The Zigzag Kid

by David Grossman

  From crooks to cooks? This was a pretty astounding idea. Dad croaked like a frog who’d dug a tunnel in England and popped out in a kitchen in the middle of France. “A restaurant? A restaurant you say?!”

  “Yes! A restaurant! With homemade food. I’ll be the cook, and you be the mana—”

  “And maybe I’ll put on a nice pink apron and help you cook, huh? Maybe you think I’m too old to be a detective? Go on, say it, say it!”

  I could see what we were heading for. I tried to change the subject fast, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. Now they would fight. Then she would leave. And every temporary departure brought the final one that much closer. I couldn’t live this way, in the midst of so much uncertainty.

  “You used to be a good detective,” said Gabi in a quiet voice that boded ill. “You used to be the best, and everybody knows it. But that one episode and what you went through as a result of it have made you lose all sense of proportion. You treat your work like some private vendetta against crime. Don’t you see that it’s impossible to maintain professional objectivity that way?”

  Silence in the shambles. No one could say a thing like that to Dad and hope to come out alive.

  But still he didn’t answer! He didn’t answer her!

  “You’re in such a fever to get back at every petty criminal, you wind up giving yourself away!” More silence. Slowly and deliberately, Dad stirred the macaroni. Gabi was so tense, she kept chopping the same poor tomato into tinier and tinier pieces. She could tell that Dad was listening to her for real this time, and here was my chance to say something that would shut her up. What did she know about being a detective? What did she understand about the eternal battle between the police force and the dark forces of crime?

  But then a memory flashed through my mind. Something which happened while Dad and I were lying in wait for some car thieves recently. It was the way he acted, like Gabi said. He had spoiled the ambush, and it was lucky I just happened to be there with him.

  I went on quietly scrambling the eggs in the pan. A new situation was developing, it seemed.

  “I really blew up when they called me a raging elephant,” said Dad quietly. “Imagine how you’d feel if they called you an … um …”

  With heroic effort, Gabi managed to ignore this lame remark. “It’s true the article was vicious,” she said. “But there were one or two points you ought to consider if you want to change your life!” At last she set aside that tomato, glared briefly at the red pulp on the cutting board, and turned her vengeance on a cucumber. “You’re so blinded by rage whenever you come across any petty crook that you lose the patience you need to trap him! Or your timing goes wrong during the interrogation! You don’t have enough perseverance to make use of the simplest strategies!” And she slashed the cucumber three times for emphasis.

  We were back to back, the three of us, but I peeked around out of the corner of my eye.

  “And I bet there’s not a single drop of iodine in the whole damn house!” she shouted suddenly, dropping the knife and rushing to the bathroom to stop the blood that dripped from her finger. Dad stood motionless, his back like a cast-iron wall. I couldn’t decide whether to go after her or stay and comfort Dad. My loyalties were divided. He hadn’t seen what I saw: that Gabi deliberately cut her finger. Grimacing with self-hatred, she had cut her own finger with the knife.

  “She’s right,” said Dad in a faraway voice. “Everybody’s telling me, but I never listen. She had to say it to my face because it hurts her and she really cares about me. She’s right.”

  “No, she’s not,” I protested, my mouth dry with fear. What did he mean, she was right? Dad was the greatest detective in the whole country. He had to stay on the job until I could join him so we could be a team.

  “Wait here, Nonny,” said Dad, his voice so gentle I barely recognized it. “I’ll go bandage her finger.”

  How I wished that Gabi were beside me in the car, listening to Felix talk.

  “And perhaps he is best not only in Israel,” Felix continued, nodding his head for emphasis as he repeated the words, “not only in Israel!”

  I inhaled deeply, taking in what he had said. The only interruptions to our manly silence were the humming and muttering noises Felix made. I was feeling peaceful, dreamy and peaceful, almost as if I were listening to a story about myself, a kid whose dad, a high-ranking detective, arranged an adventure for him in honor of his bar mitzvah, a voyage to the darker side of life, as a special gift for his coming-of-age so that he would know both sides of life, and remember that even his dad had another side—a side that was wild and free and happy.

  Or had been, once upon a time.

  When he was young. Before he married Zohara, before he joined the force. I knew. Gabi had told me about it, or hinted, rather, and Dad’s cronies would sometimes recall with a wink the rapscallion he used to be. He had two friends, the Three Musketeers, people called them, army buddies who started a furniture-moving business in Jerusalem, not that Dad ever mentioned any of this; for him the mere thought of happier days seemed to desecrate his mourning over Zohara. But I collected bits of information from Gabi and pieced them together in my heart: once upon a time in Jerusalem there were three famous hooligans with hearts of gold, chief among them, Koby Feuerberg, with his cowboy hat and horselaugh and daredevil exploits, like dancing a waltz with a refrigerator strapped to his back, or stealing a zebra from the Biblical Zoo and riding it through the streets; and sometimes in the evening, after work, the Three Musketeers would comb their hair with brilliantine and crash the fancy parties in the better neighborhoods, where one of them would cut in on the belle of the ball and whirl her around till she nearly fainted, while the other two stood guard to make sure no one else cut in, and they would suddenly vanish and turn up at another party. A lot of ladies were after him in his bachelor days, and he would sweep them off their feet, but never fall in love with any of them, he always said no woman alive could catch a man like him, she’d have to hunt him down and shoot him first, if she really wanted him, that is, he would laugh. Yes, that’s how Dad used to be a million years ago, whizzing through the streets of Jerusalem on his motorcycle with the little sidecar where a tomato plant grew so luxuriantly that he could pick a fresh tomato and eat it as he drove, and people called him the Tomato Cowboy, and whenever a policeman pulled him over for reckless driving, Dad would bribe him with a luscious tomato, and everyone would laugh and sigh, What can you do, a cowboy is a cowboy …

  Where was he now, the man he used to be? Why had I never known him? Why had he never peeked out at me from behind Dad’s eyes? Where was the prankster who liked to steal cars and mount them with square wooden wheels? Why did grief come and dig that terrible crease between his eyes with an iron claw?

  Felix drove on, still humming, and I only hoped I would be able to keep my heart from bursting through my teeth. I kept touching my lucky charm, the bullet Dad had taken out of him. Some criminal had fired a gun at him, but Dad kept shooting till the guy surrendered. I wore that bullet on a chain around my neck and never took it off, even in the shower. It came out of his body, and it would stay with me for the rest of my life. We’re together, I reflected, I’m here with Dad. Everything I do now I do with him, even if I break the law; his spirit is with me in the bullet I wear around my neck. All of him—even the long-lost cowboy—is with me, next to my heart.

  This was a moment of rare insight. I didn’t always realize how close we were, Dad and I, closer than twins, even closer than two pros working side by side who understand each other without saying a word. Sometimes I’d get this lacerating fear that I would grow up to be different from him. But just then, in the speeding Beetle, I felt that I was growing, growing with him, getting to know him to the depths of his soul, perhaps for the first time ever. Because only now had he revealed himself fully to me, and given of himself with unflinching generosity, and this was his greatest gift for my bar mitzvah.

  A police cruiser with a wailing siren was
heading our way. Heh heh heh, I chuckled inwardly, like an old crook. Maybe the cops in the cruiser are hot on the trail of the hijackers in the black Bugatti! I checked myself: no, I wasn’t afraid, not much. What did the cruiser have to do with me? Actually, I kind of wished they would come after us so we could lose them in a thrilling car chase. Of course we would lose them. We were fearless, lawless, a couple of wild animals. And with Felix beside me, everything would turn out right. He had experience, he had nerves of steel. No one would catch me under the spell of his deep blue gaze, at least for a day or two, then I would forget everything and mend my ways, I would be a good little boy, and never tell lies or misbehave, and only sometimes, alone in the night would I remember this day or maybe two, and all that happened in reality, though it will seem like a dream: the hijacked train, the black Bugatti, and the wailing sirens of a hundred police cars chasing after me, till I lose them and escape. Because I am swift and sudden, I buzz and sting and fly away. A master of crime is Nonny Feuerberg, soon to be the best detective in the whole wide world!

  My heart was pounding. I pressed my knees together and bent over in the protective-custody position. For a moment I felt confused and scared, because, who am I anyway?

  10

  A Chapter I Prefer to Leave Without a Title, Particularly a Humorous One

  Gabi’s been with us forever, I told Felix; that is, as far back as I can remember. She came to Dad and me after my mother died, which happened when I was very young, like at the age of one. I paused briefly, because this was usually the point where people started asking all sorts of stupid questions, like what she died of, and did I remember her. Felix, however, said nothing.

  I was a little perplexed. Why did he show no interest, why didn’t he care about this motherless child, this virtual orphan? I decided to conceal my surprise from him, though, because as I explained earlier, ordinarily it was the other way around, people were always bugging me with questions I didn’t feel like answering, so I could just pretend it was the same this time.

  I told him more about Gabi, that she’d worked as Dad’s secretary since the old days when he was deputy chief of the bunko squad, and then transferred with him to the felonies division, and stayed on when he became a detective. Wherever he went, she went.

  “I am the thunder, as it were,” she would say, “if we mistakenly assume for the moment that your dad is the lightning, that is.”

  “She is kind of thundery,” I explained to Felix. “She’s big and fat, and has a booming voice, but let me tell you, Gabi’s the greatest, I don’t know how we would have managed without her. [Brief pause] Especially after my mother died.”

  Silence. Okay. He had a right to be silent. Even though, in my opinion, when a kid says, “After my mother died,” it makes him sort of special. Or maybe not. Felix turned down a narrow road that led us to the sea and the sunset. The green beetle rolled slowly on, as though there were no policemen anywhere.

  “She’s always trying out new diets,” I confided, “because she’s sworn not to give up the battle until her body is fit for human habitation. But she loves to eat, she’s a chocolate freak, and then Dad and I cook these big wonderful meals, so she has to join us.”

  She eats and then she hates herself. But when the onions sizzle in the olive oil and Dad throws in some mushrooms and stirs the macaroni, how can she be expected to control herself? Sometimes I suspect Dad of doing it on purpose: of cruelly tempting her so she’ll get even fatter and he’ll have an even better excuse not to marry her.

  “But Zohara was really beautiful,” I told him for no particular reason. “I saw a picture of her once.”

  Silence. He drove along the shore.

  “Dad kept only that one picture. A picture of him and Zohara. He wanted to throw all the rest of her things away after she died.” I stressed the word “died,” in case he hadn’t heard me the first time. But he didn’t respond this time either. He just hunched over the steering wheel, with a long, tense face.

  So be it. There’s no law that says you have to discuss a dead woman, even if she was the mother of the person you’re talking to. Because that person may not be so interested in talking about her himself. He hardly knew her. He was only a year old when she died, and she’s hardly ever mentioned at home. She just died and that was that.

  “And what about Gabi?” asked Felix out of the blue.

  “She doesn’t talk about her, either,” although occasionally, in the middle of a conversation, Gabi would fall strangely silent, as though she sensed a presence passing through the room and we had to pretend not to notice, and then Gabi would pick up with “Now, where were we?” I knew that Dad had forbidden her to mention Zohara in our house, because every time I worked up the courage to ask about her, Gabi would say, “Anything you want to know concerning Zohara, kindly ask your father,” and then seal her lips, though I knew very well that she was bursting to tell me things.

  “No, you did not understand,” said Felix. “I meant, why is it Gabi came to take care of you?”

  “Oh, that.”

  All right, then, I thought, if this guy has no respect for the dead, if all he wants to talk about is Gabi, we’ll talk about Gabi. In any case, there’s not that much I can tell him about Zohara, since I know next to nothing about her. She’s a stranger who happened to give birth to me, whereas Gabi’s invested so much in my upbringing.

  “When Dad married Zohara, he took a leave of absence from the police department; he wanted to try a different life. But after she died,” I continued, “he decided to rejoin the force, just when Gabi was thinking of quitting. She was fed up with working as a secretary. Gabi has loads of talent. She could succeed at anything.”

  “Like what, for example?”

  “Like what? Like being an actress maybe, or a singer! And she’s a fabulous organizer, she organizes the holiday shows for police force kids, and she writes skits for the department ball. And she’s terrific at crossword puzzles, and she’s a real film buff, we go to see at least one film a week, and she does these hilarious impersonations of people in the news, and let’s see, what else? … She has a great sense of humor. Practically perfect.”

  Felix smiled.

  “You love Gabi, don’t you?”

  “She’s the best,” I said. Too bad I couldn’t convince Dad of that, on account of her looks—or on account of Zohara …

  “The trouble is that she is not pretty enough for your Mr. Father,” reflected Felix. I thought of something Gabi used to say: “Oh, why did my parents have to give me such a patty-cake face when I was meant to be Brigitte, the femme fatale!” I, personally, felt glad that Gabi had never resigned herself to her looks, otherwise she might have turned into some dumpy woman, with nothing interesting about her, when the opposite was true: she had a razor-keen wit and a zest for life—and suddenly I wondered whether maybe Gabi was Gabi not because of any genetic trait, and not because of her education, but because her soul had chosen to fight her form and face, and that was why she was always trying to be so smart and special, and then I understood how hard she’d had to struggle all her life, without anyone’s help, without anyone to confide in.

  “Why she wanted to leave the police department?” Felix asked quietly.

  “Because she was sick and tired of typing reports about corpses and murderers and organized crime.”

  “And you know what I hated most?” she would ask me. “Seeing your father’s sour face every morning.” (I didn’t mention this to Felix.) She never heard a word of praise from Dad, and he would fly off the handle if she missed a day of work.

  “Silly fool that I am, I thought this was his clumsy way of showing how much he needed me,” Gabi would say with a sigh whenever she told me the story.

  “Once she almost left him,” I continued, “but she decided to stay on a little longer.”

  “Because he looked so sad and so defeated, I couldn’t leave, and I couldn’t stay with him, either,” recalled Gabi, as we discussed it for the umpteenth time,
over a cup of hot chocolate at a café after the movies, and later at home, in the kitchen, just the two of us. “The circles under his eyes were darker than ever, if you can imagine, and still his idiotic pride wouldn’t let him admit the pain he felt to anyone.” Here she narrowed her eyes as she drew me closer, and said in a chilling whisper, “The sadness simply flowed out of him. He was the embodiment of human tragedy.”

  “And then one day she saw him trying to diaper me on his desk at the office,” I told Felix, smiling to myself, because I could imagine him doing it.

  “And when I watched him searching frantically for the pacifier, which was stuck in his gun holster …” At this point, her eyes would always turn misty, and her voice get hoarse and low. “Well, seeing him that way, as lost and helpless as his bawling baby, I realized that I loved the guy, that I had loved him all those years we worked together, without knowing it, and that I was the one who would bring a smile back to his grieving face.”

  Then we would both fall silent in deference to her tender feelings. I liked that story.

  “I guess I’ve seen too many movies where the widower marries the children’s governess,” she would grumble.

  “I wasn’t allowed to call her Mommy,” I told Felix as we parked the green Beetle near the beach and made our way over the hot sand. Even before I could actually see the water, and only smelled it, I began to chatter. The sea always has that effect on me.