Make It Concrete Read online

  “Yeah, but someone’s got to do it. Someone’s got to push silence around.” Isabel fumed. Emanuel’s words reminded her of Alon who discouraged ghosting from the get go. And Alon’s words reminded her of Dave who throughout high school and college told her to leave the past alone. Look to the future Isabel, Dave would say to her whenever she tried to talk to him about European history, the past is a greedy storm.

  Isabel knew that Emanuel was not Dave and that he truly had her best interests at heart. From the first time she met him at an exhibition opening in town four years earlier, she had sensed that here was a man strong enough to be kind. He had delicate handsome features and soft grey curls down to his neck. An academic with a bit of the bohemian about him. And she had said yes at the end of the evening when he asked if he could see her again. But lately he had begun pointing out things that were not part of the script of their relationship: that they should travel more for pleasure; that they should drink less wine; that they should move in together; that she should stop ghosting or at least take a break from it. It was alarming how often he returned to these last two points. Because even after four years of intimacy, Isabel didn’t want them to live together. And she didn’t want to stop ghosting, though she suspected Emanuel was not entirely wrong on this one. Twenty years of slipping into survivors’ lives, a warm body between cold sheets, was taking its toll on her. And that mortified her. How dare she complain of hardship? The dead and the survivors were owed too much.

  Isabel looked around Bet She’arim and felt it was too beautiful a day to leave the park for the darkness of her desk. She had a sudden yen for Zakhi and a short reprieve before returning to German-occupied Greece. Zakhi had just come back from Thailand and Isabel couldn’t get enough of him. She had missed him and suddenly, out of nowhere, the fourteen-year age gap between them taunted her. Suddenly their relationship was all risk with no safety net. She never used to think about Zakhi and other, younger women. She just enjoyed their time together. But now she needed him more. He had become a ballast to her life on the seam of then and now. The dead and near dead. The living and the walking wounded. The loops of memory. He was also the playmate that helped her buck the staid safety of Emanuel.

  Isabel stepped away from the parking lot and back across the large green lawn. She stopped by the playing dogs and called Zakhi.

  “You free now?”

  “Fortune shines upon us, Isabel Toledo,” Zakhi answered. “I’m leaving the building supply store in town and can be in the park in five.”

  She waited on a wood bench by the Cave of the Coffins, next court over from Yehudah HaNassi’s, and debated whether to tell Zakhi about the gas station attendant the day before who ordered her to move to the right. In German. And when Isabel didn’t budge, he screamed at her, amplifying her terror and paralysis. Then suddenly his shouting was Hebrew and she drove the car to the adjacent aisle of pumps. She could share this with Zakhi because he would never tell her to stop ghosting. Zakhi understood her commitment. He was haunted too.

  Zakhi’s truck pulled into the parking lot. From the bench, Isabel watched him step out. He glanced at his cell phone, slid it into the back pocket of his low riding jeans, and turned towards the lawn. Long strides in heavy boots. He also looked up at the hill. Like her. He watched the dogs chase each other among the oak trees. His gait was purposeful. His hips pumped forward. The man exuded sex.

  He found her easily enough. The park had emptied since the ceremony. They didn’t talk. Not even hello. When he held out his large calloused hand she took it and he pulled her to her feet and hugged her tightly.

  “I missed you,” he said.

  It had only been twenty-four hours. Isabel smiled and took a deep breath of the smell of his neck. Holding hands they walked to the Cave of Coffins and bent low to pass through the short narrow door. The bright September morning did not give way easily to the cool dimness inside and it took their eyes a few moments to adjust. Silently they continued down the cave’s long-spined corridor and passed shadowed niches filled with stone sarcophagi. At the corridor’s end they entered a large tall space and stood close, shoulders touching. Isabel finally spoke.

  “I love those chisel scores.” She raised her chin towards the pockmarked walls and looked up at the high ceiling.

  “All carved out by hand.” Zakhi walked around the large alcove, taking in details and dimensions. “Somebody important was buried here.”

  Isabel leaned against the damp wall. She could literally spend days watching this man move.

  “Function follows form,” he said. “The builders simply and ingeniously enlarged the natural limestone bays.”

  “When you were in Thailand, I came here a lot. It’s cool . . . relief from the heat . . . from my work.” She stopped herself but wanted to tell him so badly. Zakhi wouldn’t judge her like Emanuel and Suri. Even Lia gave her odd looks when they Skyped. All the way from India.

  But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, talk now. What if Thailand had made Zakhi change his mind about the war, about her ghosting, about her? People went through changes when they travelled. They had insights. New perspectives. She wouldn’t say a word. She couldn’t afford to hear Emanuel’s-Alon’s-Dave’s words come out of Zakhi’s mouth.

  “You came with Woody I assume.” He stopped near her and then walked round the cave again. “We’re really deep inside the hill, right?” Zakhi stopped and stared at her. “You know how much I like being deep inside,” and flashed her a mischievous sexy grin. Isabel laughed greedily, adoring his foreplay. He went and stood next to an ancient seven-branched bas relief candelabrum carved on the back wall, sizing it up.

  “Looks like a modern interpretation of primitive art, no?”

  “Yes,” Isabel said, paying closer attention to the plain blocky candelabrum. It stood out as different among the highly ornamented sarcophagi. Yet here it was. A man-size marker indicating that the bones buried in this hillside belonged to the children of Israel.

  “Impressive.” Zakhi made his way back to her, coursing casually in and out of a loud pool of Spanish tourists that suddenly filled the space. “Wonder what their overrun costs were?”

  Isabel laughed again and took Zakhi’s hand. They walked back down the corridor and through each one of the many ante chambers. At seventy-five meters square, the Cave of the Coffins was by far the largest in the necropolis.

  “This coffin belongs to Kyra Mega, wife of Rabbi Joshua, son of Levi Shalom.” Isabel used her cellphone flashlight to read the inscription. “And that one, Yudan, son of Rabbi Hillel. Look here, the goddess Nike,” she flashed the light on a winged female creature carved on a large coffin in the corner.

  “Victory is at hand.” Zakhi drew her into a large dark niche with haphazardly stacked coffins.

  “The archaeologists haven’t made order in here yet,” Isabel said.

  “Perfect.”

  Zakhi led her towards the back. A small rectangle cut high into the wall let in a thin cone of natural light.

  “All these bas reliefs—bulls, lions, crocodiles, cows, eagles, even Aphrodite there, proof, look.” Isabel pointed here and there. “Jews have always been transnational.”

  Zakhi pulled her to him. Kissed and licked her lips. She had missed this, missed him. Two months without his touch, without his eyes, without his laughter, and his smile. He moved them deeper into the hollow, screening them behind the last row of coffins and lifted her legs around his waist. When he slid his hands under her dress, he let out a long low whistle.

  “Ready for action.” His lips pressed against hers and ran his hands over her naked buttocks. “Just how I like it,” he whispered into her mouth.

  Like a cat going up a tree Isabel’s legs wrapped around Zakhi. He undid his jeans, took hold of some of her weight, and when he entered her, her moan reverberated against the many surfaces of stone. She moved her hands from Zakhi’s neck and pushed back against the
cool stone of the coffin. Along the cover’s decorative edge her fingers read aleph—א—chet—ח. Zakhi pitched into her and she stopped reaching for script. His physical power, his gentility and wildness, lured her to stillness. His tradesman hands that jack hammered concrete block walls, laid cable, spliced wires, and worked with live current unseamed her. Zakhi moved back and forth watching her buckle and whimper. When they were done, they held on to each other quietly. Isabel’s fingers read the stone again. Aleph, chet, yod, nuun, ayin, mem. אחינעם. The resting place of Achinoam.

  Zakhi kissed Isabel long and hard on her open lips. With one hand he held her spent body. With the other he stroked her calves, thighs, calling her skin to life.

  “I really missed you,” he said. “Under the palm trees, in hammocks, over cocktails, my dear, I thought of Isabel hunched over her keyboard day after day.”

  She smiled. Pulled him closer.

  “But maybe it’s time to stop.”

  Her heart dropped to her stomach. Here it was. Finally. The break-up that was written into the script from the first time they met.

  “Seriously. A few months in Thailand, a rest from work, would do you a world of good.”

  She was relieved but also annoyed. Why did everyone want her to stop writing? “When Uri’s done with the army, I’ll be free. For now I’m here.”

  Zakhi slackened his hold and slowly her legs slipped to the ground. He slapped her backside lightly. Her dress fell back into place. He sat down on the coffin.

  “Isn’t it sacrilegious to have sex in a graveyard? Here’s a righteous perfumer. And there, rabbis, their families, their virgin daughters and nieces.”

  Isabel scanned Zakhi’s face. A refugee from a religious family, were the teachings of his fathers’ peeking through? Was he mocking them or paying homage? Zakhi lived like a heathen but cited Scripture like other men cite sports.

  “First, Zakhi Kandel, dearest.” Isabel’s finger traced the sharp outline of his handsome sun browned face, “no one’s buried here right now. No righteous perfumers. No virgin daughters. Them bones been removed hundreds of years ago. Second, I like sex in graveyards. Peaceful in a compressed kind of way. And third, in case any souls are hovering around, then we’re providing a bit of entertainment. Think of it as a mitzvah.”

  She inclined toward Zakhi—her friend and lover—found his mouth, pulled him up from sitting towards her. She pressed herself full length against him. “Again,” she murmured and stroked his smooth shaven head. She wanted to lose herself. “Again,” she hummed knowing she should be working. The book’s deadline’s fast upon her. But she sought sanctuary in the park. In Zakhi’s strong hands. In the wide chest she had missed. In the gravelly voice that told her about construction projects, books, and the latest government insanity.

  While he was away, she had suffered his absence silently. Afraid to admit to herself how much and not able to share it with Molly who didn’t want to hear about Zakhi. Molly wanted Isabel to grow up, was how she so tactfully put it, and move in with Emanuel. On those rare occasions when Isabel did mention Zakhi, Molly reminded her that fourteen years separated them. Nearly one life cycle apart. Isabel was forty-seven with three children. Zakhi was thirty-three and had it all ahead of him: falling in love, building a life with a chosen mate, making all the usual mistakes one makes in marriage, and gaining all the usual miracles associated with children and—unless or until it fell apart—domestic peace. As if Isabel didn’t know all this. As if she weren’t terrified of this attachment.

  Isabel lifted Zakhi’s loose cotton shirt and ran her fingertips lightly over his mocha-soft skin. She adored his skin. The first time they lay naked together, two years ago, she couldn’t stop stroking him. She asked if he were Yemenite or Sephardi, like the Toledos. But he said no. His family were Dark Russians from the Pale of Settlement.

  “Again,” Isabel hummed a third time. A little louder, just a little more, just a little longer. In the cave’s dimness, in the screened recess behind the coffins, she placed his hands on her breasts. Their recreation a balm to her turbulence. Zakhi lifted Isabel up against the coffin. She wrapped her legs around him, again, closed her eyes, and whispered, “Help me drive away the ghosts.”

  3

  Isabel drove quickly from Bet She’arim to her house on the other side of town. Foot hard on the gas even on the narrow turns. Now that the school ceremony was over, now that she had been with Zakhi, she had no excuse not to get back to work. Joseph Schine’s deadline heckled her: Pages, Isabel, I need pages, pages.

  Fields of sunflowers spiked up on one side of the winding road. Dancing cypresses on the other. This landscape of soft hills, modest groves of oak and olive trees, a passing goat herd and shepherd, looked like Provence. Same colors, same textures. Yet when suddenly the earth and skies reverberated with lightening grey metal, the mechanical thunder of F-16s and low flying helicopters ferrying wounded soldiers to Haifa, then one knew, despite the silver greens of trees, the blue brilliant sky sheltering Jewish and Bedouin villages, the goats, shepherds, the teenagers on horses, the short hills running toward the Carmel mountain range and on to the sea, that this was not Provence but the State of Israel going to battle once again.

  Isabel pulled into her driveway and dashed into the house. She gave Woody a quick pat on the belly and beelined straight to the desk without looking right or left. If she paused for one second, she might never make it. Pages, Isabel, I need pages, pages. Schine’s refrain towed her to the computer. Owner, chief editor, art coordinator, public relations manager, and sole distributor of Schine Publishing, a publication house dedicated to Holocaust testimonials, Schine squeezed her like a constrictor. His thick Polish accent, like Suri’s, like her aunts Zizi and Lola, jammed the New York-Galilee line, book after book, year after year. He insisted she comply with his draconian production schedule. Six to eight months from survivor interview to completed manuscript. No flexibility or frills. And she complied. Laid herself down on Schine’s conveyor belt.

  “Why?” Emanuel asked.

  “Why?” Lia asked.

  “I think it’s perfectly awful,” Suri the survivor weighed in time and again. Suri had been against this work from the very beginning. “Live life, Isabel. Use your imagination to create new worlds, ones with beauty and love and adventure.”

  Luckily Dave was already dead when she began ghosting or she was sure to have been subject to the usual speech: “Why European history? The past is a greedy storm Isabel.” He would frown as he spoke, intent on displaying disappointment. “Why not computers? Be part of the cutting edge, part of the future.” He would bob his head as if to push towards the future.

  “Let the dead rest. Let the pain settle.” Suri’s mouth tightened and turned away when Isabel talked about her books. Through her silence she said again and again that her own life story would not be shared nor written down.

  But Isabel had no rest. Once she wrote Rosa Levi’s life she was hooked. She and Alon and the girls lived on kibbutz then and Rosa talked to her. About the war. About the Jews. About her life. Finally someone willing to talk and, like a restorative torrent, her words became the powerful antidote to Suri’s stifling muteness. Finally answers to questions. Finally details, descriptions, tears. After that there was no stopping her.

  Isabel opened the computer. She was behind schedule, which was totally unusual for her. All of the previous books she had written for Schine were produced and delivered on time. But not this one. Not this time. Which is why she hadn’t answered Schine’s badgering calls all week. Years ago she gave up telling him to stop calling her all the time, that his anxiety and pressure didn’t help the process. He had to trust she’d meet the deadline. And she had for fourteen books over the past twenty years. But the word relax was not in Schine’s vocabulary. He treated every manuscript like it was the last boat out of Europe.

  Isabel had sat with Jaim in April in New York. Now it was t
he beginning of October. Seventy-five percent should have been done by now but only the first third was. She told Schine two weeks ago that she was winding up the second third. She lied. No choice. She scrolled down through the pages. Scanned the sentences. Jaim Benjamin on a scrubby hill walked a herd of twenty goats back down to the village. The sun was setting. The goats moved slowly. Bellies full. Ready to lie down for the night. The pen was enclosed with wood slats. It was covered in tin. Large dogs slept with them. Wolves and raptors hunted at night.

  Jaim washed his face, arms, and chest from a large bucket near the well. Inside the small house, the Ivanovs, the elderly couple whose family has known his for generations, waited for him. The Jews of Florina came from Spain following the Expulsion in 1492. They lived peacefully and well among their Christian neighbors. They sold fabrics and charuji shoes. Jaim Benjamin and Isabel laughed how from Spain to Florina to Lodz to New York, Jews were forever in the garment business.

  Olives, hard cheese, flat bread waited on the table. A noise startled the animals in the hutch. The dogs growled. Jaim rose from his chair to see what or who might be disturbing them. The old man gestured for him to stay and went out by himself. Nazi beasts, men and dogs, patrolled the hamlets at night. It was too risky for Jaim to talk to them. He looked like a mountain peasant after six months of hard labor and simple living but didn’t sound like one.

  When Jaim recalled this moment, Isabel told him that she too lived near goats and passed them on her nightly walk with Woody. To her they looked like old Jewish men.

  “The old Jewish men you have in mind are from Eastern European shtetls. Old Jewish men from Greece look different. We are Sephardi, you know. Darker, broader, in face and body. We look like you look, Isabel, like your father and grandfather probably looked. It’s a shame you know so little about our history.” Jaim Benjamin dared her to venture into this other dimension of her past. To venture into her father’s story. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. And she basically didn’t want to. Dave Toledo was and would remain on the margins on her life.