Don't Ask Me If I Love (25 page)

She brought the two cups and placed them carefully between us, on the floor.

“The sugar is already in.”

“So now you're hunting for a job?” I asked carefully.

“I've got one already. Can you guess what it is?”

“I don't know. What is it, TWA?”

“Egyptian Airlines …”

“Oh.”

“No hijacking or anything.”

I tried the coffee.

“No,” she said. “It's a small bookshop. They needed an English-speaking girl. It's not fantastic, but for the time being …” She made a meaningless gesture with her hand. “It will have to do.”

I put my empty cup on the floor.

“Come back to Jerusalem,” I said. “I'll get you another job, a better one, any job.”

She looked at me.

“No problem?” she asked, smiling into my unhappy face.

“No …”

The smile broadened a bit, then disappeared.

She shook her head.

“No. If I stay, I have to be able to make it on my own. I have been sorry about that Good Friday,” she said. “I was rude.”

“That's all right.”

“What did you think of that tall girl, remember her?” she asked me. “I thought she was very sexy.”

I nodded.

“Yes, so did I. She was quite dumb though, but then they usually are.”

She seemed surprised.

“You spoke to her?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes watched me closely. The amusement was still there but, behind it, I thought there were signs of tension.

“And what happened then?”

“I put her up for the night. She had to leave the following morning, for Paris.”

“Was she another hard case?” she asked thoughtfully, wrinkling her brow. “No, I guess not,” she added after a pause. “I don't think she was.”

“She was easy,” I said, thinking, so the hell with all of it. “She was the easiest one I have ever come across, but, then, I haven't had a lot of experience.”

“Oh, I see,” she said.

Raising her cup to her lips, she took a few sips.

“Was she good?”

“I don't know. All right.”

“Well. At least there is that.”

I licked my teeth with my tongue.

“It's you I want though,” I said. “I told you that already. I wish you would come back.”

“I have to stay here.”

I climbed slowly to my feet and walked to the other side of the room.

“Assaf?”

I looked down at the floor where some small, black ants were emerging from underneath the door.

“Yes.”

Then, I heard her light footsteps behind me and her arms tied themselves around my neck. I felt her quick, hot breathing on my cheek. She kissed me with a low moaning sigh, and I kissed her back and I heard her sigh again and I put my arms around her and pulled her fiercely to me and we were stumbling backward until we sat on the bed and her eyes were closed and her mouth was hot and dry on mine and her arms were pulling me down on top of her. And my hands wandered over the smoothness of her skin until they came to the hook in the back of her dress and I stopped hesitating and I undid her white virgin-like dress and then she kicked the dress away and it fell on the floor and her long thin fingers unbuttoned my shirt and touched my chest and she sighed again, and I pulled off her remaining clothes and I was never sure until the last minute if she was really going to, but she drew me to her and her eyes were like clouds so close and her body was soft and I felt her legs around me and I never stopped wondering and I thought to myself maybe it isn't what it always seems and then at that moment I didn't feel sad any more.

Afterward, when we were lying on our backs in the narrow bed, she looked at me, like a small girl trying to find something lost. I was trying to figure out what she was thinking, and after we lay there for quite a while in silence, she leaned over and kissed me, and her lips were dry and caressing, and then she smiled at me and there was no melancholy in it.

“Well?”

“You are beautiful.”

“Is that all?”

“No. That's a lot, but that's not all.”

Her face flushed.

“Kiss me once again,” she said, “and I'll go and make some more coffee.”

I pulled her to me and kissed her. She clung for a long moment. Then she sat up, suddenly energetic.

“O.K.,” she said, “coffee.”

She slipped into her white dress.

“Mustn't catch a cold,” she said coyly and went to the kitchen.

“Listen,” I said to her, when we were drinking the coffee, “won't you come back?”

“I shouldn't,” she said, clutching my arm with her hand. “I have to be sure, I need some time, can't you see?”

“O.K., then let's not talk about it any more.”

“Don't be cross,” she said softly. “I don't want to quarrel any more.”

“I am not cross.”

“Then, it's all right.”

“I sold the bloody book,” I said.

“WHERE did you spend last night?” my father asked me the following evening when we ran into each other in the hall.

“I visited Joy in Tel Aviv. Why?”

He looked at me thoughtfully.

“Drop in to my study some time later, will you?”

“Sure.”

I went to the kitchen and snatched a bottle of Coke. My mother looked at me silently.

When I entered my father's study holding the bottle loosely in my hand he wasn't looking at his papers. He was sitting at his desk staring straight ahead of him. I sat down on the sofa and took a drink.

“I hear you are speaking on Monday night,” he said after a while, “in the party delegates' meeting.” He raised an eyebrow. “That is quite something. What are you going to say?”

I shrugged.

“Nothing much. Mostly my view about the government's ‘so-called policy' on the Arab question. Mostly that.”

“Yes,” he said darkly. “And what are you going to say about your view of the government's ‘so-called policy' on the Arab question?”

“Well,” I said, “I'm going to say, first of all, that there is no policy to speak of and, secondly, whatever policy there is is not one which initiates peaceful solution. If we want peace, we've got to tell them exactly what we are willing to give back for it, and it will have to be most of what we have taken. That is the only practical solution, and no one ever articulates it.”

His pale eyes narrowed just a bit.

“That's no good,” he said.

“That is what I am going to say.”

“Better not.”

I licked the mouth of the bottle.

“Don't be a fool,” he said suddenly. “We'll give it all back and they'll try to wipe us all out, three months later. There is no other safe way, except being strong.”

“Lately I don't feel so safe,” I said flatly.

“That is no good,” he repeated. “You shouldn't go against the official line of the party, not when you are just a beginner, not when you've just started establishing yourself. You speak well. Argue for the majority opinion and you'll rise quickly. Maybe afterward you can afford to change your opinions.”

“That isn't the way I want to do it.”

“What good does it do you?” he said, not raising his voice. “You can't influence anything, one way or another, before you are important, and if you say what you want to, you won't ever be powerful.”

I licked my lips, my mouth felt dry. I wished I had another bottle.

“I never did want to go into politics,” I told him.

“It would be worth your while,” he said.

“I don't know.”

“Think it over,” he said. “I hope you take it easy with that American girl.”

“Her name is Joy.”

“Yes,” he said. “I hope you are not going to behave stupidly over her. At your age it's easy to make mistakes and hard to pay for them.”

I got up.

“Thanks for the tip.”

“You think over what I've said.”

It sounded a bit like a threat.

“Sure,” I said, walking out. “Sure.”

He still looked at me like he was working out all the possibilities in his head in order to decide on the best one.

It was going to be harder from now on, I thought. The atmosphere in the house was becoming more tense. I wasn't sure how to handle my attitude toward politics. The most reasonable thing seemed to be to follow my father's line. He was certainly no fool.

After having a bad night's sleep, I called Eitan the following morning. I felt like having a long sarcastic chat. Eitan liked talking about politics which he felt made no sense at all, and about the approaching hot summer. Since the Six Day War, every summer was described as hot, because of the constant firing on the Canal.

Despite his frequent laughter at the world, Eitan was no less patriotic than anyone else.

His mother answered the phone.

“Is Eitan there?”

“Who is it?”

“Assaf.”

“You're sure calling at the last minute. He's already got his pack on his back. Hold on a moment; I'll call him.”

After a few seconds he got on the line.

“Hullo?”

“Where the hell are you going?” I asked.

“Three guesses.”

“Well, I'll be damned.”

“Yeah, they really like me lately, second time this year. I think I'm going to join the peace movement.”

“The Canal?”

“Yeah.”

“How many days?”

“Forty,”

“That's a pity, I wanted to talk to you.”

“Looks like you've missed your chance.”

“You are missing my brilliant speech next Monday,” I said, “before a full house of excited delegates. You could have chosen a better time to walk out on me.”

“What are you going to say, anyway?”

“I had been depending on you for that.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I'm really awfully sorry.”

“That's all right.”

“I have to go now,” he said. “I've got a bloody long way to go.”

He paused.

“See that I get a plot overlooking the city.”

“Anything for a friend,” I said. “I'll be there with a bouquet of roses.”

“See you, then.”

“Yeah,” I said, “in one of the other worlds.”

I hung up.

That weekend I went to Eilat with Joy. I picked her up in the early afternoon and we sped south.

It was slow and lazy and dreamlike in Eilat. The last time I had been there was five years before. I had come with Ram then, a short while before he was drafted into the army. We had spent our time swimming and listening to the stories and songs of the hippies who had been camping there. It had seemed like a new world. I had been fascinated at that time by their careless, timeless, purposeless way of life. Ram had been more reserved.

I didn't go looking for the hippies on my trip with Joy. We spent all our time by ourselves on the beach, and we also slept there. I was happy then. It seemed like a part of a novel I had read a long time before, then given up and forgotten.

Joy was all smiles and vivaciousness. I enjoyed just watching her, splashing in the water like a child who'd found a new toy.

Sitting by a small fire that Friday night, I decided that this was probably the charm of beautiful things. You knew they wouldn't last, and that knowledge was what made them seem so complete. Joy was telling me about her early childhood in the state of Washington, and how she used to go camping with her family. It all of a sudden seemed like I had missed a wonderful thing by never having gone camping with my family. I think my father would have had a stroke if someone had as much as mentioned such an idea. I couldn't picture him sitting on a beach in bathing trunks wearing a straw hat. He had to work for fun.

Lying in the one sleeping bag we brought, which meant no sleeping, I felt warm and satisfied. Joy was moving around restlessly, giggling each time she stuck her elbow in my stomach and saying sorry sorry sorry. She also told me that once, before she had started studying psychology, she had considered becoming an actress. She said she had never quite given up the idea, but had decided that she would rather make herself more intellectual first, because once you start with a mania like acting, you don't have time for much else. I told her not to worry, I would still make a star out of her one day, when I really got going in the movies. Sure, Joy said, that was what she was counting on. Her only fear was that she would grow old while I was getting started.

The next day we started driving slowly back. We passed through the old Herodian fortress Masada, where the Hebrew zealots had killed themselves during their war against the Romans rather than surrender. Nowadays, I told Joy, the young tank corps recruits were sworn in, on the top of the rock, in the night, with the words “Masada shall not fall again” burning above their heads.

Her face was anxious, as we stood upon the rock, looking at the hard wild desert below us.

“No, it can't fall again,” she said anxiously. “This country has so much going for it. It can't fall.”

As we were climbing down I tried to explain to her that we had only two alternatives, holding, or being pushed to the sea. As the latter was really no alternative at all, we had to hold, so we would. It was as simple as that.

We reached Tel Aviv after dark and went to have pizza in Dizengoff, the so-called Fifth Avenue of the city. We walked for a while in the street, biting wolfishly at the food we had in our hands. There were many soldiers wandering around with their machine guns hanging at their sides, looking for girls to take to the beach, which was only two blocks away. There were many soldier-girls too and they would also go down to the beach, because, besides being soldiers, they were also girls. Joy watched all of it with wide curious eyes, clinging to my arm as we passed through the masses of hurrying people.