The Extra

Twenty-One

THAT NIGHT, IN BED, she wonders with a smile where on earth that whip came from. Was it the sound of the word that enchanted her, or the whip itself? In any case, why not? If the grandma upstairs doesn’t know who she is, and grandpa drums Torah into students at night, and Shaya, that beautiful guy, has been abducted by an extremist cult, why not a whip to impose order? An actual whip that can be waved in the air and snapped to induce fear from afar. Because clearly this smart-ass kid won’t give up his TV, and so in the remaining weeks of the trial period she will protect her privacy not merely with a bolt, but with a whip, not symbolic but real.

She falls asleep with this bizarre notion, and wakes up with it too, and after breakfast she goes for a walk among the stalls of Mahane Yehuda, where she might not find a whip but can at least inquire about one. But so that an elegant, cultured woman won’t arouse laughter or suspicion by asking the vendors about a whip, she approaches an Arab porter who waits next to a fruit and vegetable stand with a big wicker basket on his back. The Arab is not shocked by either the question or the questioner, but cannot imagine that any of the Jews in the market still own a horse or donkey requiring a whip, and recommends that she look for one in the Old City.

“How do you say ‘whip’ in Arabic?”

“Why Arabic? Speak Hebrew — everyone in the Old City will understand you.”

“Still, how do you say it?”

“Say kurbash, madam. Just kurbash.”

“Kurbash,” she pronounces with satisfaction. “Lovely word.”

She is excited to have found a practical reason to go to the Old City, which she hasn’t visited for many years, even before the job with the Dutch orchestra that took her far from Israel. To enhance the experience, she chooses to ride on the elegant light rail line, which deposits her near the Damascus Gate, and she is soon swallowed up in the shadowy marketplace. She doesn’t rush to find what she seeks, but wanders through the narrow alleys, buffeted by shoppers and tourists, pausing by various shops, examining beads and copperware, even purchasing an unusual pipe for the administrative director of the orchestra, who allows himself a smoke backstage during concerts, the aroma of his tobacco sometimes complementing the music.

Finally, in a colorful souvenir shop she asks about a whip, using the Arabic word, but it turns out that in the overflowing market of the Old City it’s difficult to get clear directions to a place where a whip may be found, and she is sent from one merchant to another, and they ask whether she wants a whip as a wall hanging or a real one.

“A real one,” she clarifies, “and long, if possible.” “How long?” the Arabs ask with a smile. “Two meters at least,” she says, extending her arms wide. “Two meters?” They are astounded. “Two meters is a whip to train a wild horse. Does the lady have a horse?”

“No horse,” she jokes, “but a husband as wild as a horse.”

The vendors like her answer, and the laughter echoes from shop to shop, and one young man, whose headgear seems a hybrid of a turban and a Hasidic skullcap, offers to take her to a place where she might find the whip she desires. He leads her past the Western Wall and beyond the Old City walls, and there, on the road near the tour buses, crouches a group of gaudily decorated camels, poised to carry tourists, and the young man explains to one of the camel owners what the lady is looking for, and the owner is puzzled: Why a whip? What for? Is it even allowed? — as if she were seeking a dangerous weapon. At last he consents, and consults with an old Bedouin sitting on the curb, who gets up without delay and approaches one of the camels, burrows into an embroidered saddlebag and produces two whips — long and longer.

The harpist, who has never held a whip before, examines the two and considers one versus the other. These are clearly whips that in their day have prodded camels, trained horses and struck donkeys. Their leather lashes are tattered and cracked and emit a strange smell. Now she brandishes the longer of the two, and as it whistles in the air, a nearby camel rises to its feet.

She chooses the shorter one and asks its price. This is a question for the camel’s owner, who thinks hard before declaring, “One hundred dinars.”

“Dinars? What’s a dinar?”

“He means dollars,” explains the turbaned young middleman.

“Dollars? Why dollars? We’re in Israel. Tell me in shekels.”

“If it’s shekels,” says the young man, “he will have to charge value-added tax.”

“VAT?” She laughs. “This Bedouin does VAT? What is he, a licensed contractor?”

“Why not? I can even write you a receipt in his name.”

“Too much.” She smiles. “A hundred shekels is plenty. It’s an old whip.”

“But genuine. You won’t find one as strong and good in the whole Middle East.”

They finally compromise on two hundred shekels, and everyone is happy. And she knows that the seller and the broker find her attractive, though she is neither young nor a virgin. She has not borne children, yet radiates womanly charm and sensuality. Thus even the Bedouin camel drivers, who doubtless have any number of wives, are in no hurry to part from her, and they take the whip from her on the pretext that it needs to be prepared, cleaned, oiled and bathed in a pungent liquid so that whoever is whipped will smell the lash and long remember it. Then they wrap the whip in a Jordanian newspaper bearing a photo of the king, and tie it with a linen cord. The young man in the turban, Yassin by name, who has learned Noga’s name and its celestial connotation, and has translated it for her into Arabic, insists on walking with her to the place he brought her from.

On their way back, as they pass the Western Wall, Yassin stops and says obligingly, “If you want, Venus, to pray and cry a little at your wall, I can wait for you on the side.” “No praying or crying, young man,” she says with slight irritation, “but you can definitely let me go now,” and hands him a twenty-shekel bill as an escort fee.

She decides to enjoy another ride on the light rail, which takes her near her neighborhood, and as she climbs the stairs to her parents’ apartment, she secretly hopes to catch the ultra-Orthodox boys fixed on their television elixir, so she can crack her newly purchased whip and possibly land a blow.

But the apartment is silent. Can it be that the older one has finally been sent back to his Torah school and a new chaperone assigned to the little tzaddik?

She lays the wrapped-up whip on top of the television, as if to confirm its existence, but after she gets undressed, puts on a light bathrobe and consumes a full bottle of water, she moves the whip to her parents’ closet, setting it on a shelf above the black suit that has yet to find its suitor.