Safekeeping (13 page)

“Lucky you! You've reached Barry Sloman. I don't need to tell you what to do after the beep, do I?”

U
lya and Farid lay on a maroon blanket in their usual spot on the hillside, just past the mandarin grove, on the other side of the cattle-wire fence that surrounded the back of the kibbutz. The spring wildflowers covering the hill, which were a splendid blur of blue and yellow during the day, lost their color at night, but were twice as fragrant.

Farid turned onto his side and looked down at her. “Maybe your cousin can lend me the money?”

Ulya, head resting on her purple vinyl purse, blew out smoke. “For what? Your little restaurant dream?” She tossed the cigarette, even though it still had a few hauls left. She refused to suck at butt ends. “Wake up. You're going to work on the kibbutz for the rest of your life.”

“Why do you say that? Because I'm Arab?”

Ulya found Palestinians or Israeli Arabs or Palestinian Israelis or whatever the hell she was supposed to call them a lazy bunch, it was true, but that wasn't why she thought Farid was going nowhere. He just didn't have
it
—that hunger, that urgency, that willingness to do whatever it took.

“Yes, because you're a lazy
Aravi
.” She said “Arab” in Hebrew to give it extra bite.

When she and Farid first started spending time together, he would get mopey when she teased him, but then he came up with his wishful theory that she was behaving like a love-struck schoolgirl, teasing a boy because she was frightened by her feelings for him. Ha! The truth was she couldn't care less if Farid ever got his restaurant. If he remained a fieldhand for the rest of his life, what did it matter to her? For selfish reasons, she even liked
how easygoing he was. When she was with him, it made her feel almost easygoing. For the few hours, when she lay with him on the hillside, the future felt just a little less urgent. So the very reason why she liked being with Farid was exactly why she could never fall in love with him.

Farid picked a twig off the blanket and rolled it between his callused fingers. “Arabs are responsible for some of the world's greatest inventions, you know. We invented the concept of zero.”

“Oh, I believe that!” Ulya tried to grab the twig from him. “If there's anything the Arabs could invent, it's nothing.”

Farid climbed on top of her and poked her cheek with the twig. She wriggled her head and laughed under the delight of his weight.

“Say you're sorry.”

“No.”

“Say you're sorry!”

“Get off me!” she hooted.

“Have you ever said sorry in your life?”

Ulya gazed past Farid's shoulder at the stars. Just as she had to admit that Farid had striking eyes, she had to admit this sorry little country had a magnificent night sky. Every time she lay out here, she spied a falling star. In Mazyr, the gray smoke billowing from the orange and white stacks blanketed the sky, tucking its citizenry into the city the way her mother used to tuck her and her brother under the charcoal blanket they would spend the rest of the night fighting over.

She shrugged. “I've never had to.”

“I'll make you sorry.” Farid nuzzled his face into her neck and growled like a bear, tickling her, making her cringe and laugh. Then he rolled off and lay on his side again, resting his hand on her stomach, his fingertips under the hem of her cropped tank top. “I know why you can't ask your cousin for the money. He doesn't know I exist, does he?”

Of course he didn't know Farid existed. Ulya dreaded anyone finding out about them. She didn't want to see the knowing leers on the other Arab workers. She didn't want her fellow Russians making cracks about her giving it to an Arab fieldhand. And although the kibbutzniks might not say anything to her outright, they would certainly look at her askance, especially the girls in the dairy. She would rather sell
vobla
than have Jews looking down at her. And who was Farid to talk? Had he told his parents about her? No. He claimed he was waiting until she agreed to marry him.

“Forget my cousin. My
fourth
cousin or something like that. He may be a bioengineer, but he doesn't have any money. Doctors don't make real money in Israel. His apartment in Tel Aviv is a dump. And anyway, even if he did have money, he wouldn't give me any. He thinks I'm a user.”

“What's a user?”

“He thinks I use people, you know, for my own purposes.”

Farid's hand froze on her belly. Was he actually wondering if he were being used? What could she possibly use him for? Other than to pass the time. Or for that feeling of easygoingness. Or for his worship, his love.

He asked, “Do you?”

“My cousin is an idiot. When Israelis say the Russian immigrants have been good for the country—how it's all Russians in the symphony, the research labs, the universities, the Olympic team—they're talking about people like him. He's so grateful to Israel for getting him out of the Soviet Union, even though he can go to America now and make lots of money—people in his field are millionaires there, sometimes billionaires—he stays here and lights Hanukah candles. It makes me sick to see him turning into a big Jew.”

Farid pressed on her nose. “The only thing I hear the Israelis say about the Russians is that they're criminals, that they brought the mafia with them. That they're
using
Israel to get to the United States.”

“Firstly . . .” Ulya brushed his hand from her face. “I say Russian, because you all say Russian, but I am Belarusian. There is a difference! Secondly, you want me to say it? I'll say it. I'm a user. I'm not ashamed. Life is a game, Farid, that you can either win or lose. And if you don't win, it's not like you get to play again. You've got one chance. One! So if a person gets an opportunity to cheat, under those circumstances, who can blame them? You?”

Ulya did not like the way Farid regarded her with his bottom lip between his teeth. He had told her that he loved her for her fire, that he felt twice as alive when he was around her, but once in a while, like now, she could see her fire made him uneasy. One time, when she said something that disturbed him, he told her that according to the prophet Mohammad “the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were women,” but he refused to believe women were corrupt or soulless, that he could sense Ulya's good soul beneath her tough talk, just as he could smell her skin under her perfume.

In order to change the subject—or maybe, Ulya thought, because he had wanted to ask all evening—he said, “So who was that person you were eating lunch with today?”

Enjoying his jealousy, Ulya pretended not to remember. She rolled on her side to face him. “Today? Lunch? Who was it?”

“He didn't look familiar. Didn't look Russian. Probably a Jew. Tanned skin. Black hair.”

“Oh, him! Adam. Yes, he's a Jew . . . from Manhattan.”

“Manhattan?” Farid raised his eyebrows.

Ulya smiled at his worry. She was glad he hadn't seen Adam until today. If he had seen her with him when he first arrived, a week or so ago, he never would've been jealous. He would have known that she couldn't possibly be interested in that bum with the shaggy hair. But Adam didn't look quite as sickly and unkempt now. From the distance Farid had probably seen him, he may have looked quite good.

“Yes, Manhattan. The real one, in New York. I don't know why he's on the kibbutz. His grandfather was here after the war.”

“My grandfather was here before the war.”

“Oh, God!” Ulya rolled her eyes. “Not this again. I can't hear this anymore. Everything was different before the war. Then Belarus had the Jews. Who knows? Maybe if there'd been no war, if the Germans hadn't destroyed every city in my country, and then the Russians, maybe I wouldn't be running away today.”

Farid rested his hand on the dip of her waist. “And did this Jew try to convince you to go to Manhattan with him?”

Ulya wasn't going to tell him that even though Adam had seen her naked, he couldn't be less interested in her, that he talked to her as if she weren't the least bit attractive.

“I don't want to talk about Adam anymore.”

“Me neither.”

Farid pressed his lips against hers and pulled back his head to take in her face. Ulya met his stare with her blue eyes, which she knew Farid found as beautiful and exotic as she found his gold ones. He brushed a strand of hair from her face.

He said, “Chez Farid is going to be a very special restaurant. I can see the sign, very fancy. It's going to have the best hummus. Everybody—Jews, Arabs, even Russians—are going to come from all over for it.”

Ulya stuck out her tongue. “I hate hummus. It tastes like whipped sawdust.”

“And, of course, what I'm really hoping, Ulya, what I want more than anything is for you to be with me behind the counter. For it to be
our
restaurant.”

Ulya managed to keep a cool face even though his words punched her in the gut and sent her soul, the soul he claimed to sense so well, reeling backward. How had she come to a place in life where such a proposal was possible from such a person? She couldn't imagine a worse fate than the one she'd just been offered. For a second she missed Mazyr and the smokestacks.

“That's sweet,” she said, as if he couldn't possibly be serious.

But he either didn't hear the sarcasm or chose to ignore it. “I can't help it, Ulya. You're as important to the dream as the fancy sign and the hummus. I'm not even sure if I would want the restaurant without you.”

As important as the hummus? If she weren't so horrified, she would laugh. And did he think it was cute that he wouldn't want the restaurant if it weren't for her? That's why he was never going to have one. He didn't want it enough. Farid didn't want anything enough. She couldn't even be sure he wanted her badly enough. Maybe she had come to him too easily. She rolled onto her back. A stone pressed into her shoulder blade, and she writhed to the side, away from Farid.

“I'm going to New York, Farid. Manhattan. I've told you that a hundred times. It's like you're deaf.”

Farid shifted over to be near her again. “Do you know how many times you've said you never want to see me again, but then, the very next night, come crawling through that barbed wire?”

Ulya's face burned. The stars twinkled down at her, mockingly. She debated telling him, once and for all, that she never wanted to see him again. She rolled so that she was facing away from him. She really should get up. Go. Go talk to the American. Make herself see something in him, make him see something in her. Anything but keep wasting time here.

Farid laid his hand on her waist, tentatively this time. “Okay. I believe you. You're going to New York. But don't you think you're going to miss me? At least a little?”

Ulya's eyes roamed over the collapsed cattle wire fence and the fallen mandarins rotting on the ground and marveled that Farid could think for
even a second that she would miss him amid the dazzling store windows and honking yellow taxis and elevators to the sixtieth floor and cocktails the color of gemstones and handsome young businessmen in Italian suits with platinum tie clips. Did he really think she was going to miss his farmer's hands with those flat fingernails packed with dirt when one of those suited men had his hands on her waist? She may have come to him easily while she was trapped on the kibbutz, but when she's in Manhattan she'll never think about this barbaric place and its lovelorn Arab. She probably won't even remember his name.

She sat up and reached for the second bottle of metallic cabernet. As she twisted out the cork, she noticed him watching her, head propped on his elbow, his glossy eyes like gold coins lost at the bottom of a lake.

She laid a hand against his cheek and covered his face in light kisses. Farid closed his eyes, and she kissed each lid. Why rub in how little she was going to miss him?

A
dam walked down the hallway, looking for the archives office. Eyal's office door was open, revealing the secretary hunched over his desk, but everyone else had gone home early, as was the custom on Fridays, which sounded like a great custom to Adam until he found out Israel had a six-day workweek with only Saturdays off. Luckily, Barry, who had returned from reserve duty the evening before, wasn't making him wait until after Shabbat to go through the archives. He agreed to meet him the following day, as soon as Adam was finished with his dishwashing.

Adam knocked on the open door, and a stout man rose from behind a desk, extending his hand. “Shabbat shalom! You must be Adam.”

Adam had expected a guy in his thirties, old enough to be in charge of the archives, young enough to be a soldier. How could this graying man with reading glasses tucked into the collar of his work shirt just have returned from reserve duty? They shook hands.

“Sorry about leaving you so many messages,” said Adam.

Everything about Barry's face sloped down, his nose, the outer corners of his eyes, and yet he had a cheerful aura, a sense of humor under his clipped accent. “That's quite all right. It was nice to come home and have so many messages not from my mother. Last time, she forgot I was doing
miluim
and kept calling long-distance from Jo'burg asking why I wasn't calling her back.”