“Nobody will ever like me as long as I tag along with you,” Israel said. “You know that. They all think I’m a burden to you. The worst thing is, I’ve begun to think so myself. Maybe I was afraid to admit it until now.” When Dov remained silent, he said, “Yes, I was afraid to admit it. I was too weak even to admit that.”
“The plane’s landing any minute now,” Dov said. “Get moving, Israel. Nobody’s going to pay us for sitting on our butts.”
Israel stepped to the door. He stopped and once again looked at Dov, who was sitting motionless, breathing hard, his arms lowered, a grimace on his face.
“Remember what I told you,” Israel said.
“What was that?”
“I don’t believe I can ever turn your luck, and nobody’s going to like me as long as I tag along with you.”
“It’s too hot for me to rack my brain over people’s likes and dislikes,” Dov said. “Find me a simpler problem.”
“Israel is right,” Esther said.
They both turned to her. “
Anybody ask your opinion, Esther?” Dov said. “
No,” she said. “You’re just like your brother. Neither of you has ever asked for my opinion. You love only each other. Dov loves Dov, Dov admires Dov, and Dov listens only to what Dov says. You need women only between ten in the evening and six in the morning, and only for one reason: so you’ll fall asleep more easily and dream of each other. But I shouldn’t be telling you all that. I should be listening to what you’re saying so that I can repeat it all later to my Dov and finally hold his attention.”
She walked past Israel. As he moved out of her way, he felt the heat from her body. She left the kitchen, softly closing the door.
“See?” Israel said. “
She shouldn’t have opened her trap,” Dov said. “I’m surprised my brother never taught her better. Look, the problem is not you; the problem is me and my unwillingness to get involved in their squabble with those fishermen. I won’t get involved. They can talk themselves blue in the face; it won’t help.” He gave Israel his sunglasses. “Forget the whole thing.”
“They won’t.”
“Now go to the airport and try to pick up a tourist,” Dov said. “If you see a Jew in a suit with a camera in his hand, walk up to him and be ready to bargain about the price, because he’ll never pay as much as you ask. Since you’ll probably be talking in English, at some point just say to him, Man, I need the gelt. He should understand; if he does, take him where he wants to go. If he looks like a religious man, charge him double.”
“Will you remember what I said?”
“No, I’ve already forgotten. It’s a hundred and forty degrees outdoors and probably more inside. People who live here have to take salt pills because if they don’t, their bones snap like twigs. If we stay here two years longer, we’ll lose all our teeth and hair. We’ll never look like those actors who play sons of the desert and heroes of the tropics. I’m sorry, Israel. I’m locked up in my body as if it were a cage nobody’s going to open until my death. That’s all I can think about. Or maybe I can’t. Maybe it just seems to me that I’m thinking. There’ll be no rain here until the end of October.”
“Yes,” Israel said. “Or even until the end of November.”
He stood for a moment in the doorway staring at Dov who continued to sit inert, his eyes closed, breathing hard. Sitting like that in the glare coming through the window, naked to the waist, he looked like a blind man. The shirt he had thrown down on the floor was still there, though he had moved it with his foot; a wet mark on the tiles showed where it had first landed. Dov’s heavy body didn’t budge when Israel finally left, slamming the door.
NEARING THE AIRPORT, HE COULD SEE THE DAKOTA coming over the mountain range; he waited in the jeep by the airport gate on which somebody had placed a broken sign with the crookedly lettered message NO TRESPASSING; he watched the plane describe an arc over the bay, where the flat roofs of Aqaba glimmered faintly in the white sun; then the plane landed heavily, raising clouds of reddish dust. He watched the passengers descend and begin walking toward the gate, grimacing and narrowing their eyes against the sun: two young men carrying scuba gear, and an old woman accompanied by an old man, probably her husband, whom she clutched by the arm, yelling something into his ear. Then one more woman left the plane and stopped helplessly on the runway, dazed by the glare and the heat; a moment later the stewardess swung the door shut.
The old woman and her husband approached Israel.
“Will you take us to a hotel?”
“That’s why I’m here,” he said. “To take people where they want to go. Have you got a room reservation? If not, I can take you to the Eilat Hotel.”
The old woman glanced at her husband, tall and thin and ramrod straight; the earpiece of a hearing aid was stuck in his ear, while the microphone dangled from his hand; he was playing with it as if it were the pendant on the waist chain of an old-fashioned watch.
“I didn’t say I wanted to squander my money,” she said. “They told me at the tourist office how much that hotel costs. We can stay at a cheaper one. We want to wash after the trip and then go see the sights. We’re leaving on the afternoon plane.”
“Okay,” Israel said.
“How much do you charge?”
“It depends on how long you want the jeep for.”
“For three hours,” she said. “We’d like to see King Solomon’s mines and whatever else of interest there is here.”
“What about a drive around the desert?”
“No,” she said. “We saw it from the plane. You don’t expect anyone to pay for looking at sand, do you?”
“Then it’ll be twenty pounds,” Israel said.
“That’s too much.”
“Give him the money,” the old man wheezed.
Israel watched the woman as she raised her hand to her husband’s ear and pulled his earpiece out.
“He was never any good at doing business,” she said. “His brothers cheated him all his life, and now he’s come here to squander away all I managed to save.”
“I can’t hear anything,” the old man screeched. He groped for his earpiece, but the woman pushed his hand away.
“Twenty pounds,” Israel said.
“That’s robbery,” she said. “They told me at the tourist office that it costs twenty pounds to rent a jeep for the whole day; we want it for only three hours!”
“This is the only plane,” Israel said. “And none of the locals want to go sightseeing. Most of them would pay through the nose just to leave Eilat.”
“I want to see King Solomon’s mines,” the old man screeched again. “Give him the twenty pounds.”
“No,” the woman said. She stuck the earpiece back in her husband’s ear and leaned against the jeep’s hood, intending to go on haggling about the price. Suddenly she jumped away, her face twisted with shock and pain.
“It’s a hundred and forty degrees now,” Israel said. “Didn’t they tell you that at the tourist office?”
“I’ll take the jeep,” a woman behind him suddenly said. He didn’t see her; he only heard her voice reaching him through walls of heat, and he thought with reluctance that he would have to turn around and face her.
“Twenty pounds,” he said, without turning around.
“I know,” she said. “I heard you say it three times. The first two times I didn’t say anything, but now I’m joining in. Like at an auction.”
“What auction?” the old man screeched.
Israel turned around. The woman was standing a few steps away, smoking a cigarette.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “I saw you leave the plane. You want me to take you to a hotel?”
She walked over and he helped her get into the jeep.
“I heard one could rent a room privately,” she said. “That there are people here who take in lodgers. Would you know of anyone?”