Apples from the Desert. Savyon Liebrecht
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 and bound themselves to another boss. That was the way they did things, as the bank teller who knew about her project had taken the trouble to warn her. But in the afternoon, shaken at the familiar sound of the pickup truck and all the while composing harsh sentences to reproach them with, she saw that the truck was laden with iron rods, thin and thick. The three of them got out of the cab and set about unloading the truck and passing the iron rods from hand to hand up to the roof. Relieved at her window, she watched them at their work. She decided to rest until Udi awoke from his afternoon nap.
For a while she heard them walking around the roof, dragging loads, their voices reaching her through the closed blinds of her room. Later, there was a lot of insistent knocking, which she first took to be part of a dream, and then she heard them at the door. When she opened it, the three of them were standing close to each other, with Hassan half a footstep in front. He said, “Hello, lady, how are you?”
Inwardly bridling at the familiarity he allowed himself in asking that polite question for the first time, and keeping her face frozen, she ignored his question and asked, “Yes?” She was guessing that they would ask permission to heat up their meal.
“Lady, we need some money.”
Her sister had warned her about that in their last conversation: You mustn’t pay them before they’ve done the work as agreed. She tensed. Her voice rasped more than she intended: “Did you finish putting the iron in place for pouring the concrete?”
“We put band around roof.”
“You did the band, but I’m asking about the iron. Did you get the iron ready for pouring the concrete?”
“That’s tomorrow, lady.”
“You’ll get your money tomorrow.”
“We need some. Maybe you’ll give us, lady . . .”
“Tomorrow,” she said firmly. “Anyway, I don’t have that much now. I have to go to the bank.”
“Really, lady,” Hassan said, looking straight in her eyes and pounding his chest with his fist. “Lady, believe. We coming tomorrow, money or no money.”
“No money,” she said, knowing how Yoel would smile when she told him about this occasion. Hassan turned to his friends, and they put their heads together and whispered. From where she was standing she saw the back of his neck, his dusty hair, looking gray under the woolen hat with the tattered edges, frayed yarn twisting down. His companions’ brows darkened. They put their heads close to each other, taking counsel. One of them pulled a creased wallet from his pocket and seemed to be counting the bank notes in it, his face worried. Inside, she was already prepared to withdraw her position and say, “Look, if it’s something pressing, I’m prepared to give you what I have in my purse now . . .” He suddenly turned to her and asked, “Can wash hands in water?” He surprised her so much with the question that, like the morning when he had stood before her with a cooking pot in his hands, she said, “Certainly, certainly,” pushing the door wide open, while her only wish was to slam the door in their faces.
They entered hesitantly. Now she saw that Salah was holding a large army knapsack, the kind that Yoel used to extricate from the storeroom when his unit was called up for maneuvers. Hassan led the way to the bathroom, looking at her as though asking permission, and the three men made their way in and locked the door. For a long while she heard the sound of running water and the men’s boisterous voices. She, pacing back and forth in the living room, looking out at the large garden with no other house visible, was gripped by sudden fear, thinking of what might be in that big knapsack. Perhaps they were assembling weapons there, spreading the steel parts out on the carpet, as Yoel had once done, kneeling on the floor and joining the shining parts one to another. Maybe they would come out in a little while with their weapons drawn and threaten her and her son. Perhaps they would take them as hostages in their pickup truck. And what about Udi? She had already run out of his special flour, and she wouldn’t be able to feed him when the men kept them there in their broken-down shacks in Gaza, among the muddy paths. They had shown those shacks on an American television documentary. Maybe, the thought flashed through her like lightning, she should snatch Udi out of his crib and flee with him, lay him in the back seat of her car and drive immediately to the police station on the main street.
Hassan came out first, and she was startled at his appearance. For a second she imagined a stranger had come out. For the first time she saw him without the woolen cap pulled down over his forehead. His hair, surprisingly light, freshly combed and damp, was brushed back over his temples. He wore a dark, well-pressed jacket over a white shirt and tie. His black dress shoes were highly polished.
He told her, “My friends come out minute, lady.”
“Aren’t you going home?”
“Have wedding from our aunt in Tulkarem. We today in Tulkarem.”
At that moment the baby let out a screech more piercing than any she’d heard since the morning he had burst forth in the maternity ward: high and prolonged, followed by a sudden silence. She herself let out a scream and rushed to the room, pushing his rolling high chair out of the way as she ran. Udi was prostrate on the floor, lying on his stomach, his face on the rug spread at the foot of his crib, with a toy between his fingers. She bent down and picked him up, carrying him in her arms, and he looked at her with cloudy eyes. She clasped him close to her body and started murmuring words without knowing what she was saying, her heart pounding wildly, making her fingers tremble. After a long while he burst out crying, resting his head on her shoulder, sobbing.
“Is okay, lady,” Hassan said from the doorway, and she looked around in panic, not realizing he had followed her.
“What?” she asked fearfully.
“Is okay he like so, lady,” he traced his finger along his cheek and made a crying expression. “Is nothing. He good that way.”
“What’s good?” she asked as the baby trembled in her arms.
Hassan approached her and gently lifted Udi from her arms. “Lady, get water,” he said softly. “He need drink.”
In