The Pure

sandpaper smudge on his cheeks and neck. He examined the cyst on his shoulder. Outside, cars went past. Israel felt a million miles away. The alcohol lay hot and heavy in his belly and his mouth was dry. He tiptoed back into the bedroom. The girl had turned on to her front, hugging herself like a child. She must have been quite drunk, to fall asleep like that. She was lying in front of the door. He thought of moving her into the bed, but he didn’t want to wake her. He gathered his sweaty clothes together, dressed and nudged the door open. She sighed and rolled over, but didn’t wake up. He kissed her gently, incongruously. Then he slipped out the door, through the catacombs and into the street.
    The morning was humid and he did not feel as if he was entering fresh air. Already he was out of breath. He took a cigarette out of his pocket but he didn’t light it. His fists were clenched. He still had a feeling of dread, and almost turned back to check that the girl was still alive. His vision became blurred; he could feel tears on his cheeks. Then his inner ear began to itch, and he knew the voice was coming.
    ‘Good morning, Uzi. How are you today?’ it said – as always – in Hebrew. He thought it had a sarcastic tone. He thought it knew what he had just been doing, thinking, feeling. But he couldn’t be sure.
    ‘Leave me alone,’ he replied. ‘Just leave me alone for today, all right?’
    The voice fell silent. It could be respectful like that.
    The sky was swollen and dark with humidity. Uzi pulled out his phone – no missed calls, no texts, and the time was 07:23. How stupid he had been to think it was possible to forget. London. Another day. He saw a bus stop and walked to it. Rain began to fall.

 
2
    When Uzi awoke later that day, it was 2.30 p.m. and his body was covered in bars of sunshine. His ears were still ringing from the music in the club, and he had a hangover. There had been no nightmares – a pleasant surprise. He fumbled on the floor beside the bed, found his cigarettes. He smoked one, screwed it into the porcupine of butts in the ashtray. Then he turned on to his side and tried to go back to sleep. But his ear began to itch again.
    ‘Uzi, we need to talk.’
    ‘I told you, leave me alone,’ he mumbled into his pillow. ‘I haven’t got the strength to talk to you today.’
    There was a pause while the voice considered.
    ‘OK. I’ll give you a break. For today. Believe in yourself.’
    The Kol was always saying that. The itch in his ear gradually receded and he breathed a sigh of relief. Many people had these kind of voices, he knew they did. But for him, he thought, it was different. He only ever had one voice, and he called it the Kol, meaning ‘the voice’ in Hebrew. Always it was female, very calm, almost hypnotic, with a metallic edge. Occasionally the voice sounded older, usually when things got serious. Sometimes it would leave him alone for days on end, leave him to his own devices. Other times it would be with him all day, nagging from his left ear like a fishwife. Often it made him crazy. And it always tried to make him talk back.
    But the Kol had promised to leave him alone for today, and he was going to make the most of it. He pressed his head into the pillow as deeply as he could and allowed his mind to drift. It didn’t take long for sleep to close in on him. That was when the nightmare came. He should have known it. Brussels, gleaming diplomatic Brussels. His hand stretching out before him like a pale trident. The cold slap of his palm against the girl’s sternum as he shoved her with all his strength. Her face, stretched by a languid terror as she fell in slow motion backwards into the road. Her hair flicking in ropes and tendrils against the night sky as her head hit the windscreen of an oncoming Mercedes; the snarl of acceleration, the flinging body, the black bonnet. The single cry. His first kill for the Office.
    At 3.30 p.m. he awoke again, and this time he got up. Music was playing somewhere, he could hear it coming through the floorboards. He took a strawberry mousse from the fridge, peeled the lid and spooned it into his mouth. Then he turned on his two televisions; they had to be used together, as one had no picture and the other had no sound. He parted the curtains and looked out into the summer’s afternoon, scratching his woolly head. A group of children were clustered around a smashed bus stop, kicking a lump of concrete. He closed the curtains