Every House Needs a Balcony Read Online Free PDF

work and every evening in each other’s arms in the apartment he was renovating for his sister, who was away in Barcelona. She spent the weekends with Leon and her parents and didn’t bother to invite the man, although he showed some interest.
    She didn’t want to bring him to her modest little room in the apartment she shared with the arrogant students. The room was actually the living room, which opened onto the kitchen and was separated off by a one-inch-thick sheet of plywood that Leon had installed with considerable flair.
    The man either trumpeted in her ear or sang to her in English, and she wept silent tears as she counted the days to their separation. No man before had ever trumpeted in her ear. She had been sung to in Hebrew, and some rhymes in Turkish repeated themselves occasionally, but there had been no trumpeting in English.
    On the final weekend before he was due to leave, she promised to return from Haifa on Saturday night so they could spend his last night in Israel together, but Leon insisted on driving her all the way to Jerusalem, so she wouldn’t have to take a bus. Throughout the journey, she was troubled by her promise to the man and the knowledge that she wouldn’t be able to say good-bye to him before he returned to his fiancée in Barcelona.
    â€œWould you like me to stay in Jerusalem so that we can go house-hunting together?” Leon asked her, knowing how much she hated her two roommates.
    â€œI’m not sure,” she replied, irritated with him for insisting on driving her.
    â€œYou’re not sure you want us to live together, or that I should stay the night in Jerusalem?” asked Leon, hurt by her sharp tone.
    â€œBoth,” she replied, “I think I’m fed up with Jerusalem. My sister has suggested I come and live with them in Tel Aviv, and I think I might just take up the offer.”
    â€œAnd that’s how you thought you’d tell me? After I’ve already informed my work in Haifa that I’m leaving and moving to Jerusalem?” Leon was in shock.
    â€œWhat do you want? I didn’t plan it.” The only reason she was being nasty to him was that he was preventing her from saying good-bye to the man from Barcelona.
    â€œAnd when exactly were you planning to tell me?” he asked.
    â€œI’ve only just thought that I might move to Tel Aviv.” She squinted at his angry face. “Are you annoyed with me?”
    â€œI am furious with you for not taking the trouble to include me in your plans,” said Leon, who was making arrangements to join her in Jerusalem, at her request.
    â€œWould you like me to get out of the car?” she asked.
    â€œWhy not?” he replied, and to her surprise, he pulled up sharply in the middle of the climb up the Kastel.
    She alighted, vaguely insulted that he was allowing her to walk away, rather than fighting to keep her with him—even stopping for her to get out halfway up the Kastel in the middle of the night, knowing of the terrorists and rapists roaming the region. She got out of the car and started walking, not looking back. In the corner of her eye she saw him overtaking her. She tried to hitch a lift, and the second car stopped for her.
    The driver asked if she wasn’t afraid to be hitchhiking at that time of night, and she asked him if he was planning to rape her.
    â€œNo,” said the kind driver.
    â€œThen I’m not afraid,” she said, and within twenty minutes he had pulled up at the entrance to her block.
    Leon was waiting for her in the darkened stairway. She jumped when she saw him and said, “You frightened me.”
    â€œI’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t think you’d get out of the car,” he said.
    â€œI didn’t think you would leave me in the middle of the road,” she replied.
    â€œI love you,” he said.
    â€œI know. Would you like to come in?” She considered having sex with him, a