The Wanting Read Online Free Page B

see,” she said.
    “Still.”
    “There’s nothing there.”
    “Nothing for you, perhaps.”
    “It will upset the girls.”
    “Don’t worry. It’s already cleaned up,” I insisted.
    “Then why go?”
    A muffled, disconsolate voice came from the backseat. “He won’t stop until you do what he wants. Just do it.”
    She had to change directions altogether and head toward the center of town. As an architect, I had thought location important. A beautiful building, one of the oldest in town, white stone, low, exotic doors, unquestionably Ottoman; but I gutted the inside of our suite, installed brazilwood floors, stainless credenzas, a glass conference table surrounded by six Herman Miller chairs. I had a small Snaidero kitchenette with brightly enameled three-legged stools, a sitting area with Barcelona chairs and a genuine Børge Morgensen coffee table. And, of course, the floor-to-ceiling window that later came crashing down on top of me and was the reason my face was wrapped in gauze and a searing pain was shooting down my right arm and up across my shoulder.
    Anyusha was right. You would never have known a bomb had exploded on my corner. Only instead of our bus shelter, there was a new cardboard sign on a pole. And my glorious window was boarded over with huge sheets of plywood. I gasped, I think, because Daphne took my hand. Bits of stone and plaster had beenblasted from the façade of my building, revealing layers that had never before seen sunlight. These sad old blocks of stone! I could see directly into their broken hearts.
    Anyusha suddenly leaned forward and threw her arms around me.
    “Don’t be sad, Pop,” she said. “You can fix it up. You’re good at that.”
    “Now can we go home?” Daphne asked.
    I think it was on the way back that Daphne’s daughter, Shana, asked me why I was an architect.
    “What do you mean, why?”
    “I mean, how does someone become one? Was it like, a calling?”
    “No one has a calling,” I said. “Because there’s no one to call you.”
    “Oh boy,” said Anyusha. “Here we go.”
    “We all just do what we decide to do,” I said. But I knew that was not completely true.
    I was about thirteen and had already been obsessing about university for some time. To get in, I had to be in the right high school. But in the past year, I had been turned down by the special school for mathematics, even though I’d passed all the tests, and also the special school for French, even though I was quite fluent, and also by the polytechnical preparatory school, even though my paper on electromagnetism won a prize and was published in
Junior Scientist
. I should not have been surprised. Even the most brilliant Jewish math students—far more formidable than I—often ended up studying nothing more than mechanical engineering, and the most promising Jewish science students became mere lab technicians. But something in me refused to accept this simple truth. Every day I would fill out another application or write a letter of protestto some ministry. My father encouraged me: “Keep trying! Keep working! Let them know you exist!”
    “Why are you letting him draw so much attention to himself?” my mother complained.
    As for my grandfather, he scratched his head. “What’s all the
tummle
? Use our connections.”
    “Papa, everyone you know is dead,” said my mother.
    “Well, Lyopa has connections.”
    “Lyopa does not have connections. Lyopa cannot get a respectable job for himself. How is he going to get something for Roma?”
    Lyopa was my father. “I have a respectable job,” he said.
    “Phhhh,” my mother replied, and went back to her chopped onions. My father at that time adjusted hearing aids.
    “I have a respectable job,” he repeated. “And you,” he said to me, “don’t give up.” He raised his voice and spoke directly to the walls, “A good Soviet boy always is an example to his peers!” Then he winked at me. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”
    Outside