A throaty bell splits the silence. Karin scrambles to pick up.
– Shalom. This is Netta from the Society for the Protection of Foreign Workers. I was wondering…
Karin sighs. The tortuous passage of a month has not sufficed to eradicate her fantasy of Bo’s rich voice bobbing on the other end of the line. Surely he will soon call, admit his hastiness, error and wrongdoing, beat his breast, beg to be rehabilitated in her life?
“Hope limps eternal,” she chides herself, and reluctantly agrees to donate thirty shekels.
– Would you like to make that a regular contribution of eighteen shekels per month? Chai shekalim?
Karin gulps down her sarcastic rejoinder (how are eighteen shekels a month equivalent to a one-time sum of thirty?)
– Look, I’m poor . . . I’m a student.
– Okay.
Netta sounds disappointed.
– Shalom.
Karin sits in the kitchen, eating a carrot and averting her eyes from the history textbooks piled on the table. Crusaders, Provençal exegetes, disputations; right now they are about as important to her, as the Hebrew idiom colourfully had it, ‘as the garlic peel’.
Her mind seems to be elsewhere, so she sets out to look for it outside. Children in bobble hats and stripy socks streak past, laughing. Head down, hands in pockets for warmth, she kicks at the slush until her boots are soaked, realizing belatedly that she should not have worn these cheap fur boots from China, an impulse buy from one of the many shoe shops along Jaffa Street. Permeable to water, they have quickly transformed into...
Subscribe now to keep reading
Please enter your email to log in or create a new account.