DAPHNE MERKIN
401
or, more likely than either of these, he is too potent an absence . But
this is something I begin to consider only years later, when I am
ready to consider so predetermined a lack of choice.
It
is again Friday night, but I no longer wear my sisters Lily
and Rachel's outgrown velvet jumpers. My newish breasts press
against the scalloped opening of an embroidered caftan, a semi–
hippie style bought in the Arab market in Jerusalem. I can no longer
hear the word
bush
- Moses and the burning bush; a bird in the hand
is worth two in the bush - without thinking, blushingly, of my own
recently sprung undergrowth. The world has turned scratchy with
sexual possibility.
"Do you think he'll last?" my father asks.
My father, who inhabits the same apartment as I do, lives
worlds away during the week. It is only on Shabbos that he surfaces,
at the other end of the dining room table, to discuss what I think of
as Current Events with someone male and powerful.
"For a while, Walter, like any politician," the guest, Mr. Hans,
replies . "You and me - we could do better with one hand tied behind
our backs."
Someone has been elected to high office somewhere, in
Jerusalem or Paris or London or New York - it is all the same to me.
None of this cares for my feelings, least of all my father. I look into
my silver soup spoon, seeking the containable, the world inside me.
I shift my spoon until my father's face is reflected in its curve,
distorted but nonetheless there. After years of living with him, I am
still looking for my father.
My father laughs, delighted by a skepticism that matches his
own. "They say he's capable. Do you believe it?"
The heavy gold watch on Mr. Hans's wrist shines below his
snowy white cuff. He nods his head, as though agreeing with himself
in advance. "He knows how to get his way, there's no doubt about
that. The financial disclosures alone would have ruined a weaker
man. For the rest, wait and see is my opinion."
"He's tough, no doubt about it," my father says, taking a heap
of rice from the bowl our cook Louisa holds out to him. "And I think
he knows how to handle the Americans."
"Not so much rice, Valter," my mother protests, ritually.
"Louisa, don't let Mr. Lehmann have too much gravy."
I cross my ankles under the table, a grumpy fifteen-year-old .
Does anyone realize I have
breasts?
Why does my father ignore all the
circumstantial details that other men seem intrigued by - the
