Limassol

by Yishai Sarid

  “I want to touch him,” Hani said suddenly. “Afterward, I can go. Don’t give me too many drugs, so I’ll manage to get up early. He’s coming only for a few hours, that’s what he told me. You’ll see him, that man. You’ll like him, you remind me of one another. The two of you are quiet and loyal. Come, give me your hand. You’ll get to Paradise because of what you’re doing for me.”

  I gave him my hand and he held it tight.

  Daphna looked into my eyes until I trembled inside.

  Some men sat down at the edge of the restaurant. You could see from a mile away that they were our tail. I laughed to myself as I drank, and Daphna asked what happened. “Nothing,” I said. “I remembered a stupid joke I was told.”

  The food was good, the fried fish were fresh. I ate a lot; Hani tasted a little cheese and eggplant, and smiled sadly. I wanted to get up and run away from this cheap show, to go back where I belonged, where everybody knows exactly where he belongs. Calm down, you’re starting to sweat.

  Three musicians got up onto the small stage at the front, after they had been given supper. They slowly put out their cigarettes, took out their instruments. The group wasn’t young, and they were dressed like clerks. They sat down, one with a bouzouki and one with a violin and the one in the middle held a drum and sang. As soon as he opened his mouth and plucked the first hoarse string, tears almost came into my eyes. That man, who looked like a customs official in the port, was singing only for me, about all my pains, as deep as possible.

  “You aren’t going to kill anybody tomorrow morning, right?” Daphna whispered in my ear in a soft voice that blended with the Greek, as if it was a verse in the song.

  I let the song be played. We drank together, we moved to drink from the same glass, we had another bottle of white wine, we ate mullet with our hands from the same plate. Hani fell asleep and woke up and smiled at us, muttered something in Arabic. It was getting a little crowded there, a lot of locals came to hear the music.

  We got up from the table at about eleven o’clock at night, when the evening was just beginning to get hot, but we had to put Hani to bed, fill him up with drugs again. I barely managed to wheel him in a straight line, the ground was spinning around me. I tried to hear the footsteps tailing us, I checked the cars driving by us, until Daphna hugged me, and together we pushed the wheelchair to the hotel, and nothing around us mattered.

  We put Hani to bed. I took off his shoes and undressed him and laid his head on the pillows. I sat with him until he calmed down and fell asleep. Daphna leaned on the banister of the balcony. “Come here,” she said quietly.

  We watched the strange lights and the dark water, we came so close there was no distance, we kissed. We slept together in my room, on the broad white bed, with the window open, above the quiet rustle of the sea. The night was sweet as honey and broad as a golden pond, I sailed far away to a new world, a new world.

  In the cold light before dawn, I was awakened by a muttered wake-up call in Greek. I remembered that something wonderful had happened to me, but the instructions of the operation immediately took control of me. The big battle started ticking, all around were all the assistants of the matador and the spies, and the listeners and the tails, and the sniper was also already taking care of his instruments not far from here.

  I got up to shave and brush my teeth. The man in the mirror smiled at me like a bastard, with clear eyes; I loved that smile of his, before it was wrapped in the everyday gloom. Soon it will be six. I had to wake up Hani, prepare him for the day, the meeting, to sit with him at breakfast, cheer him up, tell him words of peace.

  Daphna wasn’t with me; in the middle of the night, she had parted from me to go sleep with Hani. “Tomorrow we’ll go to the mountains,” she promised.

  Isolated cars were driving on the road, diligent Cypriots who got up early to go to work in the morning. Our guest was now in the terminal in Damascus, probably drinking a morning coffee. I got dressed and knocked on the next door. Daphna opened it, dressed in the hotel robe, a white towel wrapped her head like a makeshift turban. She smelled good, of toothpaste and soap. She kissed me. Hani was at the stage of putting on his pants. We greeted one another in Arabic: a morning of beans, a morning of cream. He couldn’t stand up on his own, and his eyes were almost hanging out of their sockets he was so thin. He had the clear look of the world-to-come in his eyes. In another hour and a half, he’d sit in the lobby in the wheelchair and wait for his son who would enter with the confident stride of a man. I’ll disappear a few minutes before, I’ll say I have to go to the bathroom, to take a crap. That was the plan.

  At seven, we were the first ones in the dining room. We sat at the window facing the bay. There was a lot of activity in the port, big ships were coming and going, honking their horns. Daphna brought an omelet and cheese and vegetables from the buffet. A waitress in a black apron offered us tea or coffee. I heard a humming sound all around, or maybe I only imagined it. The arena was sterilized. We sat alone in the dining room. Now there was no uncontrolled movement.

  Hani told her she was as beautiful as a rose, as she put a piece of cheese in his mouth. He could barely swallow a crumb, and he coughed. “Awful empty here,” said Daphna suddenly and looked around. “As if we were the only guests in the hotel. That’s strange.”

  At that moment, a tall, older couple came in, two wanderers in shorts and walking shoes, and saved me the need for explanations.

  “Maybe they serve lunch here,” Hani said in Arabic. “Find out for me, please, reserve a table for four and we can eat with my son. We won’t have to go too far. It’s very nice here at the window.”

  “Wouldn’t you prefer to eat alone with him?” I asked matter-of-factly.

  “No, you’re friends, I want him to meet you,” said Hani with foggy eyes. “I want to put a little love in his heart.”

  We wheeled Hani’s chair to the lobby. Daphna suggested we wait in the hotel garden, there were flower beds there and a little fountain and benches overlooking the sea. “Just bring Hani’s hat from the room, and if it’s not too much trouble, also a bottle of water and the bag of medicines I forgot,” Daphna asked me with her sweetest look.

  “Just don’t go too far,” I asked them. “I’ll meet you in the garden in two minutes.”

  I went to the elevator. On the way I thought of my child and of Daphna and of the night that was, and the sea sparkled in my eyes. I entered the elevator, my jaw was clamped, and I pushed the button for the third floor. I knew I was being watched from every angle. I walked quickly, I opened the door of their room. Her clothes were scattered along with the instruments of his care, a smell of perfume mixed with a smell of disease. I looked for his hat and the bag of medicines, and a bottle of mineral water left over from yesterday, and I ran out.

  In the garden there were narrow paths covered with pine needles, a little slide whose paint was peeling, and green ferns around high tree trunks, and flower beds growing wild, and benches facing the enormous sea. They weren’t there. All the instruments of communication connected to the orifices of my body started beeping and yelling all at once. I ran back to the hotel and asked the reception clerk, panting, where the beautiful woman and the man in the wheelchair were.

  They went out to the garden. He looked at me severely, that Greek. I thought about the little apartment he lived in and his wife and their children and how much money he got to collaborate. Or he was a Greek refugee from Famagusta and had no affection for Muslims.

  I ran back to the garden, in a panic, and looked for them on other paths. I heard my name rising in the distance. They were sitting hidden behind a tangled and fragrant bush, under a thick tree, in a salty breeze of sea wind.

  “Did you think we had escaped you?” she laughed.

  I gave her the hat and the bottle of water and said they had to start going back to the hotel, he should be arriving soon. I knew if the son didn’t see him waiting in the door, as they had agreed, he wouldn’t get out of the car, and then the work would b
e more complicated. And they wanted everything to be clean.

  “And who else is waiting for him up there?” asked Daphna, erect and serious.

  I couldn’t lie anymore.

  “Me,” I said.

  “And you’ll take care of him?” she asked.

  Hani looked at me uncomprehendingly, and then his gaze filled with terror.

  “You . . . ”

  I ran up the path with heavy legs, flew above the thin branches blocking the way, I had to be there, I couldn’t run away. In the tiny earphone planted in my ear, I heard: “Two minutes to arrival.” I slowed before the exit from the garden, entered the hotel calmly and sat down on the sofa. The parking area was spread out before me. I measured the seconds with my heartbeats. The reception clerk looked at me and went to pick up the phone. I saw silhouettes moving from every direction, in another minute they’d take shape and come out of their corners. And a white taxi is driving into the parking lot. Run, I was pushed through the glass doors, run, I dashed to the center of the drive, I jumped in front of the cab and waved my hands for it to stop. The driver got out and cursed in Greek and I burst into the back seat and closed the door behind me. The pavement in front of us suddenly filled with people bursting out of the walls and trees.

  “Go, go back!” I yelled at him in English. “Fast!” I heard them connecting: currents passed through all the instruments, consultations in fragmentary words, how to stop them. “Go!” I yelled at him, and now we were on the coast road, on the way back to the airport, in the rush hour traffic of a regular morning.

  I was breathing crazily. I looked to the right. He looked young and more vulnerable than in the picture, but his eyes were indescribably hard. I saw his eyes, and changed my mind. For eyes like that, I wanted to kill him with my own hands.

  “Your father sends regards,” I gasped.

  He looked scared and groped for something in his pocket, forgot he had had to leave the gun before he got on the plane.

  “The traitor, the shit,” he said in Arabic and tried to find the door handle.

  “No,” I told him. “He didn’t betray you. Your father saved you.”

  He looked around feverishly, suddenly everything seemed unstable. The two of us were in free fall without a parachute, without a hold. He opened the door quickly as the car was moving. I managed to shout at him, but he was already rolling on the side of the road, a curled up human ball. Honking started immediately, the driver looked in the rearview mirror and started yelling and cursing again, screeched to a stop on the shoulder. I sat inside another moment. I hoped he was dead, I wanted him to live for them. I got out and started marching fast along the guard rail, beyond it were the fleshy shore plants and a sparkle of the sea. On the road there was an enormous tumult, and the lights of the local police spinning. The driver shouted something and pointed to me. A moment before I was caught, a dark car passed by and a heavy hand came out and gathered me inside.

  I didn’t know when or how they took me back to Israel. I woke up in a small room on a kibbutz, or a boarding school: bars on the windows, screens, a narrow bed, bare walls painted a greenish hue. Rustle of eucalyptus branches moving in the wind. I went to the door, which was locked. Outside sat a man in civilian clothes. I heard him whispering into a walkie-talkie, reporting that I had woken up. I felt refreshed, but not for long.

  Two of them sat across from me at a simple wooden table of a kibbutz. They came in without knocking. “Get up, get dressed.” I saw a solid look, a sturdy body, house in a village, SUVs and good-looking women—very normal people. They almost didn’t use force, just were very cold, didn’t ask how I felt, shot questions and I replied. Now and then, they went out for breaks, I heard them whispering, laughing maliciously—as far as they were concerned, I was garbage. They asked a lot about Daphna, about Hani, they questioned me about Yotam. I told everything as it was, I didn’t hide practically anything. Afterward, they asked about Cyprus, wanted the whole picture, minute by minute by minute. I tried to sit upright, to answer clearly, not to look broken. I remembered which detainees stirred respect and which seemed like human trash to me. I kept back only one thing, the memory of the night with Daphna. Here I lied to them: No, I didn’t sleep with her. They said insulting things about her, and I restrained myself so they wouldn’t notice I cared, so they wouldn’t put their dirty hands on her. Sometimes, they showed up at night after a whole day of silence, they turned on the light, pulled me out of bed, wouldn’t let me brush my teeth, I sat across from them in my underwear—by now it was a bit cool at night, and they wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom so frequently . . .

  Between the visits there were long hours of nothing, attempts to sleep in sweat and bad dreams, to guess what time it was, to recall the face of the child. Outside, the guards who sat on plastic chairs dressed in civilian clothes were replaced. They had small guns in their belts—students putting themselves through school by guarding the traitor. They looked tranquil, I could surprise them, split the skull of one of them from behind. But what for? Where would I go from here, in that big prison? Once or twice an hour, a patrol car passed along the barbed wire fence. I could smell the sea, pick out the limestone outcroppings in the distance.

  The guards didn’t come into the hut, they just looked at me from outside through the barred window with the screen. I asked through the bars for permission to call my child. Two of them ignored me completely, the third got up off his chair—he had a cell phone in his hand and chatted and laughed on it all day with his friends—came to the window with firm steps and whispered to me to shut up and not talk to him anymore. I understood. I shut up.

  I counted the days between one dawn and another: two weeks had passed. I waited for something to happen. I prepared chapter headings for my defense speeches, for the day they’d bring me up before the judge, but I couldn’t compose an orderly argument. Only faces and eyes I saw, and groans and voices of distress, nothing that could be conveyed in words.

  On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, they gave me a kippa and a prayer book with a special portion of fish whose plastic wrapping said “Carp North African Spicy Style.” At long last I had something to read. I got a lot of sleep because the interrogations had diminished in recent days. All evening and night I read prayers over and over, I got to Sukkot; I tried to decipher signs in them, I saw faces of God—a gloomy and fearsome man. Outside the guard was wooing some girl on the phone; he sounded like a coarse fellow and I hoped she’d disappoint him. Afterward, he stopped guarding and emitted snores that drove me nuts. My fingers itched to break his neck.

  After the holiday, they transferred me to a police installation near Ramle, to a real detention cell, without a window, without trees outside, with a thin mattress full of fleas. The interrogations there were more formal, they took orderly minutes. They didn’t let me wash or shave. I lay curled up, like a hairy, ugly fetus, and I thought of death.

  They released me suddenly, one morning. A pale man sat across from me in the interrogation room and made me sign all kinds of forms. I was forbidden to talk about anything connected with the service, the operations of the service, the things I had done. I was forbidden to leave Israel. Forbidden to talk with journalists. A policeman accompanied me to the door of the station. The sun blinded me when I went out. I had a long beard, and my clothes were filthy and stinking. I had no money. They had also forgotten to give me back my watch. It took a long time to find a taxi that would take me in my condition. The driver asked what had happened to me. I was silent.

  For three days I slept in my apartment, which was locked and deserted, the home of a family that no longer exists. I left the shutters closed. I couldn’t read. There was nothing or no one on the shelves that could talk to a person in my condition. I spoke a few words with the child on the phone; I wanted that conversation so much but I choked up and couldn’t continue. “When will you come to me, Papa?” he asked and his voice sounded distant, as if he was in another solar system. Sigi asked where I had disappeared, in a flat a
nd hostile tone. “I’ve got something serious going with somebody, just so you’ll know, I don’t want you to hear it from the child. He misses you. Don’t disappear like that again. You don’t have to punish the child because of me.”

  When I managed to get up, I looked in the piles of papers that had accumulated at the door for some reference to Cyprus ,on or around the day we had been there, but I didn’t find anything. Once I called Haim; that was stupid because he hung up on me, and about half an hour later, police knocked on the door and asked if everything was all right. They walked around the apartment and rummaged through my things. I had to disappear, be forgotten, buried in the earth in some God-forsaken corner.

  When the summer ended, on the last day of October, I left the house for the first time. The boring suburban street, the dull houses, people I don’t know. With every step, eyes stuck in my back like arrows. I drove to the city. I hadn’t shaved off the beard I grew in prison, and I was pale as death. I missed her street, the beautiful ficus trees that made the sidewalks dirty, the crooked children of the city, the gloom of the staircase. I sought her warmth. I went up the stairs slowly, like the first time I came.

  The big window was open and purple spots of sunset blew inside with the wind. We sat in the kitchen. “The etrog man returned,” she said and stroked my head. It grew dark outside, but we didn’t turn on a light.

  “What’s with Hani?” I asked.

  “Dead,” said Daphna. “A few days after we returned. Died here, in the living room. In his sleep. Yotam called to tell me. I wasn’t home.”

  “Did he say anything?” I asked.

  “He said thank you for saving his son.”

  “I don’t know if I managed even to do that,” I said.

  “You did,” said Daphna. “They were here, asked questions. Put me in jail for two nights. Not a pleasure, especially knowing that you were being held as well. I understand he got out of it wounded, but alive. Not so awful, he probably deserved to do some time.”