the next day, in the doorway, smiling to her with his eyes tinted yellow in the winter sun, Hassan, whose name she had learned, said to her, with gentle bashfulness in his voice, “Yesterday lady make coffee. Today I make coffee like in my house.” From a plastic bag he withdrew a container of coffee that gave off a fragrance like the one in cramped spice shops where coffee grinders crush the dark beans into pungent grains.
Taken aback by the friendly gesture, as though they hadn’t sparred with each other the day before, as though she hadn’t been wracked all night long with worry as to how she would mobilize the police and the courts if they again tried to violate the agreement they had signed, she took a step backward, and before she grasped what was happening, he slipped through the space between her body and the doorjamb, stepped over to the stove, and put the plastic bag on the marble counter. With precise, expert movements, he took out a long-handled blue coffeepot and a spoon, measured a heaped spoonful of coffee, added sugar that he poured out of another bag, and filled the pot with water. Then after fiddling lightly with the lighter and the knobs on the stove, he lit it and placed the coffeepot on the glowing ring. She observed his motions with astonishment, stunned at the liberty he took in her kitchen, her eyes drawn to his graceful, fluent movements, knowing danger was latent in what was happening before her.
He stood on one foot, his other foot to the side, like a dancer at rest, peeking into the coffeepot now and then. A hissing rose from it, heralding the onset of boiling, and the spoon in his hand stirred without stopping, with a fixed circular movement. He said, “We put two more centimeter of cement from yesterday.” And she answered, “Fine, I hope there won’t be any more problems. David told me you were good workers—so do things right.”
Then she combed her hair and washed her face, and before she could change out of her soft mohair shirt (which had once been burned in the front by a cigarette, so she wore it only around the house) she found herself sitting at the table with his two fellow workers, for whom Hassan had opened the door with a hospitable gesture while she was spreading a cloth on the table in the breakfast nook.
“That’s coffee like in our house,” he said, looking at her, the smile on his lips not reaching his eyes. She sipped the thick, bitter beverage, and smiled involuntarily. “You mean the coffee I made yesterday wasn’t good?”
“It was good,” he answered quickly, drawing the words out, alarmed at her insult. “Thank you very much. But we like it this way, strong coffee.” He clenched his fist and waved it toward her with vigorous motion, to emphasize his last word.
She heard Udi crying in the next room. This was when he usually had his first bottle of cereal. She excused herself and got up, sensing their eyes on her. She took Udi out of his crib, wrapped him in a blanket decorated with ducklings, and carried him into the breakfast nook. Then she placed in his hands the bottle of cereal that had been standing on the windowsill; it was already lukewarm. Ahmad looked as though hypnotized at the sapphire ring Yoel’s parents had given her for their engagement, and the others looked at the baby curled up at her breast in his bright blanket, drinking the cereal with his eyes shut. Hassan smiled suddenly, and his eyes brightened. He enjoyed the sight of the tranquil baby, and he brought his face close to Udi and said fondly, “You eat everything—you be strong like Hassan.”
Months afterward she would remember that morning with dismay, when she had sat with them for the first time, as though they were at home there: drinking from cups like welcome guests, eating off the violet lace tablecloth her mother-in-law had brought from Spain, looking at her baby over their cups. She sipped the bitter liquid and only part of her, the part that didn’t laugh with them, thought: Could these hands, serving coffee, be the ones that planted the booby-trapped doll at the gate of the religious school at the end of the street? Her heart, which had been on guard all the time, began to foresee something, but it still didn’t know: this was just the beginning, appearing like a figure leaping out of the fog. From now on everything would grow clear and roll down like boulders falling into an abyss. The future would clearly be a fall—and no one could stop it.
IN THE AFTERNOON, as she gathered up the toys Udi had scattered on the carpet, there was a knock on the door. Hassan appeared with a sooty aluminum pot in one hand and a plastic bag imprinted with the name of the supermarket on the main street in the other, a friendly smile of familiarity on his lips, and he said, “Excuse. Can put soup on fire, lady?”
She stood in the doorway, guarding her boundary, with her hand stretched toward the door frame as if halting all entry. But the warm smile on his face and the way he had asked the question left no room for refusal. The blocking arm slipped down, and with cordial hospitality, as though to mask her initial hesitation, she moved her hand in an arc and said, “Please, please.” Anger at herself welled up inside her for treating him, despite herself, as a welcome guest.
She went back to gathering up the toys, stealing a look at the way he put the pot under the faucet with steady movements, like an expert, boiling water in the blue coffeepot that he pulled out of the bag, finding the barrel-shaped salt cellar in the right-hand drawer, knowingly manipulating the knobs of the gas stove. While she arranged the toys in Udi’s room, as he slept between the duckling blanket and the Winnie-the-Pooh sheet, there stole up in her—still faint, still resembling discomfort—the fear born of having people trespass, pushing her boundary back and pretending they were unaware.
When she returned, the other two were already with him in the kitchen. One was cutting vegetables into her new china bowl. The other was standing at the open refrigerator, his hand in the lower vegetable drawer. By the look on his face she could tell he’d been caught in the act. His hand, rummaging among the vegetables, stopped where it was.
“Need cucumber, lady,” he said, stepping back.
She went to the refrigerator, slammed the drawer shut, and took a cucumber out of a sealed bag in the back of the top shelf.
“Take it,” she said.
“Thank you very much, lady.” He took the cucumber from her hand.
“Lady drink coffee?” asked Hassan from the stove, stirring his coffeepot and smiling at her in profile.
Confused, fighting to control the muscles of her face, she said, “No thanks.”
“Is good coffee,” Salah, who spoke only seldom, tried to persuade her.
“Thanks, I don’t drink coffee in the afternoon.”
“Afternoon, morning—is good coffee.” He wouldn’t let up. She, already feeling the teeth of the trap closing on her, said, almost shouting, “No!” She saw Hassan open the china cabinet and take out three plates.
A moment before she abandoned her house and her baby, fleeing to the bedroom and locking the door behind her, breaking out in silent, suppressed, helpless weeping, into which dread was already creeping, she told Hassan in a soft, commanding voice, “I’ll thank you not to make any noise—my baby is asleep.” A few minutes afterward, when she left her room, her eyes already dry and her voice tranquil though her heart pounded within her, she said, “Maybe you could cook your soup up there. I’ll give you a small camping stove. It’s inconvenient for me here.” Salah threw her a malevolent glance over his steaming bowl of soup. And Hassan said politely, “If you please, lady, thank you very much.”
For five days she heard them arriving, but by the time she had fed Udi and put him to sleep in his crib, her workers were no longer on the roof. Angrily she calculated that in the past two days they hadn’t raised more than a single row of blocks above the stone rim on top of the window. Suspicion stole into her heart that they had taken on another job and, so it wouldn’t slip through their fingers before they finished the construction in her house, they had accepted
