The Place Will Comfort You (4 page)

A bull-calf. An ox. A ram.

Oil. Incense.

Meal of grain.

A drawer rolls open. Cutlery chimes.

The fat and the kidneys and the lobe of the liver.

The drawer rolls shut.

Breasts and right thigh.

Inwards and legs.

A plastic plate scrapes lightly across the counter.

Washed and made smoke.

Smeared with blood at the base and corners.

The orphan crows out of the quiet, and the luster of the verses is made dust. “You seen this?”

Her narrow back is turned to me across the breakfast island, a shoulder laboring, sleek mane shifting with that one lock an exception. She has set up her own station in the neighborhood of the sink. As far as I can see, she is supplied with our tub of chocolate sandwich spread, our loaf of bread, much shortened, and our toothiest big-handled knife, which I hear crunching. The teeth don't show, only the handle. The blade is shoved down. The orphan steps back, fingers around the wood. Then, finger after finger, she lets go, and waves her empty hand. Yet the knife stands. The blade is buried in the marble. She has stabbed our kitchen counter.

I move all at once like the army, down from my stool, around the island, across the floor: “Stop!” Even though it's already done. Done, there before she found it. I know that crack. This is a feature of our kitchen and she didn't put it in.

“Should I take it out?”

“Take it out.”

She jerks the handle one way and the other, and free. Stone meal has stuck to the chocolate-greased metal, up to a point. She says, “Deep as this.”

“You made it worse.”

“With such a thin knife?”

“Metal beats rock.”

“So metal made the crack?”

“My mother, with a pot.”

“Why?”

“She took it off the fire, ran, dropped it on the counter and leaped back.”

The orphan finds the stain before I point it out, how could she not, a beet-red splatter on the ceiling, a wildly flaming planet, droplets violently striving everywhere. “I like borscht,” she says. “With sour cream and pepper. Why did she do it?”

“Pressure cookers make her nervous.”

“So why did she use one?”

“To save time.”

“Did she get hurt?”

“I told you she leaped back.”

“You saw?”

“I heard.”

“And then?”

“I came.”

“And saw?”

“Her hands shaking. She was sitting on the floor.”

“Dropped?”

“Legs straight ahead.”

“And no one helped?”

“She didn't want at first but then she let. My father took her hands.”

“What did he say?”

“I don't remember.”

“What did she say back?”

“‘God damn that pot.'”

“With you there?”

“They didn't see me. That's not her usual language.”

“Did she take it back?”

“She didn't say one more word. She looked like she had found him after a terrible, long trip.”

“Show me the pot.”

“I can't.” I put out a hand and she gives back our knife. “My father threw it out. It was archaic and a hazard. Better technology is just around the corner.”

“I could have told you that,” she says, again gazing up. Her chin is bearded with a dab of chocolate. She slips her fingers through her hair; they meet up at the crown, over the damaged patch, to feel it gently, then come apart. “For a whole week I didn't dream,” the orphan says. “Last night I did. I bit right through a windowpane. Inside was light and outside dark. I bit a hole right through the middle of the glass, black in the middle of the shine, the shape of my mouth. It didn't hurt, it didn't not hurt, I didn't feel any blood running.”

I don't see what this has to do with anything right now. “We have a big assignment in Leviticus.”

“I don't.” She keeps on staring at the stain, but glassy-eyed, bored sick.

“The teacher gave it after you got up and went.”

She says, “Gave you. But I'm exempt.”

“You have chocolate on your chin.”

“So?”

“You should wash it.”

She says, “Let's watch TV.”

I almost laugh at her. Nothing can tempt me before five o'clock
today. He comes on only once a year. I smile. “Only after homework. That's my mother's rules.”

The orphan finger-pats her tough, blunt lock. “Maybe for you.”

“What happened there?”

She spins around to push the lid back on the chocolate. “Finish your boring work,” she says. “If you finished we'd have time.”

“It isn't boring.” I lay the knife in the sink. She hands me the soft-sided tub, which I return to its home in the pantry.

“Boring.” She licks her thumb, presses it onto the breadboard, then pecks off the coating of crumbs. “This year there's no more story,” she says through speckled lips.

“There is.”

“No.”

“Yes. What do you call the people in the desert? Exodus they got away and headed out, right? The tabernacle was built to practice for the Future Temple? This year they are learning how to worship in it and they get to try. In chapter 9 they have a test. What happens?”

She lifts the loaf and squeezes it like an accordion. I grab the bread and box it.

“If you'd have stayed in class you would know. They get it right! They offer everything correctly. A fire comes forth from HaShem and eats the offerings. And all the people rise in song and fall, because they got it right.”

She says, “So why'd they fall?”

“That's just the bowing.”

“You said fall.”

“That word in the Torah just means bow. A sudden bow that looks like falling. From the reverence.”

She says, “For such a easy word as fall you have to learn a explanation? I feel sorry for you that you're not exempt.”

The fragrance of the mimeographs wafts over the air. A trapped fly struggles in a tiny burst; this is the nature of the sound which says the clock's tin hand is straining in a tricky nock, and out.

“Go watch TV.”

“For real? What if she walks in?”

“The rules are just for me.”

Her sandals slap over our tiles, then are muffled by our carpet. The television knob clicks smartly and releases seltzer noise. The fizz acts up in six new ways, then smoothes into the trill and prance and festive kindergarten teacher's voice of an Arabic commercial meant for kids. The orphan has chosen Lebanon TV. Next come Loony Toons, two, rich and quick, carnival ruckus on each side of a chase. Big deal. It's nothing I can't watch on the National Channel, later, an extra row of printed exclamations coursing below, Hebrew flowing above the Arabic.
You see how tables turn, my lucky duck!

Though I smooth the pages of Leviticus back at my work station, my thoughts stay on translation. Why do we translate the Toons for Arabs, along with us, but they translate only for themselves? Because Israel has Arabs living in her, but the Arab countries, no Israelis. Also they wouldn't like to do a favor for the children of our nation. And we? Do we translate every program for the Arabs? How could I truly know? I would have to watch every single show on the National Channel, all day. No mother would allow it. But the answer doesn't matter when I don't need translation in the first place, since I understand the Toons as they are said:
Tha-tha, that's all
—

The ending is cut short. The orphan has switched somewhere else, a sterner place, Jordan TV. A string orchestra slices its rows with slanting notes while a kingly voice keens. The orphan turns this up. The singer and strings complete their job, slow down, and stop. A newer Arabic music gallops in, and just as quickly halts.

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon to you,
a welcoming voice says, but not in Arabic. No. Otherwise, explain how I know what he just said. The greeting may have come out in their sounds, but that is our language, here. Hebrew is what he's speaking, with an Arab accent. Jordan is talking so we'll understand. An enemy reaches out.

The orphan has pushed our rocking chair from its belongful spot. The curved base rocks over the smashed nap of our carpet, in front of our TV. The screen is showing a man who I can see is Arab, polite and serious in a pinstripe suit behind a desk. The number on the dial says it's Jordan, but I recognize every word.

In a secret address broadcast to the Israeli cabinet today, United States president, Jimmy Carter, vowed to withdraw all aid within a fortnight if no reforms are seen in Israel's policy of gross coercion and brute force.

The orphan is laughing and clapping her hands. “Oh, good one,” she says. “Very clever. Try a little harder, liar. Lying Arab liar.”

“Who is he talking to?”

“Who do you think? Me and you.”

“Why? What's happening? What are they going to do?”

“Like you never saw this before?”

“What was it that he said? What did it mean?”

“It isn't true,” she says. “He is a liar for a living.” She makes room for me on her chair, but doesn't stop the rocking. I must catch the rhythm fast and jump at the chance. She grabs me as I land.

Last week in Belgrade, Maccabi Tel Aviv's basketball team claimed the European Championship cup.

“That's true,” I say. “We did win.”

“Stop bunging up the rocking,” she says. “Do like me. Pay attention.”

Probes into stimulant abuse by runtish point guard Motti Aroesti have been quashed,
the newsman says,
by American Jewish financiers of the competition.

“Lie,” she says.

“The part I understood was true.”

A poll suppressed by the Israeli censor demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Jews collected from the Arab countries and transplanted in Palestine since the inception of the Zionist experiment would like to be collected again, and put back. The European Jewish ruling class
alone stands in the way of a movement of return to lands where this now sorely disenfranchised group had previously been perfectly happy, typically affluent and influential.

“No one wants to go back! We all like it here!”

“Who's talking to you?” the orphan says.

“Him, no? You said.”

“I also told you he's a liar. Anything he says is the opposite of true. If he says go away, stay put. He says you're weak, you're just that strong. Me and her watched it every day before dinner. Lost means won. News equals propaganda.”

I don't know of such a thing. The man delivering it shuffles his notes. “He said we won. We did.”

“You don't understand how it works,” she says. “Make sure not to eat up what's coming next. The strongest lie will always use sights and actors. What look like stumps are really tied up in the pants or sleeve. Any pus is mustard.”

The television blinks away the man. His voice speaks on.

In today's objective third party report, a Belgian camera crew turns its equipment.
The screen looks out on an alley, narrow, unpaved, unloved, spangled with water-filled footprints in mud.
One refugee family, uprooted and banished from a village of antiquity which was subsequently occupied and renamed.
A knock-kneed child appears, splashing away from us over the mud, barefooted, a boy in shorts. His hands are joined behind his neck, clasping the handles of a grocery satchel which rides on his back. His back is stooped in a manner for carrying what is heavy. The net shows through only a stack of flat bread loaves, bouncing against the thickness of a book bag. This last thing is the weight.

“He's learning how to be a murderer,” the orphan says. “Next year his mother will take him to your playground at the crowded time. He'll blow up your slide. Where are you going?”

•   •   •

This is the matter which God commanded you, Do.

Take ye a he-goat for a sin offering and a bull-calf and lamb, a year old and unblemished to raise up in fire. And an ox and a ram for a peace offering to consecrate before HaShem, and a grain-meal offering mingled with oil.

Today HaShem will be apparent to you.

“There's hidden salt in chocolate spread,” the orphan says, crossing the room. “You sit. Where's your drinks?” The fridge door suction gives. She finds the grapefruit squash, the ice, a cup.

“Grain meal. Oil.
”

“What?” she says. She brings her drink over to my station. “Did you want—?” she whispers. “No. Shh.”

“Mingled with oil.”
How truly thirstily her juice goes down.
“Mingled.”
She's just as eager for the empty cup. She makes her lips long and draws out the shrinking ice. Water shines on her chin. Ice clacks behind her teeth.
“Oil. Meal of grain.”

She spits the ice back out. “You already said that.”

“Aren't you missing your show?”

“It's over. I came to be with you.”

“I'm learning by heart.”

She looks at my station. “And what else after?”

“Nothing.”

“Only this and then you're free? You're almost done!”

“I'm having a hard time.”

“Finish! Be done!”

“The copying I liked but nothing sticks.”

She takes the mimeographed columns from my hands and breathes their purple scent, for a long time. When she comes up, the sun of good ideas lights her sky-blue eyes. She says, “You need a hands-on exercise.”

And these are the things which the orphan says, get:

Cream of wheat. Soy oil.

Sliced salami. Plum jam.

Corkscrew noodles in sauce.

“Anything else red?” she says, rummaging through the fridge. She finds the ketchup in the door. “What else?”

“A paper towel for each mess.”