The Others by Sarah Blau (best ereader for academics TXT) 📗

boyfriend jokes about the considerable age gap between you, it’s going to end in tears and they’re going to be yours.

It’s true that I told him right off the bat that I wasn’t interested in having kids, both because it was the truth and because I wanted to clear that sinister cloud that turns every woman in her late thirties into an intimidation.

He replied that neither was he – a lie! They’re always interested, especially the more selfish ones among them – and he stuck to it for a long time, until he once asked, “Hypothetically, if you did want a kid, who would you have it with?” I, whose sole intention was to compliment him, immediately blurted, “Only with you, my love,” which of course produced precisely the opposite effect. His eyes turned into dark pools of fear. I think that’s when our relationship’s countdown timer started ticking. Tick-tock.

And now, sitting in my rocking chair the next day in the empty apartment like an idiot, I’m holding an ugly doll and waiting for a call from Maor’s deadly double. Maor’s deadly policeman double.

Every object in the apartment is screaming at you to watch out, but you’re not listening. The walls are boring into you, watching you waiting for the phone to ring, hovering around the device with that hungry expression while the apartment slowly fills with a familiar sensation. It’s called anticipation, and it’s disgusting.

I’m supposed to be glad that I got rid of him so easily, he’s no fool, that Micha, so I’m supposed to be pleased that he went on his merry way without asking the hard questions, supposed to lock the door behind him and spin into a little happy dance. So why the hell am I staring at the phone screen, checking that my battery is still alive? Why can’t I concentrate on anything other than that crazed buzzing in my head? Why? Because you’re a brainless baby, that’s why.

At least good old Google is still waiting for me with open, gift-bearing arms.

I retype “Dina Kaminer” and wait for the deluge of results. No new hits since the last time I checked (an hour ago), no new suspects, no interesting new theories, and the phony concern (with just a touch of Schadenfreude) for the welfare of the city’s single women has been replaced by a few preachy articles about the damage women who keep putting off the decision to have kids are causing themselves blah-blah-blah. In other words, no useful information. I scroll down to the bottom, where the dark world of internet commenters is revealed before me.

It’s incredible how much they hate her. Even like this – murdered, violated, stripped of her dignity and titles – even now they hate her. They always hated her.

And what’s that? A new article. The headline is sentimental – “Dr Dina Kaminer – the mother of all those who do not wish to be mothers” – not bad, kind of poetic, I’m not sure what Dina would have thought about it, but I find there’s a certain beauty to it. The article was written by one of her research colleagues, and the comments inform me that she too is childless. They’re on a downright rampage of wrath and contempt, from comments like “fuglies like you shouldn’t have kids,” classic, to “who would even want to have kids with a selfish raggedy hag with a stick up her fat arse,” slightly banal, the usual displays of verbal diarrhoea, and there’s also the tasteful suggestion: “You should find someone who’ll inseminate you and along with his semen maybe pump a little sense into your sterile brains.”

Oh, well, some things never change.

None of these birdbrain commenters has my way with words.

Now, obviously, I wouldn’t dare write a single syllable; I have no intention of letting some police prodigy connect certain dots that could get me into trouble, but in the past, oh, I definitely wrote a comment or two.

Because unlike these Neanderthals with their predictable and limited scopes of knowledge, I knew Dina and knew just where to strike. I knew where it really hurt. Sheila, you little witch.

In one of her interviews, when she spoke about how “the verbal aggression displayed by internet commenters is owed to their anonymity,” I realized she was on to me; I kept on reading and discovered several other sharpened arrows aimed specifically at me. But I didn’t care, at that point my hatred towards her was far beyond reason.

You see, I hated everything that had to do with her. The passive-aggressiveness that was really just aggressiveness, the dark oily hair she kept in a bun, her bulging, black cow eyes, the giant breasts she carried with the arrogance of a battleship, her self-righteousness, but more than anything, I hated her voice, deep and purring, a velvety voice that belied the steely punch.

That’s exactly how she sounded that Wednesday evening, when she opened the door and said to me, “I’m glad you came.”

4

“BUT YOU DIDN’T kill her, right?” Only Eli could produce such a sentence so matter-of-factly and calmly.

“And don’t tell me I sound like a bad thriller,” he adds, reading my mind, as always.

I sit in front of him in his office, the day after the police visit, drinking from his Coke can without giving it a second thought. Eli’s office is my safe space, Eli himself is my safe space, this faithful, doglike friend. (Actually, he looks more like a hamster. A tall hamster, a handsome hamster, some might even say attractive hamster, but still, we’re talking hamster here.) And if only I was able to fall in love with him, I would be the happiest woman alive. No, that’s not right, I would obviously be an entirely different person, a person who could fall in love with Eli. Regretfully – I am not that person.

He’s pleasant, Eli, and smart, and his mere presence has a calming effect on me. He’s also patient and has