Tongues of Fire

by Peter Abrahams

  Krebs began making telephone calls. He tapped the keys of the computer terminal, wrote on the note pad. He didn’t go to lunch. Once the girl brought him sandwiches, later a pot of coffee. Both times he watched her closely as she turned and walked away, but he recovered his concentration quickly and returned to work.

  Snow turned to rain and back to snow. Deep shades of pink and orange blended into the gray light, meaning night had fallen on the city. Krebs had made the file much thicker, but he hadn’t learned anything he wanted to know. The dull ache from cheap sandwiches and too much coffee descended slowly through his intestines. He stared for a while at the diagram of the restaurant. Then he sat back, stretched, cracked his knuckles one at a time, and telephoned Abu Fahoum.

  The man who answered spoke a few harsh sounds in a language Krebs didn’t know.

  “Mr. Fahoum, please,” Krebs said.

  “This is he,” said the man. In English the voice sounded smooth and fancy, like the voices of British actors on educational television.

  Krebs introduced himself, and asked if they could meet.

  “I’m very busy,” Abu Fahoum said. “I’ve told everything I know to the police. Why don’t you talk to them?”

  “I have,” Krebs said. He wanted to add: “Do you think I’m a goddamned amateur? We taught you everything you know.” But he remembered that Abu Fahoum had probably learned from a Russian teacher. He mentioned Armbrister.

  “The name means nothing to me. Now if you don’t mind—”

  “Just answer one question, Mr. Fahoum,” Krebs said quickly. “It may be important: Did any of the staff behave strangely, or do anything unusual?”

  There was a brief pause. Krebs felt a powerful mind on the other end of the line. It seemed to intensify the electronic connection between them. “Staff?” Abu Fahoum said.

  “The maître d’. The waiters.”

  Krebs heard a spitting sound in his ear. “I am not in the habit of noticing waiters,” Abu Fahoum said very coldly. “Now I really must say good-bye.”

  Krebs leaned forward, squeezing the phone tightly. “I wish you would think a little more about this, Mr. Fahoum. Don’t you want us to find the people who tried to kill you?”

  Abu Fahoum laughed. “For that, Mr. Kreb—”

  “Krebs.”

  “—I am happy to rely entirely on your expertise.” The line went dead.

  Krebs banged the receiver into its cradle. He glared at the telephone, picked the receiver up, and banged it again. He stood up and paced around the office. Krebs was an easy name to get right.

  After a while he approached the desk and gazed again at the diagram. The two tables were so close together. Sixteen was on a slightly higher level than twenty-three. That allowed someone sitting at sixteen who wanted to shoot someone sitting at twenty-three to fire down on him. It was very convenient. He decided he needed the names of everyone who worked at La Basquaise. He filled a Styrofoam cup with cold coffee and reached for the telephone.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was a city of wind and stone. No one roasted chestnuts on the corner, or stepped out for a quick cigarette, or walked his dog. No one made a sound. There was nothing to hear but the wind cutting its way through the stone canyons. And no one to hear it except Isaac Rehv, huddled in the little car, waiting for the night to be over. The wind had long ago found him hiding there, and worked through the cheap body of the car to blow its cold breath in his ears and up his pant legs.

  “Don’t worry,” Harry had said. “I’ll help you.” He had helped: He had lent Rehv his car; he had shown him the apartment hotel on the Upper East Side where Abu Fahoum lived; he had given him a gun. “Wait for nighttime,” Harry had told him: “He likes to go for walks at night.”

  “How do you know?” Rehv had asked.

  “Joel,” Harry had explained. “He watched him for a month.” That didn’t make Rehv feel more confident. Joel was the boy with the deep red hole in his forehead.

  On the first night of grace Abu Fahoum did not appear. Perhaps it had been the snow. Perhaps he didn’t like going for walks after all. Rehv had waited. From time to time he had stepped out of the car to clear snow off the windows. Once he had made a snowball and thrown it at a tree. It had stuck to the bark of the trunk like a round white birthmark.

  Now, on the second night of grace, he waited again. He kept his eyes on the gray stone building on the other side of the street. Warm lights glowed through heavy curtains in the windows. Behind the thick glass doors walked the doorman, back and forth, back and forth, in his chocolate brown uniform. He had nothing to do. No one came in. No went went out.

  Rehv rehearsed all the reasons he had to kill Abu Fahoum. Abu Fahoum had tried to kill him. He would try again. At the very least he would send the police after him. Tomorrow. And there was Haifa. He had reasons. They were sound and logical, but his heart wasn’t in it. Rehv wasn’t sure he could bring himself to kill Abu Fahoum without his heart being in it. He hadn’t told any of this to Harry, but the little man had sensed it all the same.

  “You wouldn’t have had any trouble killing him during the war, would you?” Harry had asked.

  “Probably not.”

  “Good. This is the war. We’re still fighting.”

  But so far from the front. Rehv wore gloves, but his hands were still cold; he squeezed them between his thighs. The front. Where was it? A year ago in time, and gone forever in space, unless you counted the space inside Harry’s mind, and the minds of a few others. The cold sank its teeth through his thin nylon jacket. It made his back ache. He waited. He wasn’t waiting for Abu Fahoum; no one went for walks in weather like this. He was waiting for the night to be over.

  Rehv stamped his feet a couple of times and wriggled his toes. He wanted to start the car and turn on the heater, but he remembered the silvery billows that cars exhale on cold nights, and thought the doorman might notice. Parked silently in the shadows it was just another empty car. He tried singing: “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “La Cucaracha,” “Hava Nagila.” His voice sounded harsh and brittle and somehow frightening in the confined space. The notes shriveled into tuneless muttering.

  In the distance Rehv saw a patch of yellow light run across the faces of the stone buildings. A taxi turned off one of the broad avenues and onto the deserted street, pointing its headlights at Rehv. He slid lower in the seat, watching from behind the steering wheel. The taxi approached slowly, almost haltingly. Rehv could sense the driver scanning the brass or wrought-iron numbers on the doorposts. The taxi stopped in front of the thick glass doors.

  The doorman in the chocolate uniform came forward and looked outside. He turned his face back toward the lobby; his lips moved. He pushed hard against one of the doors and held it open. The wind must have been pushing the other way, Rehv thought. A man walked through. He was tall and dark, and wore a thick black leather coat that almost touched the ground. He seemed to shrink inside it as he felt the wind. It made him hurry toward the taxi. The doorman was quicker: He got there first to open the door. To reach into the pocket of his trousers the dark man had to undo most of the buttons of his coat. The doorman waited patiently. Money changed hands. The dark man sat down inside the taxi. He wasn’t wearing a white robe or a black-and-white checked keffiyeh, but he was still Abu Fahoum. The doorman closed the door.

  The taxi pulled away. Rehv started the motor of Harry’s car, made a sharp U-turn, and followed. He felt the cold and heavy gun tucked inside his shirt: a Smith & Wesson .38 with a silencer attached. The silencer reminded him of condoms, although there was no analogy at all.

  The taxi headed downtown. There was very little traffic. Rehv followed closely. He had seen that New York taxi drivers were often unpredictable, and he expected this one at any moment to run a red light or push the accelerator to the floor. Instead he drove almost sedately through the empty midtown streets. When he reached the middle forties he turned west, onto a street of garish signs and gaudy lights. After he had gone a block or t
wo the driver drew over to the curb. Rehv slowed but kept going, careful to keep his face hidden as he passed. In the rearview mirror he saw Abu Fahoum pay the driver and enter a seedy cinema. Sheba said the sign in red neon.

  Rehv parked and got out of the car.

  “My friend,” someone called to him from the shadows of a doorway. Rehv said nothing and turned toward the cinema. A black man stepped out of the doorway. He was very tall, at least a head taller than Rehv, and very thin. “My friend,” he said again, blocking Rehv’s path. “How about some nice soft pussy?” The black man had a voice like a honey-coated knife. He wore a pink suit and red shoes, but no coat. He was tall and strange and dangerous, but his lips were blue and his teeth were chattering. Rehv pushed past.

  “Soft pussy, you motherfucker,” the black man shouted at his back, but Rehv heard little anger in his voice. “Soft,” he repeated more quietly, urgently, as if it had been on that point that negotiations had broken down.

  Rehv walked quickly to the cinema and pulled at the door handle. A dark-colored van went slowly by, distracting him for a moment. The wind caught the door and blew it wide open with an angry scraping of metal on metal.

  “Shut the fuckin’ door,” someone yelled from inside. Rehv jerked it closed and entered the lobby.

  It was cramped, ill lit, and dirty, but he noticed none of that at first. He noticed the smells: armpit sweat, foot sweat, crotch sweat, urine. And other smells that he couldn’t identify precisely, but were all bodily. At the end of the lobby a stained and shabby curtain hung across a narrow doorway. In front of the doorway was a small booth, enclosed completely by clear plastic walls. In the booth sat a fat, bald man with mustard on his cheek and a thick salami in his hand.

  “You think it’s summertime or something?” the fat man asked. He bit angrily on the salami. Rehv could not remember having seen a fatter man. Fat hung in pouches under his shirt and under his chin; its invasion of his face was almost complete: Only two pinprick eyes remained to show that there had once been defined features.

  Rehv approached the booth. “One admission please,” he said.

  “One admission please,” the fat man mimicked in the voice of a cabaret homosexual. Rehv felt himself becoming angry, not because he cared what the fat man said, but because he was drawing attention to himself. “Five bucks,” the fat man said, forcing the words around the meat in his mouth.

  Rehv slipped a bill into the slot and walked toward the dirty curtain. As he drew it aside he realized that the tiny eyes had never once focused on his face. Maybe the man had grown tired of looking at the kind of people who came into his lobby; maybe he couldn’t see past the salami.

  Rehv stepped inside the theater. It was very dark. He waited for a minute or two until his pupils dilated. The theater was much bigger than he would have guessed, as large as those that showed the latest expensive features from Hollywood. Nothing like that was playing at the Sheba. On the screen a black man was sitting on a sprung and tattered couch. An overweight white woman sat on his lap with her back to him. His penis appeared to be partway inside her rectum. In a tinny voice she told the black man, or perhaps no one in particular, that it made her feel nice. But she sounded quite bored, and the words weren’t synchronized with the movements of her mouth. The actress bounced up and down a couple of times. The actor was looking off to the side. After a few moments another man appeared from that direction. He wore a cowboy outfit. Soon he didn’t. He tried to push his penis into the actress’s vagina. She said it felt nice, and attempted to bounce up and down again, but couldn’t. None of the principals seemed able to move at all. The camera went to a close-up of the two penises, vagina and anus, but the lens was very much out of focus: It showed a close-up of a large and indeterminate shape, something that might wash up on a beach after a gale, and that might have once been alive.

  Rehv swept his eyes over the rows of seats. In very tight ranks they descended right to the foot of the screen, as though every inch of space saved meant more money for the owner. But there were few customers: Here and there a solitary figure slouched in the shadows.

  Rehv moved slowly down the aisle, careful to make no noise. In a row near the front he saw a lone silhouette that seemed to sit taller than the others. Rehv went nearer. The silhouette moved slightly, catching a gleam of light in the wrinkle of a leather coat. It glistened like the skin of a black snake. Quietly Rehv walked down the aisle. He turned into an empty row and moved along it in a crouch. In the middle of the row he stopped and very gently sat down, directly behind Abu Fahoum.

  Abu Fahoum did not sense his presence. His eyes were on the screen. Another actress had entered. She was skinny, and looked very young. She pulled the black man’s penis out of the overweight women’s anus and took it in her mouth. The camera moved in for a close-up. The girl raised the corners of her mouth in a grin. Abu Fahoum moaned softly.

  Rehv took out the gun. “Just be sure you are too close to miss and pull the trigger,” Harry had told him. “When you are finished drop the gun and walk away. It is untraceable.” The army had taught him guns. He was no marksman, but more than good enough for this.

  Abu Fahoum’s seat squeaked. Rehv felt him straining against it. The metallic back touched his knees, and he drew away.

  “Now,” came a voice from the screen. Rehv looked up. The girl pulled the black penis from her mouth. It dribbled weakly. Semen fell on her cheek. She grinned again. Abu Fahoum moaned. Rehv stood up and held the gun two inches from the back of Abu Fahoum’s head.

  A little movement made him glance down, over Abu Fahoum’s shoulder. The thick leather coat was unbuttoned. Abu Fahoum’s zipper was open and his legs were spread wide. A girl knelt on the floor between them. She was licking the tip of his penis with her pointed tongue.

  Rehv felt the gun in his hand, felt the trigger against his finger, but he could not squeeze it. Even the thought of Lena could not make him do it. He stood motionless. Deep within his consciousness he heard the screaming start. Only very dimly did he sense a slight form slipping toward him along the row. He dropped the gun. Abu Fahoum turned, startled. The little form moved quickly in front of Rehv. Steel flashed. A blade bit into Abu Fahoum’s neck. He rose turning from his seat, eyes huge and white, and toppled onto the girl. She screamed a scream that everyone could hear.

  The killer took his arm. “Come,” he said. By the grainy light of the screen Rehv saw the face that was half dead.

  “Come,” Harry said again, and led him up the aisle. None of the slouching figures moved at all. Whatever had happened in the dark was no business of theirs. In the lobby the fat man was counting money. He did not look up as they left.

  They sat silently in the dark green van. Harry drove. Rehv listened to the screaming slowly die away. The wind blew trash cans across the streets. Harry guided the van through SoHo. He stopped in front of the building where the gallery was and turned to Rehv.

  “Good-bye,” he said. “I have no use for you.”

  Rehv set the camp cot down beside the falling Gordon and lay down. He pulled the covers up to his neck and curled into a ball. Gordon loomed above him in the darkness. Crumpet Gordon with his eyes of jam, forever falling. The jam eyes gazed down fiercely, refusing to admit vulnerability even then, refusing to acknowledge doom. Harry’s eyes were like that. But they were blue, and Gordon’s were strawberry. Blue for Israel and red for England. There was still an England, Rehv thought, no matter what it had come to.

  In his mind he saw a little patch of land where he would like to lie down. A little patch of land where they were Buried. He would never see it again. Like Gordon they were all doomed, but they had no Kitchener to avenge them, no Kitchener to come and make everything the way it was. Harry thought it was 1948 all over again, but it was not. There was no Jewish Agency, no American money, no Zionism, no men, no arms. There would only be an Israel if the Arabs gave it back to them.

  For a long time Rehv lay in the fetal position beneath the strawberry gaze. The wind ratt
led the windows. He closed his eyes and began to dream of the desert and General Gordon and the warrior hordes of the Mahdi who had killed him. He sank deeper into sleep. The desert grew broader, the hordes vaster. He rode with them on a huge black horse. Faster and faster he rode. He led them. The hooves of the great black horse scarcely touched the ground. The warriors followed him, filling the whole desert. Invincible. Nothing could stand before him. He was the wind.

  When Isaac Rehv awoke, he was not the same man.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Krebs spent part of the night in bed and part of it on the couch in the den. This was not unusual: A blanket waited for him there, folded on the bottom shelf of the liquor cabinet, a mute and commonplace symbol of the difficulties of his marriage.

  He had come home late from the office, eaten a ham sandwich, and gone to bed, thinking of Armbrister and his salmon steaks. Alice arrived much later. Krebs listened to her turn the car into the drive. He heard a new squeak. She made no effort at all to maintain the car, but he never said anything. It was her car, bought with money her father had given her.

  Krebs heard her footsteps on the stairs, slightly too heavy, slightly unsteady, and heard her go into the bathroom. He heard her urinate and flush the toilet. He didn’t hear her wash her hands or her face or brush her teeth. He knew her too well to attribute this to the sound of the toilet flushing.

  She came to the bed. He kept his eyes closed.

  “Robert?” she said in a stage whisper. He said nothing. First he smelled a little puff of whisky breath, then he felt the mattress undulate beneath him as she got into bed. Krebs was about to fall asleep when he felt the light touch of her hand on his thigh. It was very light. He knew it was meant to be flirtatious and sexy. Without looking he knew exactly the expression on her face: eyes big and coy, lips slightly parted in anxiety and expectation. He hated that expression.

  They made love, or had intercourse, or performed the sex act: He didn’t know what to call these infrequent attempts. Krebs kept his eyes closed the whole time, and tried to imagine he was inside the hard girl who brought him coffee. But Alice wasn’t hard. She was soft and plumps.