Safekeeping (30 page)

After you've gone and left me crying, after you've gone there's no denying . . .

A wind-up phonograph with a large brass horn sat atop a wooden vegetable cart, Franz grinning beside it. Seven months had passed since he had arrived on the kibbutz. He had regained his health and good looks, and tonight something extra seemed to be back.

“What is
this
?” Ziva stamped toward him, while everyone else watched.

“It's ‘After You've Gone' sung by Bing Crosby. Written by Turner Layton and Henry Creamer.”

Ziva marched so forcefully toward the phonograph that Franz jumped in front to protect it. Pointing at the machine behind him, she spat in German, “I mean, this thing! Where did you get the money for it? Out of the money coop? Was there a vote?”

There'll come a time, now don't forget it, There'll come a time, when you'll regret it—

“Listen.” Franz raised his hands. “I bought it with my own stipend. It didn't cost much. It was abandoned by a British officer. I just thought it would be fun for everyone.”

“Fun? We don't want commercial music. We sing our own songs! You can't ignore the will of the people.”

Ziva turned with an open arm to reveal the indignant people and found many had paired off, both kibbutzniks and refugees. American Danny spun a giggling Polish girl. A Litvak with a ginger beard led a shy Dutch woman in a floral dress. Men leading, women following—it was repulsive. Women being scarcer, some men laughed and danced with one another.

Franz winded the phonograph. “I believe the people have spoken.”

Ziva, speechless, scowled at the dancers swaying around the campfire as if it were a chandelier. “An hour of jazz won't kill us,” joked one of the survivors as he shuffled past.

Dov sidled up to Ziva. “Don't get too worked up about it.”

“They aren't here because they love the land. They don't care one bit about Eretz Israel.”

“Come now, Zivale. Be fair. I think some of them love Palestine as much as we do now, which makes sense after what they've been through. If it comes down to it, I don't think anyone will fight harder to have their own country than this frail lot.”

“Yes, but what kind of country? Another England? Or United States? It's seditious. Franz is staging a coup d'état with this music.”

“A coup d'état?” Dov laughed. “It was inconsiderate to play it while we were dancing, you're right, but . . . Zivale, you're reading too much into this. Don't worry, we'll make him get rid of the phonograph first thing tomorrow morning.”

The people have spoken.
It was sacrilegious to think it, but sometimes the people didn't seem to know or care what was good for them. The same song started up again. Did he have only the one record?
You'll feel blue, you'll feel sad, You'll miss the bestest pal you've ever had . . .

Dov took Ziva's hand and tugged her toward the makeshift dance floor. She shook her head, eyes wide with warning.

“In honor of Frau Kessler,” he said.

Ziva caught one of the survivors watching them, and she realized she wasn't going to win this battle with inflexibility and fury. Tomorrow the phonograph would be gone, but tonight she would show the people what it meant to follow the group. “One dance.”

It had been fifteen years since she and Dov had been the worst pupils in Frau Kessler's dance studio, but they immediately fell into their old habits, Dov leading, not on the beat, Ziva following, only when she felt the beat had arrived. She remembered how Dov used to mimic Frau Kessler's high-pitched voice in her ear:
One two three, and one two three
. Not only were those younger versions of her and Dov gone, but it was all gone—the dance studio, bombed with the rest of central Berlin, the boys who'd grown into German soldiers, and all the Jewish children that had waltzed around them, as well as their parents who would wait in the hallway. Frau Kessler herself had probably been fed to an oven.

“Sorry, my friend.” Franz tapped Dov's shoulder. “There's only one woman to every three men.”

Dov released Ziva and, stepping out of the way, extended an arm like a maître d'hôtel. “She's all yours.”

“I'm all nobody's.” Ziva turned to go. “I've had enough dancing.”

“One dance.” Franz grabbed her wrist. He pulled her in and wrapped his other arm around her back.
There'll come a time . . .

Behind Franz's head, Dov gestured with his hand that it was going to be all right.

Ziva kept her head stiff, eyes fixed over Franz's shoulder, as he guided her around the dirt with a slight press on her back, pull at her waist, gentle push on her hand. He was such a competent lead, he swept her around the campfire, making other couples seem stationary, making it look as if she knew how to dance. Was she being paranoid or were people observing them with knowing eyes?
Knowing
? Why would she think such a thing? Franz's breath tickled her ear as he crooned along, “Babe, think what you're doing, You know my love for you will drive me to ruin . . .”

“You have a voice made for Hollywood,” she said sarcastically.

“Thank you.” He swung her out and drew her in again.

When the song came to an end, he flamboyantly dipped her, drawing applause from all around. He smiled over her horizontal body at their admirers. When he pulled her back up, a wobbly Ziva turned to leave, but he wouldn't release her hand. With his other arm bracing her back, he kept her facing him. Someone started the record again, and Ziva jerked to get away, but not too violently. She didn't want to draw attention. Franz held on, forcing them to sway side to side.

“Let go.”

“I wish you were all mine.”

. . . After you've gone away. . .

Ziva's heart thumped against her ribs so hard she feared Franz could hear it. Since that afternoon in the cotton fields, he had given her a compliment here and there, a friendly wink, but always in a way that allowed room for doubt, for her to act as if she simply didn't take it the way he might have meant it. His neck smelled warm and brackish, like the sea. Maybe he had taken a dip after buying the phonograph in Haifa or Tel Aviv. Why had she allowed him to force her to dance? She lifted her hand from his shoulders and pinched his neck. Hard.

“Ow.” Franz let go, and rubbed his neck.

She strode away from him and straight through the joggle of dancers, past Dov, laughing and dancing with David, a newer member from Paris. She had to get away. She left the light of the campfire behind and climbed up a knoll into the surrounding darkness, toward a half-built schoolhouse.

She ducked through a doorless doorway and stepped among the planks and piles of bricks on the unfinished floor. In a few weeks, the school would be ready for the kibbutz's handful of children and the more to come, but in its incomplete state, it felt abandoned, private. From here, she barely heard the stupid Bud Crosby or whoever it was. She stood before a wall of wooden beams, not yet covered with planks, facing away from the campfire and the dancers, toward the black silhouette of Mount Carmel. The stars twinkled above the mountain.

A wobbling light illuminated the wooden framing, and behind her she heard someone stepping on planks.

“I think you drew blood.”

She turned. “You should have let go.”

Franz wasn't wearing his usual smile, but his black eyes still flickered with amusement. He set his gas lantern on a worktable.

“The phonograph isn't the only thing I bought in Tel Aviv.” He dug his hand into his pocket and retrieved a small black box tied with a silver bow.

Ziva eyed the box. “Gifts to individuals are against the rules.”

“So we better not tell anyone.” He held it out to her.

What could be in that tiny box? It wasn't square like a ring box, but the shape and size of a finger. “If you want to buy me a gift, buy the kibbutz a gift.”

“My God, Ziva, some things can't be given to a whole kibbutz.”

“Why not?”

“Take it and see.”

She shook her head. “There's no point. I'm not going to keep it.”

She couldn't remember the last time she'd been given a gift. Not since Berlin anyway. Fourteen years? The silver bow pulled at her—the selfish, undignified pull of gifts. Maybe the gift giver had dignity. Maybe not. Giving a gift was also a manipulation.

Franz kept holding out the box. “What do I have to do to get you to take this?”

“There's nothing you can do.”

“What about seeing you in it? Just once? And then I'll take it back.”

Seeing her in it? Was it a pair of earrings? A necklace? She hated wanting to know. And she hated how being alone with him in this room made her nervous, parched her mouth, muzzied her thoughts. She didn't feel in control.

“I'll tell you what . . .” She grabbed the small box. “I'll put on whatever's in here if you promise to never—never—try to do this thing that you're doing right now. Wooing me, I suppose. If you promise to never woo me again.”

Ziva waited while Franz, staring at the box in her hand, made up his mind. For a second she hoped he would choose to take back the box, so he could woo her again tomorrow, but no, this needed to end.

“Fine,” he said. “Put it on.”

She almost didn't want to know what was in the small box now, to keep it a mystery. She pulled the silver ribbon. Having no use for a silver ribbon—just a waste—she handed it to Franz, who nervously fingered it as she lifted the box's black top. Inside was more silver. What was this trinket? Looked like a mezuzah. She picked it out and found it to be another finger-shaped box with a silver snap on its side. Franz took the gift box so she could unsnap the flap and pull out—

“Is this lipstick?”

“It's from the Kaufhaus Louvre in Tel Aviv, a new store, as beautiful as any in Berlin. Well, maybe not, but as fancy as you'll find in Palestine.”

She held up the silver tube as if it were court evidence. “You thought
this
would make me happy? All
this
does is show how little you know me. The women of the kibbutz, we're trying to throw off our old shackles. And you know what's the saddest part? You don't even know you're giving me a shackle. Why didn't you pick me up a pair of high heels while you were at it?”

Franz's gaze dropped to her scuffed brown work boots. It was a pensive gaze. Was it dawning on him that if she did put on this lipstick, wore high heels, she would cease being the woman he was falling in love with?
Falling in love
—how could she think something so ridiculous? He was a playboy. She was merely a conquest.

He spoke slowly, hesitantly. “I guess I wouldn't mind seeing you in high heels . . . Not every day. But maybe once in a while, on a special occasion. Is that wrong? Maybe it is.”

“There's no maybe.” She held the lipstick out to him. “Go.”

“You said you would put it on.”

“I'm not putting on lipstick.”

“Come now, Ziva. You would go back on your word?”

Ziva glowered at him, kept the lipstick extended.

“That was the bargain.” He shook his head, smirking. “If you don't put it on, then I get to keep wooing you.”

She drew back the lipstick. Clenching her teeth, she pulled off the cap and peered into the tube.

He pointed. “You twist the bottom.”

She twisted out a bright crimson, the shade worn by young women who slept all day and let men buy them drinks all night. She wasn't even so young, thirty years old.

“There's a mirror in the top flap of the case.”

“Enough with your
gottverdammt
instructions.” She lifted the lipstick and mirror to her face. The sliver of mirror reflected only her mouth. She drew the brilliant color across her bottom lip, as she had seen her mother do many times. The effect was dramatic. Even with only the bottom painted, the jolt of red ripened her lips. She felt Franz watching as she painted the top. Being a perfectionist, she couldn't help but go back and dab the tips of her Cupid's bow. Her lips bloomed in the mirror, the juicy, glistening red of ripe pomegranate seeds.

She twisted back the stick, eyes on the tube, unable to look up at Franz. She knew he would find her attractive, and the idea brought back that wooziness. She had never felt anything like this—a fog that made it impossible to think. She only worsened the tension, though, by shying away from him. She raised her head. “Now you can go.”

Eyes on her painted lips, he said, “You think we're so different, but we're not.”

She inhaled, grateful for his pronouncement. As powerful as smelling salts—it cleared her head, returned her senses. “You and I? You must be kidding. We're as different as can be. You're a . . .” What was he? A loafer? No. And then the perfect word came to her. “You're a leisurist.”

“I don't work as hard as you,” Franz admitted. “Maybe I'm not as good a person in some ways. But we both refuse to be bound by fear. To be told what to do. We both insist on being true to ourselves. We do share that, Ziva.”