Read Online Drunken Angel (9781936740062) by Alan Kaufman - Free Book Online
Authors: Alan Kaufman
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kibbutzniks noticed her blues. Remarked the cruelty of my smile when responding to their queries. Whatâs up with you and Helka? She looks so sad. Did you two fight?
I studiously avoided her. She sent notes; I tore them up. In the communal dining room, I sat apart, and after a meal, hurried out. If she knocked on my cottage door, I didnât answer. If I saw her approach, I turned down another path. I avoided the pool where she often hung out.
She sent two Swedish girls as emissaries to plead with me on her behalf. I told them that I no longer loved her and that they should tell her so.
âYou should tell her yourself, coward!â one of them spit.
Knowing that she was right, I didnât reply. Instead, accepted a friendâs invite to stay in Jerusalem. There was an Israeli girl he wanted me to meet. She was, he said, his wifeâs best friend, filthy rich, single, artistic and beautiful. If I had any sense, my friend advised, I would marry her. After all, he said, I was a pauper. A girl like that could really set me on my feet.
18
HOW UTTERLY SOULLESS I HAD BECOME. WITH shame I remember how arrogantly, heartlessly, I exited the kibbutz to bus down to Jerusalem, dressed in freshly laundered and pressed clothes, as Helka stood watching mournfully, her sleepless face haggard. Made my way out through the main gate, past the armed sentry, my heart stiffened against her. Weak, with no core values and with a foolproof escape hatchâalcoholâI was willing to betray the possibility of real love with her in exchange for a free ride on another womanâs back.
On the bus to Jerusalem, I hummed tunes to myself as the landscape whizzed by. Smoked cigarettes and dozed or dug into my bag of kibbutz bakery cookies and chewed contentedly. Helka really loved meâin my book, a fatal error. My conscience, I told myself, could turn itself off at the first hint of real intimacy. She had come too close, wanted to ensnare me in her agenda. I wasnât having any of it, had other, bigger fish to fry. Heroics to perform. Books to write. Fame to gain. Also needed a place to crash where I wouldnât
have to break my back in return for board. A place to unwind, write, produce masterpieces. Drink and not work. Justify shiftlessness and manipulation of women in the name of art.
The Israeli woman, Tsofnat, lived part of the time with her mother, Elia, and four very feral mutt dogs, in an old, sprawling, elegantly decrepit flat in Jerusalemâs Katamon quarter, which had been a front line in the horrific battles for the city during the â67 war.
Tsofnat, not nearly as beautiful as my friend had claimed, was pretty in a peculiar, jaundiced sort of way. Had haunted eyes underscored with dark bags that showed bad nerves, and her body was slender but flaccid, her breasts droopy. Not only did she have a faint smudge of hair above her upper lipâfor me, a deal breakerâbut her legs were defiantly unshaven.
And yet, there was something morbidly appealing about her. A kind of nervous, aristocratic twinkling. A fallen naïveté reminiscent of Hollywood Southern belles, late-stage Scarlett OâHara or Blanche Dubois hiding from the lightbulbâs glare.
In an instant her look would change from darkly introspective, morosely inscrutable, to a very pretty, even charming kind of histrionic liveliness, replete with cheek-fracturing dimples, and her eyes grew big and bright with awe-filled gaiety.
She was very flattering, made you feel like a knight in shining armor, and it occurred to me that since she was purportedly rich, here was someone that I could manipulate at will. The idea of such dominance aroused me.
For my visit she wore a white chiffon party dress with a ridiculous red corsage: an outfit that confirmed for me her full-blown outright eccentricity, an immaturity bordering on psychosis.
Strangely, this awareness of her probable madness gave me further hope. I realized that only someone
I studiously avoided her. She sent notes; I tore them up. In the communal dining room, I sat apart, and after a meal, hurried out. If she knocked on my cottage door, I didnât answer. If I saw her approach, I turned down another path. I avoided the pool where she often hung out.
She sent two Swedish girls as emissaries to plead with me on her behalf. I told them that I no longer loved her and that they should tell her so.
âYou should tell her yourself, coward!â one of them spit.
Knowing that she was right, I didnât reply. Instead, accepted a friendâs invite to stay in Jerusalem. There was an Israeli girl he wanted me to meet. She was, he said, his wifeâs best friend, filthy rich, single, artistic and beautiful. If I had any sense, my friend advised, I would marry her. After all, he said, I was a pauper. A girl like that could really set me on my feet.
18
HOW UTTERLY SOULLESS I HAD BECOME. WITH shame I remember how arrogantly, heartlessly, I exited the kibbutz to bus down to Jerusalem, dressed in freshly laundered and pressed clothes, as Helka stood watching mournfully, her sleepless face haggard. Made my way out through the main gate, past the armed sentry, my heart stiffened against her. Weak, with no core values and with a foolproof escape hatchâalcoholâI was willing to betray the possibility of real love with her in exchange for a free ride on another womanâs back.
On the bus to Jerusalem, I hummed tunes to myself as the landscape whizzed by. Smoked cigarettes and dozed or dug into my bag of kibbutz bakery cookies and chewed contentedly. Helka really loved meâin my book, a fatal error. My conscience, I told myself, could turn itself off at the first hint of real intimacy. She had come too close, wanted to ensnare me in her agenda. I wasnât having any of it, had other, bigger fish to fry. Heroics to perform. Books to write. Fame to gain. Also needed a place to crash where I wouldnât
have to break my back in return for board. A place to unwind, write, produce masterpieces. Drink and not work. Justify shiftlessness and manipulation of women in the name of art.
The Israeli woman, Tsofnat, lived part of the time with her mother, Elia, and four very feral mutt dogs, in an old, sprawling, elegantly decrepit flat in Jerusalemâs Katamon quarter, which had been a front line in the horrific battles for the city during the â67 war.
Tsofnat, not nearly as beautiful as my friend had claimed, was pretty in a peculiar, jaundiced sort of way. Had haunted eyes underscored with dark bags that showed bad nerves, and her body was slender but flaccid, her breasts droopy. Not only did she have a faint smudge of hair above her upper lipâfor me, a deal breakerâbut her legs were defiantly unshaven.
And yet, there was something morbidly appealing about her. A kind of nervous, aristocratic twinkling. A fallen naïveté reminiscent of Hollywood Southern belles, late-stage Scarlett OâHara or Blanche Dubois hiding from the lightbulbâs glare.
In an instant her look would change from darkly introspective, morosely inscrutable, to a very pretty, even charming kind of histrionic liveliness, replete with cheek-fracturing dimples, and her eyes grew big and bright with awe-filled gaiety.
She was very flattering, made you feel like a knight in shining armor, and it occurred to me that since she was purportedly rich, here was someone that I could manipulate at will. The idea of such dominance aroused me.
For my visit she wore a white chiffon party dress with a ridiculous red corsage: an outfit that confirmed for me her full-blown outright eccentricity, an immaturity bordering on psychosis.
Strangely, this awareness of her probable madness gave me further hope. I realized that only someone
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