Konstatin, Gorbatov. Jerusalem. 1935, Private collection, USA.

 

Yid

a novel excerpt by Rebecca Gearhart

 

Nadav did not have to set an alarm because his uncle’s screaming roosters woke him up between four-thirty and five every morning. He’d been away from the base and staying at his uncle’s for the past four days, and each morning started abruptly with a crowing rooster.  As he pushed himself out of bed, he had to wonder if it would have been more relaxing to have just stayed on base. The uncle had set him up in a caravan at the edge of the sheep paddocks. In the small kitchen, he put a kettle on for tea and then sat on the small couch that faced the television. He remembered what his uncle had told him the night before, that he’d need him to go into Qalansawe to pick up chickens. Nadav’s aunt wanted a chicken coop. When Nadav had asked why they weren’t buying the chickens from a Jew, the uncle said, “Arab chickens are cheaper.”

The kettle whistled, and he poured the hot water over a tea bag. Outside, the sheep were startled and began to moan and bleat. There was no way they could be hungry, he thought, the things ate so much that their stomachs protruded on each side as if they’d swallowed huge ceramic discs. But he wouldn’t be able to think over the noise, so he went out to the paddocks. The moment they saw him, the bleating grew louder. He took a giant pitchfork to the pile of hay at the end of the aisle separating the sheep pens from the empty horse stables and dropped it into their paddock. In the shed, he filled three buckets with grain and poured a thick line of the feed as he watched the sheep jostle for it. He returned to the caravan, locked the door and slumped into the couch. He wanted the trip to be over with, but sleepiness pulled his eyelids down from the pent up exhaustion of being on duty which rendered him nearly catatonic whenever he was on leave. Had he not needed somewhere to stay, he’d tell his uncle and aunt with their seemingly endless list of chores to go fuck themselves. He wanted to sleep in. He finished the tea, got into the pickup truck and drove it out the long, dirt driveway that snaked through the property.

The address his uncle scrawled on a piece of paper proved useless in guiding him into the Arab village as the street signs and house numbers dissolved only to disappear altogether. On the back was written, two kilometers past the petrol station, and the house has a broken down red truck in front of it. Great, Nadav thought. He drove slowly, trying different narrow veins through the village until he found the house with the broken down red truck in front.

He knocked at the door and a man about his own age answered. “Srulik’s nephew?” he asked in Arabic.

Nadav nodded.

“Yala,” he said, jerking his head toward the back of the house.

They walked around to where a woman in a headscarf hung clothes on a line to dry while a fat baby sat in the dirt at her feet. She looked at them, then at her husband—her eyes angry—then back to her clothes. Next to a stack of tires was a cage with five speckled, shrieking chickens. Nadav handed the man a wad of cash. He counted it carefully as his wife looked on. Satisfied, he nodded at Nadav, who, without saying a word, picked up the cage loading it to the back of the truck and drove home.

His aunt made schnitzel for dinner which they always ate each night. Nadav’s body felt clogged with oil and chicken whenever he stayed with them. She set the platter in the center of the table and sat. “So, Nadav, you think you’re going to sign on again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe time to start looking for a wife?” his uncle asked.

“I guess. I don’t know.”

“Hm.”

They ate in silence. Nadav would have to make a decision about the army in a year. He didn’t know what else he’d do, though he didn’t particularly want to stay on.  And a wife…of course, he wanted a wife. He didn’t care about love and happiness, but the idea of coming home to the same person every day, going to the same job every day, having his own house. Nadav would be happy to not make any decisions for the rest of his life. He thought about the chicken man and his wife and his fat baby, his house in the dirt, and Nadav wished he could come home to something like that. He wanted his own mean-eyed wife waiting at home, his own ugly, fat baby. His own house. His own broken down truck.

He finished as much of the plate as he could. “I’m going to Jerusalem for the night,” he said. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Be safe,” his aunt said. His uncle shooed him out the door, as if relieved to be rid of his nephew.

 

Nadav didn’t have a place to stay in Jerusalem, but he had a few friends in the city. He figured he’d walk around and get a drink before calling someone to see if he could sleep on their couch. Maybe he’d even stay in the city a few days. It was already dark when he got off the bus at the central station. The streets were full with soldiers in drab uniforms, perched on every corner. He didn’t know the city well, but he knew he liked it better than Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv was like a city from a different country, a city on the moon, a different planet. Jerusalem, however, felt like home. He walked until he found a dark bar that smelled of whisky, went in and ordered a Heineken. He paid for the beer and sat at a sidewalk table, in the distance, Mount Scopus was blurry, far away. Nadav sank into the chair wondering who he’d call. Now that he was in Jerusalem, he felt embarrassed at his situation. His friends were more like acquaintances and it was possible no one would want to put him up.

A few girls his age walked into the bar. They had on black leggings and black tunics. He wondered if they went to Bezalel. They looked like it. Probably pacifists. Aviad had told him about the girls at the art school. Nadav slouched in his seat as a group of soldiers walked by. He dreaded going back to the army, but had to figure out what else he could do if he didn’t sign on again. It seemed so easy for some of his friends. They found girls, got married, had jobs they liked. They’d figured out adulthood once their mandatory service was finished. But Nadav hadn’t, so he signed on for another three years. If he didn’t figure something out soon, he’d be stuck in an endless loop of signing on forever.

The girls in black came outside and sat at the table next to him. They started speaking English. Americans! Or maybe Brits? Nadav knew English from high school but couldn’t keep up with what they were saying. He noticed one of them kept looking over. She was pretty with long black hair and green eyes. The clothes made her look like a witch, but maybe it was an American thing, Witch style. Nadav smiled at her and turned back to the street, listening to their English. Maybe he could find an American girlfriend. Move to New York or Los Angeles. He wondered what kind of job he could have, something other than plumber, farmer. Maybe he’d have a restaurant. Americans loved falafel.

“Hi.”

Nadav looked over and saw the girl with green eyes was staring at him.

“Yeah, you,” she said, laughing. “Are you waiting for someone?”

“No—”

“So you’re just out here, drinking alone?”

“I guess.”

Her friends didn’t seem to notice their side conversation. Instead of inviting him to their table, she dragged her chair to his. “My name’s Jennifer,” she said. A waiter came out and asked him if they wanted another round of drinks. He then ordered two beers. Jennifer told him she was a student at Hebrew University studying psychology, and from New York. She spoke quickly, skipping between heavily accented Hebrew and her native English. Much of what she said he didn’t catch. They ordered more beers. After a while, Nadav and Jennifer realized her friends had left without saying goodbye and the two were alone as the bar was closing up.

“Do you have a place around here?” she asked. Though they’d spoken for hours, he hadn’t talked about much of his life. He was drunk, a little unsteady on his feet. He told her he was going to stay with a friend and just needed to find a payphone. “There’s one near my apartment,” she said.

He left money on the table under one of the many empty bottles then followed her down a narrow street. Everything was gold and tan beneath the black sky—all of Jerusalem looked the same to him with its warm lights. He loved it so much more than his dirty caravan on the moshav at his uncle’s farm. The sidewalks sloped and turned sharply. They stumbled a few times, bumping into each other, which he didn’t mind. He forgot where they were going until she stopped in front of a payphone but he had no idea who to call. It was past two in the morning, too late to call anybody he knew. He put a coin in the payphone and stood so Jennifer couldn’t see as he dialed a random number. A man with an angry voice picked up and he replaced the receiver back.

“Nobody picked up,” he told her.

She rolled her eyes and tugged on his arm. “You can come with me.”

 

Over the next two decades, during the lowest points of his life, Nadav would often recall the women he could have married, not out of any sexual desire to be unfaithful, or an impulse to cheat on Jennifer, but because of how different his life would have been had he stayed in Israel. One in which he was not, as now, sitting in a kitchen in Westchester County with only the idiotic voice of an American newscaster to keep him company. In those first two years after he and Jennifer were married, Nadav often imagined an alternative life. Instead of starting a family, she pursued her PhD while he supported the two of them with a job at a moving company.  He often imagined what would have been had he stayed in Israel and married Hadas who had Yemenite parents like he did, a job in a kindergarten—Hadas who had come to his apartment during that year-and-a-half between his first meeting Jennifer and then later moving to the United States.

Nadav allowed himself these thoughts when alone and tired after a long day of work while Jennifer was at school studying, thoughts of living with Hadas in Ramat HaGolan where it was green, where they had a sienna-colored house with olive saplings in the backyard and two kids. He wondered if, after all those years, Hadas ever thought of him. He decided, probably not. She’d have no reason to. She’d almost certainly married somebody else. But, he wondered if she was happy.

Before Hadas, there was Nitsan, who Nadav met on the army base a month after Jennifer left Israel the first time. Nitsan was a secretary on the base. The two had met on his first day back in Israel after returning from a deployment in Lebanon. She’d seen him sitting behind the barracks eating stale pita with cheese and gave him her green, plastic Tupper-ware of couscous with raisins and cinnamon. Sharing her food with him was all it took. That night they had sex in his office on the medical cot they took from the hall supply closet. He knew nothing about her other than she was an olim, young—eighteen—a new recruit, her body doughy under his finger-tips, and that she smelled good.

Nitsan traveled home at night and on the weekends. He went home with her that first weekend after they started sleeping together. On the bus to Netanya, jostling in the sticky seat, surrounded by impenetrable Russian conversation, Nadav considered that he might have made a   mistake of sorts. It struck him as strange to be going to these peoples’ home, that going to her home might give an impression other than his intent to fuck her.

Since that first couscous night, he always thought of being on top of her, pressing her soft body down, feeling it spread under his weight. He thought about falling into her, about being swallowed up between her thighs.

“Our stop,” she said in her South African-accented English. They alone were let off at the sprawling four-way intersection. “My dad should be here soon.”

They sat in the shell of the bus stop and Nadav closed his eyes. He didn’t feel like talking. He wondered if he should have gone, instead, to visit his own family.

Nitsan’s father pulled up in a white pickup truck, an enormous man with long white hair who spoke terrible Hebrew. He drove erratically while shooting off questions to Nadav, asking about his childhood, upbringing, military work. They weren’t the questions of a suspicious father, but those of an admiring Zionist. Nadav had met these before. Fanatic immigrants.  In the back seat, Nitsan was quiet.

They arrived at a large blue house. The generous property held a flock of sheep asleep in a paddock, a few skinny, speckled horses and two donkeys. Inside the house, Nitsan’s mother was in the kitchen with the table all set. She greeted them in English. The house was big, with a large foyer, a dining room and a separate breakfast room. A wide wooden staircase straddled the center.  Nitsan talked to her mother in the kitchen while Nadav wandered into the living room. The furniture looked expensive. There were photographs on the walls, mostly of people wrapped in colorful clothes wearing piles of beads, standing in the dirt in front of lumpy, brown huts. Nadav felt he knew the kind of people Nitsan’s parents were.

“Dinner!” Nitsan’s mother called.

 

Nitsan had no inhibitions about sex, no inhibitions about anything. It seemed the perfect set up for him.  For the next two months, whenever he had leave, Nadav would take the bus to the farm run by the South Africans. He’d suffer through the father’s political discussions conducted in his incomprehensible Hebrew, after which, Nadav and Nitsan would go to her room. He’d stick his tongue inside her, crawl on top of her until they fell asleep. Her parents loved him, making a big deal over him whenever he visited. To them, he was the brave Jewish defender of Zion, the IDF soldier. While most parents would not have approved of their relationship, let alone condone it taking place at their home, Nitsan’s parents were captivated by the visits of a real-life Maccabee.

 

One night, laying in bed sweating and sticky between the thighs and backs of their necks, Nitsan reached to pull the cord of the ceiling fan.  Nadav watched as her naked body stretched upwards. And, he thought he wouldn’t mind waking up to her every day. He hadn’t been bored of sleeping with her these past two months, hadn’t grown irritable with her voice, her face. He wondered if this is what his married friends had felt when they settled on someone. He wondered if he could stay with her and have no more surprises for the rest of his life. Or at least one less surprise.

A few weeks later, while in his office on base, he wrote to Jennifer. The letter began—I love you so much, and it hurts me to do this. He kept it short, blaming the stress of the army, sealed it and stored it in his backpack to mail after Shabbat. He locked up his office and got the bus to Nitsan’s. When he arrived, Nitsan’s parents were preparing to leave for shul. “Help yourselves to some dinner, enjoy yourselves,” Nitsan’s father said. He touched his daughter on the cheek and smiled at Nadav.

There was a tray of kugel on the counter with a cloth laid over the top. Nitsan cut two small pieces and plopped them in the middle of paper plates, handing one to Nadav. He hated the Ashkenazi food Nitsan’s mother cooked. As they sat at the wooden table, he took small bites of the kugel while Nitsan told him about the new base where she’d been transferred and how much she didn’t like the other girl stationed there. When they finished eating, she dumped their plates in the trash and took a bottle of rum from the cabinet. Nitsan’s skirt rode up to reveal her soft thighs. She took thick, easy sips of the rum from a crystal glass that looked like it cost more than a month of his salary.

He took her hand. “I really love spending time with your family.”

“They’re alright,” she took her hand back and smiled.

“You ever think about us going somewhere?”

“Like where? A trip would be fun?” He stared. She tucked her legs under herself. She didn’t need to say anything more. The humiliation hit him instantly, but he pressed on.

“But your parents really seem to love me.”

“So? Because my parents have an unhealthy obsession with the Israeli army and Israeli soldiers and this stupid country and stupid Zionism, you think I want to be your girlfriend? What are we going to do, get married or something?”

Without answering, Nadav grabbed his backpack and left. Shabbat was well under way, which meant there’d be no buses. So he walked. Occasionally, a lone car would pull over offering him a ride, but he waved them on. He thought about Nitsan and tried to identify what it was about her that he liked. This made him feel marginally better, because the more he thought about it, the more he was able to convince himself that he liked hardly anything about her. That if anything, she’d just seemed like an easy solution. An end-game, a certainty. A way out. Nadav wanted no more questions in his life. He wanted to solidify his present. And he’d thought Nitsan could provide it, that was all. That was the thing he liked about her. He’d find it eventually. Maybe he already had. He thought about Jennifer, guiltily.

By the time Nadav got back to his apartment, it was light out. His head hurt and he was hungry because he hadn’t eaten much of the kugel, because he hated kugel. On his bed, he took the letter from his backpack placing it on the bedside table and went to sleep.

 

A few months before Jennifer was scheduled to fly out for summer break, Nadav met Hadas. By then, Nadav had his own place in Haifa. Unlike with Nitsan, he didn’t make the mistake of letting himself see Hadas as anything other than a body. However, sitting in his kitchen in New York twenty years after the fact, it was easy to regret this decision.

They met while he was in Borgata visiting his cousin, Aviad. Nadav had just turned twenty-four. Hadas was twenty and had just finished her army service. She was working in a small falafel restaurant where he and his cousin ate lunch. The cafe had four tables inside and two picnic tables out front. Nadav and Aviad each ordered a falafel sandwich and sat at the picnic table. Aviad faced the road and Nadav angled his chair toward the restaurant. The door was propped open, and Nadav could watch the pretty young woman working inside while he ate his sandwich and listened to Aviad talk about his idea for a small gourmet mushroom growing business. Aviad finished his sandwich and talked about the mushrooms until he ran out of steam. “When is Jennifer planning on coming back?” he asked.

“Soon.”

“You’re looking forward to it?”

“I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t want to talk about Jennifer, certainly not with Aviad who had a nice religious wife he’d met through a neighbor’s cousin, and a baby on the way. Nadav looked through the door into the restaurant, but the young woman behind the counter had disappeared from sight.

Aviad nodded his head. “I hope you get this whole thing out of your system before Jennifer comes back.”

“This, what?”

“You know what I mean.”

Nadav went inside to pay. The restaurant was empty. The woman was sitting on a stool in front of the service window to the kitchen. She turned to talk to the line cook with her back to Nadav, who waited patiently by the register. It took a while before she acknowledged him.

“Can I help you?”

“My name’s Nadav.”

She had brown hair and wore a tight, white tee-shirt. “Okay,” she said. “Nadav, can I help you?”

“You’re very pretty.”

“You want to leave or you want me to have Yussi kick you out?” She pointed over her shoulder toward the kitchen.

Nadav could tell she wouldn’t because she was smiling. “Can I see you tonight?” he asked.

“Why should I see you anywhere? You want to see me, you can come to the restaurant.”

She was pretty and he was lonely.

She rolled her eyes, but was still smiling. Nadav knew he was good-looking. “We close at eight,” she said. “My name’s Hadas.”

When Nadav returned outside, Aviad was standing smoking a cigarette. “I almost left without you.”

“Why would you do that?”

Aviad waved his hand in the air. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

As Aviad drove, “You know, there’s another idea I had.”

“What?” Nadav asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Another business. I have a friend from the army, he lives in Jerusalem. He does tourism. He gives tours of the old city, the Armenian quarter, all this shit. One time, he had this group of Americans, and they asked if they could see his apartment. He didn’t live in such a nice place, just any old apartment. Ground level, with a tiny courtyard, you know this kind of place.”

Nadav closed his eyes, letting the car bounce him around. He wasn’t sure where Aviad was going with the idea, but ever since his wife had told him she was pregnant, this was Aviad’s usual state of mind. Nadav couldn’t blame him. Kids were expensive, they got hurt, or needed glasses, or wanted to go to college in America.

“So, he brings this family back to his apartment—and listen to this, Nadav—these Americans are into it! They love it. Feel like they’re getting the authentic Israeli experience.”

The car rolled to a stop, Nadav opened his eyes. A group of school children crossed the street. When they were on the other side, Aviad accelerated again. “So, I’m thinking, I mean, what if we were to sell this experience? For these Jewish tourists, you know, they want so much to have an idea of Israeli life. They really want to feel Jewish, I guess, fully Jewish. These Americans have good money. They’re not plumbers or taxi drivers or some other bullshit like that. Doctors, lawyers. Dentists!”

Aviad pulled the car up to his house. “Yael would love to see you. You sure you don’t want to come inside? Or, I can’t drive you home?”

“No, no, I should get going.”

Outside the car, they embraced.

“Shit, man, you are getting thin. I feel your whole skeleton, you know,” Aviad said.

Nadav kissed his cousin on the cheek and watched him disappear into the house. Nadav walked toward the bus station and kept on until he reached a small park. He had about four hours to kill until Hadas finished work. Years in the army had made him an expert at being bored, so having to pass time was no issue. There was a small hill awash in sunlight where Nadav could lay down. He pulled from his pack the letter that had arrived that morning from the United States, his name and address written in Jennifer’s sharp, even handwriting.

She never used a greeting, just his name.

Nadav-

I’ll be out there in just a few weeks now. The semester feels like it’s crawling.

I don’t know if you remember me talking about my friend Lisa, but she got engaged last Thursday (the fourteenth). I wish you’d be able to come to the wedding.

I guess neither of us has said it, but my upcoming visit is kind of a trial run. If I end up moving after I graduate, I hope you’ll show some understanding of how much I’m really sacrificing. This isn’t simple. I’m not saying I don’t want to do it.

 

She was the kind of American who would have paid Aviad’s friend an embarrassing amount of money to sleep in his shitty Jerusalem apartment. He returned the letter to his backpack. A group of four boys, none could have been older than ten, arrived at the park. They had with them a small, white dog—a puppy, maybe two months old. The boys led it by a rope around its neck, and the young dog struggled to keep up with them. When they noticed Nadav, the boys drew together and got quiet. He couldn’t hear what they were saying but, he could tell they had come to the park in the middle of a weekday, dragging sticks along with them, seeking some private place where they could torture the small animal. They disappeared into the trees at the park’s edge.

 

It was still light out when Hadas finished work. Nadav was sitting at one of the picnic tables.

“How far did you drive to get here?” she asked.

“I don’t have a car.”

“So what, you took the bus?”

“I just waited at the park.”

“Stupid man. And for nothing, you know this? I’m engaged,” but she was smiling.

“I don’t see a ring on your finger.”

The line cook walked out saying goodnight to Hadas.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“North, I grew up in the North. I just started renting an apartment in Haifa, though.”

“Why Haifa?”

“It’s close to the army base.”

“You’re a career soldier?”

He nodded. She made a face but she was smiling, sitting close, and in the warm air, Nadav could smell her deeply. She smelled good, like body odor mixed with rose perfume. Her hair was coarse and touched the tops of her shoulders and he wanted so much to touch it.

“What does your fiancé do?”

“He’s in the army, too. He’s a paratrooper.”

Nadav snorted because the paratroopers were pussies.

After they talked a while, Hadas wanted to leave. She was nervous somebody might see them and it would get back to her paratrooping fiancé that she was out with another man. They got into her car and without further discussion of where they should go, she simply asked for directions to his apartment.

Nadav’s apartment was tiny and very hot. They sat in the cement patio smoking Nadav’s cigarettes circling around the reason they were both there, which was not to talk about Hadas’ childhood love of horses. Between them, they smoked all of Nadav’s cigarettes. It was now dark. Her face was in shadows. Maybe that was why he felt comfortable pulling her toward him and touching her hair. The sex that night didn’t last long. Afterwards, Nadav dozed off and when he woke up, he smelled something good. He went into the kitchen where Hadas was seated at the table fully dressed and eating rice and tomato sauce. There was the smell of hot peppers and a pot of food cooking on the stove. Nadav pulled on underwear and joined her at the tiny kitchen table. Though they ate in silence, it wasn’t uncomfortable. If anything, Nadav found it to be a huge relief.

When she was done eating, Hadas said, “I have to go, I have work in the morning.”

“Can I have your phone number?” Nadav asked.

“No, but I’ll take yours.”

He wrote his number on the back of a receipt and she left.

He put the dirty plates in the sink and left the food simmering on the stove before returning to bed to finish reading Jennifer’s letter.

I hope you’ve had a chance to read the books I’ve sent you. I think they may help you. Salinger knows a lot about suffering. I think, in particular, Seymour: An Introduction might touch you. I hope you’ll give them a chance, at least.

In other news, I went to a talk on the Lebanese conflict the other night. My father says it is the beginning of a movement toward Jewish self-cannibalization. I’m not sure what he means by that.

Nadav put the letter aside. He checked his watch. Two in the morning. He went to bed.

Weeks later, Nadav woke up in the early morning to the kitchen phone ringing. It was Hadas. Her boyfriend had deployed the day before and she was coming over.  He pulled on pants and a tee-shirt, brushed his teeth, and walked to the store. People were out, kids on their way to school, cars carrying people to work, buses, moms with shopping bags. Nadav moved slowly, slower than all of them. At the store, there was a long line of customers.  He walked to the back past the cookies and yogurts to a display of pre-made sandwiches. There was a hard-boiled egg and roasted vegetable sandwich, another with soft cheese and roasted vegetables, and another with all three. Nadav hated hard-boiled eggs, and he didn’t want to think about fucking somebody who’d just eaten them. He grabbed two soft cheese and roasted vegetable sandwiches and got in line. Ahead of him was an older woman. What he could see from the back she was beautiful. She wore a green dress that cut across her calves. She was very thin with blonde hair and a fine layer of peach fuzz covering her bare arms. If he beheld her body a certain way, obscuring the store’s strong, white light, it might appear as if she had a halo. She carried items without a basket, same as he did. She had a pint of yogurt, a container of sugar cookies, and two bananas. Nadav wondered where she was from. The line shuffled forward, slowly. He wanted the woman to reach the cashier if only to hear her speak. When she did, the voice was soft and quiet, as he imagined it would be. She placed the items on the counter while the cashier tallied them up and, as she dug into her purse, he noticed a tiny tattoo of numbers on her forearm. She pushed her long hair behind her ear and finally, he could see her face. It was as beautiful as he’d hoped. He thought to say something to her, but didn’t. Maybe he could move into her house, fall asleep in her fuzzy arms.

 

“Are you hungry?” Nadav asked.

“No.” Nadav and Hadas were sitting in his kitchen. Hadas lit a cigarette. Nadav retrieved an ashtray from the cabinet and set it in front of her. He took a sip of coffee.

“So, you want to do this in the kitchen or what?”

“No,” he said. He left the coffee in the kitchen, it was bitter and cold, he didn’t want it anymore. In the dark bedroom, only traces of light came through the shades. Hadas placed her cigarette—still smoldering—at the edge of the bedside table, stripped off her clothes into a pile on the bare, cement floor. She picked up the cigarette, got into bed and laid back on the pillows.

He took off his clothes and lowered himself on top of her. Her hips were sharp as were his. The sex was painful, her bones grinding into his body in every wrong place, her pubic hair was rough, the bed beneath his knees hurt, he could feel the springs. The sweat pooled on her stomach, and in the crack of his butt. After a few thrusts, he came on her thigh. He thrust his fingers inside her until she orgasmed, or, perhaps, faked it. Afterwards, he went into the kitchen. Hungry, finally, he ate one of the sandwiches. Hadas sat naked across from him. Her breasts were soft, drooping in the heat. She lit a cigarette. He took another bite of the sandwich but the vegetables had gone soft and slimy and slipped down his throat. The unpleasant taste lingered. He washed it away with the cold, bitter coffee. Hadas finished her cigarette, went into the other room and came out a few minutes later, dressed.

“I’ll call you soon,” she said and left.

He nodded biting into the sandwich.

Alone again, he thought of the woman from the store. He closed his eyes, slouched into the chair. He should write Jennifer, he thought. He’d do that, then maybe take the bus to Aviad’s. He pulled a pad of paper and a ballpoint from the kitchen drawer and began his letter:

Jenny,

I think about you all the time, and can’t wait for you to come out. One more month, is it? From now, at least. Sooner, once this letter gets to you. You’re feeling nervous about so much, but you’ll feel better once you’re here, you’ll see.

Nadav set down his pen and read over those few sentences. It looked pretty good. He searched the bedroom for the books that she’d sent him. The bed was disheveled and the room still smelled of Hadas. He searched the set of drawers that held his few clothes. In the bottom drawer was a pile of books under his jeans. He went through them until he found the one with a mustard-colored spine and a white cover in black cursive—Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter and Seymour: An Introduction. He considered Jennifer’s words, it was a thin enough book, but the idea of reading it gave him a headache. He went back to the table.

I got your books. I liked Seymour, he was a good character. I see why you think I’d like this. Aviad’s wife is pregnant, did I tell you? By the time you’re here the baby will have been born. Aviad thinks it will be a boy. I’m sorry I don’t write more, but I love you, and you’ll see when you get out here, you’ll be happy and everything will be fine. I’ll write you soon.

Nadav

He read through the letter again, then placed it in an envelope shoving it into his bag and walked to the nearby post office.

The sun was up, high and hot. There was no line, and he sent the letter off.  He wished he’d thought to call Aviad and considered returning to the apartment to call him. But, he thought better of it since Aviad would probably be home, anyway. At the bus stop, sitting in a sliver of shade, he took out the book. He brought it up to his nose, but any scent of Jennifer had long disappeared. He opened to the first page. Nadav didn’t love reading in English, but the prose was simple and the short length encouraging. He realized it was a story about a man named Seymour who didn’t show up for his own wedding. Nadav thought about the letter he’d just sent and his stomach dropped. He could go back to the post office. The letter probably hadn’t been mailed yet, but he decided against it and kept reading. The bus came, and he read all the way until reaching Aviad’s.

Nadav knocked at the door.  Aviad’s wife, Yael, answered. She was in the midst of rearranging the sparse living room. “I’m babyproofing,” she said. “Aviad’s home, you know,” her voice dropped, “there’s not a lot of work right now. He’s home a lot.” She couldn’t have been too worried because she smiled and quickly went back to cleaning. Behind her, a half-built crib rested on the living room tile floor and a highchair big enough for the unborn child when it would be a year old.  There was a map-of-the-world play mat, and a stroller lined with a photo accordion of Rabbi portraits, none of whom Nadav recognized except for the Rebbe whom the Chabadniks followed like a cult leader.

Aviad came out from the bedroom. “Nadav, perfect timing! I was about to go look at a piece of property that would be great for the mushroom farm. You can come.”

They left the house without saying goodbye to Yael, and drove off. “I read that the nice restaurants in Tel Aviv will pay a lot for high quality, gourmet mushrooms. I found a little plot of land where we could put up a greenhouse. It can’t be that hard,” Aviad said.

Nadav closed his eyes. As the car bumped along, he suddenly felt very tired. His cousin talked about creating something to leave his child one day, but Nadav was so close to the edge of falling asleep that his body ached. After a few minutes, Aviad pulled the car over at the gated entrance to a dirt road and cut the engine.

“We need to walk the rest of the way.”

Aviad pushed open the iron gate and they made their way along an overgrown path.  There were no houses in the area. They walked past some pick-up trucks in the tall grass.  Beneath one of the trucks, Nadav saw a family of brown dogs. One of the puppies ran up to them with its ear full of blood-bloated ticks, dangling like little grey grapes. The men passed two caravans, before arriving at a parcel of land surrounded by wire fencing.  Nadav saw the rotting wooden bones of a half-built greenhouse.

“This is it,” Aviad said.

Nadav crouched under the wire fence. A pecan tree cast a huge shade over the plot. He picked two nuts off the ground and pressed them together in his fist, cracking them open. Beneath the roof of the rotting greenhouse, the soil was black and damp and sunk beneath his feet.

“We’d hardly have to do anything to it at all. I’ll let you buy into the business, if you want.”

“I’ll think about it, Avi.” In the distance, there were sheep in the field, and a pile of tin-siding. Somewhere an engine started up, and the dogs began barking. Aviad lit a cigarette and held the pack out for Nadav, who took one, placing it between his dry lips, and lit it. His legs felt like sand, his eyes burned.

On the bus ride home, Nadav finally slept. He dreamt of the woman in the store—her blonde hair, her green dress, the tattoo blurred on her tan skin. He woke just minutes before the bus pulled into his stop—the sky was dark, and he had an erection.

 

Rebecca Gearhart is a fiction writer from New York’s Hudson River Valley who is currently living in the Midwest. Her work has appeared in The Hunger and American Chordata.