Cafe Nevo (36 page)

“Now it's your turn. No one can decide for you, and time won't resolve this problem. Delaying can only make matters worse, for you and for Daniel.”

Vered looked at her hopelessly. Tears collected in the corners of her eyes and slipped down her cheeks, but she seemed unaware that she was crying.

“Vered,” said her mother, “all I can tell you is that the answer is in your heart. Listen to it.”

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Three

 

The painting was almost done. Sarita stood back to admire her work.

For a while she had been so bombarded by importunate faces appearing out of nowhere in her sketch pad that it seemed as if the quick would be squeezed out by the dead. Each session of painting had been like a game of musical chairs: when the music stopped, who would still have a place? Some of the figures in her Café Nevo had been painted over so many times that they stood out in relief. In the end, however, the living had asserted their rights, though their domination was not complete; here and there some former denizens of Nevo, living or dead, clung stubbornly to favorite seats.

Among these was her mother. Yael Blume as she ultimately evolved on the canvas was not the youngster of Sarita's early sketches but was close to her age at the time of her death, perhaps even a little older. She sat between her husband and Uri Eshel, who appeared no older than Arik. The three friends had raised their glasses high in a toast. Yael, smiling from the heart, was looking over her shoulder, out of the picture and directly into the eyes of the beholder: in this case, Sarita.

“Who are you toasting, Mother?” asked Sarita, but there was no reply. Ever since Yael had fought her way into the Nevo painting, her voice in Sarita's mind had faded, receding into a distance, as if, having found her place, she had grown thoughtless of her daughter. Sarita turned to look at the portrait above her bed, but there, too, Yael's eyes were opaque and unresponsive.

There came a knock on the door. Sarita wiped her hands on her smock, threw a cover over the painting, and opened the door. Arik Eshel strode into the room.

“Hello, Sarita,” he said; then he gathered her into his arms and kissed her.

She struggled free. “How dare you!”

“I missed you.”

“You think you can just walk in and out of my life, appear and disappear like a Cheshire cat?”

“I'm sorry I was gone so long,” he said soberly. “I had work that had to be done.”

“You needn't apologize. You owe me no explanations. What do I care what you've been doing?”

“I saw Brenner.”

He sat on her bed, patting it invitingly. Gingerly, keeping her distance, Sarita sat beside him. “What happened?”

He told her what he had demanded and what the Minister had said.

“You're mad,” she breathed.

“It worked,” he said.

“It didn't! Brenner agreed?”

“He agreed to establish a committee to oversee land sales. He agreed to install me as the head. We're still arguing over the other members. And he wants it to be strictly advisory.”

“That's no good.”

“No,” Arik said contentedly. “There are some major battles ahead.”

“He must hate your guts.”

“He said to me, ‘Eshel, you're going to regret the day you pulled this stunt.'“

“I wouldn't laugh. That's one hell of an enemy.”

Arik smiled beatifically.

“And what,” Sarita added irritably, “is that dumb grin doing on your face? Anyone would think you're pleased the man hates you.”

“I am. It's the best feeling I've had since I quit the army.”

Sarita gave him a thoughtful look. “So you're going into politics. Following in your father's footsteps.”

“Would that bother you?”

“Would it matter?” she countered, and immediately regretted it. Arik seized her hand.

“Of course it would,” he said. “You're going to be my partner.”

Sarita shot a panic-stricken look at the portrait behind her, but Yael's eyes were blank reflective pools of paint that told her nothing. She listened but heard only silence. Arik squeezed her hand with gentle insistence, forcing her eyes back to him. “You know that, don't you?” he said.

Now Sarita was frightened, but she was also excited and, like any young woman, curious to test her strength. “What if I said I don't like politics?”

Arik laughed. “Do you like Brenner and Gordon divvying up the West Bank?”

Her lip curled. “No.”

“Would you stop them if you could?”

Without hesitation she said, “Yes.”

“There you are then. I'm just doing what I have to do.” How many times had he heard his father say those words to his mother, who when she heard them would laugh, sometimes in despair, and roll her eyes? Rina always argued, and Uri always listened meekly and then went out and did just exactly what he wanted to do. And she supported him. Whatever she said in private, in public she supported him and savaged his enemies. Rina was half Uri's strength; without her he would be Samson shorn. Arik's recent battles had loosened the tight knot that had settled in his throat since he learned of Rina's illness, but suddenly, in Sarita's room, Arik remembered that which he had never for a moment forgotten. He closed his eyes.

Sarita's fingers tightened on his; her warm breath brushed his face as she turned toward him. “How is your mother?” she said.

He let go her hand and put his arms around her. Sarita remained very still. Slowly he tightened his arms, drawing her near. He put his head on her shoulder and Sarita closed her arms around him, awkwardly patting his back.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered, but Arik had succumbed to hormonal amnesia and was no longer thinking of his mother. He pressed his face into Sarita's neck, which smelled faintly of turpentine; in his state, and forever after, it seemed the most seductive of perfumes. He kissed her throat. Sarita trembled and thrust him away.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked.

“I'm not afraid.”

He waited. His hands still played over her back and shoulders; he touched her beautiful hair.

“I can't do this,” Sarita said.

“Why not? You're allowed.”

“It's not right for me.”

“Why, have you taken vows?” he teased.

She said indignantly, “I have other things on my mind.”

With his hand flat against the warm flesh of her back, Arik could feel her heart beat. “Sarita,” he said gently, “you keep saying no, and I keep feeling yes.”

In a low voice she said, “I hardly know you.”

“You know I'm in love with you. You know I want you. Don't you like me a little, Sarita?”

“A little,” she said, and Arik exhaled a great, noisy, joyous breath and reached for her again. “I was so afraid of coming back from Jerusalem and finding you married or gone,” he murmured.

“You were only gone two weeks.”

“It felt like months.”

This time Sarita did not pull away. She stayed in his arms, but it took an act of will, like a child being brave for the dentist. Arik felt it; and after a few minutes he forced himself to release her. He kissed her brow and pushed the hair back from her face with a touch that bespoke gratified surprise. “Let's go out,” he said.

“Where to?” she asked, surprised, perhaps a little disappointed.

“Anywhere. Nevo. Let's go and see Sternholz.” He thrilled at the idea of entering Nevo with Sarita on his arm. Seeing the old man's eyes would be almost worth the pangs of delayed gratification.

Sarita smiled. “Mr. Sternholz says I spend too much time there. He said not to come around so much.”

“You should be flattered. Sternholz only insults the people he loves,” said Arik.

 

“David,” said Ilana, “this is my dear friend Emmanuel Sternholz. Emmanuel, David Barnardi.”

“How d'you do,” said David, rising to shake the waiter's outstretched hand. Though he found the Israeli tendency to obviate even the most basic social boundaries mildly distressing, David, a traveled man and tactful, believed in doing as the Romans did.

As they shook hands, Sternholz turned to Ilana. “This is the one?” he muttered, sotto voce.

“Behave yourself,” she warned silkily.

Sternholz cast a critical glance about his domain, which was growing crowded as the Sabbath closed in. Caspi had established himself with his new entourage, which was not quite his old entourage, at a central table. On the pavement, just behind the front rank of chess players, Arik and Sarita sat close together. Mr. Jacobovitz was polishing glasses behind the bar, a never-ending task since as he finished wiping each glass, he put it at the end of the line of glasses to be wiped. Muny had preempted one of Sternholz's aprons and was serving drinks. Punctilious in his dishonesty, he pocketed exactly half the take. Satisfied, Sternholz pulled up a chair and sat ponderously between Ilana and her lover.

He looked the Englishman over with no approving eye, from his school tie down to the tips of his Gucci shoes.

David suffered this scrutiny as he had that of El Al's security agents—in dignified silence. Conscious of Ilana's amusement, he was determined to betray surprise at nothing this eccentric person might do or say. It may be said to his credit that David did not actually mind the waiter's having joined them; it just had never happened to him before.

“So you're the one,” Sternholz finally said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It's not my pardon you should be begging.”

“Emmanuel,” Ilana murmured, in a tone of indulgent censure.

“What are your intentions?” he demanded.

“To visit Jerusalem, of course, and perhaps a few days at the Dead Sea; nothing more ambitious in the way of sightseeing,” David said.

The old man clicked his tongue rudely. “About Ilana, you fool.”

“Emmanuel!” Nothing playful in Ilana's tone now. “How dare you speak to my guest that way?”

“If I don't, who will?”

“Were you ever a schoolmaster, Mr. Sternholz?” David said. “I ask because you remind me very much of an old master of mine. The Grand Inquisitor, we called him. Respectfully, of course.”

Sternholz quelled a tremor in his lower lip that might, unattended, have developed into a smile. “I
was
a schoolteacher once,” he said grandly, “but I gave it up for a higher calling. You, I believe, are a Jew.”

“Does that matter?”

“Does that matter?” mimicked Sternholz. Turning to Ilana, he tapped his temple.

She scowled at him. “If you weren't,” she told David, “he'd be charming. Emmanuel saves his rudeness for his own people.”

For the first time in his life, David felt proud to be a Jew, a strangely placed pride indeed, if being a Jew meant being scourged by this frightful old man.

Sternholz and Ilana maintained injured silences. David, disinclined to end the odd colloquy, said, “This is quite an establishment you run, Mr. Sternholz.”

“Establishment? Asylum, more like it.” He cackled, though his face retained its dour set.

“I wondered about the name. Does ‘Nevo' mean anything in Hebrew?”

“It's a Biblical name,” the old man said shortly.

“Biblical. Are you a religious man, Mr. Sternholz?”

“God forbid.”

Ilana said, “Nevo is the mountain somewhere in Moab where Moses stood to survey the Promised Land, knowing that he would never be allowed to enter.”

David glanced around the room. Impatient faces everywhere were focused on Sternholz, who did not notice or, if he did, paid no attention. “It's an odd name for a café located inside Israel,” he ventured. “I mean, you've already arrived, haven't you?”

A momentary silence fell over the café; the sort of silence commonly ascribed to angels passing overheard; then a wave of laughter arose, starting from Caspi's table and spreading from the depths of Nevo to its gleaming Dizengoff shore. The toothless old men, the young lovers, Muny, and the senile busboy all roared together. Ilana's face, too, dissolved in mirth, though she pressed David's hand penitently. Even Sternholz permitted himself a dry titter.

The Englishman's dignity was sorely tried; at first he found himself, as always when he visited this country, infuriated by the rudeness. But the old man's bleary eyes were almost friendly now, and David felt that this mass amusement was not altogether at his expense, but at their own as well.

“Did you ever wonder,” Sternholz said, when the laughter had subsided, “why Israeli Jews still pray each Pesach, ‘Next year in Jerusalem'?”

“I didn't know they did,” said David.