MONDAY
I LEFT THE HOTEL ROOM BEFORE RAFI WOKE. I was glad he was sleeping; I didn’t want to say good-bye. I dressed quietly and left him a note, tel ing him I’d cal him from the Coastal Strip to let him know I was al right, and asking him not to phone me. Then I went back to my at and packed the dressing gown and the photograph of the men and the birds. I decided to take my toothbrush and a change of clothes as wel , since I would be staying overnight. I assumed Daniel would need time to get organized, and that I’d stay with him until he was ready to come back.
In the taxi to the train station my heart was pounding, and I was having di culty breathing. The driver asked me whether I was feeling unwel .
“I’m just excited,” I said. “I’m going to see my husband. I haven’t seen him in eleven years.” Tel ing a stranger something that was ut erly meaningless for him, but of such immense signi cance to me, was a diversionary tactic. Or maybe I was trying to pul this event out of the realm of the supernatural to the surface of normal life, in order to give it weight and presence.
“He’s been out of the country?”
“Yes.”
“Why so long?”
“He got lost.”
The driver laughed. “You’re funny,” he said. Then he sighed happily. “I’m laughing, I’m sit ing here next to you. And I’m alive. You don’t appreciate life until you see death. Two hours ago I was sure it was the end for me …I haven’t come so close since the fucking war.”
“Which war?”
“Take your pick.”
“What happened?”
“I swore to myself I wouldn’t do drug pickups, but business is so lousy. I have to eat, I have to pay the rent. And drug pickups pay real y wel , one hundred fty shekels for a twenty-minute ride, there and back. So I gured, what the hel . Without money you can’t stay alive anyhow. That’s what I said to myself, but it isn’t true. I’d rather be in debt and alive, I know that now. Two hours ago I had a gun pointed at my head, because by mistake I got a look at the dealer.”
“Do you think it wil last, this feeling of being happy to be alive?”
He shrugged. “Probably not. I’d like to hang on to it, though. I real y would.”
When we arrived at the train station El a was already there, waiting in her smal blue car and talking on her mobile phone. She motioned me to come inside and with her free hand made room for me by moving junk from the passenger seat to the back. The car was like a large suitcase, stu ed with boxes, papers, food wrappers, bat eries, a large ashlight, another mobile phone, a tape recorder, hats, socks, a rain jacket, a rat y cushion, blankets, and a bag of disposable diapers.
I waited for El a to nish her phone conversation. She was speaking in Arabic, with English words inserted here and there when she didn’t know the Arabic word. When she was through, she said, “Hi. Thanks for being on time. There’s an envelope in the glove compartment …
that’s your permit. I need to stop somewhere for cof ee. Cof ee, and I also have to pee. What a night … don’t ask.”
“You’ve been up al night?”
“Yes.” She sighed, and pressed on the gas. She was a bit of a wild driver.
We found a food stand and El a got out to buy co ee and a bot le of water. Then we drove to the apartment building Daniel had given as his address, where the old couple lived now.
“This is where I pick up his mail,” El a said. “You can give him this month’s check.”
“I can’t believe you never told me,” I said.
“He asked me not to.”
I stepped out of her car and stared at the building. It was a four-story apartment house, menacing, impenetrable, expel ing breaths of invisible pain like smoke. Eleven years ago I had kept watch here. I had stationed myself across the street, on a rock, hidden by a row of dry, hostile bushes. I remembered thinking that this was what it was like to be a fugitive. You hid from the rest of civilization and you tried to look unobtrusive. I was afraid to move or sleep; I was afraid I’d miss Daniel’s secret messenger. I thought there was even a chance I would see Daniel himself, late at night; maybe he was the one leaving the notes on the door in disguised, alien handwriting. But in the end I had to sleep and I had to eat. I tried to rent a flat in the building, or in the building facing Daniel’s, but nothing was available.
We entered the familiar dark hal way. El a used a key to open the mailbox and took out an envelope. “His al owance,” she said.
“Did you leave those notes on the door?”
“What notes?”
“Gone to the supermarket, back in five minutes. I stil have those notes, I tore them of the door and kept them.”
“No, that wasn’t me. A widow lived here—I guess those were her notes. She put an ad in the paper, room for rent, and Daniel took it—that is, he paid the rent so he could col ect mail here.”
“But I knocked on the door, there was never anyone.”
“She was a lit le paranoid.”
