A young woman with open lips, shut eyes, sat there looking as if she were rapt in mysterious thoughts. Artists yelled and cursed one another, and when a person entered and wanted to sit at an empty table, the waiter took it under advisement and then allowed him to sit and I recalled Mr. Soslovitch and at the same time also understood that he was dead, and at that very moment, Jordana entered the cafe and looked extinguished. Something in her face was depressed and bitter, she looked nervous, stood next to me distracted, I said Hello Jordana, I was so glad to see her, and she said Hey Henkin and corrected it to Hello Henkin, but the words were said distractedly, absentmindedly, she barely saw me, she sat down in a chair, muttered something, excused herself and got up, went to the bar, next to where the owner of the place always slept with his enormous belly thrust forward and his legs stretched out in front of him and on his face a sweet glow of a giant teddy bear, asked permission to use the phone, dialed and sank into a long whispered conversation, I saw her weep a few times and then hang up decisively, amazed at the emptiness that filled her and very slowly she came to me, tried to smile through the screen of tears, said: You look great, Henkin, she sat down next to me, put her hands on the table, played a little with the salt shaker that had more grains of rice than salt, lowered her hands in astonishment, the salt shaker hit the pepper shaker with a bang that was maybe too loud for her. She groped in her purse, took out a cigarette and lighter, put the cigarette back in her purse, lit a cigarette that had been stuck in the corner of her mouth before, for a moment, she shut her eyes whose lids pearled with tears, opened them wide in a certain amazement, as if she didn't know exactly where she was and if she had already ended the long phone conversation, she inhaled deeply on the cigarette, and all I could see was a sadness spiraling up in a thin curling smoke, and I, maybe because of my sensitivity to her, maybe because of memories that surfaced in me, I looked at the man sitting at Soslovitch's table drinking beer and I tried to think about him, and Jordana played with the lighter and said: What a day, what a day, twice she said that, as if she weren't at all sure she had said what she said. The sorrow I saw in the meeting of her lips looked as if the smoke came to the soles of her feet and clouded my ability to talk with her about the outing we were about to plan. I said to her: The man eating gizzards and drinking beer is sitting at the special table. Maybe it was an attempt to distract, I really don't know anymore. Mr. Soslovitch, I said to her, sold locomotives. Ever since the establishment of the state he sells only one locomotive a year. A confirmed bachelor. Always dressed up, with a tie and a handsome hat.
Soslovitch loved artists and so he'd come here with the Cohen family. Mr. Cohen was then a bank manager or a finan cial advisor, I don't remember anymore, and Mrs. Cohen, a big, handsome woman (her father was one of the founders of Wadi Hanin and left her some land) had a house that served as a salon for artists and writers. I'm not well-versed in gossip, but Mrs. Cohen and Mr. Soslovitch fell in love with one another in nineteen twenty-nine, while Mr. Cohen used to travel a lot and seemed satisfied. He performed important missions for the newborn state, loved his wife's artists, and was a close friend of Mr. Soslovitch. Every Saturday afternoon they'd meet at Kassit, sit at the regular table, eat and drink. Sometimes they'd even hug each other emotionally, or would become pale and sing sad songs in Yiddish or Russian or Hebrew. Mr. Soslovitch would come alone every afternoon, sit at his regular table, and until he'd leave, nobody dared to sit at the table. Now a stranger is sitting there, and that's a sign that Mr. Soslovitch is dead. And so, out of thoughts of distant years I didn't even know I remembered, Jordana said, half pensively and half provocatively: What does that have to do with us?
What does that have to do with us? I asked.
Me? she said, blushed and repeated: What does that have to do, you burst into an open door and that doesn't suit you, Henkin. I said to her: I was trying to distract you from your gloom, and Jordana said to me: You're too old and wise to believe that if you tell a woman like me about a locomotive salesman who sold one locomotive a year, I'll forget what I'm weeping about. Did stories like that help you?
I was silent and drank coffee.
Then she ordered a beer and I saw the beer foam stick to the lips of the fragile madonna of death, and then she hissed between her lips: Son of a bitch, that Boaz Schneerson. She tried to smile, tears again pearled in her eyes, and she said: Let's drop the son of a bitch and talk about the outing. The son of a bitch said the stalactite cave is a delightful place, so I want some other place, Henkin, and now she almost yelled, since the girl who was meditating mysterious thoughts opened her eyes wide and looked at us in amazement and let her head drop on the table and fell asleep. I thought, Who sells us locomotives today? But that thought didn't help me, I couldn't really be concerned.
A few days ago, Harvjiaja brought me a story that was published in one of our journals. The story was written by a writer who fought in the war with Boaz and Menahem. In the story, Boaz appears, along with Noga, and Jordana, under the names of Aminadam, Mira, and Shulamith. I translate the story for you with the original names so as not to confuse you. The title of the story is "Vulture." The story annoyed me. Only after I read it did I understand what Jordana's rage meant. I wondered how the writer knew things I didn't know. But those are facts and from them we have to interweave "our" story. The writer's name is Nadav ben-Ami.
[A part is missing]… And Jordana left her office and went to the street. The light was dazzling, people who were scared of the heat weren't the shadows she had thought. She stood in line for the bus and since she didn't have anything to do with her hands, she straightened her hair and tried to squint her eyes because of the dazzling light. On the bus she stood crowded between people who were pungent with sweat and the driver yelled, but his voice was blended into the turmoil. When she squeezed her ticket, her hand was wet and the coins in her hand seemed to be swimming in water. The sights passed by in the blurred windows, and a woman sitting next to where Jordana was standing tried without much success to open the window wider. When she came to the stop, she got off slowly, which annoyed the driver who muttered something and even locked the door when the blast of the lock hit her spine. A sudden burst of wind from an air-conditioned shop made her shudder with pleasure. She turned to the street, which, now, at dusk, was empty. The night watchman in the big building, whose lower floors were built now, put a pita in his mouth filled with tomatoes and olives. The tomato dripped red juice and he wiped the blood of the tomato with a lace handkerchief. When he tried to smile at her he looked distorted because of the tomato and maybe also because the olive pit didn't come out in time, so he spat out the pit and the smile was crushed. But she had already crossed the street and didn't hear the curse. A car sped by and she jumped, the watchman couldn't help laughing, and the tomato dripped even more and she looked at the house, and didn't move. Just as the woman who lived alone in the house next door started hanging laundry on the clothesline, Jordana lit a cigarette and immediately let the cigarette drop to the ground and crushed it with her foot. The watchman looked at the cigarette and the tiny spark that still flickered in it. Jordana went upstairs, even though she didn't know where she got the strength to climb.