his jealousy, Ulya pretended not to remember. She rolled on her side to face him. “Today? Lunch? Who was it?”
“He didn’t look familiar. Didn’t look Russian. Probably a Jew. Tanned skin. Black hair.”
“Oh, him! Adam. Yes, he’s a Jew . . . from Manhattan.”
“Manhattan?” Farid raised his eyebrows.
Ulya smiled at his worry. She was glad he hadn’t seen Adam until today. If he had seen her with him when he first arrived, a week or so ago, he never would’ve been jealous. He would have known that she couldn’t possibly be interested in that bum with the shaggy hair. But Adam didn’t look quite as sickly and unkempt now. From the distance Farid had probably seen him, he may have looked quite good.
“Yes, Manhattan. The real one, in New York. I don’t know why he’s on the kibbutz. His grandfather was here after the war.”
“My grandfather was here before the war.”
“Oh, God!” Ulya rolled her eyes. “Not this again. I can’t hear this anymore. Everything was different before the war. Then Belarus had the Jews. Who knows? Maybe if there’d been no war, if the Germans hadn’t destroyed every city in my country, and then the Russians, maybe I wouldn’t be running away today.”
Farid rested his hand on the dip of her waist. “And did this Jew try to convince you to go to Manhattan with him?”
Ulya wasn’t going to tell him that even though Adam had seen her naked, he couldn’t be less interested in her, that he talked to her as if she weren’t the least bit attractive.
“I don’t want to talk about Adam anymore.”
“Me neither.”
Farid pressed his lips against hers and pulled back his head to take in her face. Ulya met his stare with her blue eyes, which she knew Farid found as beautiful and exotic as she found his gold ones. He brushed a strand of hair from her face.
He said, “Chez Farid is going to be a very special restaurant. I can see the sign, very fancy. It’s going to have the best hummus. Everybody—Jews, Arabs, even Russians—are going to come from all over for it.”
Ulya stuck out her tongue. “I hate hummus. It tastes like whipped sawdust.”
“And, of course, what I’m really hoping, Ulya, what I want more than anything is for you to be with me behind the counter. For it to be our restaurant.”
Ulya managed to keep a cool face even though his words punched her in the gut and sent her soul, the soul he claimed to sense so well, reeling backward. How had she come to a place in life where such a proposal was possible from such a person? She couldn’t imagine a worse fate than the one she’d just been offered. For a second she missed Mazyr and the smokestacks.
“That’s sweet,” she said, as if he couldn’t possibly be serious.
But he either didn’t hear the sarcasm or chose to ignore it. “I can’t help it, Ulya. You’re as important to the dream as the fancy sign and the hummus. I’m not even sure if I would want the restaurant without you.”
As important as the hummus? If she weren’t so horrified, she would laugh. And did he think it was cute that he wouldn’t want the restaurant if it weren’t for her? That’s why he was never going to have one. He didn’t want it enough. Farid didn’t want anything enough. She couldn’t even be sure he wanted her badly enough. Maybe she had come to him too easily. She rolled onto her back. A stone pressed into her shoulder blade, and she writhed to the side, away from Farid.
“I’m going to New York, Farid. Manhattan. I’ve told you that a hundred times. It’s like you’re deaf.”
Farid shifted over to be near her again. “Do you know how many times you’ve said you never want to see me again, but then, the very next night, come crawling through that barbed wire?”
Ulya’s face burned. The stars twinkled down at her, mockingly. She debated telling him, once and for all, that she never wanted to see him again. She rolled so that she was facing away from him. She really should get up. Go. Go talk to the American. Make herself see something in him, make him see something in her. Anything but keep wasting time here.
Farid laid his hand on her waist, tentatively this time. “Okay. I believe you. You’re going to New York. But don’t you think you’re going to miss me? At least a little?”
Ulya’s eyes roamed over the collapsed cattle wire fence and the fallen mandarins rotting on the ground and marveled that Farid could think for even a second that she would miss him amid the dazzling store windows and honking yellow taxis and elevators to the sixtieth floor and cocktails the color of gemstones and handsome young businessmen in Italian suits with platinum tie clips. Did he really think she was going to miss his farmer’s hands with those flat fingernails packed with dirt when one of those suited men had his hands on her waist? She may have come to him easily while she was trapped on the kibbutz, but when she’s in Manhattan she’ll never think about this barbaric place and its lovelorn Arab. She probably won’t even remember his name.
She sat up and reached for the second bottle of metallic cabernet. As she twisted out the cork, she noticed him watching her, head propped on his elbow, his glossy eyes like gold coins lost at the bottom of a lake.
She laid a hand against his cheek and covered his face in light kisses. Farid closed his eyes, and she kissed each lid. Why rub in how little she was going to miss him?
Adam walked down the hallway, looking for the archives office. Eyal’s office door was open, revealing the secretary hunched over his desk, but everyone else had gone home early, as was the custom on Fridays, which sounded like a great custom to Adam until he found out Israel had a six-day workweek with only Saturdays off. Luckily, Barry, who had returned from reserve duty the evening before, wasn’t making him wait until after Shabbat to go through the archives. He agreed to meet him the following day, as soon as Adam was finished with his dishwashing.
Adam knocked on the open door, and a stout man rose from behind a desk, extending his hand. “Shabbat shalom! You must be Adam.”
Adam had expected a guy in his thirties, old enough to be in charge of the archives, young enough to be a soldier. How could this graying man with reading glasses tucked into the collar of his work shirt just have returned from reserve duty? They shook hands.
“Sorry about leaving you so many messages,” said Adam.
Everything about Barry’s face sloped down, his nose, the outer corners of his eyes, and yet he had a cheerful aura, a sense of humor under his clipped accent. “That’s quite all right. It was nice to come home and have so many messages not from my mother. Last time, she forgot I was doing miluim and kept calling long-distance from Jo’burg asking why I wasn’t calling her back.”
“How often do you do reserve duty?”
“Every three years or so. This was probably my last. Funny, for years I hated going, and now . . .” He smiled, shrugged. “Well, I suppose we all get too old for something. So you’re looking for a woman named Dagmar, eh? Who lived here in, what was it? Forty-seven? Dagmar, sounds Swedish. Or maybe German?”
Disappointed that yet another person didn’t remember Dagmar, Adam said, “Not sure,”
