Safekeeping (48 page)

She slipped inside her room while Adam walked toward his, past the pomegranate tree.

Pomegranate.

He dug his hand into his pocket.

“Wait!”

Ulya heard him as she was closing the door. Not knowing what to do, she closed it anyway, and then listened to him marching up her walkway.

He knocked. “Hey!”

She stood on the other side of the door, breathing as quietly as she could, struggling to think of what to do next.

“Hey!” He banged hard. “You still have my brooch!”

She waited to see if, by some miracle, he would go away, decide to deal with it in the morning, but he struck the door with a flat hand. “Open up! Open up!”

Of course, he wasn't going away. She hurriedly unpinned the brooch from her T-shirt and stuffed it down her skirt, into the front of her panties.

“HEY!” He pounded on the door, likely waking up every volunteer. “Open the fuck up! If you don't open up right now, I'm going to kick the fucking thing in!”

Ulya opened the door and feigned irritation. “I was in the bathroom, Adam.” She glanced down at her chest. “Oh . . . Oh, no.”

“Oh, no, what? Give me the brooch.”

She raised her head, tried to look as shocked as possible. “It's gone.”

“Gone?”

Before she had a chance to nod, Adam shoved the door and came at her so fast she stumbled backward, heels slipping under her.

“What do you mean gone?!”

Adam no longer felt tired or depressed. He was pure panic. He clutched Ulya by the arms and drove her back until he had her pinned against the far window, its concrete sill jabbing into her back.

“What do you mean it's gone?”

The violence in Adam's black eyes startled her. She didn't think he had violence in him, not after his encounter with Farid. But she had been wrong. She could feel in an animal way that she was in danger, that if he found the brooch on her, he could kill her. She had been scared while stealing before, but not like this.

“It . . . must have fallen off . . . in Ofir's car.”

“Then we'll have to go get him.”

“But it's so . . . late. We'll do it tomorrow.”

Adam squeezed her arms so hard, her hands numbed. She prayed that he didn't lean against her, didn't feel the brooch against her pelvic bone.

Spittle hit her face as he shouted: “It's not Ofir's car! The whole kibbutz uses that fucking car. We have to get it NOW!”

She stammered, “O-o-okay.”

He let go, allowing her heels to return to the ground and the blood to rush back into her arms. She followed him toward the door. It wasn't working, pretending the brooch had fallen off. He wasn't going to let it go until he found it. And she couldn't keep it on her body any longer. It was too dangerous.

She trembled as she closed her door, not daring to take the time to lock it. Adam ran for the steppingstones. Dizzy with fear, she thrust her hand down her skirt and hurled the brooch at the grass.

“Adam!”

He turned. “What? We have to hurry.”

“Maybe . . . it fell off after I got out of the car. We should keep an eye on the ground. Look here in the grass first.”

“Look fast.” He jogged down the stones. “Fast, fast, fast.”

Adam moved the grass around with his feet while Ulya searched on her hands and knees. She figured it would be better if he found it, but it was getting harder to wait for that with him screaming ever more loudly: “Where the fuck is it? Where is it?”

“What's that?” She pointed at gold glinting in the blades behind him.

He whipped around. “Where? Where?”

She crawled over and picked it up, hoping she looked genuinely relieved, happy for him.

Adam grabbed it, clutched it to his chest. “Oh my God. I would've killed myself.”

Ulya rose from the grass. Without another word, Adam turned for his room, and she watched him walk away with the brooch. She had come so close. For a minute, it had been hers.

She headed back to her room. She would have to try again, and next time not let the threat of violence deter her. She was running out of time. Adam might get kicked off the kibbutz any minute; and even if he suddenly got his act together, she had another clock to beat. Soon it would be too late to have an abortion. If she wasn't careful, in a few weeks she would be poor and pregnant and living in an Arab village with dusty Coke bottles and donkeys.

She closed her door and slipped out of her heels. The floor felt cool against her feet, sore from all that dancing. She climbed onto her bed and, sitting with her back against the wall, lit a cigarette. As she rubbed her feet, like she used to do after a night out in Mazyr, the memory of Adam's rage started to subside. Instead she pictured the tall, handsome man, the infatuation on his face when he struck a match for her cigarette. God, it was fun. Everyone's eyes had been on her tonight.

She blew smoke.

Could that part of her life really be over?

F
or the first time in months, Claudette rolled over to turn off the alarm and found she wasn't covered in sweat, that her T-shirt wasn't glued to her clammy chest. The breeze coming through the window was fresh, the sunlight mellow, and the oscillating fan stood still. She was supposed to stay for the summer, and the summer was coming to an end. It was the first week of September. At home she would be pulling on wool stockings. Would they let her remain here through the winter?

When she stepped outside and saw the pomegranate tree, she remembered Ofir's prediction that the fruit would be ripe by now. She picked one to bring to Ziva, though Ziva hadn't eaten in two days. As she climbed the steppingstones, schoolchildren were coming down the main road wearing colorful backpacks and spotless new sneakers.

The main square was unusually crowded. Claudette walked around the people standing in pockets, speaking loudly, hands waving in exclamation. Rounding the white golf cart that still sat in front of Ziva's place, she wondered what was going on. She knocked on Ziva's door as if the old woman could answer it, waited a courteous second, and went inside.

Quiet dominated the apartment. Ziva rarely used the television Eyal had set up for her. Claudette walked toward the bedroom, hoping she would find the old woman coherent. For the first couple of weeks Ziva was confined to the bed, she mostly knew where she was and who was visiting her, but over the last week the confusion had worsened. She increasingly called Claudette
Mutti
and asked for her cookie recipe or to see her
latest painting. Claudette ignored these requests. Often she had no choice because Ziva spoke to her in German.

“Look at them!” With her adjustable bed raised to its most upright position, Ziva pointed out the window. “They've just voted! I should be standing by that door, handing out pamphlets, answering questions. Not lying in this goddamn bed!”

So that's what everyone was doing in the square. Claudette hadn't realized today was the big vote. Of all the days for Ziva to be lucid. She walked over to the window and gazed out at the scene. A circle of people burst into laugher, their laughter loud enough to reach the sad bedroom.

“I'm sure they won't vote to end the kibbutz, Ziva.”

Ziva clutched the waffle blanket, held it under two tight fists. “How can I just sit here?”

Not too long ago, Claudette believed, the old woman would have rolled off the bed and dragged herself across the square to intercept the voters. But after five weeks of withering and yellowing in the bed, even Ziva's incomparable willpower could no longer overcome such a body. The doctors decided against treating the fractured hip of a dying woman, and they'd stopped pumping her stomach. All they offered now were painkillers.

Ziva tried to reach the Styrofoam cup on the nightstand. “This is the longest I've gone without working. How long have I been stuck in this bed, Claudette? Two weeks?”

Claudette hurried to get the cup for her. She couldn't lie so she said nothing. What would be the point of informing her it had been twice that?

“I told you I didn't want to die in bed. Didn't I tell you that?”

“You won't die in bed, Ziva.”

“Oh no? Then what am I doing right now?”

Ziva took a shaky sip of water, holding the cup in both hands, her index finger circled by a red scar where the tip had been sewn back on.

“I don't know.” Claudette sat in the visitor's chair. “You don't know. You never know what the Lord has planned.”

“The Lord? Please, Claudette, you know I can't stand that nonsense.”

Claudette returned Ziva's cup to the nightstand. In the past she would have come to the Lord's defense, but she was still waiting for His sign. All
she had asked for was one small sign to prove that it hadn't all been lies, and, so far, nothing.

Ziva rested her hand on the mountain her stomach made under the white blanket. “You know what the doctor claims, Claudette? She claims I took a turn for the worse because I messed up my pills. Took far too many. I told her that I may have lost control of my body, but not my mind. My mind, I told her, is as sharp as ever. Only . . . I can't explain it. I have run out of all my pills ahead of schedule.”

Claudette opened her mouth, but she couldn't get the words out.

“Tell me, Claudette, have I become feebleminded without realizing it?”

Claudette lowered her head, tried harder to push out the confession.

“Have I, Claudette? Have I shown signs of dementia?”

Claudette saw she wasn't going to get away without answering Ziva's question this time. She would either have to tell the truth or tell a lie. She shook her head. “No.”

“Oh, I want to believe you, I really do, but I can see you won't look me in the eye, and there's no denying the pills are gone. I can't explain that away.”

“I took them.” She said it so quietly, she barely heard it herself.

“What's that, Claudette? Speak up.”

“I took your pills, Ziva.”

Ziva regarded Claudette with suspicion. “I don't understand.”

Claudette pressed her clasped hands against her face. “I wanted . . .”

“Claudette, are you making this up just to make me feel better?”

Claudette shook her head.

“Then why? Why would you take my pills?”

“I wanted to kill myself.”

Ziva knew the young woman suffered—she knew it ever since she saw the fear in her eyes that day in the laundry—but if people could survive Auschwitz without killing themselves, what excuse could anybody have? It demonstrated the worst weakness of character to throw away life. And yet, Ziva wasn't entirely comfortable calling Claudette weak. Every day she cleaned the feces from her bedpan without a flinch, not even in the back of her eyes. She had watched for it.

Ziva straightened the hem of her blanket. “No matter. You didn't do it in the end. Intention without action means nothing.”

Claudette closed her eyes. “I should have told you sooner, Ziva. I'm sorry.”

Ziva turned to the window in time to see Hanoch, the man who would sell his soul for a television, disappear through the dining hall door. His decrepit dog sat outside waiting for him.

“Never mind sorry. Like intentions, sorry is worthless. Learning, moving forward, that's what counts. To tell you the truth, I'm thrilled to find out I haven't lost my mind.”

Claudette nodded, feeling at once guilty and proud of her lie, of sparing Ziva the knowledge that part of her was already gone. What was right and wrong was no longer clear to her. She said, “I hope when I'm old, Ziva, I'll be able to look back on my life, the way you can, and be happy with my choices. Of course, I could never expect to feel as proud as you do, I'll never do anything half as grand, but I'd like to have no regrets.”

Yossi, the dishwasher, bicycled alongside the square, calling out to Larry the archivist and Chaim the lazy bum. Ziva couldn't be sure what any of these people had voted. She smacked her mouth, already dry again.

“No regrets? That's a bit much, Claudette. Few regrets, perhaps. But none? That's probably impossible.”

Claudette was surprised to hear Ziva say such a thing. Over the last few weeks the old woman had told her so many stories from her life, full of perseverance, courage, anger, pride, but never regret. “Does that mean you have regrets, Ziva?”

Ziva turned to the younger woman. “I just told you that I think it's impossible to get through life without them, so obviously I do. But I also told you—didn't I?—that I don't see the use in dwelling on things. What's done is done.”

Claudette didn't dare push it, and Ziva faced the window again. The women sat in silence. People left the dining hall; others arrived. Boisterous schoolchildren filed inside for their early lunch.

Without looking away from the square, Ziva said, “There's one moment I would like to go back and do differently. I don't want to go back and redo whole years. Just one moment. All of five or ten minutes.”