by Yitzhak Nir
Gershon got up and walked towards the bathroom opening off from the bedroom, while on his way adjusting the air conditioner to maximum heat. Within a few minutes the bedroom was a bit warmer than necessary.
Afterwards he closed the bathroom door behind him, adjusted his hairpiece and checked that his mustache was firmly attached to his upper lip. He undressed, removing his Sig Sauer pistol and placing it in Adam’s underwear drawer. Then he rinsed his face and coolly examined its reflection in the mirror-doors of the medicine cabinet above the sink. He opened them and scanned the cabinet’s glass shelves: “Excellent!” he exclaimed out loud, spotting a plastic bottle containing fragrant but inexpensive body oil that was still partially full. “Ben-Ami, you’re quite a little devil…” he smiled, carrying the bottle to the bedroom.
Li-Lan was lying in the center of the purple sheet covered with the duvet, wearing only pink panties embroidered with red conch shells.
“Tadaaamm! I’m coming, babe!” he declared theatrically.
She turned her head towards him, resting her cheek on the pillow, opening her eyes and smiling. In his boxer shorts he sat on her lovely tiny lower buttocks, removing the duvet covering her back. On his chest he was still wearing the white T-shirt, from which he almost never parted that concealed his small paunch. He enjoyed the sight of her smooth, pale back, delicate shoulder blades and long arms resting at her sides.
With his thighs enveloping hers and his knees digging deep into the purple sheet, he poured some oil onto her back and his hands, which he rubbed briskly together until they were red-hot. Only then did he begin massaging her back slowly with both hands. Soon Li-Lan began breathing regularly and guiding his hands down her back that was shining with oil: “Good, Jerry! Yes, yes, there, right there…” she groaned softly with her forehead resting on her hands.
He noticed that his hands, which were the pride and joy of his youth, were not as muscular and fine as he liked to remember them. So to prove that he didn’t only still have strength in his loins but also in his biceps, he rubbed, pressed, massaged, drummed and slapped energetically and forcefully until he found what he was looking for: a stiff muscle on her right shoulder blade above her backbone.
“Yes, yes, there! Continue, Jerry… Ah yes, right there! I feel strong pain, exactly there, Jerry!”
Her charming shouts and groans were music to his ears, and he increased his thumbs’ pressure on her shoulder blades, trying to soften the stiffness of her back. Slowly he felt his organ pressing on his boxer shorts and demanding its rights. …So the blue diamond is still in working order after all… he smiled to himself.
The heat in the room was becoming oppressive, but he chose not to cease his efforts in order to lower the temperature. Sweat began to glisten on his chest and underarms. He removed his shirt, and for a moment remembered his friend, Prof. Marwan Sultani, who had introduced him to the wonders of physiotherapeutic massage, after he had bailed out of his plane. …And today that same Prof. Marwan Sultani is my private barometer measuring the mood of the Arab world in general, and of the Middle East in particular… he mused as he began stroking the long arms lying at her sides.
After about fifteen minutes of vigorous massage he began feeling tired. Li-Lan’s breathing slowed down and she began dozing off.
He stretched himself over her, released the grip on her thighs and straightened his knees. He stroked her body and began kissing her from the small ears buried in her black hair, to her throat, shoulders and waist and down to the lovely roundness of her buttocks. Without wiping off the oil that still clung to her skin, he took hold of her lovely breasts sinking into the purple sheet: her back was to him and his chest was pressed to her shoulder blades, his navel to her spine, his groin pushing against her buttocks, his cheek to her cheek and his chin sinking into Adam Ben-Ami’s soft mattress. He breathed deeply and slowly recovered a regular heart rhythm. Emitting even breaths Li-Lan fell asleep.
The time was eleven minutes before four p.m. when they both fell asleep in an embrace: she on her stomach and he pressed up against her back, their sweat mixed with the oil absorbed in her skin and his nostrils filled with her aroma.
Suddenly he awoke:
…Wow, I fell asleep! What a shame that we’ll have to part so soon without having made love… He raised himself up on his elbows and regarded her for a long moment: …I really hope that this beautiful, strange woman desires me at least as much as I desire her… Then he glanced at the small gold watch on her left wrist and relaxed: they still had an hour and a half to be together.
The nightingale on his left hand was also devoid of messages.
Morning Coffee
At five-thirty in the morning the sun had not yet risen and the temperature was fourteen degrees Fahrenheit.
A clear, cold blue winter’s morning greeted the early risers in the small town of Manchester, Connecticut, located about thirty miles north of New Haven, on the East Coast of the U. S.
With the help of a small snow scraper, Professor Joe Yang had just finished removing the ice that had collected overnight on the windows of his blue Subaru Forester.
In fact, by purchasing a Subaru, he, too, had ignored generations of deep enmity between China and Japan. “A successful global economy always overrides any blood feud, whether religious or national,” he would preach to his listeners. And to himself he would add: “Especially if you are a successful Chinese man in the United States.”
He had retired from Yale University four years previously, after being invited to join the Israeli-Chinese initiative firm, Sepcom, whose ambition was to support the Chinese regime by securing China’s economic future and food security. Thus the Yang family had moved northwards to turn over a new leaf in its life.
His wife Linda, twenty years younger than he was, his two teen-aged daughters Lisbeth and Ursula and the auburn cocker spaniel answering to the name of Gypsy were all still soundly asleep in their beds.
On the frozen street Joe returned the snow scraper to the glove compartment and got in behind the wheel. He started his car and waited for the Subaru to heat up a bit in order to disperse the water vapors that covered the car’s windscreen, while going over in his imagination his plan to visit the State of Israel that he had already grown to like.
The Yang family lived in a two-story, gray-shingled wooden house located at 33 Sycamore Avenue, surrounded by lawn and with a tall tree at the front. In this it resembled hundreds of neighboring houses in the affluent, sleepy neighborhood.
At sixty-seven a professor emeritus of economics at Yale University, the American citizen Joe Yang sighed with contentment. The transformation that had occurred in his life when he left Shanghai at the end of the twentieth century and was naturalized as a U.S. citizen had reached its peak:
He had been invited by the Chinese government to participate in an international congress, Economics in Crisis Times, which would be held in the large auditorium of Tsinghua University in Beijing.
At the congress he would lecture in English about his successful book “Economics Outside the Box: A Guide to Crisis Resolution” and would chair the key session, whose panel and audience would include prominent economists from both East and West.
He hadn’t informed his wife and daughters of the major reason for his planned visit to Israel. He only explained that he needed to “rest between flights and revisit Israel, the start-up nation.” For his family Israel was a country that they saw on TV and smart phones only: always with reports of terrorist attacks or endless interviews about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a large assortment of talking heads.
Sitting in his heated car, mummified in a gray suit, his face pale, his hair graying on his pate and rimless glasses on his nose, Joe Yang looked much younger than his actual years. And since he was a comfort-loving hedonist, he preferred driving early in the morning in order to avoid heavy, annoying traffic.
He again checked th
e itinerary that had been sent to him by the International Coordination Bureau of the Ministry of the Economy in Beijing:
BlueJet 202 - Bradley International to: JFK Airport New York. Departure: 06:35. El Al 010 - J. F. K. Airport New York to: Ben-Gurion Airport Tel Aviv. Departure: 10:00. Air China 095 - Ben-Gurion Airport to: Beijing Airport. Departure: 22:30. [All departures: local times at exit airport].
He had requested and was granted a two-day stopover in New York and an additional five days in Tel Aviv in order to visit his daughter, the economic attaché, and travel with her to the congress.
Since she had completed her studies in New York, they would only meet infrequently. He devoted himself to his new family and successful academic career, and although she missed him, she dedicated herself to her career in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For many years he had had mixed feelings about his eldest daughter: Together with feelings of guilt for having abandoned her in childhood, he was proud of having enabled her to acquire an excellent education in New York and develop a career in his own field of expertise. However, since assuming the role of head economist at Sepcom, the corporation responsible for Israeli-Chinese initiatives, they met often when he arrived to participate in economic forums and conferences in Israel. Thus their previously loose ties were gradually strengthening.
Recently he had begun regretting that she had not given him any grandchildren, but on the whole, he highly respected her principles and devotion to her work, as long as the right man had not entered her life.
Joe was fascinated by Israel. The Chinese admiration for the Jewish brain had further increased his interest in the country and he had begun learning Hebrew. His colleagues at Sepcom had informed him about the Arab-Israeli conflict and the endless wars and struggles between the two peoples in the turbulent Middle East.
In China he was considered an expert on Israel and in Israel an expert on China, thus his status and influence in the corporation were growing. Within himself he thought that the grandiloquent title ‘Israel - the start-up nation’ was much more suitable for China, but he kept that to himself. Nevertheless, Israel was an enigma that aroused his curiosity.
The professor had yet another reason for visiting Israel: he planned to meet his friend Professor Daniel Safran, his colleague at Sepcom, with whom he had planned a daring, imaginative secret initiative.
Furthermore, Professor Joe Yang had a secret love:
He loved to fly, but not on light aircraft or cheap charter flights and definitely not on vulgar, crowded tourist-class flights. Not a chance! Joe only enjoyed flying the proper way: either first class or not at all.
Since joining Sepcom he flew frequently, accumulating thousands of miles in every possible flight club, and frequently flew luxury class. The inconvenience of hanging around, undergoing security checks, waiting for luggage and other “terrible, unpleasant annoyances” was not anything he should have to put up with. But the rewards! He loved to stretch out during a ten-hour flight in a luxurious airborne hotel room, suspended between sea and sly, with a constant supply of films, music and beautiful girls rushing to fulfill his every whim at the press of a button and “gifts for Linda and the girls on my return.” All these were a fitting payment for the trials and tribulations of airports. Until Sepcom buys us, its directors, a few G-750 Gulfstream jet planes… And that day will surely come if and when our new huge initiative gathers momentum…
He would tell his friend, the demographer Professor Daniel Safran: “I feel like a time capsule. A borrowed pleasure! From the moment the wheels retract, I can’t escape and I don’t wish to! Others are responsible for my life and I cut myself off from reality, leave my troubles behind, dive into my inner world, give myself up to pleasure and fall asleep smiling and at peace. Is there a greater gift to a man than that?” he would inquire theatrically.
“And aren’t you ever frightened by those air-pockets or accidents?”
“Relax, Mr. Safran. Air bumps simply put me to sleep. And if I were to dive down and crash into the sea, so what? In an instant my soul would leave my body without regrets and take up residence in the body of a young man, or even a woman! Isn’t that preferable to fading away in a retirement home?”
For Joe, who grew up in a poor Chinese village in which his large family had only a stinking cesspit in the yard to serve as a lavatory, and into which he fell at age four and from then on suffered from breathing difficulties and nightmares throughout childhood and adolescence, first-class air travel was a fitting prize.
In the east, the sun gradually broke through the gray-purple morning mist. He shifted to reverse and the car began rolling slowly out of its parking place, with its exhaust muffler emitting vapors of warm water and murmuring softly. Then in a commanding tone he addressed the auto driving system’s screen: “Bradley Airport!” The vehicle obeyed like a dog called to his dish. The car turned left and lined up out into the street. It gained speed on Foster Avenue to the maximum allowed in urban areas and traveled with ease and determination onto Interstate 291, also called Vietnam Veterans Memorial Highway. Joe tuned in to a local radio station that was broadcasting Chopin’s Nocturnes.
“Who even remembers the Vietnam War nowadays?” He hummed to himself and continued the thought: “Apart from those suffering from post-trauma, the seriously injured and the families of those killed, who even cares? Companies and businessmen, politicians and hordes of tourists are developing friendly relations there. The fear of communism has long ago disappeared, without even the pretense of concern,” and aloud like a lecturer addressing an imaginary audience, he added:
“Nations continue to perpetuate their past mistakes and close their eyes to the future. If it were only given the chance, a proper global economy could resolve crises and conflicts. Human beings want to live and love, not die!” he ended with pathos. This was his first rehearsal of the final resounding sentence of his future speech in the Tsinghua University auditorium in Beijing. He smiled to himself like someone convinced that he holds a magical formula in his hands...
Fifteen minutes later when it reached the river, the car went onto the Yankee Express Bridge and with a wide right turn straight ahead onto the road leading to Bradley International Airport, near the town of Windsor Locks, Connecticut.
Joe pushed the release button on the steering wheel and took charge of his elegant Subaru. He slowed down and entered the long-term parking lot. With a wide left turn he drove down to sublevel three. As he had anticipated, the place was almost empty at that time of the morning.
After parking and checking that the vehicle’s computer would start up its engine every morning in order to protect the battery, he photographed the parking place: “Maybe by the time I return, I’ll forget where I’d parked… maybe the automatic navigation system on my iPhone 17 won’t work properly underground…” he assured himself in American English with a Mandarin accent, satisfied with his brilliant thinking, despite the early hour.
He walked briskly through the departure lounge, toting behind him a small, wheeled silver Samsonite suitcase, towards the JetBlue’s ’check-in counter. For that morning’s short flight he would have to compromise, since the plane had no first class. But his reward would come on the flight to Tel Aviv. Of that he was certain.
He strode towards the check-in counter wearing an elegant gray suit, a sparkling white shirt and matching gray tie, with the latest toy from Apple: a biometric Mac protected from break-ins, matching his iPhone 17 which could be stored inside it - over his shoulder. With the help of his sophisticated equipment, he controlled every aspect of his life, starting with activating every function in his smart house and ending with protecting his classified documents and producing authentic paper money in emergency situations.
He smiled at the flight attendant behind the counter and after a moment received a boarding card for Seat 11C. He soon found himself striding through the frozen, partly transparent, sleeve towards the entrance
of the old Boeing 737. …Thousands of them are still in use in the third decade of the twenty-first century… a puzzling thought crossed his mind.
Through the cockpit’s side window he saw an attractive woman of about forty, with a short, blond pageboy haircut, seated in the captain’s seat. She was dressed in a white shirt and blue tie and on each shoulder were embroidered four shiny gold stripes – the captain’s ranks.
Joe gave her a long look and remarked to himself: “In China today there are also many women pilots.”
With his long coat with the label “Pierre Cardin” on its lining slung over his arm, he turned, crouched down to get into the low-slung door and entered the aircraft.
He was welcomed by two yawning flight attendants, the taller of whom directed him with a sleepy smile to a leather window seat in the second row to the right of the aisle. Business class was empty and he still hadn’t drunk coffee since leaving home.
Captain Barbara McCain taxied the small Boeing plane at high speed towards the takeoff runway. With her right hand she grasped the “Passengers’ Announcements” microphone off the shelf between the pilots and with her left - continued to guide the plane along the taxiway. Meanwhile she quickly organized her thoughts and announced over the loudspeaker:
“Good morning ladies and gentleman! We are number one for takeoff and there are no landings at the airport at the moment. In three minutes we’ll take off from Runway 24 at Bradley. After takeoff we’ll climb to an altitude of seventeen thousand feet heading south-west towards the East River, New York. Today you will have a clear, spectacular view of Manhattan and the Hudson River. In Kennedy the weather is excellent at the moment and the temperature is 24 degrees Fahrenheit, minus four degrees Centigrade. Light snow is expected after our landing”