by Joshua Sobol
Excellent, whispers Shakespeare, everything is happening almost exactly according to the script by Tyrell the Third.
Run, son of a horse, run as fast as you can, and you’ll run out of air faster than we thought.
Keep up the appearance of limping, Tyrell Shlush instructs the hero of his movie, but quicken your pace a little. Maintain a distance of a thousand meters between you.
After five minutes running, the guy appears to be losing control of his breathing. He goes from running to walking and back to running again. A good sign. He’s getting tired. Timber was right: from time to time he raised his left hand and felt his stomach. The heartburn must be burning his throat, the smell of dead meat rising from his upset stomach and filling his mouth. Now is the time to narrow the distance, in order to give him the illusion that he can come within effective range of you. You’re entering the dangerous stage of the game. Narrowing the distance will give him hope, but it will also increase his chances of hitting you. If you start being afraid, your legs will start running faster than they should, and he will understand that he’s lost and give up the chase. Despite the danger you have to let him come closer to you. This is a nerve-racking stage. You won’t be able to stand it if you don’t get out of yourself, says Tyrell. We’ll shoot the next scene from a helicopter. Imagine that you’re seeing the arena now from above.
Go higher. Higher, Tyrell instructs the pilot of the helicopter. That’s it. Take the picture, he instructs the cameraman. Two people are moving over the ground below. Pursuer and pursued. Look at everything from this angle. Forget that he’s the pursuer. And above all—forget that you’re the pursued.
After another five minutes Shylock allows Adonis to narrow the distance to eight hundred meters, in the hope that he’ll be tempted to shoot again. The chance he’s taking justifies itself. The pursuer stops and aims. The pursued turns his head and discovers that his pursuer is unhappy with his position. He drops to one knee. The pursued lurches to the right and left, to make it difficult for the shooter to get him in his crosshairs. The shot doesn’t come. He looks back and discovers the reason: his pursuer is wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. Apparently the sweat is dripping into his eyes and blinding him. The pursued goes on staggering from side to side like a drunk and advancing at a limp. He knows that at this distance only a crack sharpshooter has a chance of hitting a practiced runner like him, and this is the time to start running in a rapid zigzag, he tells himself, exactly half a second before another two bursts split the air a meter or two above his head. He turns to face the shooter and goes on running backwards. The guy aims his rifle from a completely ineffective range. The whistle of a single bullet pierces the air close to his right ear. The pursued falls to the ground. The shooter stands up. He busies himself with his weapon. He ejects the magazine and looks at it. The minute he changes the magazine, get up and start running, the script girl reads Tyrell’s instructions.
But what’s happening here?
Adonis doesn’t change the magazine.
He throws down the rifle. Draws his pistol, cocks it and starts running towards Shylock, lying motionless on the ground.
Don’t move, Tyrell instructs his hero. Let him run. Let him come to within two hundred and fifty meters from you. He’s running fast, the fool, he’s in a hurry to finish you off, to confirm the kill. Let him come a little closer. When I tell you to get up—start running, but as if you took a shot to the head.
How do you run when you took a shot to the head?
I don’t know, says the beginning scriptwriter, you’re the actor! Invent something! Four, three, two, one—go, Shylock!
The wounded man raises himself from the ground with difficulty, and sets off at a kind of staggering run.
Great! enthuses Tyrell. You’re running like a drunk who polished off a bottle of lousy whiskey!
There’s no such thing as lousy whiskey, stinking Markus reproves Tyrell the novice scriptwriter, there’s only better whiskey.
I don’t have the time to argue with you now, the beginning scriptwriter says nervously.
I’m not arguing with you, pronounces Markus, that’s a fact.
Enough of the polemics, Hanina silences the antagonists quarreling inside him, you’re interfering with my concentration.
He casts a glance behind him.
My acting really is perfect, or perhaps Adonis isn’t thinking straight anymore, he notes to himself, because the guy has swallowed the bait of the severely wounded target, and he is running after him as fast as he can with his pistol drawn. You haven’t got a choice, you have to put on speed, but not too much, Hanina says to himself. He draws his pursuer behind him for about another twenty minutes, allowing him to slowly narrow the distance between them to two hundred meters. Then he decides to risk letting Tony advance to a range of one hundred meters, on the assumption that he is already exhausted, and his chances of hitting his target at a run are close to zero. The closing of the gap excites the pursuer, who imagines that his prey is about to fall into his hands, and he gathers up the last of his strength and mobilizes for a final, decisive effort to overtake him. This is exactly what the pursued has been waiting for, he increases his speed and opens up the gap between them again, but takes care to do it gradually, so that it will take time for the pursuer to realize that the distance between him and his prey is not only not diminishing, but is even growing, albeit very gradually, a meter to a meter and a half for every minute of running.
They run for another twenty minutes before the pursuer realizes that the distance between them has increased again. This has to drive him crazy, says the pursued to himself. He has to ask himself how a man wounded in the shoulder and the head and limping from a shot in the thigh is able to outrun him. Soon he’ll despair of the possibility of overtaking you, and then he’ll presumably try to shoot again, but the longer the chase lasts, the less chance he’ll have of steadying the pistol in his hand and hitting his target.
And indeed the shot doesn’t take long in coming. A bullet whistles past the right ear of the pursued. The next bullet hits the ground a few meters in front of him. He turns his head to make sure that his pursuer doesn’t disappear from sight. He sees him standing with his legs apart, aiming and shooting, and shooting, and shooting, but the distance between them has already put his target out of effective range. Nevertheless he doesn’t take any chances and goes on running and zigzagging. The next shot misses by far. He turns to face the shooter and sees that he is having second thoughts and has decided to stop shooting. Apparently saving ammunition. Again the legs of the pursued take over from his mind, heart and guts, and they start running in a big circle round the pursuer. Now it is no longer clear who is pursuing and who is being pursued. And again, without he himself having made a decision, his legs begin to narrow the radius of the circle. His head tells him that perhaps he should save his strength and take a rest from the running, but his legs refuse to stop, and they know what they’re doing. The owner of the pistol begins to sense the ring gradually tightening around him and his nerves can’t stand the pressure. He raises the pistol and shoots another bullet, which whistles behind the nape of the target, who pretends that he has been hit. He falls to the ground and writhes in the dirt.
As if he has learnt nothing from everything that has happened so far, the shooter rushes towards his victim. This time—he presumably says to himself—the shot went home.
In the time you still have left to live, says Shylock to his pursuer, I’m going to be your nightmare.
The leg-man’s legs raise him from the ground in a sudden bound and break into a run. The pursuer stops for a minute, thunderstruck, unable to believe his eyes. He looks around him. Maybe he’ll abandon this crazy chase and go back to his Hummer. But how to get back? Where did he come from? Where should he turn? Where is he? In the middle of the desert. No, he won’t go back. A man armed with a pistol and a hunting knife doesn’t run away from a man with empty hands. The short rest from the running has helped him t
oo. He feels reinvigorated. He’ll get him in the end. And even if they land up in hand to hand combat, he still has a dagger and he knows how to use it.
He’s starting to run again. Now you have to be very careful not to make him despair, commands Tyrell Shlush.
I’ll try, promises the double marathon runner, whose legs set out again.
The chase goes on for some time, until the pursuer realizes that he isn’t catching up with his prey, and he slows down to a walk, and the movements of his body and arms show clearly that he is out of breath, and apparently the pain in his liver is getting worse, because his left hand goes frequently to the right side of his abdomen, while his right hand, holding the pistol, dangles at his side. This is the moment to begin closing the circle of death around him again, say the legs of the pursued, which have already set out on their circular route in ever decreasing radii.
The man with the pistol apparently understands that his fate is sealed. He comes to a standstill. Wonders whether to shoot or not. The legs of his quarry go into neutral, running very lightly on the spot, keeping the engine warm, ready to race again, which is exactly what they do the second the pistol is raised and a bullet whistles again behind the nape of the pursued, who casts a glance at the shooter, and suddenly has the impression that the latter is pressing the trigger again and again, and nothing happens. Has he run out of ammunition, or is he tricking you? The leg-man’s mind has no answer to this question, but his legs are already running in ever smaller circles, tightening the noose round his pursuer, who suddenly picks up his heels and begins to flee in a straight line across the desert plateau strewn with fist-sized stones.
The tables are turned, say the legs of the pursued who has become the pursuer, growing lighter with every step. This is the moment to go back to being who I am—strange words sing in him:
I am Hanina ben Raya and Salek Rugashov from the
Judean hills,
I am Hanina ben Raya and Salek—the man of legs!
Hanina’s legs abandon the circle and set out in pursuit of the limping Tino-Adonis, who looks as if a wild boar has really gored him in the liver, but judging by the pace at which the leg-man’s legs are moving, it seems that they are determined to drag the chase out as long as possible, until Adonis is utterly exhausted. And indeed, when Adonis looks back and discovers that the distance between him and his pursuer isn’t decreasing, and may even be growing—hope of escaping his prey-turned-hunter springs up in him anew, and in the middle of his desperate flight his left hand goes to his pockets and examines them one after the other, and now the right hand transfers the pistol to the left, and once it is free it begins to rummage in the pockets on the right side of his stylish, pseudo-military trousers, and by now it is clear that Adonis is looking for a new magazine, and that he doesn’t remember which pocket he put it in when he got out of the black Hummer, and it seems that the magazine is not to be found in any of the six trouser pockets, which are examined one by one as he runs, nor in his shirt pockets, which he is examining at this very minute, no, the spare magazine is nowhere to be found, and the question is whether the previous squeezing of the trigger was an act, to show that there were no more bullets left in the pistol, or whether this is in fact the case, and the question will be answered when the owner of the pistol reaches the end of his tether—which according to the way he looks now, will be in another twenty minutes, or half an hour at the most.
In the meantime they run.
Tino knows that he will remain alive as long as he runs, and as long as there is some distance between him and Shylock, the pursuer running after him in white underpants and yelling:
Wait till I get my hands on you, Anton, Adonas! I’ll put out both your eyes and cut out your tongue with your hunting knife, and then I’ll sit next to you and sing you arias by Donizetti until the blood drains out of your body.
These words have their effect. Adonas goes on running, in spite of his throat cracked with dryness, in spite of his burning lungs, sucking in air with a weird kind of screech, and letting it out with a sob, in spite of the red-hot skewer piercing his liver. He knows that as soon as the man in underpants lays hands on him, the countdown will begin of the last seconds and fractions of seconds left to him in which to breathe the dry desert air. For a moment, without stopping, he tries to send his right hand to the haft of the dagger strapped to his calf, but the hand fails to get a grip, and he knows that he must not stop, and so he runs on.
As long as he has the strength, he runs. Stumbling and falling, he runs, his gaping mouth gasping for air like a fish on dry land, his throat emitting grunts and whistles like those of a boiling kettle.
Hanina runs two steps behind him—a distance sufficient for a spring and a kick, if Tino should suddenly stop and raise his pistol to shoot, or if he draws his knife.
But Tino doesn’t stop.
On the contrary.
Suddenly he puts on speed. The cunning bastard. Has he been keeping his strength in reserve? Again he transfers the pistol to his left hand, and tries to take hold of the haft of the dagger with his right hand. Hanina has to keep him within range of a bound and a kick. He quickens his pace. He listens to the breathing of the man who wants to kill him. He thinks he can hear a kind of bubbling. Yes. No doubt of it. The bubbling of liquids. The guy has lost all control of his breathing. His lungs are bursting and filling with liquids. They’re getting puffy. In a minute he’ll stop running and start walking. Don’t let him. Push him. He’s started walking. Hanina’s hand reaches out and pushes his shoulder.
Run! he roars in his ear. Run, you bastard, run!
The touch of the strange hand on his back momentarily instills new strength in Adonas, his feet begin to pound the ground again.
This is the moment to kick the pistol. Hanina leaps and his right leg shoots forward. The force of the kick throws the hand of the running man up into the air and the pistol flies through the air and lands behind the pair, who go on running.
I told you to come unarmed, whispers Hanina, but you didn’t listen.
And again he pushes him, and again and again, refusing to let him slow down.
No, pal, you’re not going to stop now, there’s no more stopping, now we run, my friend, if you need a push from behind you’ll get as many as you like, but stopping isn’t an option, run, lover boy, run, until your heart bursts. This is your death run, pal. Have you ever heard of a death run? That’s what we’re doing now, friend. And he surprises himself and calls his enemy all kinds of pet names:
Run, my sweet. Run, my love. Run, my dear. Here’s another push, here’s another kick in the ass, go on, there’s no stopping, darling, none, honey, none, pick up your feet, yes, go on, here’s an uphill stretch, never mind, onwards and upwards—
Heave-ho! he yells savagely behind Adonas’s back.
Imagine that this foot up your bum is the saddle of a horse! shouts Shakespeare in savage glee:
Imagine that you run on horseback up the hill,
If you don’t wish
That I run it into you up to the hilt.
Run even if you’re out of breath—he goes on pushing the man whose legs are buckling under him—even if your heart is a tom-tom drum and the blood in the veins of your neck is Niagara Falls!
And then the man suddenly stops in his tracks and spins around, and his hands reach out to hold onto some imaginary support, and they wave in the air like the legs of a slaughtered beast, and he loses his balance and his body spreads over the ground like a rag.
The leg-man’s legs remember that stopping is forbidden, and they go on running on the spot round the body writhing and twitching on the ground, death-rattles and frothing blood gushing from its gaping wound of a mouth.
Hanina runs in a circle, thinking about the ruinous destruction raging now like an avalanche in the cells of the heart and brain of the vicious bastard whose back arches for a moment, as if he wants to get up in a last effort to hang onto the life draining out of him—and then he crumples and struggle
s no longer, and only his eyes open wide and gaze in terror at the man in the white underpants skipping lightly round him, and in the pain cutting through his chest with a red-hot blade, and the suffocation overtaking his swollen lungs, he tries to say something to this man
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Who is bending over him and contemplating him curiously. Trying to decipher this clean-shaven face. To imagine a black beard covering most of the area of his cheeks. Is this the man? Is this face that he sees before him the result of plastic surgery, which changed the handsome face of Adonis beyond recognition? Is this face, distorted now in the terrible effort to breathe, a savage mask? The dying man’s feet stamp the ground, wave in the air. His throat snorts. His hand shakes as it tries to reach his chest torn apart by pain. This is the man that only two hours ago was still running and shooting deadly bursts of fire from his state of the art assault rifle, and only a short time before was still aiming his pistol—now he lies here, purged of every killer instinct, struggling open-mouthed against suffocation, knowing with the vestiges of his consciousness that there is no one to help him.
And out of the fog descending on his senses he stares with frightened, astonished eyes at the hairy man bending over him and loosening the straps holding the sheath of the dagger to the calf of his right leg. And his eyes suddenly clear when he sees him draw the dagger from its sheath and examine its blade. Is he about to plunge it into his heart?
Hanina lays the dagger on the ground, a little distance from the dying man. He opens the buttons of his safari shirt, and pulls it out from under his body without touching him. His abdomen is exposed, full of scars. Hanina inspects them from close up. He counts three the size of a plum, and five smaller ones, the size of an olive. Scars typical of wounds from the shrapnel of a hunting gun, he says to himself.
Antonaus? He says out loud.
The dying man opens his eyes again.
Tino? Hanina tries the man’s nickname.