His scratched cruiser was parked parallel to the Toyota, and he now stepped between the twin orange shirts and me, a policeman’s truncheon in his left hand. One shadow hissed, “Get the hell out of here, ya kaza policeman.” It was the voice of the same yeshiva boy who had been outside Gelber’s apartment.
Amzaleg paused.
Kaza is a derogatory term for Moroccan Jews. It refers to Casablanca, from where most arrived. Somehow it came to mean in Hebrew what “nigger” means in English.
I called at Amzaleg’s back, “It’s okay, Amnon, leave them to me.”
He ignored me. I saw his right hand ram at his ample belly, slam on the belt buckle, twist, and tug. The belt slid out and the metal buckle was suddenly swinging, Unit style, in blurry figure eights.
Amzaleg?
The shadows paused, hesitated, then spread further and without a word plunged into the whirl, sticks swinging. There was a slash, and one shadow stumbled back, a dark welt on his cheek; another slash. The other held his neck. Amzaleg hissed something I could not hear. There was an uncertain interval. And then the two turned and ran off, and were gone.
Amzaleg said to me, “Drop the stone, you idiot. You want to be arrested?” He turned and thumped on the roof of the Toyota with his truncheon, hard. No one came out. I watched with surprise as Amzaleg swung his truncheon and smashed one of the Toyota’s back lights, then hit the car’s roof a second time. Nothing. He smashed one of the front lights, and again thumped on the roof, harder this time, denting it.
I could hear a sound inside the car. Amzaleg raised the truncheon. Now the door opened and a man came out—it was the driver of the taxi I had taken from the airport, when I arrived. Before he could speak Amzaleg said to him, “Give it to me.”
“You fucking kaza—”
Amzaleg swung at the man’s knee, slowly enough to let him jump back. I could not believe what I was seeing. What the hell was this?
The man moved his hand toward the small of his back.
“Yes,” Amzaleg said in perfectly neutral voice. “Oh yes, do it.”
The man’s hand slowed; then very meticulously he pulled out a small Beretta, holding it by the barrel with thumb and forefinger. It was similar to the one Amzaleg had in Tveriah. Slowly he bent over and put it on the ground.
“Now the rest of it. Together with the film inside.”
The man turned silently, leaned into the car, and pulled out a boxy Hasselblad camera, the kind used by our Intel patrols, with an infrared filter. I gawped at it.
“Now open it.”
The man snarled deep in his throat, like a jackal, but obeyed. He pulled the back open and stripped out the film.
“Any more film inside?”
A shake of the head.
“If you lie—”
The man cursed at length, in military Hebrew.
“You finished?” Amzaleg said. “Now fuck off.”
The man said in a voice of pure venom, “You are fucking crazy, you kaza policeman, you will pay for this—”
Amzaleg swung his belt in another figure eight, lazily, and the man sprang back and got into the car, started the engine, and drove off. I stood gaping at the Toyota as it drove away, then turned to stare at Amzaleg.
What the hell was that about?
Amzaleg bent over and picked up the gun, then opened the cruiser’s door and crooked his finger at me. “Come inside.”
Still dumbfounded, I got in beside him.
The cruiser’s interior stank of stale cigarettes and cheap Nescafe—police-car smell. But on the dashboard was a sprig of white blossoms, of the kind that grows on every corner by stone fences. “Milk tears” we used to call them. He saw me looking and said, “Smells good. You have this in Canada, too?”
I shook my head. As Amzaleg adjusted his belt I said, “Were you in the Unit?” Because it was always possible he had taken a cold-killing course somewhere else.
“Yes, in fifty-one, the second course. The first Moroccan they took.”
I felt myself redden at the express mention of this.
Amzaleg went on, “But your father said, doesn’t matter, take him.” He sniffed. “Now lift your feet.”
“What?” I could not understand what he wanted, but Amzaleg grabbed my left foot and with his fingernails extracted some glass shards. “Now the other.”
I turned in my seat in embarrassment and he grabbed the other foot and pulled more shards out of it. He rummaged in the glove compartment and from an assortment of police handcuffs, spare Beretta magazines, and plastic pens pulled an iodine bottle and proceeded to daub it on my cuts. Without raising his head he said, “Why did you accept the fight, you donkey?”
“They hit me, and—” I stopped. It sounded ridiculous, as if I were telling a teacher the other guys had started it.
He said, “You could have run off or shouted, something.” He pointed with his chin to where the Toyota had been filming the provocation. “You wanted to spend the next thirty-three days in jail?”
The play’s performance was due in thirty-three days. I said with wonder, “You want us to do the play!” I turned to face him, trying to understand.
Gershonovitz didn’t want the play to be staged, and Amzaleg reported directly to him. Yet he had just come to my rescue. Nothing made sense here. “Why didn’t they take you off the case?”
Amzaleg shook his head. “Not this one, not now.” He stared at me with his puffy eyes, and suddenly I understood: they could not take Amzaleg off the case, but they could make him report to Gershonovitz, in an unsteady stalemate. I could almost glimpse the outline of two invisible bureaucratic forces poised, like two fists pushing against each other, unmoving, perfectly matched.
I said, “Because of the elections?”
Amzaleg shook his head.
“Because of the play, then?”
He said nothing.
I pointed to his belt. “They can sack you for this.”
Amzaleg rocked his jaw from side to side. “In Casablanca,” he said slowly, “my mother had four servants, my father was a lawyer. In 1932 he decided to bring us all here to Zion. I was four. You know how they treated us here, these Ashkenazi fuckers?” I could not see why he was telling me all this now. “Like niggers they treated us. Like Arabs!” He breathed through his mouth.
I recalled his daughter, now living with her mother and her Arab stepfather in Shfar’am, and held my breath, saying nothing.
Amzaleg stared ahead. “Forty-nine years old in July, and still only an inspector. Why?”
At last I said, “And my father—”
Amzaleg swiped at his eyes. “For him there was no difference. Arabs, Moroccans, Yemenites, Ashkenazi, it was all the same.” He seemed unable to comprehend this. I couldn’t either.
I said, “And that’s why you—” I stopped.
What was I going to ask? Whether he’d be trying harder to find my father’s killer, because my father treated him decently? And so imply that otherwise he wouldn’t?
But Amzaleg nodded. “Yes, also.”
“And also because of the play?”
“Yes. Also.”
I weighed my words carefully. “So there are some who don’t want the play produced, like Gershonovitz, but also some—others—who do?”
Amzaleg gave a squeak with his lips to indicate a maybe.
I said, “The shoo-shoo doesn’t?” The secret services. “And who else?”
When he remained silent I changed tack. “Who does want it?”
I didn’t think he’d reply, but he did. “Old chevermanim.” Brave old fighters, from before ’48. “Here and there, not in one place, not just the police, or—or anywhere special, just here and there.” He paused. “Old, mostly.” Then his mirthless grin reappeared, fierce and scary. “Bereaved parents.”
I gazed outside the window at the dark sky, recalling Amzaleg’s fallen son and brothers, and Zussman’s, and my own brother, and the silent crowd outside the rehearsal hall. “But why now?” I asked at last. “What’s wit
h this play? It’s just a play.” And its essence could be read every now and then in Ha‘Olam HaZeh editorials.
Amzaleg gave a double squeak of the lips. At last he said, “Go on up, finish your gefilte fish, or whatever.” Then he added. “And be careful, ya donkey!” He thumped me on the shoulder, hard.
I wanted to tell him not to teach me my profession, but refrained. I nodded and stepped out of his cruiser, walking carefully on the sides of my soles. I was surprised no one had gone out to see what the fracas was about. But everyone probably thought it was just one more violent argument about the elections.
When I came back up I kept quiet about what had happened. Ruthy was tearing into Riva, fuming, talking about new beginnings, historic chances, the unstated wishes of the dead. Ehud, pale and blinking, was trying to pacify both; then Ruthy turned on him. I kept out of it.
At last Riva got up to leave. She gave me a brief nod, as if satisfied that there was indeed nothing between Ruthy and me; that whatever there once had been was finally over. Her nod filled me with unexplained joy, as if all the evil I had done to Ruthy was now absolved. I nodded to her civilly in return.
Later, when I told Ehud about the attack and how Amzaleg had intervened, he said sardonically, “Damsel in distress, eh?”
I knew exactly what he meant. The classic way to gain a patsy’s confidence is to save him from a fake threat. Was this what Amzaleg had done here?
Ehud said, “And you shouldn’t go naked anymore.” He tilted the kitchen table until there was a click, and pulled the drawer out. At its back was a metal box with a combination lock, which he fingered open. Inside was an assortment of throwing knives, cobbler’s knives like my father’s, a standard-issue switchblade, and a Wiesbaden dagger with a rusty blood groove.
“I don’t need a tool,” I said irritably. What would I do, take someone down in mid Tel Aviv? I’d go straight to jail. “Give it to Ruthy, in case anyone comes after her.”
“Who will come after me?” Ruthy called out drowsily from the bedroom.
“No one,” Ehud said tightly. “Go to sleep. You, too, Dada.”
I tilted my head toward the bedroom and asked Ehud in a low voice if he didn’t want to pull out—meaning that this put Ruthy at risk, too.
He rattled his head tersely no and turned in.
His loyalty and Riva’s absolution and Amzaleg’s revelation that others might be rooting for the play filled me with such idiotic relief that despite the bruises and knowledge of the nightmares awaiting me, I went to sleep with an easy heart—foolishly expecting that the blackness would soon turn into light.
A little after midnight I woke up, my head ringing with both songs and dead horrors. I went into the bathroom for a drink of water. Ruthy was waiting there for me, sitting on the edge of the tub, her face as white as her mother’s.
Without saying a word she got up, closed the door, and silently and ferociously kissed me on the mouth. Still without speaking she stepped out of her pajama pants, rose on her toes to sit on the sink, and spread her legs wide. Then, silent still, she pulled down my gym shorts and pulled me to her.
We fucked fast and silently, mouths open, eyes an inch apart, saying nothing, listening to Ehud’s snores coming from the bedroom. When it was over we stood wordlessly side by side, washing ourselves at the sink, looking neither at each other nor at the door.
The singing inside me had stopped and my head filled with pure blackness. I never knew it was possible to despise myself so much.
Ehud’s snores stopped, then continued. Ruthy slipped out and was gone.
PART III
Al Dajjal
(The False One)
29
EARLY NEXT MORNING BEFORE Ehud and Ruthy awoke, I escaped from the apartment as if I had just finished a dreck job. The paint had dried on the low stone fence but the glass fragments were still strewn about. I ate a spicy-hot falafel at the Bazel shuk, then marched up Zhabotinsky Street to the Dizzengoff police station.
I strode in and said in a loud voice, “I’d like to report some thugs who attacked me last night—” but before I finished a door banged open and Amzaleg emerged from the corridor, unshaven and rumpled. His eyes glinted as he invited me into his office. I followed him in, touched my ear and pointed to the ceiling, twirled my finger, and raised my eyes. Amzaleg nodded briefly. Yes, it was possible.
I said in the same loud voice, “How’s the coffee at the canteen here?”
“Shit,” Amzaleg rumbled. He pulled a flat bottle of arak out of his drawer and stuck it in his back pocket. “Let’s go to Berman’s.”
At Berman’s kiosk Amzaleg led the way to the only table at the back, by a pile of Dubek cigarette cartons, Tempo bottles, and shelves crammed with Reznik chocolate bars. Old Mr. Berman beamed at me in recognition, but erased his smile as Amzaleg shook his head, and wordlessly brought up two glasses and withdrew. Amzaleg poured arak. “Inoculation against microbes,” he said when he saw me squinting at the stained rims. It was a Unit expression.
We drank. Abruptly Amzaleg asked, “You carrying anything?”
I shook my head. “Naked.”
He nodded with reluctant approval. I drank down my arak and he poured me some more. I said, “If I file a complaint, can you arrest them?”
“No,” he said tersely. “You want a policeman to guard you for a few days?”
“I only walk in crowds.”
Amzaleg said, “They may try harder next time.”
“And do what? They won’t shoot me. This isn’t Russia.” I sounded like Ehud.
Amzaleg said, “Not yet.” He sounded like Ruthy.
I sipped.
“Listen, Amnon,” I said. “What the hell do they have against me? Is it this play?”
Amzaleg shook his head; his eyes refused to meet mine.
I waited. “You still think it’s an Arab who did it?”
Again, no response.
“Because after last night … I kept thinking, maybe it’s really a Jew who did it? Because of something—before forty-eight? And that’s why Shimmel wants me out of here and doesn’t want you to catch him? … Maybe it was someone that my father knew, that he would open the door for?” It was a confused question that would have gotten me an F in interrogations.
“Maybe,” Amzaleg said.
He pulled out a pack of Gitanes, the kind Shafrir used to smoke, and lit up. “These bohema people,” he said into the blue smoke. “Many were with him once in the Wrestling Club, no? Maybe one of them came?”
This caught me by surprise. “And you think one of—them—did it?”
Amzaleg gave a squeak with his lips, this one indicating ignorance.
Berman served us two Turkish coffees with cardamom seeds, in glasses like those from which we had just drunk arak.
I drank the scalding bitter syrup.
“But why?” I persisted. “Why would any one of them do it—kill my father?”
“Jealousy, maybe.”
There it was now, on the table, just what some of Paltiel’s biographies had said, calling my father Paltiel’s boyfriend as well as accusing him of stealing Paltiel’s work. I grabbed the table’s edge and leaned forward, but Amzaleg held up his hand. “Goddammit, Dada,” he said levelly. “So your father wasn’t one, but half the others were. Paltiel, Shein, Kagan, Tzipkin—”
I fairly shook. “Amnon, this was thirty years ago, all this shit. Thirty years!”
“I didn’t say it was one of them. Maybe it was an Arab. They also had Arabs in the Wrestling Club before thirty-six, before they split, and some of them were also … you know, like Paltiel and Kagan …”
I wanted to tell Amzaleg that he and Shimmel could go screw themselves, but breathed deeply and said, “Did you ask any of those old wrestlers about the play?”
“Nah.” Amzaleg evaded my eyes. “The play probably’s got nothing do with it.”
“Well, did you at least talk to Kagan about the play? Or to Riva?”
“I have better things to do t
han talk to old farts about prehistorical literature.” He looked at his watch, suddenly eager to go.
“Suit yourself.” I threw a ten-shekel note on the table, nodded to old Mr. Berman, and left.
Clearly it was not just the play, but any talk about the literary prehistory that filled everyone with unease. Why that was, I couldn’t tell. But it was equally clear that if I wanted to find the answer to why my father had left me his play and why he had died, I had to seek it myself.
30
THE STREETS WERE ALREADY teeming with morning crowds when I walked up Dizzengoff to Riva Yellin’s apartment, my tailers trailing behind.
Riva lived atop a decrepit old building on the corner of Dizzengoff and Bar Kochba. It was ten years since I had been here last. She opened the door a full minute after I had knocked, and glared at me. “Why did you come back from Canada?”
When I began to speak, she cut me off. “Because I don’t need you, and she doesn’t need you either. Go back to the diaspora. Don’t ruin her life.”
The previous night’s absolution was apparently withdrawn.
I burbled that I had nothing to do with Ruthy, that I came to stay with Ehud, that it was Kagan who had picked Ruthy for the play. “And I didn’t know she was living with Ehud—I wanted to leave after the shivah, but my father stipulated that I do this play—”
“I know.” Wordlessly she moved aside and let me enter.
Her room was bare, with only four wooden chairs with woven seats, a plywood table with a telephone and an ashtray, a hanging gray blanket to separate the bed from the rest of the room, and a cheap Primus stove for heating food on a rickety table by the small fridge. It reeked of bohemian poverty even worse than Kagan’s.
I sat down on one chair and she sat on another. I said I had been to see Mr. Glantz. “Just to get a few things from the room—he said you came to visit my father—”
Riva leaned back. “Oh ho ho, I heard you went with the policeman. But what did you need him for? In Cassit they say now you want to catch the killer yourself, this Arab burglar.”
“It was not an Arab burglar. He was a Jew.”
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