Edeet Ravel - Look for Me

“We can’t discuss politics or any of our activities in front of him, it would hurt him.”

“Okay.”

“Wil that be a problem for your wife?”

“I sometimes wonder whether she knows who the prime minister is. She lives in her own world, Dana.”

“Al right, I’l come. We’l come. But no other guests, please.”

“Here’s my phone number in case there’s a change of plan.” He wrote his number on the back of his matchbook and handed it to me.

“Does that guy need special transportation?”

“We’l manage. As long as you have an elevator.”

“Yes, we do,” he said.

Like al couples, we discussed cheating. “What would you do if I cheated on you?” Daniel asked one evening, as we relaxed on the sofa.

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine it. What would you do?”

“I’d leave you.”

“Real y?”

“Yes. It would ruin things forever, I’d never be able to trust you, there wouldn’t be any point.”

“Are you warning me?” I asked, curious.

“Of course not. If you sleep with someone else it’s because I’ve failed you somehow. I hope you’l tel me rst if you’re ever that unhappy

—not that I can imagine it. But if you sleep with another man it wil be my fault.”

“But you’d stil leave me?”

“Yes, because there wouldn’t be a way to fix things.”

“It won’t happen, of course.”

“I know … Both my parents had lovers,” Daniel said.

“Real y! You never told me.”

“It’s no big deal. But I hated it. I hated that whole scene, and I almost lost my respect for them.”

“Why? Why did they do it?”

“I don’t know. They got along, but they were at racted to other people and they gave in to their at raction, I guess. They didn’t talk about it, of course, but we knew. My mother would come home with her eyes red from chlorine; she must have had a rich lover with a swimming pool in the building. My father would come home and go straight to the shower with this guilty look on his face. Then there were phone cal s, private cal s, which they would take in the bedroom, and they’d shut the door and put on the radio so no one could hear. They must have thought they had retarded kids. I think they real y had no idea how obvious they were.”

“But did they know about one another?”

“I don’t know. They must have. I mean, I can’t imagine them not knowing, if it was so obvious to us, but maybe they were so absorbed in their own a airs that they didn’t notice that their spouse was cheating too. They were bored, I think. They were bored with their lives, with their horrible clerical jobs.”

“My parents were the exact opposite. They had this twosome that was almost impenetrable, because they felt they had shared so much that other people didn’t understand. As if everyone was an outsider, except maybe for my uncle and his wife. For one thing, their experiences in South Africa bound them together, what they went through there when they were fighting apartheid.”

“What exactly did they go through?”

“I don’t real y know. They never told me about it, except for hints here and there. They risked their lives and they were in prison for a while. They had a rough time in prison, but it was only for a few months, I think. I should ask my father one of these days. And then when they got here, most of the people they knew weren’t as radical as they were. They were a good match.”

“I trust you, Dana.”

“I trust you, of course.”

“Wel , you—you trust a lot of people.”

“It makes life more pleasant,” I said.

“Riskier.”

“No, less risky. You’d see that if you tried it.”

“I can’t.”

“Try it sometime. Try trusting people more. You’l see, it works out. It protects you. You think it makes you more vulnerable but it doesn’t.”

“No, I just can’t see that. I think you have to be on the lookout or you’l get stabbed in the back.”

“I don’t believe that. Most people are nice.”

Daniel burst out laughing. “Yes, and history proves it.”

“People just get led astray.”

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” Daniel said.

On the way back to my flat I knocked on Volvo’s door. “Anyone home?” I cal ed out.

On the way back to my flat I knocked on Volvo’s door. “Anyone home?” I cal ed out.

“Enter.”

I opened his door and peeked in. He was stil in bed, lying on his back. He had been over six feet tal when he had his legs and now he lifted weights to keep his torso and arms in shape. He looked solid and sturdy, lying there on the bed, his stumps protruding from pajama shorts. I had painted the wal s of his lit le room sand white and had decorated them with prints of van Gogh’s Sidewalk Café and Matisse’s Window: the café was a compromise, gently suggesting to Volvo an alternative to his rigid outlook while relenting partial y on the question of sorrow, but the window, with its dazzling optimism, left no room for discussion. Volvo complained that I was being manipulative; nevertheless, I often caught him staring at Matisse’s multiple rectangles of happy light. The room contained only a narrow bed and a chair: Volvo kept his clothes in a suitcase under the bed and his books stacked in tal , precarious piles against the wal . He didn’t want to feel set led, he said. “I’l end up in Siberia anyhow,” he added. I had no idea what he meant, and didn’t bother asking.

“Volvo, do you want to come with me to dinner tonight? Someone I met invited me. A guy, Rafi, and his wife.”

“Yeah, al right. Who’s favoring me with his or her presence today?” he asked, referring to the volunteers. He always pretended not to know the volunteer schedule, even though there were only four and they always came on the same days: Rosa on Sundays and Thursdays, Joshua on Mondays, Miss (or rather, Sister) Fitzpatrick on Wednesdays, and Daniel’s old friend Alex, the albino musician who had played in their band, on either Friday or Saturday, depending on his availability.

“Rosa’s coming today, as I’m sure you know.” Rosa was a very devoted volunteer, and though she had innumerable health problems of her own, she cleaned Volvo’s at, went shopping for him, and did most of his cooking. She was a widow and extremely talkative; she never noticed Volvo’s bad moods because she was too busy tel ing him about her own tragedy-fil ed life, past and present.

“God help me.”

“Do you need anything?”

“If Rosa lost forty pounds and had a brain transplant she would actual y be tolerable.”

“She’s fine as she is. You’re the one who’s always sulking.”

“If Rosa lost her legs at least she’d weigh less.” He began laughing hysterical y.

“Very wit y.”

“Where were you yesterday? That taxi driver waited for you for hours.”

“I was just out with friends,” I lied. I never had the courage to tel Volvo about my activities. I was afraid he would never speak to me again.

“And then as soon as you got home, you sent him away. So he waited for nothing, unless it was a real quickie.”

“Volvo, I’ve told you a mil ion times, there’s nothing sexual between me and Benny, not that it’s any of your business. I sent him away because I was tired.”

“Pass me my tray, Dana. And get the hel out. What time is this dinner?”

“Rafi’s going to pick us up at seven.”

“I hope there’s room for my chair in his trunk.”

“He has a van. We’l manage.”

“Who is this guy?”

“Just a friend.”

I went out to drop of my film for developing and on the way I picked up some groceries: potato salad, hummus, bread. Then I returned to my novel. I noticed that I’d made several mistakes the previous night. I’d forgot en that my character’s name was Angeline and at some point I started cal ing her Angela. Then I forgot that Pierre was a count and I made him a prince, and his wicked cousin Martha accidental y turned into his aunt. I wasted a lot of time fixing these mistakes.