by Paul Usiskin
‘Is that what that was?’
‘We could try again just to see.’
They giggled, as he slid his finger deeply into her. Then he bent over her and used his tongue.
Her breath came in short gasps. ‘Enough with the fingers. I want you in me.’
Vikki was an interior designer. When she told Dov, he saw a woman with a creative imagination and therefore an intellect. The next time he met her, two days later, she’d completely changed her appearance. Her hair was white, styled in a bob with a fringe. Her dress was body hugging, short, strapless, pink, her nails were pink and white stripes to match her similarly striped stiletto heel zip boots. Her dragon couldn’t be ignored. They were in a packed club in south Tel Aviv, loud music pumping out, the bass throbbing, the air-conditioning battling the heat emitting from the gyrating bodies.
‘I looked up your dragon,’ Dov almost had to shout.
‘You said you didn’t approve of it.”
‘True, but I was curious. It’s a dragon with a human face. Very distinctive.’
‘Yes,’ she smiled, ‘like me. And unique.’
‘You or the dragon?’
‘Guess.’
‘OK. You are unique.’
‘And you are an excellent fuck.’
She pulled him up from their table to dance. Another act of foreplay, interrupted often by people, very well off by the quality of their outfits, greeting her, young women giving her air kisses, men hugging her, enjoying touching her skin, she obviously enjoyed it too. After half an hour or so, she led him outside, hailed a cab and then they were in his elevator, he discovered she wore no panties, and in his apartment she lay back and let him dominate. Their orgasms were exhilarating. But they weren’t repeated.
‘Your dragon is known as a Torch Dragon,’ he said in the afterglow. ‘It comes from Chinese mythology, which suggests that when it opened its eyes there was daylight, and when it closed them it became night. Also its breath created seasonal winds.’ He waited for her reaction. She asked ‘Do you like my nails?’
They kept meeting every other night, going to clubs or restaurants, and always had sex at his place afterwards. But as with their second night, it was all him giving and she taking. He tried to talk with her about politics. ‘Oh, I don’t care about that. It’s boring.’ She preferred to talk about her latest clients, and the designs she was working on for them. She moved in wealthy circles, repeat customers who happily paid for her to redesign their homes annually. Dov began to realize that she had little depth of personality which jarred with her obvious creativity. On Shabbat they went to the beach where she lay on a lounger, having applied sun cream, and every few minutes she’d move her body into another pose, accompanied by suitable pouts. What she wore could have been lingerie, if she needed to wear anything. Lots of men ogled her. And why not?
Dov wasn’t a lounger kind of guy. He’d brought the weekend papers to read, but after going through three articles, wanted to go for a walk along the beach. Vikki didn’t. ‘You’ve got to learn to relax. I’ll teach you.’
Another twenty minutes past, while he tried to do nothing. ‘Let’s get something cold to drink,’ he said.
‘I’m happy where I am. Can you get me a coke float? With chocolate ice cream?’ She had to explain what it was. He was intrigued and got two and enjoyed the concoction. Consuming it, he began to talk about one of the articles he’d read, as a basis for an impromptu analysis on the lack of any real negotiations with the Palestinians. When he finished he thought Vikki was dozing.
‘I’m sorry I bored you.’
‘No you didn’t,’ she said, her eyes still closed. ‘I love listening to you speak.’
On his next FaceTime with Orli he told her he’d found someone local.
‘That’s good. I really didn’t want you to be alone there.’
‘I wouldn’t have gone out on a date without you insisting. I’m very biddable when it comes to you.’
She smiled beatifically.
‘I won’t tell you about this woman, except to say she’s really quite vacuous.’
‘It’s about companionship, Dov.’
‘I suppose, but I’m really looking forward to seeing you again.’
‘Yes,’ she managed.
His down time was coming to a close, at least in Israel. He wanted to see Ephraim Cordova in Spain and Orli in New York. What Vikki called her ‘I’ll-be-waiting-for-you-fuck,’ the night before his departure, was one more non-reciprocal event, in which he made all the moves; she came, and didn’t want anymore. He was left frustrated and sure he wouldn’t miss her.
38
Dov arrived at the summer villa Cordova’s woman Isabela shared with Ephraim. It was a big white building, off an unmade road at the edge of a Pueblo Blanco, a white village, in the Sierra Crestellina, about thirty miles north west of the Costa del Sol, high up away from the noisy tourist hordes, mostly British, who wanted only Guinness and all day English breakfasts of baked beans on fried bread, fried eggs, fried sausages, bacon. The villa’s roof was covered in curved dark orange tiles. The veranda interior was painted yellow. He saw blue, yellow and white square tiles in a frieze below arched windows. The split front door was closed and there was a large oval stone pointing inwards. Ephraim’s e-mail had ended characteristically, ‘If the oval stone is across the front door, we are out, but the door is unlocked, you can come in and help yourself to whatever you need. We will not be long. If it points inwards, we are in.’
He walked through a long deep living cum dining room, and smelled winter wood smoke. He glimpsed two people sitting on the rear balcony, and found Ephraim sitting with his arm round the shoulders of a beautiful woman. They waited as his gaze panned the view.
A long line of hills opposite was softened further by trees. Above the hills were serrated mountain peaks, joined by a long ridge running high across the skyline from left to right, ending in one bare triangular peak with a sharply falling face. He’d thought he only had room in his heart for one country, but the drive here and all this before him said that al-Andalus with its dramatic beauty, sat easily next to Israel.
Isabela was radiant and obviously in love with Ephraim. It was novelesque of him to call her Mujer de Córdoba, Cordova’s woman. She was certainly exotic enough, full figure, short black hair, dark skin, flashing blue eyes, where was that mix from?
She instantly liked Dov, wanted to know how he’d first met Ephraim, what her man was like to work with, what Israel was like, how wonderful it must be to live in a Jewish state, despite Ephraim’s little hints that it wasn’t exactly perfect.
If you loved someone that much, you’d share your heart and soul with them, and that made Dov sad, not having such a someone in his life. Yet. Ah, Orli.
Ephraim’s favorite salted almonds, and Manzanilla olives, like those he’d brought to Tel Aviv, and the chilled Fino sherry, prefaced Isabela’s wonderful lunch, fresh vegetables, smoked meats, cheese, local bread, accompanied by a chilled Rioja.
‘All the food’s from the village,’ she promised him, ‘Though I’m afraid that it’s all treif, did I say it right?’
‘I’m not that fastidious about kashrut,’ Dov assured her.
She smiled, cleared plates, and cutlery, leaving the beaded Rioja bottle for the two men.
Ephraim looked at him for a few moments, clearly deciding how and what to say.
‘The lies politicians tell have fooled us in Israel, or we allowed them to,’ he began with a knowing smile. ‘There, fear fuels those lies. Here the lies are transparent when unemployment is at twenty five percent and rising. It affects so much. Swathes of new property developments are left as husks. Even bull fighting has suffered, can you imagine? There are more bulls than fights, tickets for the fights are prohibitive, and the association of bullring owners has requested a government subsidy which was rejected. The bullfight is a careful
ly choreographed spectacle of death, and the cup final of Spanish bullfighting is in Ronda about thirty minutes drive down the valley. I have been once, it was something unique. Did you know there was even a famous Jewish bullfighter, from Brooklyn? Hemingway said he was one of the most respected matadores in Spain.’ He paused for a beat, deciding whether to add something. ‘Matador means killer.’
Dov nodded, wondering what the Spanish would make of an Israeli matador. He smiled at the image of himself in the satin suit of lights costume adorned with gold. He glanced away into the pale blue sky. There were wisps of cloud, one looked like a bird with outstretched wings, then there was an actual eagle, floating lethargically through the air, wings tilting slightly, primary feathers flaring.
‘It is called Aguila Culebrera, a small toed eagle,’ Ephraim told him. ‘We also have hoopoes here.’
‘You can’t, they’re our national bird,’ Dov said, intense before grinning as Ephraim’s face clouded. ‘Don’t take me so seriously,’ he said, still watching the eagle’s flight path.
‘There is more I want to share with you.’
He followed Dov’s eyes and watched the eagle for a moment as it dipped below the first treetops of the closest hill. A soft cool wind breathed gently through the pines, mediating the pleasant winter sun’s warmth, much like Tel Aviv for the time of year. It made a sound Dov couldn’t place.
‘I was a student pathologist as the Mandate ended,’ Ephraim said. ‘I owe Dr Andrew Mackinley much, the head British police pathologist, at a time when the whole science was in its infancy here.’ He meant Israel. ‘He was sober, a Scot who rarely drank, in contrast to the Brits who drank like fish to soften the hatred shown by everyone for them, the Arabs for the brutal way the British had put down their revolt in the 1930s, us because they did not like the new Jews. We were not the usual moneylenders or the criminals like Fagin in Oliver Twist.’
He paused. The breeze’s next breath was harsher, louder.
‘The bodies of those two British sergeants the Irgun hanged, were left in an orange grove, booby-trapped. It brought home to me how vicious the politics of the state in waiting were, how barbaric we new Jews could be, and how like everyone else we were and are. ‘
‘You said he was instrumental in that, Dudik.’
‘It was different then. Men like him had seen their families and friends slaughtered in pogroms. It was very black and white. The Land belonged to the Jews. The British occupied it. They had to be pushed out. Blood would be shed and lives lost. The Arabs would have to be dealt with, and if it came to it, it would be war. You knew your grandfather was an immigrant from Russia?’ Dov nodded. ‘Did he tell you he came here from America, that he was a volunteer in the British Army in Palestine in 1916, fighting the Turks? In about 1919 he returned to America, got involved in fundraising for the Yishuv, there was something to do with prohibition, before finally settling here, that is Israel, so to say. If you want to know more about him, America is where you should start.’
Dov breathed out slowly, breaking the tension Ephraim’s words had generated. ‘I knew nothing of this. What about my father?’
‘He was also in the Irgun. Start with Dudik in America and follow his path and I am sure you will learn much more about them both.’
‘They never spoke much about the Irgun. I didn’t know them as well as I thought.’
‘Yes, you are less complete without that knowledge.’
Then Ephraim returned to the theme of his last conversation with Dov, before Valga. His words were as biting as the icy black waters under the frozen lake. He spoke of the next time that Israel would go to war. He described how perpetual short-term thinking and actions accumulated long-term problems.
He shook his head twice. ‘Layering over them with the latest technology, is cheating reality. What if after the next war, it becomes clear we are not able to win conclusively any more, and that the future is one of continuous attempts to reduce us with collateral damage far higher than our mad last Defense Minister once suggested. He sounded like General Turgidson in Dr Strangelove, ‘No more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops, depending on the breaks.’ What will we do after losing 10-20 thousand? What will we become?’
‘Strangelove? Very apocalyptic. I thought you’d be a little more philosophical far away from it all.’
The old man raised his hands and flexed them. ‘See, I can grab and hold my woman with these, just like a man half my age, and I owe that to you. But doing that whenever I want to, and being here in this beautiful place does not stop me thinking about the country where I was born. It looks like we are ready to march ourselves up to the highest mountain, and jump off it, telling everyone as we go that we are still victims. As if what is going on in Syria is not bad enough, what about the Palestinians?’
The further from Israel Dov had flown, the more he hoped the occupation would recede, because he wanted it to. This veranda gazing wasn’t helping and Ephraim’s ominous vision jarred with the image he retained of the wise, noble master of pathology, genteelly sipping sherry and playing word games with Yakub. Stupid me, he thought, if anyone knew of man’s propensity for base cruelty, and understood the Jewish human condition, this almost father figure of mine would surely be him.
‘We are into a new phase, the emerging authentic Jewish face of the Jewish state. It is post-Zionist and in a form Ben Gurion would have rejected. They want it known that this is Jewish land, always was and will be, with Jews in all the biblical Land of Israel that the God of our fathers swore to us for eternity. And let us face it Dov, that is a hell of a long time.’
‘I wanted to talk, but not about our country’s survivability,’ said Dov forcing a smile. ‘I wanted to tell you about me.’
‘Please forgive me, I have not asked how you are or how Yakub and Lana are now. Has your jaw healed properly? I can see there is no swelling. You constantly place yourself in punishing situations. Is it how you see your role in life? Functioning like that can only be stressful and draining. Maybe you want to retire early, is that it? Find yourself a woman like Isabela, she may even have a friend or two...’
Dov described Lana and Yakub’s rescue from Andromeda Rock, skirted Irit’s death, and was vague about who might fill Hareven’s shoes, because he didn’t know but was certain someone would.
‘I’ll be the target of whoever follows him, and I’m struggling to live with that. I’m much better physically, thanks, but …’
‘I see.’ Ephraim wrinkled his nostrils as if he’d just smelled something unpleasant. Dov thought about the stench of death that had suffused the air of the autopsy room all the years of the old man’s working life. ‘I was good at cutting up inanimate cadavers and determining how they came to be that way. I did not do too well with the animate, so to say.’
‘For someone in their golden age you do pretty well with the living and the gorgeous.’
Isabela had appeared and smiled at the compliment. She asked if they needed anything. They didn’t. She stopped the sun from waning momentarily.
‘Go on then, pour out your heart and I will listen.’
‘I’ve been thinking about this conversation. It’s not easy to know where to start.’
He ignored Ephraim’s proffered Rioja top up.
Ephraim waited, watching Dov’s face.
‘I was a murder investigator.’ He exhaled slowly and then inhaled. ‘I’ve become a murderer... a killer.’
Ephraim’s eyes never left Dov’s.
‘I murdered Baruch Hareven. Not like in a Russian novel, though there are enough convoluted elements in what I did. It was an act of revenge. I engineered it. I have no idea of the extent of all the deaths he was responsible for, in this last case it’s at least five and he kept on trying to kill me. Why he didn’t have Lana and Yakub killed I can’t explain.’
He described Hareven’s death.
‘You showed him a Tibetan
Sky burial? Most ingenious. The Tibetans believe that all animals are linked, they depend on each other, even become one another after death. You knew that?’
‘No. From the time I finally had the facts about him, I knew what the outcome should be. Jailing him would have been unsafe.’ After a beat or two watching Ephraim’s face for a reaction, and getting none, he said wryly, ‘the only thing he didn’t do, was plead for mercy because he was an orphan.’
Ephraim’s expression was flat.‘Sarcastic allusions like that are misplaced, even if accurate and you’re quoting Abraham Lincoln. He was talking about hypocrites. Hareven was not that. Did you smash his head against the walls of your cube?’
‘All I knew was that he had to die.’
Ephraim’s eyes lined up with his, unblinking, contemplative. He looked as if he’d just completed a difficult autopsy and was choosing the right words to describe cause of death.
‘What do you want from me? Absolution? I am not your confessor. We have our consciences and we have God, if you believe in God. Do you?’
‘I’m not sure. Like you I deal with the rational. I apply my skills to explain the irrational, the emotions that drive people to commit crimes. Things I can’t explain I don’t put down to acts of God. And yet…’
‘Conscience means recognizing good and evil and separating them. I know you know that. I cannot tell you whether what you described means you did evil or not. Only you can know. It is what is in your head and your heart, and the head always comes first.’
‘Oh right, your decision to leave the land of your birth was a head choice?’
‘One, we are not discussing me. Two, do not get aggressive with me as a means of defending your troubled conscience.’
It came again, cool on his skin, that soft wind blowing through the tops of the trees, making the branches wave gently back and forth, parting their interlacing pine needles. What did it sound like?
‘If you thought I could offer you a way to expiate your guilt, forgive you your sins, real or imagined, you’re wrong. Atonement is something you have to perform alone. We have a whole day for it, once a year. That might be a good time to start. That is the best I can offer.’