Dinner at the Centre of the Earth

by Nathan Englander

  “And you?”

  “Which me?” Sander says.

  “Any you.”

  “I’m still belligerent, bossy, Hebrew-speaking Sander for about an hour. I’m sorry you won’t be here to watch me finish molting. To see what bird I turn into next.”

  “And Farid?”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. Farid is already someone else’s headache. And don’t be fooled by the man you met. He’s as bad as his brother. The only difference is Farid fights from a yacht.”

  He does think that he is beginning to understand what Sander-who-is-Sander-for-but-one-more-hour has just told him. He understands that Farid is the enemy. He understands that Joshua is right now buckled into his seat and taking off on a plane.

  Thinking hard, he also understands that, while he slept, he’d participated in something violent, and terrible, and deadly. And that, with one slip of the tongue, he’d turned back into himself.

  “You should feel good,” Sander says. “The General feels good. He has already released a statement to the news. You fucked up, but you’re also a hero. This was a hugely valuable mission, target-wise. So if your exit goes smoothly, tomorrow you’ll be balanced on your hemorrhoids in Paris, making cold calls, and saving the Jews.”

  “How do I go back? After this? What we just did—it’s not what I signed up for.”

  “Actually, if you think about it even for a nanosecond, it kind of, exactly, is. It’s just what you signed up for.”

  “I signed up to prevent violence. To disrupt technological advances that will lead to war. To collect data—harmless data, by selling our adversaries the machines that will catch it. I joined up to gather intelligence from our enemies.”

  “And what the fuck do you think we do with the intelligence you gather?”

  Sander then reaches behind and brings forward a manila envelope bent, the long way, in half. “Here are your tickets, and a replacement passport, fresh from the embassy—still warm as toast.”

  Z accepts the envelope. Z accepts what has just transpired. He opens the cover to the passport to see who he will be for his return to France. He flips through the visas and exit and entry stamps.

  While he does so, Sander gets up and goes over to the wall, where he presses down on a large metal toggle. With the grinding hum of some ancient engine, the shades in front of Z’s beautiful view slowly draw down.

  “That’s it?” Z says. “We’re just done?”

  “The moment that bomb hit, we were done. It’s your indiscretion that has also made our decamping a bit of a rush.” Sander, staring out at the lake as the shades cut into his outlook, sighs deeply. “Prepare as we might in this business, we don’t work in a sterile field. Always we must be ready for change. Now go upstairs and get your things sorted. In the meantime, I’ll make you a peanut butter sandwich and cut some cucumber for the train.”

  “You’re packing me lunch?”

  “That is Plan A. If you hurry down with your bag, and the things I asked for. If not, I switch to Plan B. And instead of the sandwich, I will knock you over the head and drag you into the kitchen, where I will, with great speed, chop you into pieces and feed you into the industrial food processor. Then I will spend the morning waving at the neighbors over the back hedge as I pour you, bucket after bucket, around the gardens and into the lake for all the happy little fish to eat.”

  2014, Black Site (Negev Desert)

  “Take it,” the guard says, calling in from the hallway. “It’s point-two-five milligrams. If you were free, you could still operate a backhoe after. It’s just to cut the edge.”

  From the looks of it, it would seem that Prisoner Z is not currently interested in having any edge removed. He stands on the bed, yelling down at the guard through the peek-a-boo window in the cell door.

  Prisoner Z is having a very reasonable breakdown, considering the news. The guard, expecting as much, had already fetched a feel-good pill and now takes turns reaching his hand through the slot, offering the capsule resting in his palm, and trying to speak sense to Prisoner Z through it.

  “Sister-fucker! Son of a whore!” is what Prisoner Z yells. “Let your guard down—guard—and I’ll split your head like a sunflower seed! Come in so I can show you from where the fish pees!”

  “A classic,” the guard says, admiring, while also respecting the gravity of the situation.

  “Deep breaths,” he says to Prisoner Z. “You need to slow down your heart.”

  Prisoner Z appears to process this last bit. He takes some deep breaths, eventually climbing down from his bed.

  Looking petulant, in the guard’s opinion, Prisoner Z approaches the slot, opening his mouth and sticking out his tongue.

  This time, when the guard puts his hand through, Prisoner Z accepts the capsule. He steps back so the guard can see its gelatin jacket stuck to the end of his tongue, and then, like that, he swallows.

  2002, Karlsruhe

  Z dials from a pay phone at the Karlsruhe station, while waiting on his connecting train. He can’t believe it when Farid answers, and he says, “I thought you’d already have gone to ground.”

  “And miss a chance to talk to you and whoever else is on the line?”

  “It’s only me this morning. The others are busy scrubbing away fingerprints and pulling up stakes. We should probably talk quickly. I can’t promise they won’t be listening again soon.”

  “Let me guess. This is the call where you try and turn me—on the day you killed my brother? Is that what your recruitment manual recommends?”

  “No. It’s not recruitment. If anything, I’m calling to turn myself.”

  A soft laughter comes from Farid, hardly different from the sound of the crying that Z had heard during the four a.m. talk.

  “I’m serious,” Z says. “I’m bringing you a second deal.”

  “From a man whose face I can trust?”

  “I want to help level the scales.”

  “And how will you do that, Joshua? Because I already have my own plan for the same.”

  “I can get you things, Farid. Useful things. I have access.”

  “You’re going to compromise your side, because you feel guilty?”

  “I’m going to protect my side by trying to fix an imbalance that cannot and should not be maintained.”

  “So what is my part in this?”

  “Your part is no part. I will get you what you need to protect your people. All I ask is that you do nothing in return. End the cycle. That’s how I’ll protect mine.”

  Farid takes a moment, and Z listens to the sound of a train rolling off.

  “Call me after,” is what Farid says. “Let’s finish this round first.”

  “Please,” Z says. “Don’t do it. Whatever it is, just see what I get you before. See the lengths to which I’ll go. Give me a couple of days. You can give me that long.”

  “After,” Farid says. “Talk to me then. If you’re going to murder our children, you must be prepared to drink from the same cup of poison.”

  2002, Paris

  Z tells her about those sweet and pure years in Jerusalem, the Peace Process years. He tells the waitress how wonderful it felt to live there, even with the terror that darkened so many days. He shares with her his memories of what it was like to be the new immigrant, what it meant for him to make do, while he was broke and alone and yet always exhilarated by that ancient city.

  He was so busy then, becoming fluent in Hebrew, getting himself educated, and embarking on a career that quickly turned into a secret other.

  When he had his Hebrew to study, and his schoolwork to do, he would always take the bus up the mountain, even if his classes had been down on Givat Ram.

  He’d hop off at the last stop and file past security, pausing for inspection by one of the old men (and they were always old), whose investigations consisted of pressing their fingers to the bottom of his book bag as if checking to see if it was ripe.

  Z would settle into the library’s fourth floor, feeling hims
elf cocooned in a vision of Israel’s brightest possible future. That’s what he was trying to express to the waitress, how for him, for his dreams of what Israel might become, Mount Scopus summed it up.

  Crammed together at those study tables were religious and secular, Arab and Jew, rich and poor, white and brown and (sometimes) black. The social groupings based on subject and course. The focus of the students—as with all universities the universe over—resting on the twin pillars of learning and getting laid.

  That campus was a place of sex and study, a refuge from the attendant politics and attendant hatreds that constantly rattled the state. It was as if all of that noise was filtered out, and what was left was just pure hope. They were up on that mountain waiting for the inevitable harmony to set in, a promised change that had literally drawn Z from America. He had moved to Israel to contribute to that happy age. He had rushed his aliyah, transferring to Hebrew University in the middle of his graduate degree, because he was afraid if he stayed in America any longer, he’d miss it.

  He was afraid peace would start without him.

  Z admits, in response to the waitress’s question, that of course there were the junior politicians in student government, and the junior idiots and crackpots on campus, who would one day, likewise, see their professional idiocies and crackpottitudes blossom. But the overarching, dominant goodness and happy idealism of the place easily drowned them out.

  Nothing better demonstrated the unique normality of that oasis than the unstated policy that one could leave one’s bag on a table and, for a few moments, walk away.

  Really, outside of the university, Z could think of no other place in the whole country where a bag left unattended wouldn’t have the first person to spot it yelling out without hesitation, the bomb squad summoned, a cordon immediately thrown. So often and frequently did this happen that whenever anyone was late to a dinner or a drink, all they would need say was, “Suspicious object”—everyone’s permanent, eternally reusable excuse. Z always remembers the face of a businessman running back to fetch his forgotten briefcase just in time to see the sappers set it off, all his papers swirling down onto the sidewalk after being blasted into the air.

  But on campus, no one expected you to drag all your books from your favorite carrel to run out for a coffee or a smoke or a quick pee.

  When Z was hungry, which, in those days, in his slightly younger man’s body, he always ravenously was, he’d wend through the absurdly byzantine main building and make his way across the donor-named Nancy Reagan Plaza, to the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria, which served—as far as he was concerned—the best schnitzel in town.

  Every school day for countless school days, he ate the same thing: a colossal, state-subsidized plate of schnitzel, rice, and gravy. A meal served to him by a kitchen staff that was a mix of Israelis from West Jerusalem and Palestinians from the neighboring village. Z felt warmly toward all of them. It was the kind of fondness fostered by loyalty and routine, and the nurturing inherent in being cared for.

  Answering another question from the waitress, one punctuated by a guffaw, Z admits that yes, he falls easily in love with anyone who feeds him, and that when he finds a lunch he likes, he does indeed eat it every day.

  He also admits that he is telling the story this way because he really wants her to grasp how important and special that place was to him, and how singular its character, because he wants her to understand how perfectly-evilly-perfect it was to blow it up.

  “Do you get it? They’d have to have known more than the layout of campus. They’d have to have truly understood its mentality to think they had a plan. This killer went into that always vibrant, truly mixed, and truly welcoming space and set his bag down among young people. He set his bomb down among all those bright futures and walked away. In this terrible time of suicide bombers, this wasn’t a suicide. It was a bomb that needed goodwill to go off.”

  “And you knew it was Farid behind it?”

  “Instantly. Even before credit was taken. Even before the final body count was released. I knew who did it, and why he did it, and what it was in response to—barely a week gone by. I also knew that the Mossad would be back up on Farid in a heartbeat, that they’d be on him ten times as hard, and that they’d be ten times more thorough. It wasn’t the brother anymore. He wasn’t the mark. Farid would now be the one.”

  “Isn’t that good, in a way? Considering?”

  “Not if you banked on him being different. Not if you maybe sent him significant state secrets, to try and change the outcome for both peoples. And even if you made your choices expressly to keep that cafeteria from blowing up. I mean, how long from that attack until they find the things I sent him? How long until they’d be up on me?”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I activated my mother.”

  “Your mother?”

  “What else does a Jewish boy do when trouble is afoot?”

  2014, Black Site (Negev Desert)

  In his cell, curled fetal on the bed, Prisoner Z waits for the pill to kick in. He knows he’ll have to weather the next horrific stretch of panic before he finds any relief. He looks up at the camera over the door, raising an arm to give the guard the finger and then offering it to the next camera and the next. When he is done, he returns to his previous entertainment and recommences the digging of nails into palms.

  Prisoner Z closes his eyes, letting loose a cascade of anxiety-driven thoughts that he fears will finally break him. He attempts a positive visualization, willing the medicine to take effect.

  He pictures his brain’s receptors sifting through a river of molecules, plucking what they need from the stream rushing by. He struggles to make his whole self join in the effort.

  Prisoner Z lying there, patient, patient, panning for gold.

  The guard comes to visit when Prisoner Z is flat out, looking fully corpse-like. On the floor next to the bed, the guard sets two sweaty cans of Coke. Onto a prison tray, he dumps two servings of fries from their greasy sleeves.

  “I brought ketchup too,” he says.

  He presents the squeeze bottle to his insensible prisoner, and then, turning it over, he squirts a bloody puddle.

  Prisoner Z stares at the ceiling, unblinking, his arm hanging limp off the side of the mattress, knuckles dragging the floor.

  “I drove all the way to the steakiya,” the guard says. “With you knocked out, I wasn’t afraid to leave the shop unmanned.”

  In response, no response. Prisoner Z does not stir.

  “I know you’re alive,” the guard says. “It was clear from the monitors. Zombie-you looks different than dead you. Or, at least, I think it does, not yet having had the pleasure of seeing the real thing.”

  It is to this that Prisoner Z deigns to respond.

  “You, sir, have drugged me good.”

  “I usually do give you point-two-fives. But I made a very sad face for the doctor, and he gave me the big-boy dose. That one was like a dozen of the usual.” The guard considers Prisoner Z and, feeling benevolent, admits, “Watching the feed, I did kind of wonder if I’d lost you. But then you were doing that thing you always do with your mouth.”

  “I don’t do anything with my mouth.”

  “Except that you do. Every time I dope you, you start with the dry mouth thing as soon as the pills start doing their job.”

  The guard feels quite proud for knowing. He wants to make clear that Prisoner Z is not the only one in town smart enough to read people. The guard can also observe and take note.

  The guard dips a fry in the ketchup and dangles it over Prisoner Z’s face. Prisoner Z tips his head back and opens his mouth to receive it. Before the guard even moves, Prisoner Z opens his mouth for another.

  The third fry Prisoner Z takes for himself, levering himself into a seated position.

  “Was that so hard?” the guard says, fishing the backgammon board from his backpack. “Now why not drink your soda before it turns hot. We can play a couple of games. You can take advanta
ge of your winning streak.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore, does it, if the game’s never going to end?”

  “You don’t know it won’t,” the guard says, cheerful. “You can’t tell what the future will bring. Maybe you’ll be rescued tomorrow. Maybe the Palestinians will finally conquer us and make you ambassador to France. In the meantime, why not throw some dice and move a few checkers around?”

  “I’ll never forgive you,” Prisoner Z says.

  “‘Never’ is a very long time.”

  “Did you even pass on my letters? All these years, and me pleading with a dead man. And you, letting me write him.”

  “I gave every one to my mother, as promised. Also, he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t even in a coma. They called it a semiconscious state—it’s different. They think he was listening. She read him every one.”

  “So that’s you telling me you’re a man of your word?”

  “Aren’t I? I mean, what’s the difference? The General’s response, healthy or sick, alive or dead—it’s been kind of the same for you. He put you here to stay.”

  “It’s kind of not the same. It’s kind of earth-shatteringly different. You should have told me so I could have adjusted my strategy.”

  The guard shakes his head, it’s so sad.

  “What could you do from in here?”

  “I’d have pressed you harder to make me exist again.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “And you know that’s not true. You could make noise. If not from inside the system, you could have gone to the papers. You still can.”

  “If I do, they’ll either censor the story or label me a conspiracy theorist, or a madman, or a drunk. They’ll either humiliate me out there or toss me in here. We’d be roommates.” Looking around at what is no better than a dungeon, the guard corrects himself. “Well, not in-here, in-here, but maybe in a real cell in a real prison. They’d give me a few years to ponder the bigness of my mouth.”