The Zigzag Kid

by David Grossman

  “Yes, perform for me, Amnon,” said Lola Ciperola, drawing out each letter of my name.

  “I can’t… I…”

  In the corner, among the plants, a prodigious shadow loomed and flapped its arms at me.

  “Yoohoo!” called Gabi. “Go on! Recite something!”

  “I can’t!” I moaned.

  The shadow of Gabi galumphed around me, tearing at her frizzy hair. I vehemently shook my head. The shadow considered a moment, then stood up straight, one hand high in the air, the other covering her eyes, the way Gabi does when she imitates Lola.

  “But she frightens me!” I pleaded.

  “On your feet, Nonny the Lionhearted! I shall help you!”

  “Oh sure! It’s easy for you to be heroic—you’re not even here! But I saw the way you trembled when she was standing in front of you!”

  “Shut your mouth and pay attention: we’re about to begin!”

  My knees wobbled as I slowly stood up, looking steadfastly away from Lola Ciperola. I tried to forget that she was there, that she had kicked off her majestic pumps and now sat barefoot, with her common, ordinary feet tucked under her; that I was dressed up as a girl in a skirt and blouse and sandals; and that nothing made sense anymore. I stared into the corner where the plants were. I tried with all the powers of my imagination to drape the shadow with Gabi’s everyday dress, black, because black is slimming, and because she was forever mourning the thin woman buried underneath the ripples of fat; and over the black dress I set the patty-cake face with the red potato nose and began to envision her suddenly dropping her mop or the onion she happened to be peeling, to heed the silence, as though a distant voice were calling her, and I, of course, knew what would happen next, and would watch her, all smiles, as she raised her hand high, stood up straight, and declaimed in a hoarse, majestic voice: “Oh, withered gardens … benighted larks …” and she would curtsey like a princess, modestly holding out her dress and covering her eyes, which were tearing from the onion. “The prince has departed, Your Highness, he has gone far, far away in a dark chariot, and how should he call me ‘faithful’ when I have stayed behind, when I have not accompanied him beyond the border?”

  I’m not sure exactly when I chimed in. At first I felt like choking after every word, but then my voice leveled out and I overcame my shyness, and even got a little carried away and dared to wave my hands around like Gabi does, impersonating Lola Ciperola …

  How did I do it? Where did I get the chutzpah to perform like that in front of her? At a certain point I heard an armchair creak and the clinking of a bottle against a glass. I saw nothing, I never once opened my eyes. I just went on and on and on. Maybe I was too tired to be shy, though it probably helped to have Gabi speaking out of my mouth and watching over me, blending into the figure of Lola Ciperola, softening her as she sat across the room, and asking her, woman to woman, to take care of me in her absence. Yes, I think after a whole day with the bewildering, exhausting, dangerous, and unpredictable Felix Glick, it was actually a relief to be in the cool, serene presence of Lola Ciperola.

  I didn’t stop until the scene where Aharon Meskin, in the role of the old king, replies to Lola Ciperola. That’s when I collapsed on the chair, utterly spent and astonished at myself. I was ready for bed.

  And then I heard her clap three times.

  Lola Ciperola was applauding me.

  She was sitting in the chair with the footstool, a tall glass on the table beside her. There were tears in her eyes, not like the lone tear in the photograph of her that hung on the wall, but tears in great abundance flowing down the gullies of her made-up cheeks, and suddenly I realized she wasn’t so young anymore.

  “You are very talented,” she said in her loud, manlike voice. “You’re a born actor, my boy.” And she turned to Felix. “Did you ask him where he gets his talent?”

  And Felix replied, “I asked, but he does not know. There is nice woman named Gabi, his father’s friend, who teaches him to act. Perhaps his talent comes from her side, who knows?” he said, looking innocent.

  I wanted to explain about Gabi, but hesitated to waste Lola Ciperola’s precious time on such personal matters.

  She stood up with the Chinese lamp in her hand, trailing the cord behind her as she padded around me in her bare feet, studying my features from every angle. I was afraid to move, and a little disappointed, too, as I recall, to realize that she wasn’t so young anymore. For some reason I’d always imagined her about Gabi’s age … “Never idolize anyone, child,” she said, her face half-lit by the ring of yellow light. “No one deserves to be idolized, Amnon.” And she wiped her nose on the back of her hand the way a child might, only she was wearing a glove of purple silk.

  How can she be unhappy, I wondered, when she’s so famous and popular and successful?

  “Damn my success!” she roared, then laughed bitterly. As she passed by, I felt a light, electrifying touch: her scarf had brushed against my cheek.

  “The most dangerous professions are those involving emotion …” she said, pouring wine from her glass into Felix’s, sending him a stagy smile. “Would it not be easier to be … an acrobat? Or a fire-eater? Or a mountain climber? The body …the body speaks a single language. The body is truthful. It never lies … But those who use their passions to quicken the feelings of others are liable in the end to lose their own …”

  She put her hands over her mouth and sat down. Was that a speech from a play, I wondered, and was her smile a signal for me to applaud her? I restrained myself.

  “I never asked, who are you?” her voice resounded. “I mean, what role have you chosen to perform for me tonight?”

  “This boy is—Amnon, and I am, as usual, your strolling player, magician, thief, safecracker, heartbreaker.”

  “Oh, you are a thief, sir?” asked Lola Ciperola wearily. “You’ll find nothing worth stealing around here anymore. Only memories,” she said, with a sweeping gesture at the photographs on the wall.

  “Memories cannot be stolen,” answered Felix, “only counterfeited. And for me is enough I must to counterfeit my own.”

  “Explain!” demanded Lola Ciperola, waving her glass and kicking her slender leg out.

  “What is to explain?” Felix laughed. “Who wants bad memories? I take bad times in my life and paint them brighter. I paint beautiful women I loved even more beautiful, and I stretch truth about money I rob from banks …”

  They barely exchanged a glance as they spoke. They talked into their wine, yet there was a great if shy intimacy between them, as though they had known each other for years. And all the while I could sense, without actually knowing what was going on, that they were trying very hard not to sound like two ordinary people who had met after a long separation.

  “And the boy—how did you ever manage to bring him here, Felix?”

  I didn’t remember Felix mentioning his name, or perhaps I wasn’t paying attention. Suddenly Lola Ciperola sat up straight and stared at him in alarm.

  “Is it all right, Felix? Bringing him here? Did you have permission to do it this way? Or have you relapsed into …”

  “Him? He came along of his own free will … Right, boy?”

  I nodded. I didn’t have the strength to go into a whole long story about how Dad and Felix had met and exchanged a manly handshake, and all the rest.

  “Felix,” said Lola Ciperola, and her voice was cold and cutting now. “Look me in the eye, Felix: will you take good care of him? You won’t harm the boy, will you? This isn’t just one of your crazy games, you know! Answer me, Felix!”

  A long silence followed this strange outcry. Felix hung his head. I smiled at her reassuringly, but I could still feel her voice inside me, twisting like a knife, and I thought, If I could have just one uneventful moment, I might be able to figure out what’s been bothering me for the past few hours, and catch the questions buzzing around in my head about Felix and this escapade, and why Dad chose him in the first place, and where exactly they met and shook
hands …

  “Don’t worry, Lola,” said Felix with a little sigh. “I spend day or two with Amnon, we kick up our heels, have great time, fooling policemen, but only in play, Lola, and I’ll be careful with him.”

  I couldn’t understand why she was so worried. She observed me with a disquieting gaze. A wrinkle arched over her eyes.

  “I am taking good care of him, Lola,” repeated Felix softly. “We are only playing … not like before … nothing will happen this time … and whenever he’s ready, I take him straight home … It’s my last performance before final curtain. I have waited long time for this. And in few days is Amnon’s bar mitzvah, so I thought, Now is time for us to meet, Amnon and I.”

  “Yes,” murmured Lola Ciperola distractedly. “This week is your bar mitzvah … August … August 12 … yes.” How did she know? When did Felix tell her? I’d been in the room with them the whole time, so had I fallen asleep for a moment or something? Lola turned to Felix: “What was that you said? The final curtain? Are you quitting the profession?”

  “The profession, yes,” he said with a wry smile.

  The actress regarded him, and suddenly frowned. “Is something wrong, Felix? Are you sick or unwell in any way?” she asked, a different sound, warm and tremulous, now issuing through the cracks of her theatrical voice as queen of the stage. She had reached out to him, traversing the infinite distance between her body and his, till at last she was touching his shoulder, and he bowed his cheek to her caress; and as they gazed at one another, there was no doubt left in my mind that the two of them were old acquaintances, and that they had to restrain themselves from rushing into each other’s arms.

  “Everything will be okay, Lolly,” said Felix. “It’s just old age. And heart trouble. This old heart is broken. Ten years in prison is no holiday. But everything will be okay now.”

  “I see …” she said with a bitter laugh, “everything will be okay. No, nothing is okay. We can never get back what we lost, Felix … What a mess we’ve made of life …”

  “But now we fix it,” said Felix. “I come here to fix everything, everything that is wrong.”

  “You can’t fix anything,” whispered Lola Ciperola.

  “No no,” he replied, gently stroking her hand. “I’m Felix, your fix-it man … Where Felix passes, there is light… People are like drunkards … dreaming of better world …”

  Lola laughed softly, but she seemed to be crying, too. “You’re hopeless,” she said. “But I want to believe you. Whom should I believe if not you?”

  “Never believe anyone but crooks. This is true.”

  “Swear it.”

  “You know I can only promise, never swear.”

  Again she laughed. Her face was in semidarkness now, and a soft light fell on her silver hair. She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. And then, as though playing Anna Karenina, she entered the spotlight, and looked up at Felix like a young woman looking at a young man. Her weary eyes were suddenly filled with a smile of love.

  “Where have you been all my life?” she asked.

  “Gone too long,” he sighed. “I would come to visit and run away. Then for ten years, I had urgent business, you know …”

  “You’re telling me?” She sniffled and leaned back in her chair. “For ten years, day after day, I cursed you and I longed for you. But I was glad you got such a stiff sentence. You deserved it.” She spoke quietly, averting her eyes. “And then as the years went by, five, six, seven, all the hatred vanished. How much can a person hate? Hate is as weak as love, and anyway, it’s all a game. How did you use to put it? A brief moment of light in the dark before dark. L’chayim!”

  He raised his glass. “To your life, Lolly. To your beauty and your talent.”

  “It’s strange.” She smiled with tears in her eyes. “I finally meet someone who seems real and he introduces himself as a great impostor.”

  And gracefully removing her hairpins one by one, she let down a cascade of heavy silver curls. “Tell me a little more about yourself,” she said. “Tell me the whole story again …” Felix caught a lock of her hair and began to stroke it. No one else would have dared do that to Lola Ciperola, I thought. She offered no resistance. She bowed her head and bit her lip, and he ran his fingers through her curls and started humming a sentimental melody she, too, joined in before long. They were like a couple of elderly children singing themselves a lullaby, and the whole room was filled with a dreamy sweetness.

  My eyes were beginning to close. I thought it would be a good idea to call home now, to tell Dad and Gabi where I was and thank them for their brilliant idea. I also wanted to ask Gabi how she could have missed the connection between Lola Ciperola and Felix Glick, the purple scarf and the golden ear of wheat? Or maybe she knew about it and deliberately withheld the information. And how come a famous woman like Lola Ciperola knew my birth date? Who told her? What was going on? Why did I feel like a marionette being pulled to a certain destination. And who would be waiting for me there?

  I woke up with a start to the clanking of heavy blinds. For a moment I thought it was morning already, but it was pitch-dark outside. I was still curled up in the armchair. The clock on the wall struck two. Felix and Lola Ciperola were standing by the open window, looking out, her hand on his shoulder, his arm around her waist. It was so embarrassing, I wanted to hide.

  Lola pointed outside and Felix nodded. Then I heard her say she had been robbed of the sea. He pressed her shoulder comfortingly. She rested her head on his shoulder and said, “People like you exist only in fairy tales, Felix.”

  “The way our world is, maybe that is only place where you can really live.”

  I coughed to let them know I was awake. Lola Ciperola turned to me with a smile, a wonderful smile. It wasn’t the smile of an actress anymore, it was the smile of a woman gazing at a beloved child.

  Felix asked, “And if Amnon and I succeed, will you give us your scarf?”

  She was still smiling at me, caressing her scarf.

  “If you succeed, yes, I will give it to you.”

  “Succeed at what?” I asked sleepily.

  Gently, as though I were very fragile, Lola reached out and caressed the air in front of my face. I sat perfectly still, full of longing, though I didn’t know why. Then she stroked my face, resting her warm palm on it from my chin to my forehead. Her skin was soft, very unlike the voice she used in her roles. Lightly her fingers rested on my eyes, barely touching them, and then she pressed the spot between them, but I didn’t hear or feel the buzzing like a hornet. I only felt my eyes grow wide at the gentleness of her touch, becoming clear and pure at last.

  “Bring me back the sea I was robbed of,” said Lola.

  I couldn’t speak. I didn’t understand. I nodded my head under her palm. I would have done anything for her.

  “Tell me, Lady Ciperola,” said Felix, having thought it over a moment, “is there bulldozer around here?”

  18

  Like a Creature of the Night

  Lola Ciperola scratched her head. “A bulldozer? Yes, I think I had one …” She hurried to the refrigerator, opened it, and called from the kitchen, “Ah no … I forgot, I just threw the last one away … How silly of me!”

  “Perhaps in your drawer …” muttered Felix, opening his traveling bag, rummaging through it, and pulling out a particularly hideous wig. This he put on, and soon sprouted a matching mustache (from a whole kit he kept in one of the side pockets) plus two moles on his chin. Lola took one look and hurried out of the room, returning with a tattered shirt and a pair of patched trousers, mementos from some play of hers, and a moment later Felix had transformed himself into a beggar, stooped with age and dragging his lame left leg. “How are we doing, Amnon Feuerberg? Are we too tired to go out on little job tonight?”

  I was pretty tired, but I didn’t want to miss anything. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “I explain everything on our way. Later we come back here for scarf, and for Lola.”

&nb
sp; “Don’t forget,” Lola cautioned, seductively swirling the scarf over his face. “I will give you my scarf in return for the sea—the sea, the whole sea, and nothing but the sea!” She was suddenly as blithe as a young girl. Her body seemed to dance of its own accord. I’d never seen her that way onstage.

  “Hrrrr!” roared Felix, and winked at me. Pointing two fingers over his head, he made ready to charge at the purple scarf, and Lola gave a whoop and jumped aside. Felix ran past and Lola knelt by her chair, flaunting the scarf in a great purple arc over her head. Felix stamped his feet and howled with laughter, until he saw the look on my face.

  “Beg pardon!” he called to me, suddenly solemn. “I was only making joke! I completely forget!” He smacked his forehead.

  “That’s okay.”

  “Is anything wrong?” asked Lola, standing up and draping the scarf around her shoulders again.

  “I am so stupid …” grumbled Felix. “All I want is to see Amnon laugh, but every time I spoil it, and he gets sad instead.”

  Lola didn’t understand, of course. She glanced from him to me and said, “So, you two have secrets already.” She smiled. “Very nice.” She threw her arms around us both and kissed me on the forehead.

  There were no photographers present, no flashing lights. It was only Lola Ciperola kissing me. Gabi would have fainted. She would have embalmed my forehead as a souvenir. Now Lola kissed Felix on the forehead and on the mouth. She kissed him with her eyes shut.

  “Felix has no friends,” I remembered him saying, “except for one woman.” And they hadn’t seen each other for ten years, the ten years he had apparently spent in prison. Lola Ciperola was that woman, his only friend. Things were beginning to come together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, only the connections remained mysterious, and more frightening than the puzzle itself.

  “Wonderful!” cheered Felix. “Amnon and Felix will now set off to bring you back your sea! What hour of morning does her ladyship rise?”

  “I tell the press I never open my eyes before ten, but that’s only for effect,” Lola purred. “The truth is, I’m awake by five. Old people like me don’t sleep very much.”