Safekeeping (37 page)

Cheek against the cold cement floor, Ziva sobbed, tears no longer from the onions. “I want to keep working.”

A
dam stared at the ceiling as the afternoon sunlight drained from the room. Golda had tried to snuggle against him, but he kept pushing her away until she curled into a ball at the bottom of the bed. It was a new Friday. A new paper without his ad sat on newsstands and doorsteps all over the country. A week of ads, and nobody had called. Now all those papers were in the garbage, and he was all out of ideas. Over the last few days he had tried to think of another way to find Dagmar, or whatever she was called now, but nothing came to him. Meanwhile the brooch sat in his pocket like a bona fide mark of Cain.

Golda sat up seconds before there came a knock at the door. Adam rolled off the bed. He'd called in sick today and assumed this was Yossi coming to check on him. He walked toward the door, bending over, preparing to feign he had a bad stomach bug.

It was one of the Russians, the skinny kid with the mullet and square glasses—all he needed to look like the perfect computer nerd was a computer. He even had the name.

Adam dropped the sick act, straightened up. “What is it, Eugene?”

“Phone call.”

“Phone? For me?”

“Yes.”

“They're on the line right now?”

When Eugene nodded, Adam pushed past him, not bothering to put on shoes or close his door. He bolted across the quad, his bare heel landing
on one of the hard fruits hidden in the overgrown grass. He hopped in pain up the stairs and down the veranda toward the dangling receiver.

“Hello? Shalom?”

“Shalom.
Sprechen Sie Deutsch
? Or English?”

It wasn't Dagmar. A man. Traces of a German accent. He must know her.

“English, English,” Adam said. “I'm American.”

“Good. I'm calling from Toronto. A friend told me about your ad in
Yedioth Ahronoth
.”

“Great.” Of course this is how it would go: a turnaround at the eleventh hour. Adam felt light, rescued.

“I know a Dagmar Stahlmann who would be around eighty today. We were in a Maccabi Hatzair chapter together in Berlin. Did she contact you?”

“No. Can you give me her number?”

“Oh.” The man clucked his tongue. “I was hoping you would give that to me.”

Someone else looking for Dagmar? Adam leaned on the phone.

“Hello?” said the old man.

“Yeah, I'm here.”

“So you haven't found her?”

“No. All I know is that she lived on a kibbutz in forty-seven. After that, I've got nothing. You? Do you have any idea of where she might be?”

“Well, I can't imagine Dagmar ending up anywhere but on a kibbutz. She was obsessed with the Land of Israel and the kibbutzim. Of course, I'm talking about a sixteen-year-old girl I once knew. People grow softer as they age. They give up. Though I can't picture the Dagmar I knew giving up.”

“So you think she's still on a kibbutz?”

“That would be my guess . . . if she's still alive.”

“Thing is she's probably not even called Dagmar anymore. Apparently, everyone changed their names in Israel to something more Jewish. Hebrew.”

“Well, I might be able to help you with that. We all had Hebrew names we used at the meetings. My name, David, was already Hebrew. Maybe that's why I got a nickname, Bloomie. Now what did Dagmar go by? God,
I haven't thought about it in decades. In school, everywhere else, she was Dagmar. But . . . it's right there, on the tip of my tongue.”

Adam waited. Come on, come on.

“She did all the translations, and she would sign them with her Hebrew name. Vera? No. Tsvia . . . Yes, something like Tsvia . . . But it's just not coming to me.”

Adam squeezed the handset. He had to use all his willpower not to slam it against the wall. He spoke through his teeth. “Okay, thanks.”

“If she contacts you, will you let her know I called? David Blumenthal. Are you writing this down? Do you have a pen?”

“Yup.”

Adam felt terrible about lying to a Holocaust survivor looking for an old friend, but he just didn't have it in him to go fetch a pen.

“I live with my son now.” He gave the phone number. “You can tell Dagmar that Bloomie said he should have listened to her, that he should have followed her to Palestine. You can tell her my brother died in Auschwitz. She knew him. He was also in Maccabi Hatzair.”

“Got it.”

“May I ask you why you're looking for Dagmar?”

“It's a long story.”

“All right,” said the old man. “I really hope you find her.”

Adam banged down the phone, hard, half hoping to break it, and stormed back to his room. Unaware Golda was following him, he slammed the door, nearly crushing her, but she jumped through in the nick of time.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. He kicked the dresser and looked around his room, heart beating too fast. Through the window he saw Ulya leaving her room, all gussied up in a short orange tube dress. He watched her teeter down the path in her stupid high heels.

Where the hell did she go every night? What was the big fucking secret?

He headed for the door. Golda made a dash for it too, but he couldn't trail Ulya with the dog running ahead. He slipped outside, closing the door on her round pleading eyes.

He hung back while Ulya climbed the back stairs out of the volunteers' section. Once she'd reached the top and turned behind a wall of bushes, he started for the stone steps. He walked slowly to give her time to get ahead. When he peeked around the bushes, he feared he'd waited too long.
She was nowhere to be seen. And then she reappeared for a brief second, crossing the gap between two white bungalows.

He kept a good distance as he followed her down the path away from the kibbutz's center. The kibbutz did feel different on Friday evenings. Serener. Women chatted on porches. An older man watered his modest flowerbed. A younger man headed home with plastic bags full of sodas and snacks. The way Ulya walked past these people, swinging her silver purse as she did that morning they set out for Tel Aviv, made her seem like one of them, just another person excited for the weekend, not somebody on her way to a second job.

When she reached the dirt road encircling the residential part of the kibbutz, she didn't turn in the direction of the nearby towns or the bus stop, as Adam had expected. Instead she made a left, toward the fields and orchards. This made no sense. Where could she be going?

He waited, allowing the distance between them to grow long enough that if she happened to turn around, she might not spot him in the half-light. At this point, he'd have a hard time pretending he was going anywhere believable. She crossed the road, leaving behind the white houses to walk alongside the open fields.

She continued along the road for a good five minutes before veering off behind a long shed. Adam jogged to catch up. When he reached the corrugated steel shed, he knew she couldn't have gone inside it. The clamor behind its walls—high-pitched squawks, countless beating wings—was frightening, and the stench unbearable. Hand on his mouth, pinching his nose, he crept along the chicken house. When he reached the end, he saw Ulya walking across a dusky cabbage field.

Grateful for the near darkness, he abandoned the cover of the chicken house and followed her down a path between the purple heads, ready to duck if she looked back. She seemed to be slowing, so he did as well. She ceased swinging her purse, and even from a distance, he sensed her mood had taken a downturn.

She stopped, and Adam dropped to a squat, balancing himself with one hand on the dirt. She didn't turn around. Head tilted toward the evening sky, she stood very still, reminding him of those scenes where an alien spaceship descends from the sky and lowers its ramp for one special human being. He hated to admit it after the way she had treated him, but he believed Ulya was special.

She set off again. At the end of the field, she began ascending a hill covered with mandarin trees. Adam followed and, feeling safer in the shadows of the orchard, closed the distance a bit. A bright citrusy smell pervaded the darkness. He quietly plucked a mandarin and peeled off its rind as he walked down a parallel path through the trees, watching Ulya appear and disappear behind the trunks like a flickering film.

“Hey.”

Both Ulya and Adam halted, the crunch of the wood chips under their feet replaced by the faint squeak of bats.

“I'm over here,” a man called. His accent was thick.

What kind of accent was it? Not Russian. Or Hebrew. From behind a tree, Adam surveyed the clearing beyond the orchard, the uncultivated hillside strewn with limestone boulders and clusters of wildflowers. Two legs—dark jeans, brown shoes—extended from behind a large, white boulder. Ulya awkwardly stepped over collapsed cattle wire and sashayed toward the hidden man. His hand came out, and she took it. He said something—Adam couldn't make it out—and she laughed and tried to tug her hand free. Why did she say she didn't have a boyfriend? Was she being paid for this? Was he married? The man tugged back. Ulya stumbled toward him then leaned backward with all her weight. “Let go!” she said through more laughter. No, she wasn't getting paid for this. This was real flirtation, not the sad imitation she'd been giving him, not some kind of tease. “Enough!” the man cried with that accent, yanking hard. Squealing, Ulya let herself fall forward onto her hands and knees. The man's hand clasped her orange back, and they switched places; she lay on her back while he emerged from behind the boulder.

Holy shit. It was the guy who'd been eyeing them in the dining hall. Here he'd been wondering if he was too poor, too Jewish, and all the while she'd been screwing around with an Arab fieldhand.

The Arab leaned toward Ulya, and she tweaked his nose. He smiled, and their lips came together. Adam held his breath while their faces remained locked as if they hadn't seen each other for months. A mandarin fell out of the tree and landed beside Adam with a hollow thud. Jesus, were they ever going to separate? Their motionless kiss seemed unending.

He emerged from the trees, stepping over the fallen cattle wire. “Hi.”

The couple looked up.

“Adam!” Ulya screamed, adjusting her tube top.

Adam was as surprised as they were to find himself standing before them. He hadn't planned on coming out of the trees. He just had.

He stood over their maroon blanket, their shocked faces. The bottle of wine. “I thought you didn't have a boyfriend.”

Ulya clambered to her feet. “Fuck you, Adam! Get out of here!”

In her bare feet, she seemed so much shorter, more vulnerable.

“Funny. I thought you were stripping.”

Farid had gotten to his feet and was looking from Ulya to Adam and back to Ulya.

Ulya waved Adam away. “Get out of here! Go! Go where someone wants you!”

Where someone wanted him? Nice. Adam cocked his head, pointed between her and the Arab. “So is this something I should keep to myself?”

Ulya breathed heavily.

“'Cause you're definitely keeping this a secret, right, Ulie?”

She shook her head, smirking as if he were so clueless, but her eyes gleamed with fear and hate. So different from the gleam he had wanted to see in them. He turned to the Arab.

“If you think she takes you seriously, you're crazy. You're nothing to her. Soon as some rich guy comes along, you're gone. You know that, right?”

Ulya waited to see what Farid would do. Adam was right: in the grand scheme of things, Farid was nothing to her, but that was beside the point. He should still stand up for himself, but all the coward did was gape at Adam.

She waved her hands. “Hello, Farid! Defend yourself! Tell him to get lost. Do something!”

Barely making eye contact with Adam, Farid said, “Get lost.”

Ulya looked from one man to the other, not sure whom she loathed more: the Jew, always feeling sorry for himself, but who at least had the passion to make this move, or the lazy, daydreaming Arab, standing like a frightened puppy caught peeing on the rug.

“And if I don't?” Adam opened his arms at his sides, a gesture that said, here I am, come and get me, though really he didn't want to be come and got. He knew from too much experience that he was a sorry fighter. He'd had his lights knocked out more than once. Though getting his lights knocked out didn't sound so bad right now. Sounded great actually.

Farid glanced at Ulya. Ulya, realizing a fight over her was imminent, couldn't stop the grin from blooming on her face. A duel—like in the novels she'd been forced to read in school. And why not? Why should her life be any less exciting than Pushkin's wife's? The threat of violence—violence over her—electrified the night.

“Go on, Farid. Do something!”

Farid raised his fists. Adam did the same, widening his stance, bending his knees. Farid brought one leg back. Waiting for the Arab to take a swipe, Adam changed his tactic; he straightened up and offered his chest, again daring Farid to punch it. Farid licked his lips and rocked his weight back and forth, back and forth. Adam had been right: this guy was never going to swing. And Farid, as if he saw Adam understand this, sagged.