The morning following the first technical rehearsal, the phone rang in Ehud’s office at the chocolate factory.
“You want to come?” said Abdallah’s voice. “Remember what you asked me to do, to check something for you? Last week?”
At first I couldn’t remember, and then it hit me. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”
I splashed cold water on my face and ran out through the two opposing crowds to catch a taxi.
• • •
Abdallah was sitting as before in the middle of his dark basement, surrounded by rolls of brown suede. Behind him sat the dark-eyed young man who had tried to bar my way last time. Abdallah salaamed me and clapped his hands for coffee.
“From Lebanon,” he said, pointing to the suede. “Came today.” He began to explain how the merchandise arrived in unmarked cars from the tanneries in Lattakiya, how the police knew about this. “Also the border guard. But what do they care? It’s not guns. Everyone needs shoes.”
The swarthy crone came in with the coffee. Fauzi shook his head when she put a cup before him, but Abdallah barked an order in Arabic, and Fauzi picked up the cup.
“Health.” Abdallah raised his cup to the large photograph behind him.
Fauzi performed the same salute, stiffly.
From the wall, Haffiz Seddiqi glowered down upon me, and upon the dozens of theater actors all around him, in their faded signed photographs.
“It wasn’t Arabs who killed him, Isrool,” Abdallah said abruptly. “I already told Amzaleg that the old guys, they were not involved.”
“Yes,” I said. “He told me.”
“So I asked Fauzi to check with the young guys, too,” Abdallah went on. “And he just got the word from someone, that it was not any of—them.”
I made an effort to keep my eyes on the wall. What was I doing, talking so chummily with Arabs who could get such answers?
“… not PLO, not PFLP, not the Brotherhood …” Abdallah rattled off names of organizations, of splinter groups.
I said, “Then maybe just young shabbab, some local hotheads—”
“No. Young ones would have boasted, told friends, put up placards, something.”
Fauzi thumped on the table. “No. It wasn’t Arabs who did this. It was a Jew.”
“Yes,” Abdallah said. “It wasn’t us.”
And then, without any transition, Fauzi began to talk about his own family, and the ’48 Naqba. The Catastrophe of ’48. “They took our land, our brickyard, the fishing boats, the orchards, everything—” Breathing hard, he enumerated all that his family had lost. “And my father—” He jerked his chin towards the wall. “Him they killed like a dog—and now my uncle asks me to help you—”
Abdallah put a hand on Fauzi’s knee. “Not as a Jew, to help him,” he said in Arabic. “He is the son—he came as a guest—” He used the Bedouin word connoting an asylum seeker in the desert, one who may not be refused.
I felt my face burn.
“Guest? Guest?” Fauzi shouted. “They took our land, our honor, and killed your brother—and you want me to help—”
Abdallah motioned with his chin toward the wall. “Yes, they took our land, and the orchards—and they killed him—but I had always remained a merchant—you understand? And he, Isrool, was my partner—you understand?”
He had not spoken to me, but I nodded, my face flaming.
“Partner,” Abdallah repeated.
Fauzi got up, kicked at the rolls of suede. “And our honor they took—the honor of the sons of Salach-ad-Din—”
Abdallah snapped, “Shit to all that … Making money, and poetry, is the only answer to … all this.” He made a sweeping motion. “You understand?” I sat frozen.
“Poems!” Fauzi shouted. “Fucking poems! Look at this!” He kicked at the small rusty handpress at the corner. Several bound volumes fell off. “Money! Poems! What’s the use of money or poems when honor is gone? Gone!”
I did not know what to say, how to escape.
Abdallah touched Fauzi’s knee. “Politics, honor, ya Fa’uz, love, all melt away. Only money and poems last—”
“Fucking poems on your head, ya Seddiqi,” Fauzi yelled. “This fucking poetry, it—it’s become for us Arabs a refuge from action. Can’t you see? Let us burn all our poetry books, then—then maybe we could act.”
“Act how?”
“Act. Just act.”
Abdallah said, “And then, once you burned all poetry books, how will you know what action to take, without them, if the time for action did come?”
“My heart will tell me. My heart.”
“And until then? Will you leave all the poetry to the Jews?”
“Gladly! If it would make them choose dreams over action, as it did to us.”
Abdallah said, “That it has, that it already has.”
There was a long, congealed silence.
At last I said, “But why would the Jews kill him?”
This time it was Fauzi who spoke. “Because he did not hate us like they told him; because he did not hate us. That’s why.”
Their certainty felt like hot coal in my stomach; I needed some solitude, to think clearly. I took the bus back to Tel Aviv and headed toward the Yarkon River. When I reached the end of Ibn Gvirol Street I could smell the water. Half sliding down the grassy knoll, I descended to the tree-lined embankment and turned left, toward the sea. Walking in a dense thicket of wild mustards and reeds, Abdallah’s words came to me.
“It wasn’t us,” he had said. “It wasn’t Arabs.”
And Fauzi had said, “It was a Jew.”
But why would a Jew kill my father?
I stumbled among the gravelly pebbles. The heat, if anything, had turned more intense, more personal. I could feel it on my skin, inside my lungs. To my right flowed the river, half hidden by clumps of reeds. On my left were upturned rotting rowboats, perched on wooden sawhorses, with pots of dry paint lying about underneath, half buried in the earth, like the secrets I tried to uncover.
I heard a rustle behind me and looked back. But there was nothing. The trail had narrowed to one foot in width, hemmed in by hadass bushes, and I was as alone as if I were in the middle of the Amazon.
I cursed myself for having left the crowded streets, and quickened my pace. Without breaking stride I plucked a dry reed and slapped it rhythmically on the greenery right and left and walked on. I emerged into a narrow sunlit clearing, dropped into a crouch behind a hadass bush, and waited, still beating the reeds with my stick. The dusty, minty smell of the hadass wafted all around me.
Half a minute passed. A large man walked by, stepping silently on the outer edges of his Pataugas canvas shoes.
I let him pass, then rose and said to his back, “Why are you following me?”
He turned smoothly. He was the same height as my ephemeral attacker in Tveriah, but was ridiculously more muscle-bound. His torso was like layered slabs of concrete under his white nylon shirt, and his legs inside the tight blue sweatpants bulged with muscles like pythons wrapped around poles. More pythons writhed under the skin of his thick arms and neck, which carried a round head that was all jaw and cheekbones—and, to my surprise, also a small knitted skullcap of the National Religious Party followers, or Kach adherents.
I adopted a neutral stance and surveyed him further. He was perhaps three years younger than me, about thirty, and five centimeters shorter—just shy of two meters. But he must have weighed thirty kilograms more than me, none of them fat. On both wrists, I saw, he had knitted bracelets of dark braided rope.
No, they were not knitted out of rope but hair. Braids of human hair … I felt my testicles constrict.
“Who sent you?” I rasped.
The knitted hair bracelets identified him as a Samson, an ex-bomb-loader. The air force had a small battalion of them, to lift quarter-ton bombs onto jet racks in times of war, instead of forklifts. The strongest, it was rumored, were assigned to the nuclear wing. When they finished their military service, many
joined the Internal Security Service as professional bruisers. Now someone had sent one after me.
The muscleman did not answer, just turned sideways, his thick arms hanging in a neutral stance like mine, presenting a narrower target.
Not foolish, this one. I, on the other hand, had been stupid not to have accepted Ehud’s knife. Stupid, stupid and conceited …
“What do you want?” I asked, to deflect his attention.
But he advanced carefully, his eyes on mine, saying nothing. I recalled Amzaleg’s advice to avoid a fight, and so I glanced about me. The reeds hemmed me in the clearing; but the trail, I knew, led to the old exhibition grounds, and beyond, to the old Tel Aviv harbor and the sea.
I could still make a run for it …
But then the dark Other rose in me and spoke. “Get out of my way you son-of-a-whore or I’ll cut your dick off—if I can find it.”
The giant hissed, “Enough to stick it up your ass.” His voice was high, almost feminine.
“An olive, I bet, is what you—”
All at once he kicked at my knee, swiftly and expertly. Yet somehow my right sandal lifted and blocked the kick with its sole. The impact sent a shockwave up my thigh but I ignored it, and before the giant’s foot came down I slid forward and rammed my interlocked fists into his jaw, right and left, then brought the fists down on his nose, woodchopper style, using as many large muscles as possible—as I’d been taught. But when my fists mashed his nose they met soft cartilage only—his nose bone had been surgically removed.
The giant stumbled back, shook his head, then straightened and drove his fist into my forehead like a piston. I found myself lying among the reeds, blood in my mouth, my eyes unfocused, staring at the sky through a sheet of red pain. Half conscious, I stumbled on all fours and saw him advancing on me. I tried to tumble sideways but before I could move he kicked at my tailbone—there seemed to be steel at the tip of his Pataugas boot. An electric shock went though my spine and, head forward, I was sent flying through the reeds, my head splashing into the oily water.
I rolled about, spitting and retching. Rotting fronds seemed to be stuck in my throat, and some evil-smelling muck. I saw him standing not far off, arms hanging loosely, watching me. I thought of plunging into the river to swim to the other bank, but the dark Other would not let me, now. And so I kept rolling and retching even after my breath had returned.
The Samson waited, his knees bent judo-style—and then I knew. Without pausing I staggered up the slippery bank and before I could think, I threw an idiotic long right jab. I could almost hear the sergeant major shout, “Mistake!” as the Samson grinned and grabbed my wrist, pulled, twisted, and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of flour.
Although I knew it was coming, the power of the throw was a shock. I tried to twist in the air but my eyes seemed to point every which way. I landed hard and for a second lost my sight—yet somehow I was on my feet and facing the Samson’s back just when he began to turn.
Now!
With my last reservoir of strength I slammed my cupped palms on the giant’s ears—then again. There was a popping sound as he sat down with a thud, eyes bulging, shaking his head and flailing at me. I slapped his braided wrists away and slammed my cupped hands on his ears again and again, and he bent over. Before he could rise I clawed with my nails at a dried paint can and pried it out of the ground, and with both hands slammed it on the knitted skullcap.
He slumped sideways, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he lay still.
I stood for a long while, water oozing from my nose and blood dripping down my forehead. At last I bent over the prostrate giant and searched his sweatpants, my broken nails snagging on the cloth.
He had only a thin leather wallet with three hundred-shekel bills and a few fives, no driver’s license, no ID card, no wage stub.
If I had doubts before, now I had none.
The Samson’s eyes fluttered open as he tried to wriggle up, but he fell back, swaying. I knew his ears must be ringing fiercely and his balance gone. Ear thumps were far better than beatings, and they left no marks. The Intels did it to Arab infiltrators, to make them talk, and the Shin Bet did it, too. No matter how big and strong the man, when the ear’s center of balance was destroyed, he became helpless.
“Who?” I hollered into his contorted face. “Who sent you?”
I cupped his ears again for good measure, then whacked him with the paint can on the temple. “Did they tell you why they wanted me out? Did they?” I could hear my own voice rising. Not only an F in interrogations, but in self-control, too. “What the hell do they want from my life?” I cupped his ears again, furiously.
He tried to roll away, but his balance was still all wrong. He lay on the ground, writhing, looking like the leather horse in our play.
A flicker of an idea went through my mind. I stuck my hand behind his back under the waistband.
Nothing.
I grabbed his left foot. He tried to kick at me but I hoisted the ankle high and peeled the pant leg toward the knee. Above the instep, inside a black plastic holster, was a slim black Beretta, the magazine clip fastened to the grip with adhesive tape.
No, not a Beretta. A Batya—the Israeli copy. It was flatter and lighter, its magazine containing fifteen rounds. The Shin Bet operative’s weapon.
I stared at him. “Shoo-shoo.”
This muscleman was not just a bruiser—they did not carry guns. He was an operative. Most carried their guns at the small of their backs, but a few preferred calf holsters, because they were easier to hide, and easier to draw when crouched in wait.
This was not a mere Samson. It was one with brains—the rare kind. Why the hell did they send such a high-level operative after me?
I turned the little gun over on my palm, looking for the serial number. It didn’t look as if it ever had one.
The Samson spat into my face. “Son of a whore—!”
In a fit of rage I cuffed him on the temple with the gun butt, then once more on the forehead, and he toppled back, arms and legs akimbo, like a dying donkey.
I dragged him under one of the rotting boats and left him there, with the little gun stuck down the front of his pants, then stumbled quickly back the way I had come, swiping at my eyes as I ran.
Fifteen minutes later I staggered into the Shekem supermarket on Ibn Gvirol Street. No one had followed me as far as I could see, when I fought my way through throngs of shoppers, to get to the public phone. I called Yaro Ben-Shlomo, my Unit buddy.
Luckily he was in his office.
“Could you check something out for me?” I said without preamble. “I think someone really, really doesn’t like me, from the Shkettim.” The silent ones.
There was a brief pause.
Yaro said, “You sure?”
“Yes.” I squeaked with my lips to let him know I didn’t want to talk about this over the phone.
There was another pause. “All right, come by.”
Less than a half hour later, after another jog all the way down Ibn Gvirol and up King Saul Boulevard, I arrived at his office, which was in a ten-story building at the edge of the Qirya, the army and Defense Ministry HQ.
Yaro’s office was a bare whitewashed room with yellow files piled along the walls. Below an agency certificate from HaSneh Insurance Company hung a few framed pictures of holy places: the Cave of the Machpela, the Tomb of Rachel, the Wailing Wall. The only furniture was a metal desk, two frumpy plastic chairs, and two metal filing cabinets. An empty Howitzer canister stood in the corner, with wild brambles inside, for decoration. No photos from the Unit, no mementos. Yaro was apparently trying to make an honest living selling insurance.
He himself had gone to seed in the last seven years. The thick arms had turned to flab, the chest had migrated downward and turned into a belly, and the curly red hair was nearly all gone. Only the eyes were the same as before, small and hard and pale blue, like prayer-shawl fringe knots. He wore faded khaki pants and shirt, like the kibbutznik h
e had once been, like his father.
He sat quietly as I told him of the Kach thugs’ clumsy attack and Amzaleg’s serendipitous appearance, of Gershonovitz’s warnings, and of my recent tangle with the Samson. Of the ephemeral attacker in Tveriah I said nothing. Somehow that seemed too ridiculous to mention.
“Look here,” Yaro said when I finished. “I am in insurance now, I know nothing anymore. So right after you called, I phoned someone, a friend of my dad. He told me to stay away from you, that you are not kosher. Why?”
“Someone from the shoo-shoo? They told you that?”
“No, no. Someone … higher up.” He stared at me with his pale blue eyes. “You’ve been talking maybe to the PLO in Canada, or something? Playing politics?”
“Me? I am working in a bakery and screwing shiksas.” I said shiksas, plural, to make it more convincing.
“So why?” He kept staring at me, his eyes unmoving, as if I were a prisoner he was interrogating.
I tried to suppress my anger. “I don’t know. Maybe because I’m doing this play.”
“What play?”
Apparently he read no newspapers. A typical ex-kibbutznik, reading only mushy leftist Hebrew novels and the Bible, and maybe poetry books that his kibbutz friends published through Shomron.
I repeated yet again the story about my father’s will, and the play.
“That he wrote?” Yaro said “he” with the same inflection that everyone in the Anonymous Recon used, when speaking of my father. The Founder of the Mountain Jackals. The First Tracker. The Debba Slayer. More than once Yaro had clumsily weaseled an invitation to come home with me to visit during furloughs, just to see my father. Then he would sit mute and awestruck in our kitchen as my father poured us tea laced with 777 while my mother cooked chicken and farfel for dinner.
I hoisted a shoulder for a yes.
“What’s it about?” He really read nothing.
The Debba Page 17