The Place Will Comfort You (9 page)

His wounded palms burned. They required attention.

Too close to his, her feet, in thin-strapped sandals, were planted far apart but not firmly, on high heels in a constant teeter, as if the dunes were the sea and she on a raft upon it. He looked away from her buckling toes and their dark red nails. He turned over his hands and plucked the shells and pebbles out. When he tried to rise, brambles bit his bleeding palms and he lost his balance again, but the woman squatted and caught him under the pits of his arms, pulling him up with demon strength. They stood face-to-face.

“Don't touch,” he said. In the sun her scent rose like a smokescreen of sickly incense, quavering and fruity.

“All right,” the woman said. “I'll even move away a little, you'll get used to me first.” She stepped back. The smell subsided somewhat. Her blouse was turquoise and only a tube of fabric with no sleeves, her shoulders crisped with freckles. “See, I'm keeping my hands to myself,” she said, folding her arms over her chest, tucking her fingers into her bald armpits. “I'm a very obedient girl,” she said.
“No touching the Rabbi.” She let her splayed fingers rake her breasts as her arms came unfolded. She gasped and rolled her eyes. “More?” she said. “Fifty shekels.”

“You misunderstand,” Mr. Durchschlag said.

“No problem,” she said. “It's all a big misunderstanding. All my idea. It'll be completely against your will. Fifty, Rabbi, then anything you don't want. Come on. Why always all the hemming with your type? You're here. I'm here. Let's go.”

“Listen to me, please, lady,” Mr. Durchschlag said. “I am out here only to look for a young schoolgirl.”

“And you found one. It's just the fashion to dress up like ladies early on, for you. Why should I wait? I want you now. My little body needs your love. My baby head needs you to tell it what to do.” She stuck a finger in her mouth and sucked on it. He stared, uncomprehending. Baby? His youngest came to mind, Suri Malka, a pudgy wobble, fat cheeks rosy in that rapt, expectant face with which all girls begin. But what he saw before him now was a woman of twenty-five or so, large-pored, patches of pale makeup daubed beneath eyes torn open in a look of demented stupefaction. Her earlobes were elongated, their perforations drawn into notches by bronze hoops, the sun illuminating the blood in the surrounding membrane. All at once her wet finger dragged down her lower lip, trailing over her chin, her chest, her stomach. She reached under her skirt, her eyes growing even larger. “Ooh,” she said. “What a little baby-girl find
here?”

“Enough!” Mr. Durchschlag smacked his wounded hands together, welcoming the mind-clearing agony. He turned to walk away.

Instantly the woman was before him once more, savage fragments of her again intruding, like a clawed paw into a burrow, a gnashing snout. Her shoes shifted from heel to heel. “Forty shekels,” she said. He tried to dodge her and stumbled. The woman extended her arms but showed him her palms in deference when he
regained balance. “Thirty-five,” she said. “To come this far was hard enough for someone like you. Don't let yourself down.”

Mr. Durchschlag turned his back to her and remained still. At least he'd spare his eyes the sight.

“Thirty,” she said. “Thirty and that's it. For a better bargain go south of the hotel but when she's done with you make sure to take a bath in bleach.”

He didn't respond. Why should he negotiate with her for his freedom? And what sort of freedom if by the time she was persuaded to let him go, his memory would be infiltrated by the furious parodic desperation in her voice, which would go on and on? The batty spite. The trumpeted knowingness of his supposed want, of the moment approaching when he would deposit with her the evidence she sought, of a reverent man stooping low outside his sphere.

“What's your budget?” she said. “We'll figure out the service.”

If he paid her to leave him he will have paid a prostitute. He would know this for the rest of his life. Bad enough he had even spoken to one, as little as he had. He couldn't help but think that if there had been an opportunity to avoid this encounter, he had missed it early on.

“I can give you new ideas,” she said.

He must scold her immediately at his sharpest or soon she would describe her mechanics. But what were even his roughest words compared to her daily dealings? How to overcome her? If it weren't for the proscription against touching any woman save one's wife, he would strike her and be done. She had chosen a life of violation but why must she violate his? He would strike her out. But she had assaulted the purity of his thought, not his life. If no life was at risk, the decree could not be overruled.

Unless he considered Shifra, lost in depraved surroundings. Three years ago a body had been found here, an elderly tourist robbed and dumped, a grandmother outside the watch of her community.
American of course, an old Jew, and from what city, in what neighborhood and whose congregation, where the members simply carried on with their business when a woman wandered off to a wild remove? An elderly lady unprotected overseas. It emerged finally that she had been murdered by women, a pair. He had not kept his ear open to more foul details. The principle was enough: A woman traveling alone invites aberration, end of verse.

He couldn't give up. For Shifra's sake he must strike the whore down, not with intent to injure, not to relish, only strike out and proceed as planned. First he must be sure he wouldn't delay his search further. The professional had mentioned a colleague nearby. What if there were many, organized to charge up from the seashore in their heels? But he went too far. More likely, a pander would pounce out from between the dunes, wielding brass knuckles.

“Are we alone?” he asked.

The woman tried to step around and face him. He turned where he stood.

He heard her let out a harsh breath. “Just you and me. I keep a secret.”

He twisted partway towards her. He began to see a glaring, opalescent stain in the far margin of his vision, her skirt. “You don't have nearby an overseer? A manager?”

“What do you want with a pimp?” she said. She craned to see his face, and he adjusted his stance in accordance, away.

“So you don't have one?”

“What do you have in mind?” she said.

“I'm wondering. I've never frequented these parts before. I'm not well versed. You said yourself that you could give me ideas.”

“A pimp,” she said slowly, “knows when to stay put, and when to show up.”

“I notice you're not answering the question,” Mr. Durchschlag said. “I notice more than a hint of evasion.” He joined his palms, lightly this time.

His gesture was cut short when the woman's shape snatched itself out of sight and, just as quickly, his arms were pinned behind his back. Something rammed at the backs of his knees. His legs buckled. He was pushed down onto his stomach, his arms still held behind him. He hacked on sand. Someone was sitting on his legs. He heard a brief metallic spring, and the sensitive skin of his back raised an alarm against a needlelike sharpness, a fearful sharpness.

“What did you want to pull on me, you shit?” The woman's spittle moistened the inside of his ear. “I know exactly where your kidneys are. You need them? Right here's my pimp, understand? My pimp takes care of me. My pimp won't put up with the rough stuff and never takes a cut. Not from me. Cutting in general we like. I know where your kidneys are. You're small. Small was the first thing I saw after holy. Small holy man. You never show your big bastard to the world and you won't get to show him to me. I'm not interested. I'm never interested.”

“I was only going to push you down,” he said.

At this she slit his shirt to the collar, letting the blade sear a fine fiery line all along his spine. Her weight rose from his knees. She spit on the sand beside his cheek.

“Stay absolutely quiet,” she said. “I have to think. You'll help me. Think what we should do with you. Let's decide.” After this she said nothing for a long time.

A cloud evidently passed before the sun. The glare abated, then intensified. The ocean seemed to dash its waves upon the nearby shore with greater might but at increasingly irregular intervals. Each assault came sooner or later than he predicted, tearing into the silence. Finally his nerves had had enough. She couldn't be thinking at such length.

But of course she had never meant to think. She had simply left. Mr. Durchschlag pushed himself up onto all fours, grains of sand nipping their way into his raw palms. Nothing shoved him down again, so he righted himself and sat heavily, facing west. She had
left recently. The sands remained unsettled. Her chemical fruit smell clung to each lingering mote, the haze descending over him. He had reached near the lip of the headland. He had seen the vileness of that woman but hadn't noticed this. Now, through the blur, he saw the blue sea sparkling, and the sallow filth-specked beach. The dust sank and let through the smells of the ocean. Perfume gave way to seaweed, salt and rust, beach refuse. Strongest was the scent of his own blood. A warm wind played at the exposed skin of his back. The cut was shallow, but long and still oozing, stinging badly at a touch, worse where he couldn't reach. When he wiped his hands on the rear of his trousers, he felt only his knitted muscles through the fabric. His wallet was gone.

In his front pocket, maybe? He patted himself. Of course not. Gone. His wallet for years.

Today in the wallet had been thirty-two shekels, and as always a spare key to the flat, his papers, and a stamp-sized piece of parchment minutely inscribed with the Prayer for the Way: . . .
and preserve us from the hand of every foe and lurker. . . .
Had he walked seventy amot and two-thirds, without praying, from the margins of what constituted built-up ground? The school? An unwitting breach. He would recite the prayer when he headed back. One had to be standing to recite.

The image of his wallet would not leave him. Gone? Black, polished, and embossed to resemble reptile skin. The heft and texture in his palm, never again? The wallet had cost him fourteen lira and seventy-six agorot years before inflation had forced the change of currency to shekels. A young unwedded Yeshiva boy, he had brought it down from seventeen-fifty at a shouk stall. A few stalls down he had rewarded himself with as many loquats as what he'd saved would fetch, pale orange loquats plentiful in season and then nothing until the next, when again he could roll the hard smooth pits between the tongue and palate once the teeth have burst the mild flesh and pulped it.

With age the black hide had fissured between the fake scales, so that now the simulation was more convincing. Last year one of his twins had picked off three scales in the right corner of the zippered change compartment, leaving gouges for which he had excoriated her. Initially he had hated the feature of a change compartment. He could remember a time when his thumb would recoil from the extra pouch as if the property weren't his, as if he had picked up the wallet of another. A young unwedded boy, he had tried to detach the change compartment from the rest with a paring knife. A change compartment made a wallet a purse. He had succeeded only in scarring the hide. Now his fingers sought the old scars, even the recent, daughter-inflicted ones. He had grown attached to the extra feature, liking the safety of the zipper, though of course he never used it to keep change. The pouch now bore the impression of an out-sized coin, but it was only that of his medal, which had found its proper place there, protected on his waking person always. No more. His medal, his dignity, forever lost to a slut.

What would he give the girl with the most serious essay when he returned? As a teacher he always followed through. But what had been promised was lost. What substitute? His clothes were the color of sack, the shirt cut and bloodstained. A thorny vine could have ripped it, ripped the surface of his skin. His jacket awaited him back in class. He could cover the damage and prepare his wife. But would Elisheva believe he had gone out on a field trip with the students when it had been years since he had agreed to do so? Pale, brittle Elisheva with a big bump through the middle, expanding like her distance.

A great wave hurled itself ashore, and then another. He pressed the heels of his palms onto his ears so for once he might hear his own guiding thoughts. Sand chafed his earlobes. He let his arms fall and hang limp. The sea whooshed and roared. She wouldn't believe him.

One time and one time only Mr. Durchschlag had agreed to
escort his students on the annual school trip. Every year since, he had refused. He disagreed with the administration's policy of allowing the girls to wear trousers for the length of the event. Scorpions and snakes may wait along the path, true, and thorns like razor wire cross it. So let them take the girls where there are no snakes and scorpions and thorns like razor wire. Girls! Girls, not soldiers. A nice trip to the zoo. One time and one time only he had agreed and, though a mistake, though never to be repeated, the trip had had a groundbreaking impact on discipline in his classes. On the occasion of the trip he had shown the girls his medal for the first time.

He had agreed to go because he had been a new hire and hadn't known the policy, couldn't have imagined it in a religious school. On the day of the trip they had slung a gun over his shoulder and beckoned him onto a bus loaded with girls clothed in men's garments. He had protested, of course he had protested. But Mrs. Adeena Plyer had said that with him or without him they would have to go. The parents had all paid, the hostel beds had been reserved, the driver held a contract. If in the Judaea desert the girls should fall victim to such a catastrophe as an armed chaperon could have fended off, be it on his head.

Then, without a blink of the eye, she had allowed the girls to sing with men present on the bus, both he and the driver. It had been clear from the wear and fit of many of the girls' trousers, from their indifference to their limbs delineated in the public eye, that the garments hadn't been reserved for the annual trip. The landscapes of the trip he couldn't remember at all. Two girls dehydrated, one busridden with pains disclosed only to the females. He had been a young man then, with only the first two daughters, hoping for a boy soon with whom to study the holy writ, to journey through the branching laws and not the complex mist of sweats that filled the bus.