Drunken Angel (9781936740062) by Alan Kaufman Read Free Book Online Page B

comically: me, New York Jewish, sun-starved, almost blue tinged, against her warm sweet apricot-colored silk.
    But the contrast excited her, I suspect. We drew close to each other with knowing half smiles of wanton, intelligent, slightly churlish lust.
    It also helped that she spoke great English. Our talk did not struggle, it flowed—a tone, a theme established immediately between us of personas cut whole cloth from urges, masks we could wear to hide from ourselves, or each other.
    We were, we felt, rootless cosmopolitan expatriates on the make for escape, passion, whatever scraps of meaning we could salvage, whatever clues would yield us to ourselves, show us whatever the hell it was we were supposed to be doing in this world.
    But clueless though we were about ourselves, we also thought ourselves better than everyone around us. Even in that first exchange, I sat a little removed from the singing kumsitz circle, recessed in shadow, alone, Byronic. She dropped beside me on her knees, in a pretty, sweetly submissive pose, and said: “All alone? Why? Are you not having fun?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œMay I please sit?”
    I shrugged.
    â€œI can tell: you’re a thinker. What are you thinking?” She smiled.
    â€œThat I don’t belong here. That I don’t belong anywhere. Look at them.” I nodded toward the noisy celebrants. “The normal world.”

    The smile vanished. “Everyone belongs somewhere,” she said, but sounded unsure.
    â€œDo you really believe that?” I asked disdainfully.
    â€œNo,” she said with a sad smile. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
    â€œYou don’t belong here either. Or wherever you come from.”
    â€œFinland. Helsinki. No. I don’t feel at home there or here.”
    â€œThat’s why you’re talking to me. You can see the stranger in my face. No one else looks familiar to you, except me.”
    She laughed. “Yes, in a way, that’s true. You don’t seem like anyone I’ve ever seen. Yet I feel I know you.” She touched my face with her fingertips.
    I kissed her, softly, gently. Then, looking into her eyes: “It’s not that we’re better than everyone else. We are. But it’s got nothing to do with that.”
    â€œYou’re nice.”
    â€œMaybe. I’m sure only that I don’t belong anywhere. And, I sense, neither do you. In fact, I’m sure of it.”
    â€œWhat’s your name?”
    â€œAlan.”
    â€œI’m Helka.”
    I didn’t offer the usual pleasantry. We sat silent for a time, gazed at the fire-silhouetted partyers clapping and swaying, singing and dancing—normal ones with a sense of place, who felt they belonged wherever Fate put them.
    Then I stood up, offered her my hand, pulled her to her feet, and went off with her to find a spot in the desert where we could merge, disappear from ourselves, our estrangement from everything, at least for a while.

16
    SOON, THE KIBBUTZ WAS BUZZING ABOUT OUR affair. Everyone knew everything about each other. Privacy did not exist. The kibbutz men grinned suggestively and clapped my shoulder and said: “Hey, Alan. How’s Helka?”
    â€œUp yours,” I’d say with a smile.
    They’d laugh: “You’re a good boy, Alan! A man who gets to the point!” A very high compliment in Israel.
    She asked to read my published short stories, poems. Their content mattered less to her than the fact of their appearing in print, and she regarded me with unconcealed awe, submerged in her own world of delusions. “You’re the first writer I’ve ever met.”
    â€œAnd the last, I hope.” Adding: “For your sake.”
    She hesitated, unsure of how to respond. I didn’t really know myself exactly what I meant. Was always blurting out dramatic-sounding, bitter, often cryptic or contradictory pronouncements from off the top of my head, trying to seem profound or