“That’s impossible,” Awromele said. “I have to go now. But I’ll come back, and then we’ll do everything you say.”
“Say it,” she said, “say the prayer.” She put her left hand on Awromele’s shoulder, squeezed his shoulder, then moved her hand up until it was resting on Awromele’s hair, while his finger kept stroking the mother’s lover.
“Pray,” she said. “You’re my misfortune; you have to pray for me. No one else will, no one else is allowed to.”
Awromele thought: If I do it, maybe I can get out of here, and I mustn’t forget that she’s the mother of my beloved. And so, as he continued to stroke the knife, he said: “Shema Yisrael, adonai eloheinu, adonai echad.” He said it quickly and sloppily, the way a timid boy might order a loaf of bread in a crowded bakery. His voice trembled. His hand trembled. He had no feeling left in the finger that was stroking the knife.
“Again,” the mother said.
And Awromele repeated the prayer. Just as quickly, just as quietly, and, for the first time since meeting the tall boy and his friends in the park, without embarrassment.
“Yes,” she said, “that was good. Now he can take me again like an animal, in the place where he always takes me, every night, like a hot, panting animal, because that’s what he is, my stainless-steel lover, a hot, panting beast, a sweet brute, untiring, always ready for love, always in the mood, never a headache.”
She moved her left leg forward. “Look,” she said.
Awromele saw the wounds on her left thigh, the scars, the scabs. The old wounds, the wounds from yesterday, the wounds from a week ago, the wounds that were jabbed open again and again. A battlefield, her leg was. He felt like screaming, but he was afraid it would wake someone. The mother’s hand was still resting on his head.
He wanted to run away and never come back. Away from this house, away from this city, away from this country.
“Stay,” she said, “stay, Awromele. You know that song, the one about Jewish blood that splatters from the knife? I’ve sung it often; it has a nice melody, it sticks with you. Do you know that song? I’m sure you’ve heard it before. Do you know it? Do you want me to sing it for you?”
She turned her lover around, aimed him at her left thigh.
“This is sweet,” she said. “This is living. You’re too young to understand that, and, besides, you’re my misfortune. Young, with curly blond hair, that’s how I want to remember my misfortune. If you people had been exterminated, I wouldn’t have had any misfortune, but what else would I have had?”
She set the knife to her thigh and pushed it in slowly.
This time Awromele really did cry out, but the mother put her hand over his mouth. “What do I have to say?” she asked. “Quick, what do I have to say? How does the prayer go?”
She grabbed his arm and squeezed it hard. As though that were all she had the strength to do, as though she couldn’t do anything else.
“Shema Yisrael,” said Awromele.
“Shema Yisrael,” said the mother.
“Adonai eloheinu,” said Awromele.
“Adonai eloheinu,” said the mother.
“Adonai echad,” said Awromele.
“Adonai echad,” said the mother.
Then she pulled the knife out of her leg.
She put her hand over Awromele’s mouth right away. The blood flowed like a hesitant little mountain brook in early spring.
“It’s love,” the mother said. “Awromele, it’s love, it’s the only love on this earth, the purest, the loveliest, it’s the only love worthy of the name: the hatred of the Jews. You know, my father had hands just like yours, hands just as soft as yours.”
“I didn’t know that,” Awromele said. “He must have been a special man. I think I’ll get my things together.”
“You won’t forget me?” the mother asked. “You won’t forget me and my lover?”
“No,” Awromele said, “never.”
The mother let him go.
He took a few steps back, turned, and opened the kitchen door, then looked over his shoulder. The mother was still standing there with her lover in her hand. The battlefield of her left leg was illuminated softly by the lamp in the exhaust hood. She looked at her misfortune and knew for a fact that it was love, her father’s love, too. She would never doubt it again, now that she had seen her misfortune up close.
Awromele said, “Have a pleasant night, and thank you for everything.”
He closed the kitchen door carefully and ran upstairs, to Xavier’s bedroom. He shook Xavier till he was awake.
“What is it?” Xavier asked. “Did we oversleep?”
“No, we didn’t oversleep,” Awromele said, “but I want to go. Are you going with me? Xavier, let’s go now.”
In the kitchen, the mother was carefully cleaning her lover with hot water and dishwashing liquid. “My little one,” she said, “my sweetest. You’re the loveliest of all. The warmest.” She caressed the knife, the way she would never caress anyone again. “Shema Yisrael,” she said to the knife that was the love of her life. She had remembered those words — the rest she had forgotten. “Shema Yisrael.”
Then she had to drop the knife in order to clutch the counter with both hands. She felt dizzy, but happier than she had ever felt before.
And down her left leg still flowed a mountain brook. A brook that wanted only one thing: to grow into a broad river.
In sh’ Allah
EVEN THOUGH THE MOON wasn’t full, the Egyptian sneaked out of his house in the middle of the night. He took his dogs into the garden, scratched them behind the ears, and in one corner crouched down beside them, on all fours, and cried with them at the moon that wasn’t full.
He did that for at least ten minutes. All that time, he was thinking. He weighed the advantages against the disadvantages, until all advantages and disadvantages had disappeared, and then he made up his mind.
But he himself had the feeling that he had done nothing, that the decision had been made for him. Life had rolled over him like a wave; he had allowed himself to float along. Now he was in the process of washing ashore — he didn’t know where. Soon he would feel dry land beneath his feet again. He went back into the house: he was wearing his gray slippers, so as not to wake his wife. He took his cell phone down to the basement, where there were a few bottles of wine, a washing machine, and some furniture they no longer used, and dialed the number the bald man had given him. It took a while for someone to answer.
“It’s me,” the Egyptian said, “from the kebab place.”
There was no reaction.
“From Jerusalem Kebabs,” the Egyptian said. “Nino. You two were there yesterday.”
“Where?” asked a woman’s voice he didn’t recognize.
“At my place,” the Egyptian said, “yesterday. I want to talk to her; she said I should call this number if I wanted to talk to her, twenty-four hours a day. The woman who was at my place — the blonde one. I want to talk to her.”
He had been given this number to call if he had something to tell, if he heard anything important. That was the job of the informant, that was his job now. But he didn’t have anything to tell, he just wanted to see her. He thought he was going crazy. He had been lying awake half the night beside his wife, but he didn’t see her, all he saw was the Zionist with the blond hair who actually liked women. Wherever he looked he saw her, he heard her voice. He saw himself sitting on a chair at the back of his restaurant, felt her hands running over his stomach again. He mumbled into his pillow, “I am an informant.” And he was being driven crazy by the thought of dying without seeing her again.