Free The Place Will Comfort You by Naama Goldstein Page B

a late spring sun. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, and his hand came away damp and gritty. He could hear the sea, still distant. He could smell it, seaweed and tar. He was an idiot for thinking he could find her. Through the window of a bus the dunes did not disclose their sprawl as they began to, now. But she would keep to the road. She wouldn’t dare stray very far off the road. He moved on, wresting his feet again andagain from the hungry sand, keeping his eyes trained on the road, which exposed itself between the dunes in black wedges glistening with illusory puddles. The sound of the sea rose to a dull headachy rumble, or else his own blood pounded in his ears.
    When a hand touched his shoulder, he fell. A bale of brambles pierced the soft skin behind his knees through his trousers. Shards of seashells cut his palms.
    â€œShifra,” he said.
    â€œI can be a Shifra,” said the woman. “Whatever you want, Rabbi. I can wear my skirt like a kerchief on my head. I’ll say a blessing. I remember lots from Grandma. Want to hear one?”
    Mr. Durchschlag looked up and directly looked down again because her shimmering skirt hijacked the eye with a green bird-feather shimmer, which evanesced to reveal everything else. Where her thighs would rub together walking a prickly pink rash had erupted. Above the rash the skin was smooth as a boiled egg.
    His wounded palms burned. They required attention.
    Too close to his, her feet, in thin-strapped sandals, were planted far apart but not firmly, on high heels in a constant teeter, as if the dunes were the sea and she on a raft upon it. He looked away from her buckling toes and their dark red nails. He turned over his hands and plucked the shells and pebbles out. When he tried to rise, brambles bit his bleeding palms and he lost his balance again, but the woman squatted and caught him under the pits of his arms, pulling him up with demon strength. They stood face-to-face.
    â€œDon’t touch,” he said. In the sun her scent rose like a smokescreen of sickly incense, quavering and fruity.
    â€œAll right,” the woman said. “I’ll even move away a little, you’ll get used to me first.” She stepped back. The smell subsided somewhat. Her blouse was turquoise and only a tube of fabric with no sleeves, her shoulders crisped with freckles. “See, I’m keeping my hands to myself,” she said, folding her arms over her chest, tucking her fingers into her bald armpits. “I’m a very obedient girl,” she said.“No touching the Rabbi.” She let her splayed fingers rake her breasts as her arms came unfolded. She gasped and rolled her eyes. “More?” she said. “Fifty shekels.”
    â€œYou misunderstand,” Mr. Durchschlag said.
    â€œNo problem,” she said. “It’s all a big misunderstanding. All my idea. It’ll be completely against your will. Fifty, Rabbi, then anything you don’t want. Come on. Why always all the hemming with your type? You’re here. I’m here. Let’s go.”
    â€œListen to me, please, lady,” Mr. Durchschlag said. “I am out here only to look for a young schoolgirl.”
    â€œAnd you found one. It’s just the fashion to dress up like ladies early on, for you. Why should I wait? I want you now. My little body needs your love. My baby head needs you to tell it what to do.” She stuck a finger in her mouth and sucked on it. He stared, uncomprehending. Baby? His youngest came to mind, Suri Malka, a pudgy wobble, fat cheeks rosy in that rapt, expectant face with which all girls begin. But what he saw before him now was a woman of twenty-five or so, large-pored, patches of pale makeup daubed beneath eyes torn open in a look of demented stupefaction. Her earlobes were elongated, their perforations drawn into notches by bronze hoops, the sun illuminating the blood in the surrounding membrane. All at once her wet finger