning, Ofri would wake me up and we’d go to school, with her reading Anne of Green Gables as she walked and I warning her every time she was about to walk into a tree. We’d stop at the shopping center every morning to eat rugelach. She’d nibble the layers, I’d take bites. I didn’t ask her what happened in the grove anymore. I already understood that my questions upset her. And that I wouldn’t get an answer. So I just sat close to her and loved her silently. I tried to give her as much love and security as I could without speaking. I couldn’t hug or kiss her either—someone from her class might pass by and it would embarrass her—so with just my solid presence beside her, I tried to give her the feeling that there was at least one person in the world she could depend on. At 7:55, we’d get up from the bench.

  Because after the first time she was late, she told me she didn’t want to be late anymore. At 7:58, she left me after we crossed the street and walked to the gate on her own.

  And every day last week at 8:05, I picked up the French mole and drove her to Tel Aviv.

  When she got into the car, she would always put her feet on the dashboard—a different color nail polish on her toenails every morning—and she’d start to tell me about the guys who’d come on to her at the beach the day before.

  One of them came up to her with paddles and asked if she wanted to play, but she said she didn’t like paddleball
and he got scared off. Another guy, a real hunk, asked if her father was a gardener, and when she said, “No, my father left the house when I was six and I have no idea what he’s into now,” he started stammering. And for her, there’s nothing less sexy than a stammer.

  Anyway, she has no idea what happened to the men in Israel. They used to be strong and tough like the outside of a seashell. Now they’re soft like the inside. And they don’t understand hints! Nothing! At the end of the day yesterday an older man asked her to have dinner in a restaurant with him. He poured her glass after glass of wine. She was sure they’d go back to his apartment afterward. She even said to him, “I’m dying to take a shower.” In the end, he just took her to the central bus station, kissed her lightly on the cheek, and asked her if she wanted to go to a movie with him. “Qu’est-ce que c’est? A movie, now? He does not understand that sometimes a girl just wants sex?”

  I wasn’t really sure that all her stories were true. It’s hard to explain. Something in the way she told them—some of the descriptions were too general. Too familiar. As if she’d read them somewhere.

  But I listened to her patiently. And tried not to show her that I was waiting for her to talk about what I was really interested in.

  Usually she’d get to it toward the end of the drive. Yes, she visited Grandpa Herman yesterday. And he was really fine. Made sense when he talked. So she took advantage of the opportunity and asked him what happened, how he got hurt, and suddenly the color of his eyes changed from blue to gray and he didn’t say anything. Didn’t answer. Her grandmother said, “It’s not healthy for Grandpa to get upset now.” And when she asked what she’d said to upset him, what was there to get upset about, her grandmother didn’t answer her.

  On a different day, Grandpa Herman felt a little better and went out to the department lobby to watch TV. The world artistic gymnastics championship was on and she sat down next to him so he wouldn’t feel too alone. And all of a sudden, while he was looking at the screen, he started to cry. She asked me, “Don’t you think it’s weird that a bunch of girls tossing balls and ribbons in the air made him cry?”

  “It’s very weird,” I said. “I think you should keep visiting him. From what you told me, I have the feeling you’re right, Karinne. They must really be hiding something from you. And if you let it go now, you’ll never know.”

  She rolled her eyes. “But Arno, what should I do?”

  “I don’t know, but you’re a smart girl. I’m sure that if you think about it, you’ll get some ideas.”

  She turned her body toward me and asked whether I really thought she was smart.

  I said yes.

  And then she said, “It’s hot in your car. Do you mind if I take off my shirt and sit here in my bathing suit? I’m getting off anyway. I mean getting out. Of the car. Soon.”

  Her flirting was becoming more blatant all the time. During the day, it had no effect on me. During the day, I didn’t react to the way she touched me or stroked the inside of her thigh while she talked, or how she kissed me close to my mouth when she got out of the car. During the day, I couldn’t have cared less when she said, “I miss the vibrator I left in Paris. I don’t understand how I could leave it there.” Or “I can sleep with boys, but I come hard only with older men, with real men.”

  During the day, she seemed like a little girl in desperate need of attention who was trying to get it in the cheapest way possible.

  But at night, on the living room couch, I dreamed about her. I slept with her in my dreams and I hurt her. I grabbed her by the hair and pulled, and I slapped her ass and choked her a little with my thumbs, and she loved it. When I hurt her, she said, Harder, Monsieur Arno, harder. Ayelet also liked it aggressive when we first started having sex. And then, one day a few years ago—just like that, no explanation—she stopped liking it. It didn’t work for her anymore at all. And I accepted it. I’m not the type to force a woman to do something. All the pleasure I have in bed comes from the pleasure the woman with me is having. If it didn’t work for her anymore, that was fine. And I didn’t even miss it when we let up and were, you know, gentle with each other.

  Do you mind if we move to another table, bro? No, because that couple who just sat down next to us is a little too close for what I want to tell you now. Is it okay with you? I want you to know that I really appreciate your listening to all this crap I’m dumping on you. But order something, really. On me. I get a discount at the bar here. I designed the place. From the ceiling motifs to the beer coasters. Beautiful, right? What can I get for you? A drink? A steak? They have fantastic entrecôte here. Nothing? You’re sure?

  It’s better here, isn’t it? More discreet. Where were we? So the day before yesterday, in the morning, she got into my car. The mademoiselle, who else? At first, I was still a little excited to see her because of what I’d dreamt about her at night, but then she started making up stories about the guys who’d hit on her at the beach the day before and I reminded myself that she was a pathetic little girl and that turned me off completely. Then all of a sudden—relatively early for her, we still hadn’t reached Herzliya—she stopped the Baywatch stories and said, “I think I found a way to find out what really happened to Grandpa.”

  “Great,” I said, trying not to sound too enthusiastic.

  “When Grandma comes home from the hospital, she writes emails to Elsa. She’s her best friend. She lives in Zurich. She writes her really long emails. I’m sure she tells her everything that happened. So yesterday, I stood behind her when she was typing her password and wrote it on my hand.”

  She showed me her small arm, with “WOLF 1247” written on it. It looked a little like it belonged to a Holocaust survivor.

  So I encouraged her: “See? I told you you’re a smart girl. You found an excellent way to find out what you need to find out.”

  She looked unhappy. “But I’m flying back to Mama tomorrow night.”

  “So get into her email tomorrow morning.”

  “I don’t have the courage.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t have the courage?”

  “I don’t have the courage to read Grandma’s emails. I’m also a little bit afraid of what I will find there, Arno.”

  We were both silent. She bit her nails. I ran my hands over the bristles on my cheeks. My beard’s been growing quickly this week. Two hours after I shave I have to shave again.

  And then she asked me what I myself wanted to ask, what I was afraid to ask: “Maybe you’ll come with me? Grandma goes to the hospital on the 8:20 bus. Pick me up tomorrow like always, and instead of going to Tel Aviv, we’ll wait in the groves until she leaves the house and then we’ll go back inside and read what she wrote to Elsa.”

  “Not in the groves,” I tell her. “We’ll wait in the parking lot of the squash court. There’s no one there at that hour.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  So yesterday morning I took Ofri to school. She was reading Anne of Avonlea and I held her hand and pulled her back every time she was about to walk into a tree. At the place where we always separate, she kissed me on the cheek and said, “I love you, Daddy.” Since she went into the grove with Herman, she hasn’t told me that she loves me even once. I thought it was a good sign. Maybe she was starting to get back to her old self.

  I picked up the mademoiselle at 8:05. We drove to the squash court parking lot. There were more cars there than I thought there would be, so I drove a little farther, to where there’s a bench the boys in the neighborhood sit on at night and drink the vodka they buy at the gas station. She put her small feet up on the dashboard and told me she once learned how to play squash, but her instructor hit on her and her mother got angry and stopped the lessons. Then she met him without her mother knowing. In his studio. He was married. There was a picture of his wife and kids on the table at the entrance to his studio. But that didn’t bother her. In Paris, nobody makes a big deal about things like that.

  I counted the songs on the radio while she was ta
lking. I didn’t want to look at my watch because she might get insulted and cancel everything, so I counted songs. One song is about three minutes long. Five songs, fifteen minutes. I waited through one more just to be on the safe side. “Free Fallin’ ” by Tom Petty and the Heart-breakers. Great song, eh? It’s just too bad that now it’s fucked for me and I can’t listen to it without remembering what happened.

  The judge who lives on the third floor was just coming out as we were pulling up to the building. I thought, that’s all I need now. And even though we hadn’t actually done anything bad yet, I said to Karinne, “Crouch down.” And with both of us hunched over like that, we waited for her to disappear around the bend in the street. Only then did we get out of the car and go inside.

  We knocked on the door to be 100 percent sure that Ruth wasn’t home. There was no answer. The mademoiselle put her key in the lock and turned it, and we went into their house.

  There’s a piano in the living room with a bust of Mozart on it. I felt like he was staring at me, Wolfgang Amadeus, so I turned him so he was facing the bookcase. They have hundreds of books, Herman and Ruth. Most of them are old, in German, by writers that you must know. The bookcase has glass doors. They’re usually very clean. That day, they were full of dust.

  The mademoiselle asked if I wanted something to drink. I said I thought we should do what we wanted to do as quickly as possible and started walking toward the computer room, but she stood in my way, actually blocked me with her body, and said, “I also think we should do what we want to do as quickly as possible.” And then she took off her shirt. And her bathing suit top. And her mini. And her bathing suit bottom. She did it almost in one fell swoop, as if she’d practiced the movements earlier. And before I could say stop, she was standing in front of me on the Persian rug, totally naked.