Aliza took in the activity, the polyglot madness, smiled and stroked her husband's forearm. He reached out and took her fingers in his, exhibiting just a hint of the strength stored within the oversized digits.
It had taken her some time to get used to it. She'd grown up a farm girl, on Kibbutz Yavneh, a bosomy, big-boned redhead. Her first beaus, robust, tractor-'driving youths-male versions of herself. She'd always had a thing for big men, the muscular, bulky types who made you feel protected, but never had she imagined herself married to someone who looked like an oversized Mongol warrior. And the family: her mother-in-law your basic yiddishe mama, her hair in a babushka, still speaking Hebrew with a Russian accent; Abba
Haim an old Buddha, as yellow as parchment; Yossi's older brother, David, suave, always wearing a suit, always making deals, always away on business.
She'd met Yossi in the army. She'd worked in requisitions and had been attached to his paratrooper unit. He'd stormed into her office like a real bulvan, angry and looking ludicrous because the uniform that had been issued to him was three sizes too small. He started mouthing off at her; she mouthed back and that was it. Chemistry. And now little Rafi, straw-haired, with almond eyes and the shoulders of a working man. Who'd have predicted it?
As she'd gotten to know Yossi, she'd realized that they came from similar stock. Survivors. Fighters.
Her parents had been teenaged lovers who escaped from Munich in '41 and hid for months in the Bavarian forest, subsisting on leaves and berries. Her father stole a rifle and shot a German guard dead in order to get them across the border. Together they traveled on foot, making their way through Hungary and Yugoslavia and down to Greece. Catching a midnight boat ride to Cyprus and paying the last of their savings to a Cypriot smuggler, only to be forced off the boat at gunpoint, five miles from the coast of Palestine. Swimming the rest of the way on empty stomachs, crawling half-dead onto the shores of Jaffa. Avoiding the scrutiny of Arab cutthroats long enough to reach their comrades at Yavneh.
Yossi's mother had also escaped the Nazis by walking. In 1940. All the way from Russia to the visa-free port of Shanghai, where she lived in relative peace, along with thousands of other Jews. Then war broke out in the Pacific and the Japanese interned all of them in the squalid camps of Hongkew.
A tall, husky theology student named Huang Lee had been held captive there, too, suspected of collaborating with the Allies, because he was an intellectual. Dragged out periodically to endure public floggings.
Two weeks before Hiroshima, the Japanese sentenced Huang Lee to death. The Jews took him in and he evaded execution by hiding in their midst, being passed form family to family under the cover of darkness. The last family he stayed with had also taken in an orphan from Odessa, a black-haired girl named Sonia. Chemistry.
In 1947, Sonia and Huang came to Palestine. He converted to Judaism, took the name Haim-"life"-for he considered himself reborn, and they married. In '48 both of them fought with the Palmah in Galilee. In '49 they settled in North Jerusalem so that Huang Haim could study in Rabbi Kook's Central Yeshiva. When the children came-David in 1951, Yosef four years later-Huang went to work as a post-office clerk.
For twelve years he stamped packages, noticing all the while the enthusiasm with which his co-workers devoured the dishes he brought for lunch-food from his childhood that he'd taught Sonia to cook. After saving up enough cash, the Lees opened the Shang Hai Palace, on Herzl Boulevard, in back of a Sonol petrol station. It was 1967, when spirits were high, everyone eager to forget death and find new pleasures, and business was brisk.
It had remained brisk, and now Huang Haim Lee was able to hire others to wait on tables, free to spend his day studying Talmud and playing chess. A contented man, his sole regret that he hadn't been able to transmit his love for religion to his sons. Both were good boys: David, analytic, a planner-the perfect banker. Yossi, wholly physical, but brave and warmhearted. But neither wore a kipah, neither kept Shabbat nor was attracted to the rabbinic tractates that he found irresistible-the subtleties of inference and exegesis that captivated his mind.
Still, he knew he had little to complain about. His life had been a tapestry of good fortune. So many brushes with eternity, so many reprieves. Just last week he'd shoveled dirt over the bare roots of his new pomegranate tree, the last addition to his biblical garden. Experienced the privilege of planting fruit trees in Jerusalem.
Aliza saw him smile, a beautiful Chinese smile, so calm and self-satisfied. She turned to her husband and kissed his hand. Yossi looked at her, surprised by the sudden show of affection, smiled himself, looking just like the old man.
Across the room, Huang Haim moved his bishop. "Checkmate," he told Rabbi Stolinsky, and got up to take the baby.
Elias Daoud's wife had grown fatter each year, so that now it was like sharing a bed with a mountain of pillows. He liked it, found it comforting to reach out in the middle of the night and touch all that softness. To part thighs as yielding as custard, submerge himself in sweetness. Not that he would have ever expressed such sentiments to Mona. Women did best when they were keyed up, just a little worried. So he teased her about her eating, told her sternly that she was consuming his salary faster than he could earn it. Then silenced her tearful excuses with a wink and a piece of sesame candy he'd picked up on the way home.
Nice to be off-duty, nice to be in bed. He'd acquitted himself well, done an excellent job for the Jews.
Mona sighed in her sleep and covered her face with a sausage of an arm. He raised himself up on his elbows. Looked at her, the dimpled elbow rising with each breath. Smiling, he began tickling her feet. Their little game. Waking her gently, before climbing the mountain.
She was exactly the kind of girl his father would have hated, Avi knew. Which made her all the more attractive to him. Moroccan, to begin with, purely South Side. One of those working-class types who lived to dance. And young- not more than seventeen.
He'd spotted her right away, talking with two other chickies who were total losers. But no loser, this one-really cute, in an obvious look-at-me kind of way. Far too much makeup. Long hair dyed an improbable black and styled in a fancy, feathery cut-which made sense because she'd told him she cut hair for a living; it was only logical that she'd want to show it off. The face under the feathery bangs was sweet enough: glossy cherry lips, huge black eyes, at the bottom a little pointy chin. And she had a great body, slender, no hair on her arms-which was hard to find in a dark girl. Tiny wrists, tiny ankles, one with a chain around it. And best of all, big soft breasts. Too big for the rest of her, really, which played off against the slenderness. All of it packed into a skintight black jumpsuit of some kind of wet-looking vinyl material.
The fabric had give him his opening line.
"Spill your drink?" Giving her the Belmondo smile, curling it around the cigarette, putting his hands on his hips and showing off his tight physique under the red Fila shirt.
A giggle, the bat of an eyelash, and he knew she'd agree to dance with him.
He could feel the big breasts, now, as they did the slow dance to an Enrico Macias ballad, the discotheque finally quiet after hours of rock. Nice soft mounds flattening against his chest. Twin pressure points, the hardness in his groin exerting a pressure of its own. She knew it was there and though she didn't press back, she didn't back away from it either, which was a good sign.