Unzipping

It began with a kiss. It almost always

begins with a kiss. Ella and Tsiki were in bed,
naked, with only their tongues touching – when
she felt something prick her. ‘Did I hurt you?’ Tsiki
asked, and when she shook her head, he quickly
added, ‘You’re bleeding.’ And she was, from the
mouth. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said and started a frantic
search in the kitchen, pulling ice-cube trays out
of the freezer and banging them against the
worktop. ‘Here, take these,’ he said, handing her
some ice with a shivering hand, ‘put them against
your lip. It’ll stop the bleeding.’ Tsiki had always
been good at these things. In the army he’d been
a paramedic. He was a trained tour guide too.
‘I’m sorry,’ he went on, turning paler, ‘I must have
bitten you. You know, in the heat of passion.’
‘Never –ind,’ she smiled at him, the ice cube

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sticking to her lower lip. ‘No—ing ha—ened.’

Which was a lie, of course. B ecause some—ing
had ha—ened. It isn’t every day that someone
you’re living with makes you bleed, and then lies
to you and says he bit you, when you distinctly
felt something pricking you.
They didn’t kiss for a few days after that,
because of her cut. L ips are a very sensitive part
of the body. And later when they could, they had
to be very careful. S he could tell he was hiding
something. And sure enough, one night, taking
advantage of the fact that he slept with his mouth
open, she gently slipped her finger under his
tongue – and found it. It was a zip. A teensy zip.
B ut when she pulled at it, her whole Tsiki opened
up like an oyster, and inside was Jurgen. U nlike
Tsiki, Jurgen had a goatee, meticulously shaped
sideburns and an uncircumcised penis. Ella
watched him in his sleep. V ery, very quietly she
folded up the Tsiki wrapping and hid it in
the kitchen cupboard behind the rubbish bin,
where they kept the bin bags.
L ife with Jurgen wasn’t easy. The sex was
fantastic, but he drank a lot, and when he did,
he’d make a racket and get into all kinds of

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 Suddenly, a Knock on the Door

embarrassing situations. O n top of that, he liked

to make her feel guilty for being the reason he’d
left Europe and come to live here. Whenever
anything bad happened in this country, whether
it was in real life or on TV , he’d say to her, ‘L ook
what your country is coming to.’ His Hebrew was
lousy, and that ‘your’ of his always sounded very
accusatory. Her parents didn’t like him. Her
mother, who had actually been fond of Tsiki, called
Jurgen the goy. Her father would always ask him
about work, and Jurgen would snigger and say,
‘Work is like a moustache, M r S hviro. It went out
of style a long time ago.’ Which nobody ever found
amusing, certainly not Ella’s father, who still
happened to sport a moustache.
Finally, Jurgen left. He went back to Dü sseldorf
to make music and live on benefits. He’d never
be able to make it as a singer in this country, he
said, because they’d hold his accent against him.
P eople here were prejudiced. They didn’t like
Germans. Ella thought that even in Germany his
weird music and kitschy lyrics wouldn’t really get
him very far. He’d even written a song about her.
It was called ‘Goddess’ and the whole thing was
about having sex on the breakwater and about

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how, when she came, it was ‘like a wave breaking

against a rock’, – and that’s a quote.
S ix months after Jurgen left she was looking for
a bin bag and found the Tsiki wrapping. M aybe it
had been a mistake to undo his zip, she thought.
C ould be. With things like that it’s hard to say for
sure. That same evening, while she was brushing
her teeth, she thought back over that kiss, over the
pain of being pricked. S he rinsed her mouth with
lots of water and looked in the mirror. S he still had
a scar, and when she studied it up close, she noticed
a little zip under her tongue. Ella fingered it hesi-
tantly, and tried to imagine what she’d be like inside.
It made her very hopeful, but also a bit worried
– mainly about freckled hands and a dry complex ion.
M aybe she’d have a tattoo, she thought, of a rose.
S he’d always wanted to have one, but never had
the nerve. S he’d thought it would hurt a lot.

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