The Inbetween People Read Free

geranium, and the smell is all around you. My garden, she says.
    She rises to her feet, continues to clutch at your wrist, kneading your flesh, leading you back towards the great wooden door. You want to turn around and run home, this place is nothing to you, this dark staring house, it frightens you how being here moves her. Uncle Sabri hammers on the door, shattering the stillness of the July afternoon.
    The door opens to a woman. You don’t know her age, you always think of her as thirty-five. Her face stays with you for years, her cream skin, the clean smell of soap. She is startled, disturbed, as if she has been sleeping. She rubs at her eyes and steps out past the doorway, dragging the door closed behind her. She waits for one of you to speak, one eyebrow raised slightly.
    Can I help you? she asks.
    Your grandmother’s mouth moves but she doesn’t speak.
    Uncle Sabri steps forward towards her. This woman used to live in this house, he says. She wanted to come back and see it again. She feels she is not well and she wants to see it. She lives somewhere else now, not too far from here. He gestures with his hand towards the distant villages.
    The Jewish woman digests this. She frowns at first and her eyes close a little. She turns to your grandmother. You are welcome, she says.
    Your grandmother nods in her direction, her black eyes flaring.
    The woman pushes the door open behind her, arms out.
    You enter. It is dark after the bright heat outside. You can’t see much but it smells musty, as if no one lives there at all, as if this house is too big for this little woman. Your grandmother moves towards an oak table, reaches out and fondles the polished wood.
    Tea, the Israeli woman says. Tea with mint?
    Nobody answers.
    Her eyes rest on you. And for you? she says. For you some Coca-Cola. Come with me. She holds out her hand to you and you go with her, through a dark hallway and into a kitchen that is filled with sunlight. She takes a tray of ice cubes from the freezer and places three square cubes in a glass. She fills the glass with Coca-Cola and thrusts it in your direction. It bubbles and fizzes in front of you. You stare at the brown bubbles as she fills the kettle.
    I bought this house, she says. I bought it with my husband ten years ago. She reaches her hand up to her eyes, her face startled, as if surprised that she has lived in the house for ten years. We’ll make the tea, she says.
    You sip the Coca-Cola. It is cold and sugary. You move to the door and stand looking down into the garden. She comes and stands behind you.
    It’s got a great view, she says. I like this house. It was a man I bought it from. A German. He’d had enough of this country, decided to go home.
    You don’t answer. She seems to be apologising, for what you are not sure.
    I knew it used to belong to the Arabs, she says, but I didn’t realise you were still in the country. Come out to the garden, she says, we need to pick mint for the tea. Her bare feet nestle into the grass as she bends down to pick the mint. The smell of it comes to you, and one of her breasts becomes almost wholly visible as she leans towards the plants. She places the leaves in your hands. It’s good mint, she says.
    She asks you to carry the glasses through to your grandmother and Uncle Sabri. Your grandmother is still standing in the same place, in front of the heavy wooden table.
    That table was here, the woman says. It was here when I bought it.
    It wasn’t for sale, your grandmother replies. We never sold it.
    Uncle Sabri goes out of the house into the garden, lights a cigarette. You see him through the window, kicking a stone, walking in an exact square, wiping the sweat from his brow. Your grandmother reaches out and strokes a vase that rests on the table.
    The Israeli woman leaves you in front of the table and returns with a plate of biscuits. She pours three glasses of mint tea and sits, watching the two of you in front of the table. Your grandmother takes a