The Zigzag Kid

by David Grossman

  “Whether she knew he was a criminal.” The word came out of my mouth more easily now.

  “No, not only did she not know that he was a criminal,” said Lola, “but until she was sixteen, she had no idea he was her father!”

  “What?” I couldn’t understand that at all.

  “You’re a big boy, Nonny, I can speak frankly to you, can’t I?”

  “Of course.” But about what?

  “There are all sorts of grandmothers in this world … You have one sort of grandmother on your father’s side, I believe, and I’m sure she’s very dear to you. But I myself am a different sort of grandmother.”

  “What do you mean, different?”

  “I have different ideas, different standards of behavior— Everybody’s different, right?”

  “Yes,” I answered, not sure what she meant, though she seemed cautious suddenly, worried about what I would think of her.

  “There were always men around me, admirers and lovers …. You had a pretty wild grandmother, I’m afraid …” She took a long look at herself in the rearview mirror. Felix glanced up for a moment, and there was a twinkle in his eyes. “For Zohara, Felix was just another uncle, a nice, rich uncle who sent her postcards and dolls from around the world. Whenever he landed in our tiny country he would spend time with us and everyone else—and then disappear, just another one of Mother’s friends, but a very good friend, you see?”

  “Yes,” I answered. At least I thought I did. She really was a different sort of grandmother.

  “And then, when Zohara turned eighteen, he sent a telegram inviting her on a grand tour as a kind of graduation present. The trip was supposed to last a month, but as soon as I read her first letter from Paris, I knew that she belonged to him.” Lola glanced wistfully at Felix in the mirror. “You yourself have seen how charming he can be—especially when it comes to someone as volatile and impressionable as Zohara.”

  Or someone like me, I thought.

  “Because the truth is, Nonny”—she sighed in my ear—“it wasn’t just his stories and the things he could teach her that were so fascinating. It was what he passed on to her, in her blood, what she inherited from him. When the two of them were together on their grand tour, he let her see how truly similar to him she was, always had been, though she never knew it, or was afraid to be. And he showed her what she was, what she could be.”

  I sat up: this sounded familiar.

  Felix stepped blithely on the gas. The Humber took off like a streak of lightning. I could just see the corner of his mouth in the mirror. He was smiling, pleased with himself. Lola saw him, too, and grimaced slightly. And then I realized that Felix’s whole purpose in kidnapping his only heir was to reveal the hidden Nonny inside me, to rouse him from his slumbers so I would know he existed. So that some remembrance of him and of his character would survive.

  And so I would know I didn’t only come from my father’s side of the family.

  Boom.

  My world kept changing. The events of the past few days were lit from a different angle every minute, as though reality was not at all solid and substantial but rather pliant, elusive, variable.

  My head nearly burst with so many thoughts: What did Lola mean about Felix’s blood running through Zohara and me? That I would grow up to be a criminal? That I was fated to become one? What if I didn’t want to be one? What if I still wanted to be the best detective in the world? And what about Dad’s blood running through me? Didn’t that have any say in the matter? Hadn’t he and Gabi raised me together? Did Zohara’s blood outweigh all that? Is crime always stronger than the law? How many drops of criminal blood does it take to dissolve lawfulness? I shuddered. I could feel that blood circulating, hot, boiling hot, through my stomach, my chest, stinging my legs. I never thought you could feel it, that it had a character of its own, but maybe I had other drops of Zohara’s blood in me as well, drops of the good things that were in her, like her imagination and the stories she told. Why not? The questions surged through my veins; my blood was raging, fermenting, as though someone were conducting experiments on it. But what would happen to me now? And more important, would someone remind me who I am?

  “One thing is certain, you’re not Zohara,” said Lola sharply. “Don’t ever forget that: you don’t have to follow in her footsteps. It’s up to you to decide.”

  “I’m not Zohara,” I murmured to myself. “I’m not Zohara.”

  “Naturally you have in you something of her and something of Felix. But you also have in you something of many others, all the people on your father’s side of the family, for instance, like the grandmother we spoke of, and your uncle, the famous educator Dr. Samuel Shilhav, right?”

  For the first time in my life I could see that having a bit of Shilhav inside might not be such a bad thing; but I also felt the stirring of a new self-esteem, yes, a new confidence, because it wasn’t just me on my own anymore against the tribe of Shilhavs. And I suddenly realized that I had always felt ashamed around them, like an insecure nobody, because they were this big family with strong ties and similarities, and I had to face them all alone, with no one on my side, like a foundling foisted on their family. And then I understood that they had been hostile toward me right from the start, even before I was born, on account of Zohara, but now with Lola, Felix, and Zohara on my side, the two clans could confront each other, the doctors, educators, and Tsitkas versus the actors, crooks, and storytellers … I shut my eyes tight and envisioned the scene, the two opposing sides—and me, adjusting my position till I was standing right between them. I listened inwardly: my position was still incorrect, so I backed up a little, half a step in the direction of the Felixes, and immediately felt calmer in spirit and more serene.

  “You have a different sort of character,” continued Lola, unaware of the little drill on the parade grounds inside me. “Only Zohara was Zohara. Don’t ever forget that! Know her, feel her, but remember that you are a whole new person, an independent agent.” I repeated her words under my breath and tried to engrave them on my memory. I knew that I’d be needing them a lot in the course of my life. “And now, Nonny, as an independent agent, I hereby order you to get a little sleep. We have a long night ahead of us.”

  I lay down with my head on her knees and closed my eyes. I tried to fall asleep, but couldn’t. Thoughts were running through my mind at the speed of the car. Things were becoming clearer to me and more coherent. Okay, I was unusual. I had an unusual upbringing, an unusual father. He wasn’t exactly my twin, and neither was she. I was an independent agent. I could be what I wanted to be. I would always have Gabi there to keep me on my path.

  Oh, Gabi. Gabi Gabi Gabi.

  The wise and subtle one, who had always maintained that I had the right to know about my mother, in spite of Dad’s strict orders to the contrary, and had disclosed various things by way of little hints, and big and little deeds … I remembered her sitting by the sea with her plastic noseguard and tubes of sun cream, and standing in front of the chocolate vat, and then faithfully waiting with me outside Lola Ciperola’s house—and I smiled. It was Gabi who had asked for the scarf and the golden ear of wheat, hoping to become as free and strong as Lola maybe, and a little wicked and fickle like Felix. To become like a blend of the two of them, like the product of their union, like—

  In other words, to become like Zohara. So Dad would fall in love with her again—

  But she’s so unlike Zohara, I mused, and thank goodness for that. She’s from real life, not the cinema.

  The sky grew lighter. Soon it would be dawn. Lola’s eyes closed. Perhaps she was drowsing, carried away by her memories and her regrets about Zohara. I lost a mother, I reflected, and she lost a daughter. That makes us partners in something important, something that no longer exists, but if we talk about it and remember it, she and I, it will come back to life. I, too, closed my eyes, and squeezed her warm hand.

  The road raced by, and the Humbert Pullman hovered over it. A young couple had traveled thi
s road together on a motorcycle with a sidecar. In time no doubt they stopped being afraid of each other. Vast spaces opened up. They started to talk. To rejoice over Zohara’s new-found freedom and the great adventure that lay ahead, and Dad’s release from his job and family. The road rose steeply. The sky was turning pale. It was the same hue as the night before, on the beach with the bulldozer. The things I’d been through in the past few days! I remembered that little boy waving to his father and his Gabi from the train. The kid who thought he was a pro. What a dope!, what a dope!

  “Look,” whispered Lola, “the Mountain of the Moon.”

  The mountain loomed in the early light, dark, crooked, and strange to behold: one slope was smooth and rounded, the other was all jagged cliffs. The car climbed the winding dirt road. Clouds of dust flew up around us. Portly partridges scurried away from the wheels and stopped to gape at us in amazement: it must have been years since a car had gone by. The higher we climbed, the cooler and fresher the air was. Below us lay the valley, veiled in morning mist, ribboned with green.

  “There is Jordan River”—Felix indicated with his chin—“border with kingdom of Jordan.”

  With one final roar, the Humber lurched forward and climbed to the top of the mountain, where it rolled to a stop over a surface of rubble and grass.

  The Mountain of the Moon.

  A chilly wind was blowing. The panorama faded in and out of the mist. A bird of prey circled overhead, calling as it spread its wings in flight. I felt cold and lonely. Lola wrapped our scarf around my shoulders. A tumbledown cabin stood there. No windowpanes. Weeds growing through the planks. The wind whistled with a chilling sound.

  Slowly we approached the cabin, almost as though we were afraid to get there. We climbed the three dilapidated steps. Felix pushed the door. It creaked open and fell in with a crash. Everything had an echo, and sounded bleak and forlorn.

  We trod with care, raising dust with every step, keeping away from the bare walls and the empty window frames. Yellow-flowered fennel sprouted up between the broken floorboards. Lola clasped my shoulders.

  “Remember, they were happy here together,” she said quietly, so as not to break the silence. “They wanted a place of their own, without intruders and gossip and the laws of the external world. A place where they wouldn’t be hounded by the past.” “Look—” whispered Felix.

  At the other end of the cabin there was a broken partition behind which their bedroom had probably been. The room was bare except for a big old stove that was so rusty it crumbled at the touch of my finger. Like the dolls in Zohara’s room, I gasped, everything I had touched lately turned to dust. I would have to remember everything here.

  “And look at this.” Lola pointed.

  There was a torn sheet of paper tacked up on the wall, flapping in the draft. On it was a faded pencil sketch of a man’s face, and in the background a horse. It was hard to make it out, but all three of us knew at a glance whose portrait it was.

  “She could really draw,” I marveled.

  “She could do anything she set her mind to,” said Lola.

  And that’s how I wanted to be, too.

  “Look at your father here,” said Felix. He didn’t say Mr. Father this time, and he didn’t sound sarcastic anymore.

  Dad looked young and handsome. He had thick, wavy hair, a smile in his eyes, and a smile on his lips. You could see from the picture that he was happy.

  “Your father loved her. And she?” Lola asked with a sigh, and answered herself: “She loved his love, but whether she truly loved him, the way she had always dreamed of loving, I don’t know …”

  Now I’m going to write something I can only guess about, based on what Lola told me, and I hope this is how it really was: Zohara was happy there with Dad. At least in the beginning. She wasn’t spoiled; she would take the sheep out to graze on the mountain, clean the stable, cook for the two of them on a kerosene burner. And she loved their little home.

  As the days went by, she felt that her soul was being gradually cleansed, purified, and the old adventures dropped away like layers of dead skin, like somebody else’s stories. They would spend their evenings watching the sunset and eating their simple, healthy supper in silence. Sometimes they would ride the horses out to the edge of the cliff. Together. They spoke very little. Words were superfluous there. Occasionally Zohara would play her recorder.

  I’m only guessing. Probably their life was a lot more exciting than this, only I’m too unimaginative to be able to describe it. I’ll just have to make do with the imagination I have, because Dad never told me how it really was. Even after my adventure with Felix, Dad kept silent about it. There are lots of other things I don’t know, and will probably never know.

  “Once I came to visit them,” said Lola. “I spent a whole week here, and later, back in Tel Aviv, I remember thinking, Those two have created their own Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve. Without the snake.”

  “You visited them here? They let you come?”

  “Why, they invited me. They wrote me a nice letter saying they wanted me to meet my grandson.”

  Me.

  So I was born here?

  “Didn’t you know? I see he didn’t tell you anything,” she said, and nodded with a doleful sigh. “I told you, he wanted to wipe out the past, so you wouldn’t find out! So it would be as if he were your only parent.”

  “Zohara was smart, she knew your Mr. Father will want to wipe her out of his past,” muttered Felix. “And that is why she asked me to take this trip with you. She knew!”

  “Take a good look around you, Nonny,” continued Lola, breathing deep. “Here, in this cabin, in this very room, you were born. Without a doctor or a midwife. Your father couldn’t get Zohara to a hospital in time, so he delivered you. He cut the umbilical cord himself.” She hugged me from behind and pressed her cheek to mine. “This is probably the most beautiful place in the whole world to be born.” Her voice began to quiver. “It was so primeval, the father, the mother, and the child. Right about now, at four-thirty in the morning, exactly thirteen years ago, less a few days.”

  I was overwhelmed.

  “I can’t go on,” said Lola suddenly, and left the hut. Felix hurried after her.

  It was difficult for me, too, but I wanted to stay a little longer. To be with them again. In the Garden of Eden. I knelt down and touched the wooden floor, the rusty nails, the marks left by the legs of the bed. Then I sat on the floor, quietly concentrating. I had never concentrated so hard in my whole life.

  The echoes were fading, all the echoes that had been there since Zohara died and the whispering and secrecy began. Those bewildering echoes I was always trying to understand, to imitate, to obey.

  I stayed inside a few minutes more. I found a bent spoon, the strap of a knapsack, a broken picture frame, an old box of matches, a woman’s shoe, a man’s faded handkerchief. I picked them all up and put them in the bedroom, next to the stove. I tidied up the cabin.

  “With you she was happier than she had ever been in her life,” Lola said to me when I went outside. Her eyes and nose were red. Felix’s nose looked red, too. “She would romp around with you as though you were a couple of puppies. Here, look, this is where your father put the sandbox. Two days after you were born, he built a sandbox for you! And this is where she used to set down your blanket, because it is sheltered from the wind, and she would roll on the ground with you, and your father would stand there, laughing.”

  Presents, such presents I was getting for my bar mitzvah.

  The sun came up and tinted the valley gold. Sometimes I think it was the open spaces I knew as a baby that make it hard for me even now to stay in a closed room for any length of time. In the early-morning light, at the edge of the cliff, I saw a fluttering patch of color, a shred of fabric on a thorn. It was a faded red or purple. Perhaps one of her scarves had caught on it as she galloped her horse toward the cliff. I didn’t dare approach. Not because of the cliff.

  “You grew up in the Gar
den of Eden,” whispered Lola.

  “But not for long,” Felix murmured. “Zohara brought the snake with her.”

  When was it roused, that snake? With the poison of wanderlust, the longings for a serpentine flight. Why couldn’t she just stay happy there? With him?

  “It’s not easy to tell, and even harder to hear,” said Lola. “Make a fist, Nonny. Here it comes.”

  And she told me. Zohara grew more vexed and unhappy by the day. The landscape was monotonous; the sheep were boring; she was tired of working in the cabin and in the field, tired of smelling sheep dung on her clothes.

  And my father?

  There was something about him that drove her crazy, I don’t know what, exactly. When I try to guess, it hurts too much. Maybe he was too taciturn. Maybe he bored her. I’m trying to see it from her point of view, because it always helps to look at things from a different angle. Maybe his eyes appeared small and greedy to her all of a sudden. He had this strange way of caressing an object, handling it with delight, as though forcing it to admit it belonged to him and that he had the right to touch it any way he wished. Maybe that’s what got on her nerves. It makes me sad to speculate like this. I guess I’m like him in certain ways, and the older I get, the more like him I become.

  And maybe it irked her that he was unwilling to make a complete break with his old life: that he had promised his mother to phone her once a week from Tiberias; that he just had to buy the Friday paper; that life wasn’t worth living without an after-dinner bottle of malt beer; that he was addicted to the soccer matches on the radio—and once he bought an enormous armchair at the flea market, upholstered in chintz, and it reminded Zohara of a fat woman she knew named Dobtzi (Dobtzi, of all names!) and she started screaming at him, what was he doing, they had sworn to create their own Garden of Eden here, to be free as Gypsies without burdens or possessions, and now it seemed he had dragged his materialistic bourgeois soul up here with him. Her face was terrible in wrath, with her long black hair like flying snakes and her cheeks hollow as though after an illness: how dare he suppose his soul as great as her own! She had hoped he would walk alongside her in the sky—walk, not crawl! But look at him! How could he ever understand a person like her! He with his limited little soul, the soul of a boy who grew up in a cookie bakery! “Dobtzi! You big Dobtzi!” she screamed, and flew at him with her fists and nails, and Dad grabbed hold of her carefully, but with an iron hand, and she went wild, imprisoned by him, gasping for breath, for freedom, for release …