“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 order to change the subject—or maybe, Ulya thought, because he had wanted to ask all evening—he said, “So who was that person you were eating lunch with today?”
Enjoying 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