remembered seeing you on some show about deserted wives.”
“Why do you have separate bedrooms?”
“She has problems sleeping. She can’t sleep with anyone in her bed, or even in the room, every smal sound wakes her up.”
“Since always?”
“I think so. Since I’ve known her, at least.”
“When did you meet?”
“A long time ago. Ten years ago. When I was twenty-one.”
“You’re thirty-one?”
“Yes. I was twenty-one and she was twenty-three.”
“And she told you to invite me?”
“She suggested it.”
“What were her words exactly?”
“She said, ‘That woman, Dana, she’s the one with the missing husband. Why not invite her to dinner, if you can get hold of her?’”
“Do you have people over often?”
He slid down to the floor and crouched Arab-style with his knees up.
“Yes, we have people over. Not during the day, during the day she plays. Unless she’s having one of her migraines.”
“You don’t have sex.”
“Why do you say that?”
“That’s why people get migraines. Women especial y. When they don’t come.”
“You can have sex without orgasm.”
“Wel , the studies aren’t conclusive. I want you to get up now and leave and not come back. Do you think this is what I deserve, to be some sort of voyeur?” I threw myself on the bed and burst into tears. I hadn’t cried in years.
Rafi made tea and brought it to the bed and we drank in silence.
Then he left.
Daniel managed to avoid reserve duty ve years in a row, but in the sixth year they insisted. He was a hopelessly incompetent soldier. In one of his favorite movies two armies march pompously toward each other, raise their ri es, re, and fal down dead—al of them, on the spot.
Daniel laughed very hard at that scene and he laughed every time he remembered it. He saw ghting as absurd and he refused to take his training seriously: several times he sabotaged practice operations by clowning around. His punishments were much worse than mine. I had to clean toilets, but one time he almost died when he was disciplined. He’d marched backward during an ambush dril , and the sergeant made him march backward around the camp for several hours with al his equipment, until he nal y col apsed. Daniel was very entertaining when he told people the story: vomiting on the medic’s shoes, reciting Bialik in semi-delirium, being stripped and washed down by a ninety-year-old nurse. But in fact the doctor had led a complaint, and Daniel later found out that his condition had been critical. Only once did he confess, after we’d been particularly intimate one night, that he’d suf ered and cried, and that everyone had seen him crying.
When notices for reserve duty arrived in the mail, Daniel always replied that he was in the middle of a crucial project at work; they had a deadline and he couldn’t possibly get away. But this last time the army checked up on him, and found out that he was dispensable after al .
He didn’t mind al that much. The laundry job itself didn’t bother him, but he hated being part of what he cal ed auto-genocide. The He didn’t mind al that much. The laundry job itself didn’t bother him, but he hated being part of what he cal ed auto-genocide. The government was kil ing its citizens by the thousands, he said, nishing o the job the Nazis had started. Why should he provide clean uniforms for the pathetic slobs who were being sent to their deaths by heartless politicians? Nevertheless, he was in a good mood when he left. He cal ed me every evening, and described in great detail what he was going to do to me when he got back.
MONDAY
MONDAYS AND THURSDAYS WERE MY DAYS at the insurance o ce. I kept the job after Daniel left, but they downsized me to two days a week. This meant I could no longer water the plants, al of which had di erent watering schedules; my employer had to do it himself. In fact, the only thing I did now was look after correspondence in English; I would have lost the job altogether had they not needed a bilingual typist. The let ers I wrote were sometimes cruel, but my employer al owed me to insert mitigating phrases, for whatever they were worth. We deeply regret, in this time of great dif iculty and stress, to inform you, much to our sorrow, that we are unable to cover…
The day passed quickly.
In the evening, Rafi cal ed. “I spoke to Mercedes. She can come tomorrow, is that okay?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“How are you?”
“Fine. Boring day at the of ice where I work.”
