The Girl on the Fridge: Stories (3 page)

Say someone agrees to paint you a painting. Any painting, nothing specific. You let him have your apartment for a month and in return he’ll paint you a painting. You don’t sign a contract or anything, but still it’s a transaction like any other. Objectively speaking, everybody wins. You take advantage of his enormous talent as a painter, and he takes advantage of your oft-remarked talent for disappearing from the country for weeks at a time—to Thailand, to Japan, or in this case, to a good, solid, respectable destination, like France, for instance.

Know what? Make it Paris.

It remains to be determined whether the transaction is fair. It’s legal, that’s for sure, because there’s mutual consent. But is it fair? To be honest, it’s hard to say. You’re sitting there, on the Champs-Elysées, sipping at a demitasse of espresso, while he has to paint away at your painting like a slave. On the other hand, the rent he’d have to pay for a place like yours, if he rented it for a month, would be much higher than the best price he could get for any of his paintings. Furthermore, the guy is shitting in your toilet, sleeping in your bed, covering himself with your blanket. Not just him, maybe all sorts of other people too, people he brings home—you haven’t got a clue. As for you, meanwhile, you’re holed up in some tacky French hotel with a snotty concierge who can’t understand English. When all is said and done, the Champs-Elysées is nothing to write home about, with the beating-down July sun frying your brains and a million Japanese tourists. God knows how you’ll get through the month. A hypothetical God, of course, because none of this actually happens.

Now say two weeks in, you suddenly have to go home. Your wallet’s been stolen, or maybe you only think it’s been stolen when what really happened is you lost it. It fell out of your pocket, you dropped it—whatever. You’re out of money, and you’re going home. The agreement stipulated one month. Thus the question arises whether you have the right to return to your old apartment ahead of time. On the face of it, you do. But think again. Try to picture it the other way around. Suppose the other party to the transaction had lost his painting supplies. No, that’s not a good analogy. Say he’d lost his talent. Would it be fair of you to demand that he finish the painting? But the analogy, in this case, falls apart, because talent is such an elusive commodity, one you don’t exactly come across every day, whereas an apartment is a piece of property that’s registered at the Housing Ministry, and French money is something you can easily get from your parents. At any rate, you’re back, and you’re both in the apartment, you in one bedroom and the other party in the other. At night you sometimes meet outside the bathroom.

The other party has a compelling face and a sexy body. Let’s say you find it extremely attractive. But now you’re sweating. Know what? Let me make this easy on you: Say the other party is a girl. A girl with a very attractive face and a body that turns you on. Here, let me open a window.

Better?

The other party is prettier. Prettier than her paintings. Because pretty is what she is all the time, whereas painting is what she does only when she isn’t sleeping or eating or fucking men you don’t know on sheets you got from your parents for your birthday. Know what? She uses her own sheets. But you know the men. No, I won’t say who, but a few of them are men you know very well.

So, where were we? Right: the Champs-Elysées. You threw your wallet somewhere and went home. The two of you have worked it out. Each of you has a room. Except that, in this particular case, your room is the one she gets. And the painting? Maybe she doesn’t fucking feel like it. Or maybe she does. It doesn’t seem right to ask. But all those men who keep coming and going in the middle of the night, they make her scream. And you, to you it seems very inconsiderate. Because just say you had been able to fall asleep at night, it’s not exactly as if you could have slept through it. Anyway, what’s the deal? Men you know, and I won’t say who, have her screaming in the middle of the night, and then in the morning she hasn’t got the energy to paint you the painting that, according to contract, she has a legal and moral obligation to deliver.

It’s clear enough as far as you’re concerned, but what are you going to say? Get some sleep so you have energy to paint me my painting? You’ll never have the guts, especially not when you came back two weeks ahead of schedule. Besides, maybe she is working on it, working from models, from men you know. Like your big brother, for instance. In the middle of the night. And when he won’t hold still, she screams at him. It’s frustrating work. What is she painting? You really ought to find out. It has occurred to you that the painting itself may go a long way toward elucidating her feelings for you. Could she in fact be in love with you? Could this whole apartment transaction be a ruse for getting closer to you? Either way, would you mind letting go of your brother’s throat? He’s turning slightly blue.

Where were we? Something to do with blue. Well, in the end it turns out she was making you a painting of the sea. No, the sky. Ah, sorry, now you’ve strangled your brother. Ah yes, we were just saying how much you can learn about a person’s character from a painting.

Even before he finished punching the secret code into the pad on his wall safe, Yordan felt something was wrong. A voice in the back of his mind said, “Run, Yordan, while you still can.” But twelve long years with the Mossad had taught him to treat his sixth sense as skeptically as he treated the other five. And this time, his senses didn’t disappoint him. The safe was empty. The three “deleted” files and his suede bag with the snaps were gone. For the first time since they killed his parents right before his eyes, Yordan permitted himself to blanch. “Don’t panic,” the voice in the back of his mind ordered him. “Think, think, think.” Who could think with all that nagging? “No one knew the combination except my wife, Yemima,” Yordan told himself, trying to narrow down the list of potential suspects, “and I killed her in November, after that saccharin-in-the-coffee fiasco.” He stood in front of the empty safe completely at a loss. He was being punished now for the mistake he made in November when he left himself with a blank list of suspects. Or had he forgotten someone? Yordan remembered what Halamish taught him in basic training (before he was exposed as a mole for the Khmer Rouge): “Trust no one, not even yourself.” Suddenly it was clear. “I stole the files,” he whispered to himself unbelievingly. “It all fits: I knew the combination, I had the opportunity. And who besides me had a reason to steal the suede bag with the snaps?” After the initial shock, Yordan resolved to act, and fast. He surprised himself from behind, overcame himself easily, and tied himself to a chair. “Who sent you?” he yelled furiously at himself. “Talk, asshole.” “Hey, have you lost your mind?” he replied in confusion. “This is me, I mean, you, Yordan. Untie me.” “Shut up, traitor,” Yordan said and slapped himself. “Me, a traitor?” he said, surprised. “Yordan, are you crazy? You’ve known me since forever. You know I’d never betray the homeland.” Yordan pretended to be convinced and untied himself.
“Tfadal,”
he said, handing himself a cigarette.
“Shukran,”
he said, thanking himself. “Aha! Now I’ve got you, you Arab son of a bitch,” Yordan said excitedly. “Come on, is that any way to talk about Mama?” he replied, feigning innocence. “Cut the Mama shit, mole. If you’re not a spy, why’d you answer me in Arabic?” “Because you asked in Arabic, dipshit. We learned Arabic together in basic training,” Yordan said to himself, his feelings hurt, sincerity in his voice. “Trust him, he’s telling the truth,” the voice in the back of his mind whispered with a slight Russian accent. “After all, he is you. You have to trust him.” “I have no duty but to sacrifice my life for my country,” Yordan said to himself. “Besides…Hey, wait a minute, what’s with that slight Russian accent?” He plunged his hand into the back of his mind and pulled out a dwarf in a Cossack hat.

While Yordan was driving the handcuffed midget to be interrogated at headquarters, the little man volunteered some information. “Look,” he said, “ever since glasnost, there’s been no work. All KGB guys are dying of boredom. So we decided to, how do you people say it, to pull a leg. We searched our files for an agent with the lowest IQ in the world and we—” Yordan didn’t listen to the rest. He pulled out the car lighter, shoved the Soviet dwarf in the hole, reinserted the lighter, and pushed till he felt the click. Eight seconds later, the dwarf stopped screaming. Yordan made a U-turn and went home. “So maybe I was a little weak when they tested us on the shapes,” he said to himself. “But the lowest IQ in the world? You know,” he said to himself with false bonhomie, “I once knew a Georgian agent who could hardly count to three…” He smiled irresistibly into the mirror.

Deep down, he still didn’t trust him.

The sergeant took Alon’s vacuum-sealed bandage and pushed it into the pail. Air bubbles rose to the surface. The sergeant ignored them and went on pressing the bandage down to the bottom, smirking. Alon couldn’t help feeling that the sergeant was trying to drown his bandage, his personal bandage, for no reason whatsoever.

The stream of bubbles stopped. The sergeant took his hand out of the pail and gave the wet corpse a look of contempt. “Is this what you call a vacuum seal, Schreiber? There’s a hole in this seal that’s as big as a cunt.” The sergeant moved closer, till their faces were practically touching, and said in a loud whisper: “But I’m sorry, Schreiber. Have you ever once seen a girl’s cunt?”

Alon had once seen a girl’s cunt. Many times, in fact, although he couldn’t find any connection between her naked and loving body and the sergeant’s word.

“I asked you a question, Schreiber.” Alon felt as if the sergeant had invaded his brain and was undressing her against her will, against his will. He wouldn’t let him destroy that, too. He wouldn’t.

“I can’t hear you, Schreiber.”

“No, sir.”

“Never mind, it isn’t your fault you were born a loser. Why don’t you ask your mother nicely? Maybe she’ll show you the hole you came out of. Lugassi, I wouldn’t laugh if I had a face like yours.”

The sergeant turned toward Alon. There was a menacing look in his eyes. “Am I imagining things, Schreiber, or are you crying?”

“No, sir.”

“Schreiber, you’re a piss-poor excuse for a human being, a piss-poor excuse for a soldier, and a piss-poor excuse for a vacuum sealer.” By now the sergeant was screaming, spraying droplets of spit in Alon’s face. The droplets stung, like an all-consuming acid. “I can’t make a man out of you. Even God almighty couldn’t do that. But I can make a soldier out of you. Tomorrow morning, I expect to see every single one of your shorts and undershirts vacuum-sealed. One by one. And they’d better be done properly this time. And you know why, Schreiber?” The sergeant’s voice rose even higher. “Because good vacuum sealing is an inseparable part of being a good soldier. I bet you’re smiling, Bugamilsky.” The sergeant turned to face Bugamilsky with a nervous jerk. “It’d take a cherry retard like you to smile when I’m explaining about vacuum sealing. I’d like to see you smile after you cross the Zahrani with your pants full of Arab shit and filth. And then, when you want to change into a clean pair of pants and some clean, dry underwear”—the sergeant moved over toward Bugamilsky’s bed, opened the rucksack, and registered a look of mock surprise—“you’ll discover it’s on account of your lousy vacuum seal that they’re sopping wet too. I bet you’ll be laughing then too, dickbrain, when you try to keep going with a ton of filth in your shorts, like some baby that made in his pants.

“Bugamilsky didn’t take his vacuum sealing seriously, which is why he’s going to do two extra hours of guard duty tonight. Private, write that down. Anyone else here too smart to bother with vacuum sealing?” The sergeant scanned the platoon.

Alon did take it seriously. Vacuum sealing was his only chance.

That night, Alon vacuum-sealed his clothes. The more he sealed, he could tell, the more he got the hang of it, and he couldn’t help feeling proud as he studied his last vacuum-sealed undershirt. He was ready.

He closed his eyes softly and started to vacuum-seal himself.

During roll call, the sergeant was more short-tempered than ever, handing out punishments right, left, and center. When he got to Alon, he grabbed him by his shirt, leaned over, and shouted the same sentence in his ear over and over again. Alon listened to the drops of spittle shattering against the vacuum seal. Their frenzied rhythm reminded him of raindrops banging helplessly against a taut plastic awning. Not a single droplet hit him.

That night, he had to crawl for fifty minutes, shouting “I’m a snake, I’m a liar,” because he’d assured the sergeant that his weapon was clean and the sergeant had found some oil in the assembly.

When Schreiber rose to his feet, he was pleased to discover that not a single drop of dirt had stuck to him. The vacuum seal had done its job.

Only once did Schreiber doubt the perfection of the seal. It was his Saturday off, two weeks before the end of basic training. She said that the army had changed him, had made him different, that he was avoiding her kisses, pulling away when she touched him. How could he tell her about the synthetic taste in his mouth, the fake, sticky feel of her body, the suffocation? For a moment he thought he’d heard the sound of air rushing through some hidden hole in the transparent seal. But it was just the murmur of the door closing behind her. He wanted to cry, but there were no tears in his eyes. Anyway, what’s the point of a transparent vacuum seal if you get yourself wet inside?

He looked at himself in the mirror, at his shiny dog tag, at his neatly starched service dress, at the razor in his right hand. He drew the razor closer to the clearly visible artery in his neck. “Basic training is over,” he whispered. “Time to undo the seal.”