by Joshua Sobol
Welcome, says Hanina, but we said unarmed.
Climb out of your hole, the guy growls. Show yourself unarmed if you’ve got the balls.
Hanina emerges from his hiding place behind the yucca plant growing tall as a man on the south bank of the canyon, beneath which winds the dry river bed. He raises his empty hands and waves them, to show the guy he is unarmed.
Tony returns the cell phone to its pouch, and without waiting starts climbing down the steep canyon wall. From time to time he stops to inspect his opponent through his field glasses, as if trying to discover where he is hiding his weapons. Hanina reads his intentions and waves at him with his empty hands. When Tony reaches the bottom of the canyon, Hanina begins moving towards the open ground of the level plain stretching out on the south side of the canyon, in order to keep a distance of eight hundred meters from his opponent and his automatic weapon with its sniper’s sight.
Now that Hanina is on open ground, without even a fold in the earth to hide behind, Tony can see beyond the shadow of a doubt that his opponent isn’t carrying a long-barreled rifle or even a submachine gun. He hesitates, as if trying to figure out what kind of trap has been set for him here, but after a minute of hesitation, he appears to make up his mind. In order to forestall any possible surprises Tony holds his rifle at the ready and begins to quickly cross the dry river bed, to close the distance from his unarmed opponent, who at most is carrying a revolver. Hanina too quickens his pace, with the aim of keeping a safe distance of eight hundred meters between them.
From time to time he turns his head to make sure that his opponent isn’t stopping to take up a sniper’s position. He knows that a skilled sniper equipped with a long-barreled AKS-74 is capable of killing his target at a distance of a thousand meters. But Tony-Adonis is in no hurry to shoot, and he has no reason to be. His eccentric opponent, who had chosen the codename Shylock, and entered the open territory, which constituted an ideal killing ground, empty-handed, now seemed an easy prey. Twelve minutes of fast walking and easy running brings him to the southern edge of the canyon. For a moment he disappears from Hanina’s sight, giving him the opportunity to lengthen the distance between them by another two hundred meters, and then Tony’s head comes into view.
He appears to be aware of the danger, jumps up quickly and starts running in rapid zigzags until he is at a distance of about a hundred paces from the edge of the canyon, and then drops to the ground and rolls behind a bush overlooking the yucca plant behind which Shylock had first appeared. He inspects the yucca plant through his field glasses, and after making sure that nobody is lying in wait for him there, he turns the glasses onto Shylock, who goes on receding towards the flat horizon, a solitary figure against the background of the white sky.
Hanina’s cell phone starts playing Jingle Bells. Hanina accepts the call, and the voice of Tony-Tino-Adonis rises from the instrument:
Hello Shylock. Have you got a cigarette? he asks.
Sorry, says Hanina, I don’t smoke.
Pity, says Tony-Adonis. I forgot mine in the car. Maybe you’ve got some gum?
I don’t have any gum, says Hanina, but I do have some candy.
What poison are they dipped in? inquires Tony.
Actually I have the kind that you like, says Hanina, anisette-cinnamon flavor.
Great, says Tony. I see the whore told you what I like. I’m coming to get them.
The moment Tony starts walking quickly towards him, Hanina breaks into an easy run, taking care to keep a fixed distance between himself and the Syrian.
Hey, Shylock, why are you running away? Tony asks over the phone. You said you wanted to talk to me.
Put down the rifle, the revolver and the knife, and come empty-handed, says Hanina, and I’ll stop running.
It’s a little dangerous round here without a weapon, says Tony.
Really? Are there wild boars here?
What? the Syrian lets out a strangled cry, as if he has been gored in the stomach.
I thought that after your accident you’d never go hunting again, says Hanina.
What accident? Tino-Adonis’s voice tenses over the phone.
In the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon, says Hanina. Wasn’t that enough for you?
I’ll rip you to pieces, whispers the voice on the cell phone, I’ll cut open your belly and eat your liver.
Come and do it to me, Tino-Tino-Tino, whispers Hanina in a sexy voice, come and eat my liver. Come and eat my spleen and heart and kidneys. Come and suck me, Tino. I like love that hurts.
The conversation is abruptly cut off. Tino raises his rifle, and Hanina breaks into a zigzagging run. He knows that at any minute he could be hit by a well-aimed shot from the superior firearm. His mind, heart and guts tell him that this is the minute to throw himself to the ground, but his legs have a logic of their own, and they refuse to listen to the chorus of these voices. They break into a joyful run, zigzagging here and there without any order or method. And when the shots don’t come, he turns his head back and sees that his foe has overcome the urge to shoot from so great a distance, and instead is pursuing him in order to narrow the range. Presumably he considers a range of five hundred or four hundred meters more effective.
Excellent, whispers Hanina to the wind, run, boy, run!
He starts to run a little faster, but at the same time he is careful not to get too far ahead, so as not to cause the man pursuing him to despair. From time to time he even slows down to a walk, puts his hand on his stomach and bends down a little, to give his pursuer the impression that he losing his strength, which causes Tino to run faster, and when Hanina estimates that the distance between them is shortening dangerously, he resumes running and increases the distance again.
The chase lasts twenty to twenty-five minutes, and then another yucca plant looms up in front of Hanina, standing on the edge of a shallow dip in the ground. This is the moment to slow down to a walk, he says to himself. To tempt Tino into opening fire, in order to test his marksmanship after the exhausting pursuit. He casts a glance behind him. It’s happening, he exults. He stretches his hand out in front of him, raising a finger to measure Tino’s height. A little over eight hundred meters separate them. Tino drops to his knee and raises the rifle to his shoulder. Give him a second to aim, and another second for the bullet to arrive—he counts 21, 22, and throws himself to the ground behind the yucca, and a burst of seven or eight bullets flies over him and tears the desert silence to shreds. He crawls quickly away from the plant, and rolls down into the little dip in the ground that hides him from his enemy. The right thing at the right time, Shakespeare congratulates himself as a long burst of fire wreaks havoc with the yucca plant. Excellent. The guy is sure that he is still hiding behind the plant.
Go on wasting ammunition, my friend, he whispers to the desert air.
A second and a third burst explore different corners of the plant, tearing through the tongues of the long leaves and digging into the sides of a little hillock three hundred meters away. After three more long bursts silence descends. Hanina cautiously raises his head. Tino is changing the magazine. Before he has time to think, his legs pick him up and start running into the desert. He relies on them to do the right thing, widening the distance between him and the man out to kill him, making his fire ineffective. The bullets whistle past his left ear and he throws himself to the ground.
With lightning speed he whips an ampoule of blood from his pocket and smears it over his shoulder, on his white tee-shirt. He smears another ampoule on his trousers, in the area of the thigh, and stands up bloody with theatre-blood and limps over to a nearby rock, takes shelter behind it, and crawls quickly to the side, behind another rock. A quick glance in the direction of his enemy brings a smile to his lips. The guy is training his field glasses on the first rock.
Swallow the bait, go on, piece of fashionable shit that you’ve turned into, Hanina urges him, and he swallows it. He sprays the rock and its surroundings with bullets, changes the magazine again, and starts running towards the rock
s.
Hanina takes off his shirt and trousers, crawls behind the first rock, which took most of the fire, pulls up handfuls of weeds that look to him like a local variety of wild alfalfa, stuffs his shirt and trousers with them, and arranges the result in the figure of a man curled up behind the rock. He wonders if it really is alfalfa, which actually originated in southwest Asia, in other words our own Middle East, and lent its Arabic name of alfasfasah to the Spanish corruption alfalfa, which was adopted in America too, whereas in England the plant is known by another name, let’s see—Luce? No, that’s A Comedy of Errors. Maybe Lucio? Measure for Measure? No no … and not Lucentio either, we’re not in The Taming of the Shrew, maybe Lucetta? No, my dear Gentleman of Verona, let’s see, let’s see, Luciana? No you’re in A Comedy of Errors again, not Lucullus, we’re not in Timon, and not Julius Caesar, just a minute—Lucerne, Lucerne! That’s the English name for alfalfa. I wonder where it came from. Perhaps the French luzerne, that comes from the Provencal luzerno, which means a glow-worm, which the French call ver luisant .… maybe the Provencals gave this name to alfalfa because of the gleam of its seeds, and what’s all this got to do with the city of Lucerne in Switzerland, where you kicked to death the partner of this man, who three years later, after the failed assassination attempt against the hunter of wild boars in Lebanon, murdered Jonas, and is now chasing you without knowing who it is that he’s pursuing, or perhaps he does know and that’s why he came armed to the teeth.…
And while these thoughts chase each other in Shakespeare’s head, he chooses a stone the size of a man’s skull, covers it with his baseball cap, and whispers to it, ‘Turn my heart to stone, stone, make me a man of stone with a heart of stone, or I won’t be able to do what I have to do’, and so saying he attaches it to the neck of his bloodstained tee-shirt. Then he breaks another ampoule of blood from the theatrical accessories store, smears it over his naked shoulder and thigh, and the minute the guy enters the dead zone, his fingers activate his state of the art stopwatch—automatically synchronized by means of a radio wave with the nuclear time-setting center near Grenoble—and sets it to send a warning signal after one hundred and twenty seconds, and his legs lift him from his place, wearing nothing but white underpants and marathon running shoes, and even before he can command them they take off at a rapid run on the path between the low hills leading in the direction of the sun now standing at an angle of forty-five degrees above the horizon line.
When the watch vibrates on his wrist to warn him that the two minutes are up, he stops and looks back. His eyes measure the distance to the rock from which he set off at a run: about eight hundred meters. His armed pursuer has not yet seen him, due to the fold in the ground rising to the height of a man. His legs demand another thirty seconds of fast running, and while his fingers are busy setting the stop-watch again he says: Take me, legs, you are the lifeline connecting me to the world. And again they set out at a fast run.
Thirty seconds of running for survival. He hears Shakespeare’s voice commanding his tongue to run freely in his head. Not exactly freely—how would you translate ‘this tongue that runs so roundly in thy head’?
Perhaps the right word would be ‘smoothly’? He says to Shakespeare. And perhaps ‘lightly’ would be better. ‘Smoothly’ has a connotation of dishonesty, but ‘lightly’ is associated with ‘light-headed’, ‘light-minded’, with the giving of a light and frivolous answer to a weighty and hard question. Is that what you’re doing now, Hananiah ben Hezekiah ben Gruen? Giving an answer as flighty as water to a grave question which you were asked and to which you had no reply?
What exactly was the question that you asked me in the way in which you lived your life, father?
If you answer it lightly and smoothly, with a tongue running freely and loosely in your head, that head deserves to be crushed and unyoked from the shoulders that have cast off the yoke of duty, Richard the Second warns him, while his legs carry him with a lightness that exceeds even the lightness of his tongue, running round in his head and saying to him:
A fine pair of legs you’ve raised, legs that feel at home everywhere on earth. Just let them run, and they’re at home. On the banks of the Ganges, on the marble steps of an Indian temple, on hamada desert soil strewn with pebbles of Nubian sandstone in a North African enemy country—everywhere that you are hated, persecuted, pursued, you’re at home, Shylock my friend, leg-man. Let your legs carry you in the wind, let them tell the earth the story of your father’s run for life, your father who looked at your hand one morning and said that it had reached the required size, and took you to the hills above the young little village in the forests of the Jerusalem corridor, and gave you your first lesson on the big Parabellum, which he called ‘Par’ for short, a lesson that opened with words that issued heavily from the tongue in the gray head of the iron man:
A pistol is not a cannon. Not a weapon to aim from a distance and kill. A pistol is a weapon to save life. It is the continuation of your hand, of your finger. Use it only to save your life, or the life of another person who somebody is going to kill.
And if I see someone who wants to kill me from a distance?
Run, said the iron man. For that you have legs. If somebody attacks you, run.
And what about honor, Daddy?
Leave honor to fools. If somebody attacks you, cast off everything, including honor which will only get in your way, and run. If you can, leave all the honor to your pursuer, and he won’t catch you easily. But if he does catch up with you, stop, turn to face him, and point your finger at him. How long does it take you? Less than a second. We said that the pistol is a continuation of your finger. Here, take the ‘Par’ and point at that tree trunk. Don’t say to yourself, now I’m going to shoot it, because then you won’t shoot in time and you’ll miss. Just think about your left hand holding your right hand on the handle, and say to yourself, ‘Left, left, left’, and let your finger pull the trigger lightly. Let the shot surprise you, and then it will also surprise the person who wants to kill you. Now cock the pistol. You’re running. You hear his footsteps behind you. He’s coming closer. Stop and …
The stopwatch vibrates on his wrist. Thirty seconds of running and survival.
He stops and looks behind him. The guy is still out of sight. Has he given up and gone back? So soon? Impossible. Wait. Be patient. A little longer. Give him a few more seconds. His head appears behind the rise. He peers suspiciously right and left, he’s careful, the cur. Because he’s so busy looking around him, and perhaps because of the weariness that is beginning to show its signs, he fails to notice a little pothole and he stumbles and falls and the rifle slips from his grasp. But it isn’t over yet. He rises quickly to his feet, wipes the dirt off his hands, rubs them on his trousers like a big fly wiping its feet. He picks up his gun, brushes the sand off it and holds it ready to shoot. He looks at the rock behind which three minutes ago you arranged your clothes stuffed with alfalfa. He approaches it at a crouch. Apparently he’s afraid that you’re waiting for him there with a pistol in your hand. Now he stops at a distance of fifty paces from the rock. He hesitates. Raises the field glasses to his eyes. Presumably sees the trousers smeared with blood. He appears to be making up his mind. Then he begins to move again, very cautiously. He flanks the rock from the south, approaches his prey with feline steps. Despite the distance, you can sense his excitement. He never imagined it would be so easy.
Mister Adonis, you can’t imagine yet how hard it’s going to be, you whisper to the desert air, and your legs break into a limping run. The distance between you is now more than a thousand meters. Soon he’ll realize that his prey has escaped him, and then he’ll raise his eyes and look around him and discover you limping away from him into the desert. He has to see that you’re limping. You have to entice him to go on pursuing you. There is nothing that tempts a pursuer to continue his pursuit more than the weakness of his victim.
A burst of rifle fire pierces the silence, but you don’t hear the whistle of the
bullets. You stop and look back. The guy, who discovered his wounded enemy hidden behind the rock, is standing at a distance of twenty or thirty meters shooting at him mercilessly. Riddling the local wild alfalfa with one burst after the other. Then he gets up the courage to approach the rock, and shoots the stuffed clothes again from a distance of a few meters. Now he goes up and stands over them. Pokes them with his shoe. Picks up the bloodstained and bullet-riddled trousers, looks at them disbelievingly and throws them furiously to the ground. Kicks the shirt and cap in a rage, and immediately bends down and holds his foot as if he has been wounded. The stone skull hidden inside the baseball cap has done its work. Two and half seconds later a roar of pain reaches your ears. Because of the distance everything happens as in a movie whose soundtrack is lagging behind the picture. Now a curse uttered two seconds before in a foreign language reaches your ears. Something that sounds like ‘sakashanya-khashanya’. He goes on hopping round on one foot. He must have really hurt himself. You can’t help yourself. You press 9 again, and wait. The guy raises his cell phone to his ear.
Sorry, you say, I didn’t plan for you to kick the stone.
Get fucked!
There’s no one to do it with.
Wait till I catch up with you, Shylock.
You’re not my cup of tea, you say apologetically.
You’ll rot in the desert, the guy promises.
One of us will, you correct him.
During the entire conversation he tries to locate you, but for some reason he’s looking in the wrong direction.
Look in the direction of the sun, idiot, you suggest.
He turns towards the sun. Shades his eyes with his hand and discovers the naked figure hobbling at a distance of a thousand two hundred meters. He raises the field glasses to inspect his opponent, and sees the blood on his shoulder and thigh. He overcomes the pain in his foot and breaks into a rapid run, hoping to catch up quickly with the wounded Shylock, who goes on running away from him like a duck with a broken wing.