Kashua Sayed - Second Person Singular

“You coming?” Noa asked through the haze of house music.

“I don’t know how to dance,” I said.

She got out of her chair, leaned over the little table between us, and brought her mouth close to my ear.

“Neither do I,” she whispered, and I could feel her breath penetrating my ear, bringing me back to life.

The lawyer couldn’t say definitively whether he was asleep or awake. He heard the morning noises of his wife and kids, as he did every morning, but they seemed to be coming from somewhere else, somewhere foreign and unfamiliar. He opened his eyes and hoped to see his daughter standing in front of him but she was not there. The lawyer tried, unsuccessfully, to put his mind in order, and then he gave up and went back to sleep. When he awoke again he wasn’t sure how much time had passed, seconds or hours, before the din of the house reached him again. This time he rose to a familiar world. He knew he was sleeping in a bed, in his daughter’s room, in his house, and he heard footfalls on the stairs, coming his way.

“You still sleeping?” his wife asked in a soft voice, laying a hand on his forehead to see if he had a fever. “You’re a little warm,” she said, even though the lawyer knew he wasn’t sick. All he was was tired, exhausted. He had started reading The Kreutzer Sonata, sure he would never get past the first line, but he had found himself drawn into the plot, which involved a train, a young man, a woman, talk of love, and a character who murdered his wife and starts to tell his story.

“Mommy,” his daughter said, her feet pattering behind her mother.

“I asked you to watch your brother for a second,” his wife said, raising her voice.

“I know,” the girl said. “But I’m tired, I don’t want to.”

“So?” his wife said to him. “What do you want to do? You want to take it easy at home a little today?”

“No,” he said, flipping the blanket off. “I have a hearing in court at eight thirty.”

“Mommy,” the girl said. “When are you going to brush my hair?”

“Give your hair a rest, okay? I’ll brush it in a minute. So, do you want me to make you some coffee before I go?”

“No, no,” the lawyer said, sitting on the edge of the bed and trying to limit his movements to the bare minimum so as to stave off the headache that had already announced itself. He looked over at the rabbit-shaped alarm clock and said, “You guys should get going. You’re late. I’ll head out after you.”

“Okay, take it easy,” his wife said and kissed him on the lips, a kiss the lawyer felt was genuine, not forced or apologetic or meant to conceal. “I really love you,” she said before leaving, and the lawyer gently nodded his head, to the extent that the headache allowed.

Water, first of all water, the lawyer thought as he walked up the stairs. He drank straight from the bottle, as he always did when no one was around. Then he called Tarik, who was on his way to the office. “I have a hearing on the Marzuk case at eight thirty. Please go down to the courthouse and ask for a continuance on account of illness. I’ll be in the office at nine. I have to take care of something first. Oh, and Tarik, we’re interviewing the new interns this afternoon and I may need you there. Could be you’ll be the only one there. Interview them yourself and choose yourself a bride at the same time, okay?” the lawyer said, laughing.

The lawyer made Turkish coffee and added milk and sugar. In the mornings he took his coffee with milk, which had an immediate effect on his bowels. He took the cup of coffee down to the study, lit a cigarette, and checked the Haaretz headlines online. Then checked to make sure that he had everything he needed, realized that he had forgotten The Kreutzer Sonata, left the cigarette in the ashtray, and went to his daughter’s room to get it. He was on page thirty and had been using the note as a bookmark.

Mornings in Jerusalem are cold, even in summer, which is why the lawyer had a gas-operated water heater installed in the house, ensuring that the shower water was hot as soon as it was turned on. He found the right temperature and then stood beneath the wide veil of water cascading from the eight-inch shower head. He brushed his teeth, shaved his face, washed his hair. Looking up at the shower head, washing soap off his body, he was struck by a long-forgotten childhood memory. He saw his mother boiling water on a gas stove on a cold winter night and he saw his brothers, naked, freezing, and his mother approaching with a pot of warm water, ladling it over their heads with a brass cup, one at a time, and then scrubbing them hard, an expression of great suffering on her face. Her children had to be washed every day, they would go to school clean, even in winter, even if it meant suffering. When the boys were done they shared a single towel. Then came their little sister. His mother washed her in a little tub, supporting her neck with one hand and washing her with the other, shampooing the fine strands of baby hair.

There were a dozen white shirts hanging in the closet, all starched and ironed, each paired with a tie of his wife’s choosing. His pants were hanging on special hangers. He picked out a pair of black slacks, chose a shirt, placed a tie around his neck, and decided he’d tie it later. Putting on his shoes, he called Samah.

“Hi, Samah, good morning. I’m running a little late. Something came up. Yes, I know, I spoke with Tarik already. What else is on the agenda for today? Okay. I’ll be in by nine. Wait, just a second, that ID number you gave me yesterday, do you still have it on you? Yes, exactly, Amir Lahab. Send the number to our guy in the court system and ask him to find a current address, please. And tell him not to take his time this time. Be assertive with him. Tell him I don’t want to wait until tomorrow. Okay, great, can I bring you a cup of coffee? Oh, and Samah, do me a favor and keep this between us.”

The lawyer’s carefully laid plans began to go awry as soon as he got into his car and fielded a telephone call from his wife.

“Where are you?” he yelled toward the speakerphone.

“At work. I just wanted to see how you’re doing. Did you leave for work already?”

“Yes, sure, is everything okay? Is something wrong?”

“No,” she said. “Everything’s fine. I took the kids in, everything went smoothly. I’m heading into a meeting now and I won’t be able to use the phone so I figured I’d give you a call before it started, see if you decided to stay home.”

“No, no, I’m in the car.”

“You on the way to court?”

“Court?”

“You said you have a hearing at eight thirty, remember?”

“Oh, right, sure. I’m on my way to the district court,” he said, and immediately felt that she was checking to see whether he was tied up and if he might beat her to the punch and file first.

“Okay, so I’ll give you a call later?”

“Yeah, yeah, ’bye.”

The lawyer felt like he was choking. He cranked up the AC in the car and opened the window. Was it possible that his wife was smarter than he was? Craftier than he was? She had never before called him in the morning to see how he was doing, to find out where he was and whether he’d made it to court or not. He envisioned her standing outside the Israeli civil court for family matters, which opened at eight thirty, fully aware, as was he, that her financial future hung in the balance. “She’s never called me in the morning before,” the lawyer said out loud. “Never asked me about my fucking job. So why now? And the kiss? And the sweet talk in the morning? Since when does she touch my forehead to see if I’m running a fever?”