Arab Jazz (15 page)

Down in the subway, the excitement rises. She amuses herself pretending to be Agent Barnes, tasked with an undercover mission in Crown Heights. She observes the passengers: blacks, Jews, Poles, Chinese.
You don’t know who I am or the dangerous life I lead. You don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on around you!
As she gets off at Kingston Avenue, she wonders what would happen if a riot were to break out like in 1991. She pictures herself surrounded by a group of crazed black youths mistaking her for the wife or daughter of a rabbi. The image sends a shiver down her spine. Not exactly the most pleasant of shivers, but that’s what she’s into—fear. That is the thing that has accompanied her and her brother through every second of their life since they were three, from the moment their father explained to them that only a few chosen ones would experience salvation and gain access to heaven, the kingdom of Jesus. The others are divided into those who will be granted permission to be reborn into God’s kingdom on Earth, and those who will remain for eternity as dust, their spirits as dead as their bodies: the “left behind.” For as long as she can remember, those two words have plunged her into unspeakable anxiety. She has discovered an escape route: real, physical danger, laced with the specific fear that comes with it. This is the only way that she is able to feel truly alive. In her eagerness to face concrete threats, she invents virtual ones to kill time.

A five-minute walk and she’s in front of Kingston Pizza Kosher. The familiar sign details a wood fire with peculiarly blue flames. As ever, before entering, she casts an eye over the photo of Menachem Mendel Schneerson—the last rebbe, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe—and kisses her index finger discreetly. This ritual dates back to the day of her sixteenth birthday when, lost without James who had left the day before on his first out-of-town mission, she found herself strolling aimlessly through Brooklyn. Crown Heights had had a soothing, positive effect. The men with their hats and the strictly dressed women had eased her dismay. And then she saw him, Schneerson, and he was like a revelation. He was at once the father, grandfather, and mother she had always longed for. A great ocean of kindness rippled in his eyes. All the goodness in the world. She instinctively kissed the knuckle between the first and second phalanges of her index finger, went in, ordered a pizza, and felt better than she ever had before. Today, twelve years later, this filthy pizzeria remains the one place in New York where she can find peace. Fifteen minutes on the subway and a ten-minute walk is all she needs to separate her from the isolated universe of her childhood. Twenty-five minutes to transport her to a world apart which has the extreme advantage of not being her own. Amid other people’s craziness she is able to break away from her destiny. She is convinced that something major is going to happen today. Especially if the person she is looking for is there, sitting in his usual place, as she hopes he will be.

She spots him immediately thanks to his appearance, which is that of a slightly flabby quarterback. Like most of the men in the neighborhood he is wearing a black fedora, sidelocks, and tzitzits. But his hair is bizarre—more like dreadlocks than sidelocks. Beneath his white shirt she can distinguish the outline of a T-shirt adorned with a green, yellow, and red portrait of Bob Marley. Seated at the table at the back, he pokes vacantly at his tiramisu, his eyes lost and empty, just like he was two weeks ago when she came here and saw him for the first time. That time Ariel, the pizza chef who wears a skull-cap in the colors of the Italian flag, had spoken to her about this funny Hasidic Jew who’d arrived in the area a few months before, an Ashkenazi from Kansas who was tangled up with some fairly disreputable Sephardic types, and who always wore the green, yellow, and red colors underneath his regulation white shirt. A really weird guy. She’d met Ariel, the chef, six years ago when he’d started working at Kingston Pizza. He knows she’s not Jewish, but it doesn’t bother him at all. Her sketchy, makeshift Hasidic costume cracks him up. He appreciates the fact she takes the time to lean on the counter and have a chat with him while he makes her pizza. Always the same: fake bacon, green peppers, tomato, and basil.

Susan subtly brings the conversation around to the Hasidic Rastafarian. Amused by the interest the pretty Jehovah’s Witness is taking in this Jewish guy, who’s as big as he is bizarre, the chef fills her in on what he knows about the regular at the table at the back—which is not much, truth be told. His name is Dov, he studied at Harvard, but the reasons he’s turned up in Crown Heights—Hasid Central—remain unclear. The place opposite the young man frees up, and with a smile Ariel tactfully encourages her to go and sit there. He’ll bring over her pizza when it’s ready. She nods gratefully and crosses the room.

Dov looks up and his jaw hits the floor. When she starts coming toward him, he lowers his eyes and carries on jabbing away at his pudding. Without a moment’s hesitation, the young woman sits down in the space vacated by a fifty-year-old lady who had left in a hurry—long skirt, gray sweater, auburn wig—and who patently works in the neighboring
mikvah
. Fully aware of Susan’s presence, Dov continues fidgeting with his spoon without looking at her. She makes the most of the opportunity to check him out.

She is particularly gifted at initiating conversation, at coaxing people to reveal things that they would hide from everyone besides her, and at using her newly acquired knowledge to manipulate their thoughts and actions. She inherited this faculty from her father, who excels in the art of manipulative listening. She hates her father, Abel Barnes, with all her heart and soul. She only acknowledges this deadly genetic hand-me-down because one day she intends to turn it against him and everything he believes in. It was one year ago today, on September 23, that she had started plotting with James; since they had realized that this man had stolen away their very essence—their mother and their childhood. They will only come close to being at peace when they have succeeded in making him lose everything that is dear to him. A secret meeting had been called at a Georgian restaurant on Brighton Beach. When the waiters sang them “Happy Birthday”—first in their language, then in English—Susan had been unable to hold back her tears. James held her tight in his arms, and they had promised each other that they would find a way to get their revenge and find happiness.

Fifteen minutes later, she has discovered the name of the man across the table—Jakubowicz—as well as a bit about his story: brilliant child born into a secular Jewish family from Wichita, Kansas; gets into Harvard without any trouble; it’s there that he carries out his
teshuvah
—his repentance, or return to Judaism—totally unexpectedly; before logically enough winding up here in Crown Heights. The tale is smooth—too smooth—delivered in a tone that is half-absent, half-amused. As if he were asking, “Do you really want to know all this?” Sure she wants to know, but there’s no hurry. When she’s done with her pizza, she proposes they make the most of the nice weather and go for a walk—provided he has time—around Central Park just across the river; the No. 3 line on the subway goes direct to Columbus Circle. A proposal laden with the sort of fake indifference that girls know how to direct at boys. She doesn’t think about what might happen next. She’s not attracted to him; just eager to figure out the secret she knows he’s harboring. And for that to happen, she’s got to get him out of the Hasidic end of town. The young man, for his part, finds this girl intriguing and amusing; this fake Jew fallen from the heavens to deliver him from his boredom. Today he doesn’t feel like doing anything, especially not going to yeshiva. So Central Park . . . Why not?

Susan is staying true to form. Ariel hasn’t taken his eyes off them since the start of their conversation. In a caring way, sure, but protective too. No way she’s going to leave with Dov . . . Sliding back into Agent Barnes mode, well versed in the rules of working under cover, she instructs Dov to wait for her to leave before ordering a coffee, drinking it unhurriedly, paying, and then meeting her on the platform of the Nostrand Avenue station toward the rear of the train going via President Street. Twenty-three minutes later, they are sitting across the train car from each other. Few words are exchanged in the rough-and-tumble of the journey, which is fine. A moment; a transition. One thing’s for certain: she’s not going to sleep with him. She’s not sure what she’s going to do with this guy, but what’s certain is that he is going to play a role in her life. She ditches the people she sleeps with after half a day. It’s curious—at the heart of her shambolic upbringing, with all the abiding nonsense that she thought she’d managed to escape, she still can’t stop herself from thinking in irrational terms, putting faith in signs and destiny. It’s so deeply ingrained in her. And at this precise moment, her intuition is telling her that her life is about to change. The meeting with Dov is the moment she’s been anticipating for so long. It’s within reach. She just needs to play her hand right.

16

5:00 a.m. Ahmed is asleep. 6:00 a.m. Still asleep. Before he became essentially asexual, he had read the Christian mystics like Saint John of the Cross and Theresa de Ávila. A girl had put him on to them. A sensual, spiritual girl who had liked praying, crying, and making love. Ahmed had enjoyed her company enormously. Catarina came back to him as his sleep drew to a close. He had nicknamed her “Catarina sessuale.” She had taught him all about the significance of THE NIGHT in the mystic tradition, her unsettling Venetian accent thinly veiled and full of sweet promises. “THE NIGHT, it’s terrible. You cannot imagine. It is to live without God. You understand, God has
turned away
from you. He is looking the other way; He gives light, love, and life to others.
La luce, l’amore solo per gli altri!
I can accept that He loves others, too. But He cannot abandon me! He cannot deprive me of His warmth!
Senza Dio non posso vivere!
But why am I telling you this? You with your chess on the computer . . .
Non capisci niente di Dio! Non capisci neanche dell’amore!
Saint John of the Cross was the greatest Catholic mystic. He was Jewish, you know, like Jesus! He endured everything, even torture. All for his God. And his greatest suffering was to endure THE NIGHT.
La notte.
Losing God. Being alone and unworthy while God’s back is turned to warm other hearts!” Catarina started crying and Ahmed drank her tears, feeding on them as he consoled her. That was his mystic experience: imbibing the tears of “Catarina sessuale.” As transcendental as prayers are for other people.

Tears. All of a sudden his cousin Mohamed enters the fold. “Nothing is more beautiful than the tears streaming down the cheeks of a Muslim in prayer. I pity the person who hasn’t felt that blessing! But fear not—I will pray that one day you will in turn be touched.” 6:01 a.m. The mood of the dream has changed. Ahmed is angry now. The Venetian lover was one thing: love always came after the tears. But that outburst from his cousin? How disillusioning! His subconscious adjusts to this imbalance, and pulls Rachel Kupferstein’s face out of the bag. She leans in to him slowly, brings her lips to his, and pushes her tongue between his teeth. It sends him into a frenzy. It’s been such a long time since he’s made love. So long he’s even stopped dreaming about it. Rachel undresses him, slowly at first, then more quickly, hastened by an overwhelming need to have him inside her. With one single movement he pulls down the zipper of his jeans and slides them off, relieved to be free of them and eager for the feeling of her wetness. Now for the best part: he is hard, she is ready—the contact. The best . . .
Fssshhh!
No more Rachel, no more dream. The young man wakes up feeling not so much frustrated as thankful he feels so alive. And overjoyed that he didn’t come in his sleep. He likes the idea of saving himself for her. He savors the desire, relishing the wait. The unknown.

The digital clock reads 6:03. Saucepan, water, gas. Brown filter-holder onto Pyrex
cafetière
. Recycled filter. Three or four shakes of coffee straight from the package. Go on, let’s have a fifth! Boiling water. Ahmed has a ritual to avoid getting too many coffee grounds stuck to the side when tipping the water in. It involves pouring a slow trickle of hot water before the rest of it in order to form a compact, wet lump—like at the beach to make sandcastles—at the center of the white filter. It occurs to him that this is precisely how he goes about things on the toilet. Afterward, he hoses down the inside of the toilet bowl with his urine to dislodge any skid marks. The aim is to make it tidy, but he rarely succeeds, and often has to resort to the brush to finish the job. This act of pissing on his shit to dislodge it conjures up precisely the same obsessive pleasure he gets when he splashes water on the leftover coffee clinging to the upper rim of the filter. The parallel amuses him. All about keeping things neat.

He pours himself a coffee and spreads some butter on a few crackers. By 6:30 a.m. breakfast is done, dishes washed, and shower taken. Wearing the same jeans as the day before, a white V-neck T-shirt, and blue cotton socks, he is sitting on the hessian carpet with his back to the wall. All that stuff about the coffee and the excrement has left him feeling clearer, lighter—his mind freer. Then images and faces come flooding in. Moktar, Sam. The barber’s shop is at the heart of the matter. Another face is playing dead there at the very edge of his consciousness, just where it had frozen during his trance after the discovery of Laura’s body. He can sense it twitching imperceptibly—slowly, like a mollusk, a crustacean, a starfish—as if it were moving toward a flicker of light between the shadows of two rocks in a stretch of calm water. He mustn’t force this one. He mustn’t send it scuttling away for good.

Ahmed comes back to Moktar, which in turn makes him think of that little group, 75-Zorro-19. He remembers when they started out in the neighborhood. Mourad, Alpha, Moktar and Ruben . . . Sam’s nephew! That’s the link between Moktar and the barber. The group has reformed and it’s got something to do with Laura’s death. He remembers the air hostess’s idle chitchat, which he paid little attention to. Something about Ruben’s little sister. She was under masses of pressure from her family. Laura was pushing her to stand up to them. Then all of a sudden she vanished and no one knew where she’d gone. But Laura, having been so concerned about Rébecca’s situation, had seemed astonishingly relaxed about her disappearance, to the extent that she’d stopped talking about her. How can he find out what happened? Interrogate her girlfriends, whose names he can’t even remember? He checks his watch. 7:00 a.m. He has to catch the Métro to get to Dr. Germain’s on time.