“‘My father made me do it, the way he learned from his parents,’ she said, and I heard the pain in her voice when she explained that he never ceased to remind her there was nothing to be learned from her mother’s parents. ‘They were primitive, from a neighborhood on the periphery of Berlin, he repeated even in front of my mother, and the only good thing her parents had done was to send her away at the last moment, before they and all the others went to the incinerators.’
“I just listened to her. This was another subject I didn’t want to get into. I hoped the departmental shrink had dealt with this when the time was right and that the wound had healed. Sometimes scar tissue is stronger than the original skin.
“‘So I owe these manners to him and they help me to think calmly,’ she told me, and I thought that perhaps in spite of everything she was saying something good about her father, and of course I agreed with her that he’d presented her with an efficient and effective skill. Manners were like armor, a defense mechanism. Anyone trying to make contact with her had to get through the don’t-touch-me force field that she radiated; she could listen calmly and politely to the other person, indulge in a short silence, take a deep breath, and only then come up with a suitably equivocal answer. This was her standard procedure, and I feared the day she would use it against us.
“We were in the safe apartment that was leased for her, and we went over the usual things. Accounts, reports to be completed, introduction to the new communications system. She was on “family leave,” which was easily explained in her workplace. The school agreed she could take a vacation, and Barbara volunteered to come into the apartment now and then and water the plants. Of course we had a problem with this, because the old communications system would still be there. But clearly she had no choice, she couldn’t explain why the apartment was locked up and the plants had been left to die. I remember it was during this vacation that I raised the issue of the dog. I thought it would be useful if she had an excuse to go for walks up the road and get close to the gate of the Defense Ministry. ‘Spies don’t have dogs!’ was her immediate response. ‘It’s completely impractical. Who would take care of it when I travel, and what if I fall in love with it?’ ‘That’s the very reason you should have one. A dog will add to your domestic image, allow you to do things only those in love can get away with.’ She smiled, not convinced, but I was pleased that I could finally allude to this subject. I carried on processing the fresh information, and we discussed the pros and cons of keeping a dog in a house, in a Muslim society where dogs are considered impure. I asked her where she knows him from. She chuckled and said she still did not know the dog, and it was clear she was being evasive. I again asked her about the man. ‘He’s a student in our school. Rather a good one,’ she said.
“‘And what’s his line of work?’
“She didn’t answer right away. ‘I’m not sure I understood, but as far as I can tell from the business English he’s trying to learn it’s something to do with importing chemicals. He purchases them for the Defense Ministry. At least that’s what he says when he practices with me. I play the vendor and he comes to me and says Ministry of Defense and names several other government departments.’
“You can imagine my surprise, and the adrenaline that started to flow. I admit I was thinking of myself. At once I started fantasizing over penetrating chemical weapons projects, and the plaudits that would accompany that success. And the fears started kicking in too. All this in those few seconds before I responded. What’s going to happen to her? What is she capable of? I looked at her, sprawled comfortably in the armchair, wearing a simple skirt that covered her knees, and looking back at me as if we were discussing a shopping list in the supermarket. You’ve seen her face in the picture. Pleasant, pretty perhaps, but not sexy. A regular girl. Not one of those temptresses you see in films who could seduce the Pope.”
“We had some like that,” said Joe. “All of them a great disappointment. When we were just starting out we thought we needed men who knew how to lie, including some petty criminals, and women capable of playing honey-trap schemes.”
Ehud had heard all this before from Joe but he had no intention of interrupting the flow of memories.
“It didn’t succeed. Someone who’s good at lying will end up deceiving you, and a queen among temptresses will end up being tempted herself. We tried several times and failed, and then we constructed a different template for our operatives.”
“Like Rachel,” said Ehud, not sure that Joe would agree with him.
“Exactly. That’s why your combatant has been so successful. A woman healthy in mind and body, a talented and loyal Zionist.” Joe added that in his opinion getting a woman operative into a man’s bed would be too dangerous. “Of course, I warned her to be careful, that it was not worth exposing herself and in any case she shouldn’t do anything out of the ordinary. She nodded and I tried to visualize for myself the plans she was devising while listening to my lecture. I found myself explaining the security protocols again, and thinking at the same time about the potential of this new friend, and thus in my excitement I did not notice she was telling me only part of the truth. That she was testing me, listening to me, assessing me with all the means we had supplied her with in training, and thinking perhaps she had found the cure for loneliness.
“Think of her loneliness, Joe, loneliness in the middle of a crowd. The loneliness of someone leading a double life, hiding her objectives and her motives and the things most important to her. Think of the longing for warmth, love, someone to listen to you, to want you. I could see Rachel leaving the school at the end of the working day. I saw her in my mind’s eye passing by cafés and being ogled by the men sitting there, and I thought of her refusing offers of friendship from other teachers, knowing it would be hard to disengage from them. I asked her once what she’s eating, where she sends her clothes for dry-cleaning and when she cleans the apartment. She gave me a dismissive look and told me I could figure out those things, because there was nothing surprising. She goes shopping in the market, carries the plastic bags to the car like anyone else, generally cooks for herself, and keeps the apartment tidy even when she has no visitors. She lived as if she were a normal person. As if. And she told me she reads, listens to music, does her job, and I knew she was yearning for something but she didn’t know what.
“I think that’s why I got it wrong. I veered between sympathy for her and happiness that she might have found a friend, and the firm conviction that she mustn’t fall in love with anyone. And I wanted to get some operational advantage from the connection with him, and I admit that I found it hard to suppress the jealousy that was welling up in me, simple and spiteful—that she had chosen him and not me. It may have already been too late, the bud had opened, and the only way to stop it was to pull the stalk out by the root, but what could I do? The temptation to go on was overwhelming.”
“Stop there,” said Joe. “Tell me again, from the beginning.”
“HOW DID SHE MEET HIM, AND what did she see in their first encounter? I’ll try to repeat her words, but you know how memory works, it chooses what to erase and what to retain. And even when you remember and you try to share the words and pictures, you find yourself telling a different story from the one you intended. That is certainly my experience.
“I didn’t record her, and I didn’t take notes. I knew she was choosing and creating the picture she wanted to present. Her true feelings she kept to herself, and even if she’d written a diary, I don’t suppose she would have been entirely honest.
“‘I met Rashid in the school,’ she said, and I saw she was making an effort to play down the importance of the relationship. As if, when an operative in the field meets someone and goes out with him, it’s a small detail that can be overlooked. She could tell straightaway how tense I was, and asked, ‘Why are you so uptight about this? Is it against the rules? I’m not allowed to drink coffee with someone? Not allowed to talk t
o a man? I can’t go out with him?’
“And what could I say to her? That I didn’t want to hear about him? That what she does with her free time is her business? She and I knew that wasn’t correct. An undercover operative has no free time, and there’s nothing that’s of no significance. With male operatives we already had a convention: Ask no questions and hear no lies. We knew they were fucking, they were finding relief that way. But we don’t ask, don’t want to know. Because the moment you know, you have to do something. Start worrying about the prostitutes they’re going to, about the amount of alcohol they’re consuming in solitude. So we don’t ask and only want to know how things are going, and we’re glad when we’re told everything is in order. And we wait for the periodic polygraph test and hide behind it instead of having a heart-to-heart talk. If you’re having an open conversation you have to reveal something of yourself too. You have to show your operative there are other sides to you, the humane side, the good friend side, to let him feel that he is sitting with someone who is taking care of him, someone he can trust. And then he’ll talk, because he knows you’re listening and he can rely on you. You might criticize him, but you’re doing your job as a handler, as the one responsible for his safety and the success of the mission, and you’re his friend too. But I couldn’t be Rachel’s friend. I simply couldn’t.
“I kept quiet and let her go on. She looked at me, tugged the hem of her skirt down, and shifted her gaze to a corner of the room. I closed the notebook, put it aside, and waited. She wiped her face with a handkerchief that she held in a clenched fist. After a few moments of silence, she turned to me. ‘You want to know what we did together?’ I could tell she wanted to be angry, she knew she had done something wrong. Everyone makes connections. It’s almost inhuman to forbid them, unnecessary too. So what if you tell a child to be careful? Maybe the very declaration that something is forbidden is an important way to emphasize it. So it will be in their head all the time. Who doesn’t lie? Who doesn’t sin?
“When she started I was hoping for something light, a cup of coffee in the school canteen, something that would enable us to continue to manage the situation until we decided what to do. As if it would make any difference, as if we could force her to do something with him on our behalf. ‘What is there to tell?’ she said, and described the school to me, the unprepossessing lobby and the Arab receptionist whose main asset was her ability to order take-away meals from restaurants where there were no English speakers. I imagine how this receptionist looked at him when he came in. A good-looking man in a smart European suit, accompanied by a burly driver jangling a bundle of keys, right out of a gangster film. Mafia or secret service, she was probably thinking, and she stood up to meet him, smoothing down her dress and adjusting the scarf on her head.
“The receptionist greeted them politely, and later, after they had gone, she told Rachel that the bodyguard, or perhaps he was the driver, or perhaps both, looked at her as if she were for sale. Rashid acknowledged her with a nod and said he had an appointment with the headmaster. She said there was nothing in the diary and asked them to wait. The driver, or bodyguard, wiped one of the chairs with his handkerchief, and it was only then that the guest sat down. His aide stood beside him with arms folded and watched the main entrance, and both waited in a menacing silence.
“Rachel arrived in jeans and a T-shirt under a loose open blouse. She told me, in her particular way, exactly what she was wearing and what impression she wanted to make in the school—the proverbial girl next door, not someone you could expect anything from. Still, she was wearing a backpack and the straps stretched the T-shirt in a cheeky way that only young women can get away with. The bodyguard tensed when she opened the door and came hurrying in, and he put a hand under his jacket. Rashid didn’t turn his head, but it was obvious he had noticed her, and Rachel had a moment of dread, the moment feared by someone who has something to hide, the feeling they had come for her. She was used to seeing only the receptionist at this time, and although she had a reason for arriving an hour before the start of the school day, she didn’t talk about the regular route that she followed in the early morning hours, that passed by the Defense Ministry. In those days before satellites it was important for us to know that the routine was kept. At night she observed the Defense Ministry from her apartment, and in the day she passed it going to work and on her way home. A routine can be a dangerous thing, unless it’s part of something that’s easily explained, like the way you go from your apartment to your workplace. Rachel tended to arrive a few minutes after the receptionist and enjoyed chatting with her briefly, practicing her Arabic.
“‘And this was the first time I saw him,’ she said. ‘He sat upright like a teacher but he was relaxed, and the strange thing is I remember the glass vase and the bunch of grubby plastic flowers on the table. It seemed he was looking at them, and although I was afraid he was from the Mukhabarat and had come for me, I felt embarrassed that the reception area looked so shabby. And I also thought, in that split second before I turned to the receptionist, if I’d known that today they were going to take me in for questioning, I’d have worn more comfortable clothing and had a change of underwear with me.
“‘I ignored them as best I could, though I had no doubt they were looking only at me. She gave me the day’s class schedule. “Nothing special today,” she said, in English. This was the rule in the school—speak English—and she signaled to me that this was no time to be careless; the working day had begun and I needed to watch out. I heard a soft sound behind me and guessed the important-looking one had stood up. My body stiffened in anticipation and I went on talking to the receptionist as if the two men approaching me didn’t exist. Needless to say, the receptionist would not stand by me if anything happened.
“‘He said, “Excuse me”—in an accented English and waited for me to turn around and face him. I didn’t respond. I don’t owe him anything, and I can use every extra second to prepare for what’s coming. Again: “Excuse me,” and this time in a firmer tone, the voice of someone who knows what he wants and knows how to give orders politely. Something touched my elbow, and I thought, Here it comes, now he’ll put his hand on my shoulder and tell me I’m under arrest. Hard to explain to you what I was thinking at that moment. I didn’t even have time to feel afraid. I figured that even if they stripped me and saw me naked they would never know what I was thinking and what I had to hide, and this was some consolation. I couldn’t ignore him any longer. I turned around. I saw a smiling face, thick pink lips beneath the black mustache, and brown reassuring eyes.
“‘Without introducing himself he asked me my name. As if the suit, the polished shoes, and the bodyguard were his ID card. I said, “Rachel,” and already I felt different. In the movies the cop knows the name of his quarry. He repeated the name twice and then said it again with a more pronounced Arab pronunciation. I waited for him to say why he came. “I want you to teach me English,” he said simply, and then asked me, in a tone that sounded almost like a command, to tell him about the school and the method we used, instead of wasting his time waiting for the headmaster.
“‘I glanced in the direction of the muscleman, still standing motionless in the corner. “He’s just my assistant,” he said, and still he didn’t introduce himself. His English was simple and deliberate. I assumed that he had studied at the local school, and what he wanted from me was to become fluent, to use idioms, to become more confident in English. There wasn’t much chance of getting rid of the accent, he was too old and I had no expertise in this area. Strange, to be thinking about my professional competence at a time like this. He radiated an air of pride and self-assurance: his poise, his clothes, the bodyguard at his service. And so I wanted to show him I wasn’t just a young woman in jeans who knows English. “All right,” I said, “you want to join the advanced class? So let’s go, see what you make of this, and I started speaking fast in a London accent, like some kind of a cockney bimbo. He looked disconcerted f
or a moment. “I’m sure you’re a good teacher,” he said, as his right-hand man went on counting prayer beads in one hand and holding the Mercedes keys in the other, his eyes on the door.
“‘He finally held out his hand and said, “Rashid.” “Rachel,” I answered, and I’m sure I blushed.’
“‘And that’s all?’ I asked her when she finished. ‘Yes,’ she said, and blushed.”
JOE LIT A CIGAR AND BLEW a perfect smoke ring into the darkening sky. Logic told him he should give up smoking, but he had decided to allow himself this one forbidden pleasure, and he invited Ehud to join him. Ehud declined and asked Joe what he thought. Joe didn’t answer and went on smoking placidly. Ehud’s story reminded him of operatives who had been under his command, and the special relationship that evolved every time between the case officer sitting in Europe and the operative embedded in enemy territory. He believed Ehud and thought he was doing his best to clarify Rachel’s image, but he wasn’t sure that Ehud knew what was really happening in the field, or if things were really going as they should. A long life had taught Joe that in romantic matters there is no logic, and there are a lot of lies.
Ehud wasn’t deceiving himself either. Not now and not then, when he sat facing her and heard the reports about Rashid. He listened to her and felt that although she trusted his discretion and his judgment, she was still keeping something to herself. She hadn’t told him everything. No one tells everything, not even to a lover, especially not to a lover. Ehud was Rachel’s case officer and her connection with headquarters staff. No one met her without his approval and with one word he could veto any project or request for information directed at her. The memory of the Eli Cohen debacle and the hanging of the operatives in Egypt had faded over the years, but the feeling that those operatives had fallen into the hands of the enemy because there had been too many demands made on them was always there, and if Ehud said that was enough, she could do no more, no one would put pressure on him or on her to go on. This responsibility had two sides to it: there was the appetite to do more and more, and it was his job when to say enough, when things were getting out of control.
The English Teacher Page 12