so hard, was it? Though to be safe, he would avoid the main square at night, when the bar was open.
When he reached the bottom of the steppingstones, Golda charged at him and ran circles around his legs while he marched for his room to grab the phone tokens and directory. He ducked around the tree, all its flowers gone. Instead it bore greenish-brown balls, the size and shape of small lightbulbs.
The blue pay phone, shared by all the volunteers, hung on the wall outside the classroom where the Russians studied Hebrew. The phone token, a silver coin with a hole in the middle, reminded him of the subway tokens from his childhood with the Y of NYC punched out in the middle. He dropped the asimon in the phone and dialed Barry’s number. Dagmar had to be in those archives.
An answering machine picked up. After a Hebrew message came an English one in a British-y accent. Maybe New Zealand?
“Lucky you! You’ve reached Barry Sloman. I don’t need to tell you what to do after the beep, do I?”
Ulya and Farid lay on a maroon blanket in their usual spot on the hillside, just past the mandarin grove, on the other side of the cattle-wire fence that surrounded the back of the kibbutz. The spring wildflowers covering the hill, which were a splendid blur of blue and yellow during the day, lost their color at night, but were twice as fragrant.
Farid turned onto his side and looked down at her. “Maybe your cousin can lend me the money?”
Ulya, head resting on her purple vinyl purse, blew out smoke. “For what? Your little restaurant dream?” She tossed the cigarette, even though it still had a few hauls left. She refused to suck at butt ends. “Wake up. You’re going to work on the kibbutz for the rest of your life.”
“Why do you say that? Because I’m Arab?”
Ulya found Palestinians or Israeli Arabs or Palestinian Israelis or whatever the hell she was supposed to call them a lazy bunch, it was true, but that wasn’t why she thought Farid was going nowhere. He just didn’t have it—that hunger, that urgency, that willingness to do whatever it took.
“Yes, because you’re a lazy Aravi.” She said “Arab” in Hebrew to give it extra bite.
When she and Farid first started spending time together, he would get mopey when she teased him, but then he came up with his wishful theory that she was behaving like a love-struck schoolgirl, teasing a boy because she was frightened by her feelings for him. Ha! The truth was she couldn’t care less if Farid ever got his restaurant. If he remained a fieldhand for the rest of his life, what did it matter to her? For selfish reasons, she even liked how easygoing he was. When she was with him, it made her feel almost easygoing. For the few hours, when she lay with him on the hillside, the future felt just a little less urgent. So the very reason why she liked being with Farid was exactly why she could never fall in love with him.
Farid picked a twig off the blanket and rolled it between his callused fingers. “Arabs are responsible for some of the world’s greatest inventions, you know. We invented the concept of zero.”
“Oh, I believe that!” Ulya tried to grab the twig from him. “If there’s anything the Arabs could invent, it’s nothing.”
Farid climbed on top of her and poked her cheek with the twig. She wriggled her head and laughed under the delight of his weight.
“Say you’re sorry.”
“No.”
“Say you’re sorry!”
“Get off me!” she hooted.
“Have you ever said sorry in your life?”
Ulya gazed past Farid’s shoulder at the stars. Just as she had to admit that Farid had striking eyes, she had to admit this sorry little country had a magnificent night sky. Every time she lay out here, she spied a falling star. In Mazyr, the gray smoke billowing from the orange and white stacks blanketed the sky, tucking its citizenry into the city the way her mother used to tuck her and her brother under the charcoal blanket they would spend the rest of the night fighting over.
She shrugged. “I’ve never had to.”
“I’ll make you sorry.” Farid nuzzled his face into her neck and growled like a bear, tickling her, making her cringe and laugh. Then he rolled off and lay on his side again, resting his hand on her stomach, his fingertips under the hem of her cropped tank top. “I know why you can’t ask your cousin for the money. He doesn’t know I exist, does he?”
Of course he didn’t know Farid existed. Ulya dreaded anyone finding out about them. She didn’t want to see the knowing leers on the other Arab workers. She didn’t want her fellow Russians making cracks about her giving it to an Arab fieldhand. And although the kibbutzniks might not say anything to her outright, they would certainly look at her askance, especially the girls in the dairy. She would rather sell vobla than have Jews looking down at her. And who was Farid to talk? Had he told his parents about her? No. He claimed he was waiting until she agreed to marry him.
“Forget my cousin. My fourth cousin or something like that. He may be a bioengineer, but he doesn’t have any money. Doctors don’t make real money in Israel. His apartment in Tel Aviv is a dump. And anyway, even if he did have money, he wouldn’t give me any. He thinks I’m a user.”
“What’s a user?”
“He thinks I use people, you know, for my own purposes.”
Farid’s hand froze on her belly. Was he actually wondering if he were being used? What could she possibly use him for? Other than to pass the time. Or for that feeling of easygoingness. Or for his worship, his love.
He asked, “Do you?”
“My cousin is an idiot. When Israelis say the Russian immigrants have been good for the country—how it’s all Russians in the symphony, the research labs, the universities, the Olympic team—they’re talking about people like him. He’s so grateful to Israel for getting him out of the Soviet Union, even though he can go to America now and make lots of money—people in his field are millionaires there, sometimes billionaires—he stays here and lights Hanukah candles. It makes me sick to see him turning into a big Jew.”
Farid pressed on her nose. “The only thing I hear the Israelis say about the Russians is that they’re criminals, that they brought the mafia with them. That they’re using Israel to get to the United States.”
“Firstly . . .” Ulya brushed his hand from her face. “I say Russian, because you all say Russian, but I am Belarusian. There is a difference! Secondly, you want me to say it? I’ll say it. I’m a user. I’m not ashamed. Life is a game, Farid, that you can either win or lose. And if you don’t win, it’s not like you get to play again. You’ve got one chance. One! So if a person gets an opportunity to cheat, under those circumstances, who can blame them? You?”
Ulya did not like the way Farid regarded her with his bottom lip between his teeth. He had told her that he loved her for her fire, that he felt twice as alive when he was around her, but once in a while, like now, she could see her fire made him uneasy. One time, when she said something that disturbed him, he told her that according to the prophet Mohammad “the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were women,” but he refused to believe women were corrupt or soulless, that he could sense Ulya’s good soul beneath her tough talk, just as he could smell her skin under her perfume.
In
