Limassol

by Yishai Sarid

  I sat under an umbrella, bought something to drink, focused on the small hovering shadow that accompanied her on the bottom. The sun scorched the lawns mercilessly. I counted the movements she made from one end to the other, forty-six, forty-seven, without any effort at all, she seemed to be able to swim forever. Finally, she stood in the transparent water, took off her swim goggles and the cap, shook her hair from side to side, like a dog, rested in the water another moment, and climbed up the ladder. God, what legs she had.

  She rinsed herself under the shower at the entrance to the pool, dried herself, slipped her feet into flip-flops, put on sunglasses. I waved to her from afar, and she came to me.

  “Hi,” she said, and sat down in the chaise longue across from me. “Can you get me something to drink?”

  At the counter, I ordered fresh orange juice for the two of us. She crossed her legs and said: “So nice when you finish . . . ”

  I said that she swam very nicely, that I was very impressed. “Thanks,” she laughed. Up close you could see, a few fine wrinkles on her face. “I trained with the ‘Future Maccabees’ youth team. That’s where the improved style comes from.”

  Her laugh was clear. Not far from us, a crow cawed non-stop, as if he had lost his nestling.

  Daphna sipped the juice and then stretched out her legs and leaned her head on the back of the chair, as if she had fallen asleep. She had the movements of a glamour girl. I thought of how she had looked twenty years ago and what the hell she had done with all those jerks. There was a red blossoming on the trees and a distant sprinkler began spinning on the lawn, and heat mists rose around us. Now the two of us were the only ones in the whole area.

  “Jump into the water a little,” she said. “Cool down. You look upset. Did you hear anything from the wife and child?”

  I muttered something, and she didn’t press. Her feet were close to me now, and I had a desire to grab them and see her response.

  The lifeguard, an elderly man with a broad-brimmed hat, passed us and asked how we were and she answered with the warmth of an old friend. She didn’t look as if anything was really at stake. Why was it so urgent to bring me here?

  “You were great at that party,” she said. “Hani also enjoyed it. He thinks good things about you. He asked what you do for a living. I told him you had made a lot of money in the stock market. He was very impressed by that. He said you remind him a little of his son. You don’t intend to kill him, right?”

  “Who?” I jumped. Slivers of sun burst in my brain.

  “Anybody. You won’t kill anybody,” she said, and the picture split into snapshots, as on a broken computer screen.

  “Why did you call me?” I asked.

  “I need money,” said Daphna. “Hani is costing me a lot, and the kid is also living with me now. The bank won’t give me a loan. You think you could help me with that?”

  Now I was in familiar territory, my natural milieu. And yet I felt nauseated, for some reason I hoped it would remain pure with her.

  “How much do you need?” I asked. She named a sum, relatively high for what we pay those in the field, who are willing to sell their mother for a thousand shekels.

  “I’ll have to get permission for that,” I said. “It’s a lot of money.”

  “Tell them I’m a high-priced call girl,” she laughed—suddenly she had orange tints in her hair—“and you’re a pretty high pimp, and somebody needs to finance the whole operation. Otherwise we’ll split up, me and you. The etrog man will have to look for another teacher. Even though it’s fun to sit on the lawn with you. You don’t talk much. Were you always so taciturn?”

  I felt scorched, as if she had breathed fire on me. I used to come to meetings with Arabs with money in my pocket, petty cash, a few bills would settle the issue. She was talking about a salary. “Over the years, it developed,” I answered. “I prefer to listen. I don’t have a lot to say.”

  Daphna got up and said she had to go take a real shower before the chlorine ate her skin and hair. I watched her strong body from behind as she strode toward the dressing rooms. When does the collapse come for a woman like that? The crow didn’t stop screaming. The water in the pool glowed blue. I tried to imagine the touch of our bodies in the great heat.

  Afterward, Haim authorized the sum she asked for over the phone, but told me to haggle with her a little; she shouldn’t think she could get whatever she wanted. “Move fast now,” he said in his most serious voice. “This is a house of cards. I don’t want everything to depend on that whole circus you’ve been building around you. Too many clowns and acrobats. Our job is to deliver the goods, others will do the rest. Start tying up the package.”

  Tying it up good, that was the whole thing. Tying it up good and bringing in the fastened package. Afterward, throw it away. The rest isn’t our business.

  Sigi called from Boston on Saturday night, woke me up from a sound sleep, demanded I talk with the child on Skype.

  “I don’t know how to use that,” I grumbled. “Why don’t we talk on the phone.”

  “He wants to see you,” she explained. “Go to the computer, it’s all set up there, make an effort for the child.”

  I did as she said. The picture was blurry and the voice sounded metallic. Sigi sat him at the camera as in a kidnappers’ video. From his chatter, I gathered that he was going to kindergarten, that he already had two friends, a high slide, squirrels were climbing a tree. Mother bought him a car in a big store and afterward they ate pizza without any cheese at all. He talked continuously and I didn’t interrupt him.

  “When are you coming, Papa?” he asked.

  “Soon, when I finish working,” I answered.

  He went on with his childish talk. I tried to gather my child from the piecemeal, interrupted fragments of the picture.

  “Is Mother there?” I asked, and he turned from the camera and called her. The picture of him changed into a wall, until Sigi came on. The familiar frame of her face, something with her hair had changed, maybe the curls were cut short.

  “I’m turning off the camera if you don’t mind,” she said, and I was left with just the voice.

  “Why, Sigi . . . ,” I said.

  I got a technical report in a few sentences: work was excellent, she was very happy she had come, the child was adjusting well to the kindergarten. She didn’t say my name even once.

  “I want us to separate,” she said suddenly. The sound was as clear as could be asked from an instrument, everything is science in discussions now. “We’ve got to cut it off. It’s not healthy for anyone, especially not the child.”

  “Wait,” I said, choked up. “I . . . ”

  I wanted her to put herself back up on the screen; face to face, it’s easier to persuade. I wanted her to call me by name at least once, I even chuckled strangely. Sigi’s head was completely artificial.

  “You sound troubled,” she said. “It’s lucky it has nothing to do with me now.”

  “I’ll come to you and we’ll talk,” I threw out in desperation. “Maybe I’ll get a job in the consulate, I’ll be a guard or something, I’ll identify Middle Eastern guys walking around at the entrance.”

  “I don’t want you to come,” Sigi decreed through the ads popping up on the screen. “I’m not waiting for you anymore. There’s nothing between us anymore.”

  I asked her to call the child back. My heart went out to him. I knew he was hiding around the corner, listening to every word, feeling everything and understanding everything.

  “He’s playing and I don’t want to disturb him,” said Sigi. The line went dead.

  Daphna, Hani and I were sitting above the sea in Margaret Thayer’s restaurant in Jaffa, eating lunch on the tab of the general security services.

  Hani wanted to come here, he remembered the place from long ago, when Victor Thayer was still alive and broadcast election ads. He remembered the couscous and the fish.

  Hani was thin as a skeleton, you couldn’t mistake his disease. He touched only crumb
s of the food. But he was smiling, looking far out to sea, a delicate and nice man. Daphna offered him some of her food, put it in his mouth. “Very good, excellent,” he said and relented.

  Margaret came out of the kitchen to greet us, shaking her wet hands. For a moment I worried that she’d recognize me from somewhere. She examined me for a moment from afar, and then took a chair and sat down next to Daphna and they started fishing up forgotten things.

  “How is your kid?” asked Margaret. “You used to bring him when he was a baby, even at night. Everybody said how beautiful he was. The whole group used to play with him.”

  “He’s fine, finding himself,” answered Daphna and her eyes gave away the lie to the whole world. “Hani missed your food,” said Daphna.

  “Of course I remember you,” said the owner. “You’d talk with Victor about fish. What happened to you, where did you disappear?”

  Hani answered her with a sad smile. Margaret went back to the kitchen. Meanwhile, a few tables around us had filled up. Daphna ordered a bottle of cold white wine.

  “I’ll drink,” sighed Hani. “In Gaza they would have killed me. Not so bad, just one little glass. God will forgive me for that.”

  The air was still, and the sea stood in a tub that ended at the gray line of the city. Daphna said she was sorry she’d never gone to visit him there; there was always a fear they’d toss grenades, stab, but now it’s worse.

  “It’s very close,” Hani sipped a few drops from his glass. “The same sea. Exactly the same sun. Only with a lot of fences in the middle.”

  “Someday all the fences will fall, we’ll all be together,” said Daphna. The sea and the wine colored her eyes turquoise.

  “That will happen after us, habibati,” laughed Hani and gently put his sick hand on hers. “Today the lunatics decide what to do. The sea doesn’t interest them. They miss the mountains.”

  I finished the bottle slowly and quietly, and crunched the heads of mullets between my teeth.

  “Only a cigarette is missing,” said Hani. “How good it would be to smoke once.”

  “What about your children?” Daphna suddenly asked him. “Don’t you want to see them?”

  I almost choked on a bone. I bit my lips. My eyes stared at the rickety tourist boat that never had any tourists.

  “Want to,” said Hani. “But the daughter has four children and she can’t leave them. And the son . . . ,” he laughed. “That kid can’t come in here. He’s not as nice as his father. He was a prisoner, you know, they kept him in prison camp in the desert for three years, and now . . . ”

  “Where is he now?” asked Daphna, as if she wanted to reward me for the meal.

  “God knows,” Hani smiled in embarrassment, and looked into my eyes, seeking understanding in them. “Knocking around the world.”

  We ate malabi, a kind of flan, and drank mint tea for desert, that really was a splendid meal. Daphna wanted to pay the bill, made a whole production; I took out a card and she pulled out cash and in the end, I let her pay.

  On the way to the car, we leaned on the ledge, looked at the rock of Andromeda. Hani said his father missed that corner of the world, for him it was the most beautiful place on the whole planet. We sat Hani in the back seat, he was tired, and Daphna sat next to me. “You want to make a tour, Hani?” she asked him. “See a little of Jaffa?” And he said he’d be glad, only if I wasn’t in a hurry.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I’m not in a hurry. The stock market went very well this morning, I’ve already made my daily tab.”

  We drove along the road leading to the port. Now the sea rose a little and waves crashed on the wall. We passed a new white mosque built there, Al-Bahar Mosque, the mosque of the sea, what a nice name. I went back to the square of the clock. “See how they’ve renovated the clock,” said Daphna and Hani laughed: “The sultan must be very happy.”

  After Halbani’s hummus stand, I turned right into Agmi—a lot of scaffolding, renovations, new cars, Jews coming to live in the old houses—and I drove along the sea to the border of Bat Yam.

  “Where is your house?” asked Daphna.

  “We’d already moved,” said Hani. “If I’m not mixed up. I didn’t live here. It’s all from stories. I was a baby after all.”

  “Are you angry?” asked Daphna.

  “I’m sad,” said Hani. And after some thought, he added: “That I should have to miss a place I never knew.”

  We drove back to Tel Aviv through the flea market. The celebration of lunch vanished in the rush hour traffic jam. I set the radio on some medieval music, Daphna said that felt good. I helped Hani up the stairs, three flights, in fact I dragged him on my shoulder. “You’re a good man,” he said to me when we got there. “I like you.”

  In the apartment, a smell of burning came from the inside rooms. Daphna stood frozen in the doorway.

  “Go to him,” she asked me. “I simply can’t.”

  I went down the short corridor and opened the door without knocking. Yotam was sitting erect with a syringe stuck in his arm, a cord blocking veins, and an expression of definite pleasure on his face. Got to try it once, I thought. I closed the door quietly and went back to the entrance.

  Daphna looked at me with tears in her eyes. “Don’t go in there,” I said.

  “I can’t bear it,” she wept and clutched my hand. “What should I do, tell me, what to do?”

  “In the end, we’ll take care of him, soon, soon, after it’s all over,” I whispered to her, and she slowly let go, leaving red marks on my hand.

  Hani was in the armchair where I had put him. “I’ll go talk to the kid,” said the Arab man. His voice rose sudden and firm.

  “No, don’t go,” shouted Daphna and looked at me. “He can kill you.”

  I wanted to get away. It had become too crowded in that crumbling apartment. But I forced myself to take one more step. “Maybe we’ll get together tomorrow,” I said, bending over Hani. “Let’s go to the movies.”

  “Yes, why not,” the eyes of my new dying friend lit up.

  The next day, Hani was waiting for me right on time. Avital Ignats’s old clothes were hanging on him as on a hanger, the best men’s fashions of the seventies. Daphna helped him down the stairs and I dragged down the folding wheelchair.

  The chair was pretty rickety and one wheel squeaked. I pushed him slowly down the slope of Frishman Street, like a welfare aid worker from Albania who missed home. Hani felt like talking, more and more. He told how much he loved Tel Aviv: he’d had a good time here, a lot of friends, staying out till the middle of the night, interesting conversations, went to a lot of plays, performances. Asked if Dani Litani was still performing, he was his friend; he also remembered Zahuira Harpai, a wonderful and very funny woman. “Back then I started writing a story about Jaffa,” said Hani, “but I couldn’t finish it.”

  “Where did you live?” I asked, trying to get the broken wheel out of a crack in the sidewalk.

  “Mainly with Daphna,” answered Hani, seated in the rickety chair as in a royal chariot. “Until Ignats would come. Ignats didn’t like me being in his house. He was a very nervous man. Smoked a lot. Drank a lot. Couldn’t make the movies he wanted, and took it all out on her. He didn’t know how to treat her nice.”

  We passed the large excavation on Frishman at the corner of Dizengoff. A big poster showed a drawing of the skyscraper that would be built there, luxury apartments for culture merchants. “You’re always building,” he said. “Towers to the sky. Look what you’ve got and what we’ve got, the same land, the same ground, the same sand. You’ve got everything and we’ve got nothing. But you’re nervous. You don’t have the patience we do.”

  Across the street, some woman I knew passed by, I didn’t remember exactly where I knew her, maybe from the army, maybe from Sigi’s work. She lingered a moment to look at me, looked to be in two minds about crossing the street to say hello, but went on. I felt embarrassed.

  “I thank you very much,” said Hani, apparently se
nsing something. “Too bad we didn’t know each other when I was healthy.”

  “Why did you leave Tel Aviv?” I asked innocently.

  “Oh, that was some story,” said Hani. His head moved from side to side under me. “Somebody denounced me. They took me for interrogation, I sat in jail a few days, they didn’t treat me very nice. In the end they let me out on condition that I wouldn’t go back in, that I wouldn’t come visit you anymore.”

  “Were you arrested?” I asked. “Why did they do such a thing to you?”

  “Oh, nothing serious really, they gave me a few smacks, they didn’t let me sleep . . . Really, I’m sorry I’m telling you that.”

  “That’s awful,” I said. “Why did they do that to you? Why did they act like that with such a nice man as you?” I almost blurted out an hysterical laugh at my silly questions.

  “I wasn’t connected to anything, but they thought I was a terrorist. After they understood I wasn’t a terrorist, they wanted me to spy for them in Gaza. Maybe I’m agreeable, love Jews, but I’m not a traitor. They told me I wouldn’t get out, they’d give me ten years for knowing members of the PLO. I was with them for five days, I came out five years older.”

  “How come you don’t hate us?” I asked. My shirt was covered with spots of sweat from going up the concrete ramp of the square and the hard work of pretending.

  “Why should I hate?” laughed Hani and turned his face up to me. “I’m a weak man, I can’t hate. Maybe I’m not a man. Can’t take revenge, that’s how I am. There are wicked people among you, but for Daphna, I’d give my life.”