Apples from the Desert. Savyon Liebrecht

to the meter,” he told her again.

      “But does it come out above the floor or not?”

      “Level with the floor,” he spread out his hand to emphasize his words, with a satisfied expression, like a merchant praising his wares.

      “That means it’s no good,” she said.

      “Why no good, lady?”

      “Because the rain will leak in,” she said impatiently, her anger growing at the game he was playing with her while the concrete band was drying steadily. “It has to be two centimeters higher. That’s what David said to you, and that’s what’s written in the contract.”

      “We say David twenty centimeter.”

      “At least twenty centimeters,” she corrected him, her voice rising and turning into a shout. “And of that, two centimeters above the floor.”

      “There is twenty centimeter, lady,” he said again, his voice like a patient merchant standing up to a customer making a nuisance.

      She pursed her lips as if to demonstrate the conversation was useless. She swung her legs over the low wall around the roof and placed her feet on the rungs of the ladder.

      “I’m going to get David,” she said to the three men standing and looking at her, anxious to see how things would develop. “If that’s the way you’re starting—then it’s no good,” she added. She went down the ladder with a rush to demonstrate the bellicose spirit that animated her steps, inwardly calculating how long it would take her to get to the building on Herzl Street and locate David, and whether it would be better to take Udi with her, or leave him in his crib and hope he was asleep. Planting her feet on the ground, she strode vigorously toward her car, determined to call David in before the concrete band dried. Then she heard a thick voice calling to her from the roof: “Lady, you don’t need David. We add two centimeters.”

      She turned her face upward, suppressing the feeling of relief and victory that surged over her anger, seeking the three dark heads bunched together. “Quickly then, before it dries,” she said in a loud, hard voice.

      That evening, her sister Noa declared, her voice coming through the pay phone from Jerusalem mingled with other voices, “You made a mistake about the coffee. Let them make it themselves, and don’t serve them anything anymore. If they enter the house—you’ll never get rid of them.”

      “Don’t worry. No one gets into my house without an invitation,” she shouted over the strangers’ voices.

      But the next day, in the doorway, smiling to her with his eyes tinted yellow in the winter sun, Hassan, whose name she had learned, said to her, with gentle bashfulness in his voice, “Yesterday lady make coffee. Today I make coffee like in my house.” From a plastic bag he withdrew a container of coffee that gave off a fragrance like the one in cramped spice shops where coffee grinders crush the dark beans into pungent grains.

      Taken aback by the friendly gesture, as though they hadn’t sparred with each other the day before, as though she hadn’t been wracked all night long with worry as to how she would mobilize the police and the courts if they again tried to violate the agreement they had signed, she took a step backward, and before she grasped what was happening, he slipped through the space between her body and the doorjamb, stepped over to the stove, and put the plastic bag on the marble counter. With precise, expert movements, he took out a long-handled blue coffeepot and a spoon, measured a heaped spoonful of coffee, added sugar that he poured out of another bag, and filled the pot with water. Then after fiddling lightly with the lighter and the knobs on the stove, he lit it and placed the coffeepot on the glowing ring. She observed his motions with astonishment, stunned at the liberty he took in her kitchen, her eyes drawn to his graceful, fluent movements, knowing danger was latent in what was happening before her.

      He stood on one foot, his other foot to the side, like a dancer at rest, peeking into the coffeepot now and then. A hissing rose from it, heralding the onset of boiling, and the spoon in his hand stirred without stopping, with a fixed circular movement. He said, “We put two more centimeter of cement from yesterday.” And she answered, “Fine, I hope there won’t be any more problems. David told me you were good workers—so do things right.”

      Then she combed her hair and washed her face, and before she could change out of her soft mohair shirt (which had once been burned in the front by a cigarette, so she wore it only around the house) she found herself sitting at the table with his two fellow workers, for whom Hassan had opened the door with a hospitable gesture while she was spreading a cloth on the table in the breakfast nook.

      “That’s coffee like in our house,” he said, looking at her, the smile on his lips not reaching his eyes. She sipped the thick, bitter beverage, and smiled involuntarily. “You mean the coffee I made yesterday wasn’t good?”

      “It was good,” he answered quickly, drawing the words out, alarmed at her insult. “Thank you very much. But we like it this way, strong coffee.” He clenched his fist and waved it toward her with vigorous motion, to emphasize his last word.

      She heard Udi crying in the next room. This was when he usually had his first bottle of cereal. She excused herself and got up, sensing their eyes on her. She took Udi out of his crib, wrapped him in a blanket decorated with ducklings, and carried him into the breakfast nook. Then she placed in his hands the bottle of cereal that had been standing on the windowsill; it was already lukewarm. Ahmad looked as though hypnotized at the sapphire ring Yoel’s parents had given her for their engagement, and the others looked at the baby curled up at her breast in his bright blanket, drinking the cereal with his eyes shut. Hassan smiled suddenly, and his eyes brightened. He enjoyed the sight of the tranquil baby, and he brought his face close to Udi and said fondly, “You eat everything—you be strong like Hassan.”

      Months afterward she would remember that morning with dismay, when she had sat with them for the first time, as though they were at home there: drinking from cups like welcome guests, eating off the violet lace tablecloth her mother-in-law had brought from Spain, looking at her baby over their cups. She sipped the bitter liquid and only part of her, the part that didn’t laugh with them, thought: Could these hands, serving coffee, be the ones that planted the booby-trapped doll at the gate of the religious school at the end of the street? Her heart, which had been on guard all the time, began to foresee something, but it still didn’t know: this was just the beginning, appearing like a figure leaping out of the fog. From now on everything would grow clear and roll down like boulders falling into an abyss. The future would clearly be a fall—and no one could stop it.

      IN THE AFTERNOON, as she gathered up the toys Udi had scattered on the carpet, there was a knock on the door. Hassan appeared with a sooty aluminum pot in one hand and a plastic bag imprinted with the name of the supermarket on the main street in the other, a friendly smile of familiarity on his lips, and he said, “Excuse. Can put soup on fire, lady?”

      She stood in the doorway, guarding her boundary, with her hand stretched toward the door frame as if halting all entry. But the warm smile on his face and the way he had asked the question left no room for refusal. The blocking arm slipped down, and with cordial hospitality, as though to mask her initial hesitation, she moved her hand in an arc and said, “Please, please.” Anger at herself welled up inside her for treating him, despite herself, as a welcome guest.

      She went back to gathering up the toys, stealing a look at the way he put the pot under the faucet with steady movements, like an expert, boiling water in the blue coffeepot that he pulled out of the bag, finding the barrel-shaped salt cellar in the right-hand drawer, knowingly manipulating the knobs of the gas stove. While she arranged the toys in Udi’s room, as he slept between the duckling blanket and the Winnie-the-Pooh sheet, there stole up in her—still faint, still resembling discomfort—the fear born of having people trespass, pushing her boundary back and pretending they were unaware.

      When she returned, the other two were already with him in the kitchen. One was cutting vegetables into her new china bowl. The other was standing at the open refrigerator, his hand in the lower vegetable drawer. By the look on his face she could tell he’d been caught in the act.