The Debba

by Avner Mandelman

  I stood on the leather mound and kept waving the keffiyeh, howling. “Ta‘al ho-o-o-oo-n!”

  All movement toward the exit stopped. Then, like the earth giving up the planted seed after rain, the bedlam began to disgorge men. Some in abbayas, some in baggy pants, walking slowly as though waking from a dream, toward the stage.

  “Ta‘al ho-o-o-n, ya shabbab!” Rise up and come, O brave ones!

  The two tall shoo-shoo men swam against the crowd, their eyes fixed on me; to the side came the third, carrying something in his lowered hand.

  And then, from the other side of the hall, came other men. Four, five, six. Thin, diffident, their legs moving in floating half steps, shoulders hunched, heads bent forward, half to the side. Anons. I hadn’t even known they were here. Then at the far back came another, a bulky frog of a man with a shiny welt under one eye and a clot of blood under his lip. Yaro. Our eyes locked.

  Gershonovitz, in his seat, made a motion toward me with his head.

  As though from a great distance, I could see Yaro hesitate, then begin to march down the center aisle toward the stage.

  “Backup!” I called to him; my voice came out a croak. “Yaro, I need backup!”

  Yaro went on walking.

  I went into a crouch. Behind me, incongruously, Kagan rose to his feet, swaying.

  “Jews!” He wept. “Jews! I am begging of you! For his sake—!”

  Then he toppled again.

  In the aisle, Yaro stopped. He stared at the spot where Kagan had fallen; his face was stricken and hot. All around him the melee seethed and surged. Then, as though shaking himself loose, he continued to move, his eyes no longer on mine. A tall Moroccan spoke to him briefly. When Yaro did not answer, the man started to grab his shoulder; without even pausing Yaro hit him twice, swiftly, almost as an afterthought, once with the elbow in the ribs, the second time with the heel of the palm under the chin. The man crashed sideways into a trio of boys in orange shirts, then to the floor.

  I raised my keffiyeh, waving it, waving.

  Yaro jumped on the stage. Two thin young men hopped right behind him, their hands held akimbo at their sides.

  Yaro stood beside me, his eyes refusing to meet mine.

  “Yallah,” I said. “Later.”

  Fauzi shouted at me, “We’ll take the back of the stage, close the door!” His keffiyeh was askew, his face flaming with emotion. At his side was Ben-Shoshan, the accountant, his head streaming blood.

  “No!” Yaro snapped at him. “Stay with Dada and Uddy!”

  The two thin men at his side were dangling broken chair legs from the tips of their fingers, swinging them lightly. I recognized them vaguely—they were from my brother’s old outfit. They nodded at me slightly, bashfully, while in the hall below the brawl seethed and boiled.

  “Ta‘al ho-on!”

  I jumped down into the hall. It was a mass of bodies, congealing and separating, breaking and joining, in a seething dance of hate. Behind me I saw Ehud and Ben-Shoshan, broomsticks in hand, fanning left, then two of the Arab shabbab, holding chairs, fanning right.

  Three more men in orange shirts stepped forward.

  Ben Shoshan waved his stick in the air. “‘Aleihum!” At them!

  Jews and Arabs, side by side.

  “Ta‘al ho-o-on!”

  A heavy hand grabbed my elbow, hard, at the nerve joint. I swung sideways, once, twice, but couldn’t shake it off. I twisted and brought him down, felt a large hand at my throat, and knifed with my knee. It was met with another knee. Another twist; this, too, was resisted. I brought my palm up, on the chin, and met another palm. It was like fighting a doppelganger who knew all my moves in advance. I peered into a dark face, the hooded eyes dark, the mouth gaping in a humorless grin. Amzaleg. His gun was out, a police-issue Parabellum.

  “Enough,” he said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

  He pointed the gun at the ceiling and fired once, then again. The sound rolled. There was a frozen silence.

  Amzaleg reholstered the gun.

  All motion stopped. Then, in the first row, Gershonovitz lumbered to his feet. “No one leaves until the ambulances arrive,” he rasped. “This show is over.” He pointed his finger at me. “And we want to talk to you.”

  The silence disintegrated. Policemen poured in through the open door, then men in white, with litters. Groans, and yelps of pain, were heard again.

  I said to the fat man, “The show goes on.” I pushed him into his seat, roughly.

  “This show is finished!” He struggled up, his small mouth quivering with rage.

  Amzaleg said, “Their permit says ‘till midnight.’”

  “Amnon,” Gershonovitz hissed, “Amnon, Amnon, you don’t know what you’re doing—”

  But Amzaleg had already left.

  After the ambulances had come and gone (Abdallah, I saw from afar, was being taken out alongside a wounded policeman, side by side, on two litters), I saw we had no actors left.

  The two principal ones had been taken to Hadassah Hospital, so we had no Yissachar and no Debba. Of the actors playing ’Ittay and Yochanan there was also no trace. Either wounded and taken to the hospital or escaped.

  Ehud, miraculously, was safe. Ruthy, too, was unharmed. While everyone else was fighting, she had lain behind the stage, under the Debba’s mound, hiding.

  She now came out, her hands on her belly. “I—I couldn’t,” she said. “I had to protect it—”

  Ehud stared at her, his eyes colorless.

  “Yes,” she said, her chin raised, as though ready to be hit. “I am. And not by you.”

  People came and went, collecting broken chairs and torn shirts.

  I said to Ehud, “The two musical directors can do the Friends; they’ll just have to sing it in a higher register—”

  “I am telling you, Uddy,” Ruthy went on, “at last, I am.”

  In the hall, the audience was sitting down, one by one.

  I said to Ehud. “Can you take Yissachar’s role? I’ll take the Debba.”

  He looked at me, still saying nothing.

  “Everything else, later,” I said, gripped by panic. “First we finish the show—”

  Ehud said, “But you got to promise me, first, something—”

  “Everything later,” I said.

  “Now!” His face flowed in and out of shape. “You have to promise me now, or there’s no show—”

  “No!” Ruthy shouted. “No!”

  “Promise”—Ehud stared at the floor—“that you’ll leave her alone—don’t worry about—but you must promise—”

  “No!” Ruthy screamed. “Dada, no!”

  “—on his grave—”

  I looked over my shoulder at Ruthy, then at Ehud; Ben-Shoshan called out at me from behind the stage. I couldn’t hear what it was. There was a hum in my ears.

  Down at the hall, policemen were helping some men carry the last stretcher through the door. The audience was slowly sitting down; this time the Jews and Arabs sat mixed together wherever they found a chair or on the floor, looking up at the stage, at Ehud, at me. Waiting for my father’s song to begin.

  There was a long moment of absolutely no movement, no sound.

  “Yallah,” I said at last, through the sand in my larynx. “Let’s get into roles.”

  Ignoring Ruthy’s staccato shrieks, I walked away from her, toward the back of the stage, toward the dark.

  Side by side we stood, behind the cardboard border, waiting for the call.

  Snatches of a woman’s wail came from backstage, and the sound of an Arab flute. A low wailing sound. Time stood still, like my enemy at my side. The enemy who had saved my life and had now chosen to take it back.

  “One minute!”

  A burst of applause came from the hall, where the woman had just finished singing of her love for the Debba.

  “Five seconds!”

  I turned to look at the man beside me. His greasepaint did not seem like a mask—it was more like a wooden part of h
is face in which his eyes were burning, burning. I wanted to touch him, to remove the mask from his face, to see what lay underneath; what he was really made of, this enemy of mine.

  A hand thumped me on the shoulder. Ben-Shoshan.

  “Go! Yallah! Go!”

  The black tunnel loomed before me.

  Where was I?

  On all fours I searched for my hiding place, my secret lair.

  There. There it was. Breathing fitfully I sat on the leather mound, safe at last, in the belly of my whale. Pale light shone from somewhere, from a small window high on the wall. The beam intensified. In a moment the submachine gun would open up with its song of death …

  Down! Down!

  I threw myself upon the rough floor, breathing hard and shallowly, listening.

  A sound of hissing came in my ears, like the voices of a thousand hyenas, yelping.

  Who was after me? Who?

  Srik-srak. Srik-srak.

  From where I crouched I glimpsed Ehud squatting at the foot of the stage, his head bent low.

  Who was he? What was he doing?

  Srik-srak.

  Yissachar was sharpening his sword, making ready for battle. No, not a sword. A blade. A long knife he had made, a knife to kill his enemy with; his enemy, the Debba.

  I crouched low, my knuckles on the land. A humid smell came in my nose, the smell of my motherland; a musky, lemony smell. I rose into it, my nostrils flared.

  A woman’s face floated before me, her eyes staring into mine. She sang at length, thanking God and cursing him at the same time.

  Who was she?

  Srik-srak. Srik-srak.

  Two wiry monsters were crawling up the mound, hissing like khaki-clad lizards. Yissachar, my enemy, knife held between his blackened teeth, crawled before them, leading them to my lair.

  Danger! Down! Down!

  A wheel creaked somewhere; the light rose in intensity, and the woman’s song turned into a shout of anguish and anger, mingling with the rhythmic whispering of the attackers.

  “Now! Go!”

  A single yellow Fresnel light had been turned on, and the three attackers rose to their feet. Knives in hand, hissing and shouting, they ran up the mound.

  “Ta‘al ho-o-n!”

  Spreading my arms wide, I seized one attacker by the throat, prepared to fight for my lair, for my land, the cradle of my ancestors.

  “Ta‘al ho-o-o-on!”

  Whose voice was it, yowling like that?

  By the blinding light of the kliegs I saw the audience’s faces frozen in terror, Gershonovitz, and Riva, and Gelber, and behind, improbably, Jenny, her eyes large and luminous, and behind them the entire lineup of old theater hacks and ’48 fighters; and, as though from the top of a distant mountain, in a glutinous haze, I saw Ehud’s face, distorted in a rage of fear and love, and his raised fist plunging, plunging, the knife sprouting from it like a flash of black silver.

  And then the hand turned, and the balled fist slammed into my chest.

  The world stopped. I tried to speak, to explain, but could not utter a sound. Only my sight remained.

  And then, as I stood there, my sight began to expand. It blossomed and loomed, grew and widened, and suddenly it opened up to encompass the entire hall, the entire land, and at that very moment I saw it all; without the least effort on my part it all came together, and at long, long last, I finally understood.

  I understood my father, and Ehud, and Gershonovitz; I understood Ruthy, and her infidelities; I understood myself, and my rage; and above all and beyond everything, I finally understood the Debba, his anguish, and his boundless wrath; why he did what he had done to my father; and how and why my father had died. And as the scales fell from my eyes, in that one bright instant I also understood, with an almost surreal lucidity, what my father had asked of me; and what, without any thought of refusal, I must finally do.

  57

  HE WAS WAITING FOR me, in the dressing room, slumped in his chair, Riva at his side. Even before he began to speak I knew what he was going to say.

  “Yes,” Gershonovitz said, “she was the one who sent me a note in forty-eight, your mother, warning me.” The fan clicked and clucked and he gazed at it quickly, as if happy not to look at me. “About him, Paltiel.”

  I said, “That he was going to Yaffo, to warn the Arab?”

  I could still breathe only with difficulty, after the horrible blow that Ehud had struck at my heart.

  Gershonovitz gave a nod; I felt no surprise. Somehow I had expected it.

  In the corner, Riva stirred. “But I wrote it … Sonya phoned Isser from Cassit, just before the Castel battle, to finally tell him who—who Abu Jalood was, and that he was going to be there …” Riva’s eyes turned black and small. “This shmendrik Paltiel overheard her, so right away he ran off to Yaffo to warn this Arab boyfriend of his of the coming attack … Sonya saw him go and she guessed why, so she came running to me …”

  I wanted to speak but could not.

  Riva’s voice was a rasp. “She was crying, Sonya … she asked me what to do—if she should go warn our boys, someone, so they’d stop Paltiel before he warned the Arab—I was six months pregnant with Paltiel’s child—and she asked me—”

  Gershonovitz let out a whistling sigh, a slow exhalation, as Riva’s black eyes turned toward me. “So I told her, Sonya, ‘We must finish with this Arab, before he ruins us all—nothing else matters—’” Riva was looking at me directly, her eyes ageless. “I told her, ‘Write a note, so they’ll send someone to stop Paltiel—’”

  Gershonovitz whispered, “You did right—I told you a hundred times already …”

  Riva curved her mouth. “But Sonya, she couldn’t write it … her fingers couldn’t hold the pencil—you understand? … even after she’d already decided—she couldn’t …”

  “Yes,” I said; or I think I did.

  Riva said, “This Arabush—she knew him from before your father—you understand?—”

  I nodded. The world was crystallizing into discrete objects, small and round and hard. Riva was saying, “… so I took the pen from her … and I wrote the note—and—then we—” Her chin vibrated. “We called someone we knew, who—he could get things to the Shay …”

  “Who?” I was amazed to hear my voice, so normal, so clear.

  “What does it matter?” Gershonovitz said. “Someone.”

  “Zussman,” said Riva, “from the Tnuva kiosk on Herzl Street. I knew his wife—he had a bicycle—” She shut her eyes so tight they disappeared.

  I said nothing. I think that Gershonovitz said something about everyone making a sacrifice, or something equally idiotic.

  “Sacrifice!” Riva said with harsh contempt. “What do you know about it? You think you men sacrificed? You have any idea what we went through, in the prehistory … what we still …” She fluttered her palm in one of her famous dramatic gestures, the one of Leah’le from The Dybbuk, to signify it was useless to explain, then turned to me. “I told you to leave but you didn’t listen! Now look what you’ve done to her.” She got up, steadied herself, and, holding the rim of her embroidered galabieh, swept out.

  I could hardly breathe; then little by little, life resumed.

  “Who did you send, after Paltiel?” I asked Gershonovitz, not looking at him.

  He tried to shrug. “Someone.”

  “From the Shay?”

  “Someone, what does it matter?”

  A wave of nausea washed over me. “My father?”

  “No no no,” the fat man fairly hissed. “Someone else.”

  Another wave rolled.

  Gershonovitz was saying, “We had to do it … What do you think … Other times we had to do worse—”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “For unity,” said Gershonovitz, “what do you think? Without unity there’s nothing. Look at them, these Arabushim. Just look at them!”

  “Yes,” I said. “For sure.”

  “No, look at them!” The fat man was fairly h
issing now. “You think I liked doing all this dreck? Doing all the necessary dirt so that one day we’ll have all this—” He waved his hands about, then stopped. Ruthy and Ehud barged into the room. Ruthy was still glowing with the makeup and fulminating with the spirit of her role. Ehud held her hand, squeezing it.

  “They want everyone on the stage,” Ruthy said, her eyes, blindly glowing, looking through me.

  Ehud rumbled, “This will go fifty performances for sure.”

  He looked at me. The flat stare had given place to another, harder still; like Gershonovitz’s of the week before.

  I said to Gershonovitz, “I have to go.”

  The clapping was turning rhythmic, insistent.

  “They are waiting,” Ehud said.

  I got to my feet. Gershonovitz gave me one of his old looks, and then, for the briefest moment, I saw his eyes brighten with something akin to moisture.

  “All right,” I said, then added in Arabic, “Illi fat matt.” The past is dead. Meaning we’ll keep all this between us.

  He tried to thump me on the back but his hand seemed to have lost its vigor. “It never is.” He stroked my shoulder, almost gently. “Now go, go. They are all waiting for you.”

  “Bye, Shimmel,” I said, and left. And this was the last I saw him.

  There was a break in the line of actors on the stage; beyond it was a sea of hands clapping soundlessly under a white cloud of light. I moved into the break and gave one hand to Ehud, the other to Ruthy.

  In the front row I saw the pinched face of Mr. Gelber (Jenny was no longer behind him), his eyes narrowed with an intense emotion I could not identify. And, beside him, Leibele, clapping with his soft hands; and Zussman and Amzaleg, side by side; and all the others, Arabs and Jews alike; my people, my two peoples; my father’s folk for whom he had fought and killed, and for whom he had finally and helplessly died.

  I left through the front door, openly and idiotically.

  Ruthy’s Beetle was parked at the end of the yard, its door unlocked. Or perhaps it was locked and I had kicked or wrenched it open. I no longer remember. My chest, the inside of my nose, the entire contents of my skull, were on fire. In the dark I rummaged under the steering wheel, for the ignition wires. I think I bared them with my teeth, before the engine caught.