Just People
Page 43
He let Ephraim fill his glass and gulped it down. He didn’t enjoy it.
Isabela brought coffee, a dessert of chestnuts in brandy and fresh oranges. Dov sipped the coffee, its bitterness adding to the sourness in him. The chestnuts and oranges almost replaced it with sweetness. He managed to thank her and wished her much happiness with Ephraim.
‘Do not let it eat you up Dov,’ the old man said. ‘Follow the past, put some perspective on it all. But promise me you will come back for another visit?’
‘You couldn’t keep me away.’
They saw mutual warmth in each other’s eyes and did something they’d never imagined they’d do, they hugged and Ephraim went the extra mile and kissed him on both cheeks.
*
From an hotel in Seville, Dov called Daniel Freund.
‘I’m taking some time out Daniel, and wanted to renew our acquaintance. I’m really coming for some family research. I believe my grandfather came to the States as a refugee from Tsarist Russia and I want to know as much about his story as possible.’
‘First of all, it’d be a pleasure to see you again,’ Freund said warmly. ‘I have a home in New York and I’d love for you to stay as long as you’d like. I owe you at least that for helping me that night in Washington.’
Dov tried to dispel any notion of a reciprocal favor but Freund brushed that aside, and told him to e-mail him with his travel plans.
His next call was to Doug Chiswick. Doug was a distant cousin from America who’d come to Israel in the 1970s, became a citizen, joined the IDF and got himself into a little trouble. Dov and grandpa Dudik had helped him out and they’d stayed in touch ever since, not frequently, but they felt close. Doug had become a consulting forensic psychologist, very successful, and when they did talk there was a mutual professional interest that brought them closer still.
‘How long will you be here?’
‘Hard to say.’
‘Use me, I’ve lots of connections and I’ll help any way I can.’
‘Thanks Doug.’
‘Call me when you get in. Looking forward to it.’
Then he FaceTimed Orli. ‘When are you coming?’ He told her. ‘I look forward to seeing you Dov, but please, low expectations, OK?’ He acted as if he hadn’t heard those last words, focusing on how she smiled as he’d announced his plans. ‘I’ll call you on arrival,’ he said. Then he blew her a kiss. He saw her now expected blush, but not how her head turned away.
Dov spent the next forty-five minutes booking one-way tickets, alarmed at the cost, but paying it anyway: Seville to Madrid, Madrid to London, London to New York. He emailed the details to Orli, Daniel and Doug. The flight schedule allowed him another day in Seville.
The city offered him glimpses of its diverse history, Roman, Muslim, Catholic, its maritime significance with the river Guadalquivir and the beautiful Torre del Oro, the Golden Tower. Of the Jews there was little sign, though an exhibition told him that for two hundred years they had lived peaceably in the city, some Jewish financiers even residing in the Torre del Oro, before a riot broke out in 1391 and four thousand Jews of the Jewish quarter perished. On a wall nearby there was graffiti in English. ‘Gaza Free!’ Someone here remembers Gaza, Dov thought. At home the war that finished only weeks ago has already been forgotten, like it’s a normal part of life, once in a while we need it, it comes and it goes and in between we carry on life as normal. That’s normal?
Back at the hotel after a siesta he browsed the net on his iPad, delving briefly into news from home about a homosexual murder whose ripples spread out to senior police echelons, rumblings of fresh civil unrest against the Morsi government in Egypt, more deaths in Syria, the refugee crisis in Jordan, first rumors of a new US peace initiative for Israel-Palestine.
He was about to power off the device when a tone sounded for a new email. It was from his boss, the new Justice Minister. She wrote: ‘I hope you are beginning to rest and recuperate. I’m updating you on some of the loose ends after Trigon. I’ve instituted new proceedings against Ron Calev. With help from your very able Deputy head, we have corroborating evidence from Palestinian villagers via a PCP Detective Inspector Nabulsi and two settlers. Your Deputy is heading an investigation into a police officer, Gurwitz, at the Kfar Saba police station for his incompetent handling of the Biderman kidnap. Stay in touch. Best wishes.’
He went out for some tapas. There was a tapas bar in a square round the corner. The little waitress with the real smile and no English tried to tell him he’d ordered too much food, but Dov dismissed her in perfect Spanish and tucked in. He was famished. Washing down the diverse dishes with sangria, he watched a football match. Drowning in heavy rain, on a widescreen TV the bar offered to the square. He asked around and was told it was Atlético Madrid versus Valencia. When he asked where the game was being played, he was told dismissively that it was Madrid where it often rained, not like here in Andalucia.
The crowd in the square was a mix of ages and nationalities, predominantly young, lively, many of the girls pretty in tight skirts and jeans, loose tops and shawls against the night cool. He ordered another jug of sangria, getting the waitress to understand he wanted less juice and more wine, lemon and cinnamon, and he brought a pack of cigarettes from a machine in the bar.
Sevillanos, like most Spanish, come to life in the evening, go out to eat, drink, and enjoy the vibrant regional capital. Dov, enjoying his moments of relaxation, was boxing away memories, beginning to enjoy his freedom, feeling human.
By eleven he was full, happy, but noted that he’d smoked over half the pack. He surveyed the scene and wondered how many of these young people knew about killing. He became maudlin and could feel those box lids pushing to open. He was saved from their contents flooding out with shouts of ‘Ariba! Arriba!’ as a line of young skaters, seven of them, all crouching down, rolled along the narrow pavement at speed, the middle skater waving a banner of some sort and shouting to pedestrians to clear the way. The square erupted in laughter and shouts of approval.
Dov stood and went in search of a quieter space and some bourbon, and found an almost deserted bar but the first glass didn’t anesthetize his sense of isolation, it aggravated it. After two more, he was drunk and needed a change of scene and large amounts of water. The hotel’s doors were locked, and swaying, he had to ring for the night concierge to let him in. He took the elevator up to the roof bar, hoping that someone had left a bottle of water behind. Instead there was an iced water dispenser and glasses. He helped himself and sat.
The clock in the orange lit tower of La Catedral chimed twice.
He drank more water.
A full moon shone between clouds. A plane’s engine roar reached him above the persistent hum of a nearby air-conditioning unit. Some late-nighters shouted in a street below.
Dudik had once said, ‘The blood always remembers.’ Why that came back to him now, he couldn’t explain. Perhaps it was a subliminal prompt from the plans to discover as much about Dudik as possible. What had he meant, that there was an inherited characteristic, some family trait they shared?
A movement in the sky made him look up again, his head clearer, his focus sharper. He watched a flight of birds in V formation heading west, white against a black sky, eerie in the reflection of sodium lights below. They were pointed in the direction he would be flying.
If Ephraim was right and Dudik had had a role in the hangings nearly seventy years ago, revenge acts they’d been called by their perpetrators, then there was indeed a connection between them beyond being grandfather and grandson. Had his father been involved?
‘Real or imagined,’ Ephraim had said about Dov’s sins. Were they acts of self-preservation or the product of ‘something in the blood?’ Dov believed that all Jews had a visceral fear, buried in their DNA, of not surviving. Those who’d escaped the fall of the Second Temple and eventually reached Spain and Seville, ultimately
found themselves in a ghetto and were slaughtered because they were neither liked nor trusted by Christians and Muslims. They must have known that fear.
Never! said Dov Chizzik, son of the Jewish state. All this lofty philosophizing was about something much more universal, the will to respond to any threat to life. If you prick us we will make you bleed.
A hint of cold air caressed his forehead. It wasn’t as refreshing as the breeze the previous evening at the villa, though he finally recognized what the sound reminded him of. It was the roar of a crowd at a distant stadium. He imagined they were applauding him, the Israeli matador de toros.
He hoped that in learning about Dudik and Dan, he might define his future better. That wasn’t guaranteed, it could all go nowhere.
And he saw himself in the bullring, watching as the red sun, the blue sky, the yellow sand, gradually bleached away, until what remained was a translucent image, in which there were no colors at all, just shades of dark and light, and he couldn’t tell whether what was soaking the sand was the bull’s blood or his.
AL NEHIYAH – SOF – END
About the Author
Paul Usiskin is a dual UK/Israeli citizen, living in London and frequently visiting Israel. After attending the Hebrew University, he served in the IDF. He then became a journalist and TV documentary producer. Paul has worked as a peace advocate, given lectures and workshops at numerous institutions, and debated at the Oxford Union. He is now a full-time writer who broadcasts and blogs about Israel and the Mid-East. He’s written for The Daily Beast, The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, and many more. Paul also appears on TV and radio on these topics.
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