by Y. I. Latz
She attacks me with harsh words. Promises me I’ll never see sunlight again.
I shift my body weight from foot to foot—
Like a reprimanded boy facing his scowling teacher—
She won’t let me use the bathroom. I can barely hold it in.
“As far as I’m concerned, you can piss in your pants,” she smirks. “You’re already a giant shit. So be a major piss too. What’s the difference?”
My eyes close.
My thoughts return to Shin.
Pleasure spreads through my body.
Marina slaps me twice. Once on the right side and once on the left.
I’m shocked. “Why?” I ask in a weepy voice.
“You smiled, that’s why,” comes the answer.
* * *
4 The Intifada is the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which began in 1987.
5 In Arabic, “God is great” and “Slaughter the Jews,” common rallying cries during the Intifada.
Chapter Five
At the Junction of Tel Aviv and Africa
“About Africa,” she says.
It’s two or three in the morning and the interrogation is still continuing. I’m sitting at the table, my head occasionally dropping to my chest. Marina is across from me, all on her own. The young interrogators have been sent off. Apparently, she took pity on them.
“You didn’t fly to Mombasa in Kenya,” she declares firmly.
“No.”
“But you told your family and, in fact, the entire kibbutz that you did, as part of your role as cook on duty on one of the submarines.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I was supposed to go there.”
“But you were laid off before then, and the trip was canceled. Why did you insist on pretending you were still going?”
“I’ve already told you why.”
Her fist hits my chin. It’s not quick or strong. I have time to tilt my body aside. I lose my balance and fall. My nose hits the leg of the chair. My experience teaches me I should stay sprawled out on the floor. If I lie there long enough, and throw in some moans, they’ll let me be and the interrogation will end for the time being. However, what was true in the past doesn’t prove true this time. She throws cold water over my head.
It’s a small amount. I assume it’s from the glass on the table. Feeling it on my body and my clothes is unpleasant. Marina sits down next to me on the floor while I’m laid out on my stomach.
She looks like a referee counting down “nine…eight…seven…” to a boxer laid out in the ring.
“Tell me again.”
“I was ashamed to cancel it. I’d been laid off and I didn’t know how to tell them I was laid off. I didn’t want to let them down.”
“What does ‘letting them down’ have to do with what happened?”
“I was laid off.”
“No! You were scared! What were you scared of?”
“I wasn’t scared.”
“The facts prove that you were.”
“I was ashamed. I wasn’t scared. No way was I scared.”
“You’re not the first person to be laid off. What’s the big deal about being laid off? Who isn’t laid off these days at least once in their lives, if not more? No one has job security. It’s not that big a shame, and actually there’s no shame at all. You’re fifty years old. Millions of employees are laid off at that age all over the world, making room for younger people.”
“I was ashamed!”
“You piece of fly-shit. You weren’t ashamed. You were scared! You were scared that something horrible would happen to you if someone found out you’d been laid off. Who is that someone?”
“No!”
“Your wife?”
“No!”
“Who, then?”
“No one!”
“Have you ever heard of a similar case where someone got laid off and continued to go to work as usual?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I read about it online.”
“What did you read?”
“A cop from a bad neighborhood in Lod continued to go to work even after he was laid off. He was the pride of his family, and shame over being laid off was eating him alive.”
“Explain this to us. I mean it. So we understand. Why would a fifty-year-old man continue to show up daily to a job he’d been laid off from, instead of looking for a new job? You were a famous cook. A chef. You couldn’t find any restaurants that wanted to hire you?”
“I told you. At the kibbutz, it was a matter of honor.”
“Are you Moroccan? Ethiopian? Bedouin?”
“No.”
“Well, then, what kind of honor are you talking about?”
My forehead is dripping—
Streams of water are flowing from it—
I can hear the thundering of my heart in my ears.
“You took money from your friends at the kibbutz, who asked you to pass it on to their children who were backpacking in Kenya.”
“They asked me to.”
“How much money are we talking about?”
“About two thousand dollars.”
“We know of at least twenty thousand dollars.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t count it. The money was in envelopes and letters.”
“Did you pass the money on to their kids?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t fly to Kenya and I didn’t meet their kids.”
“But you told them you did.”
“Yes.”
“Did you return the money?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I already told you guys why. Again?”
She grabs hold of my shirt, lifts me up as if I’m a rag doll and throws me on the chair. In the process, a few buttons come off my prison shirt.
She quickly ties my hands to the back of the chair behind my back.
And then it begins.
She starts slapping me at a measured pace, alternating between the right side and the left. There’s no anger in her actions, and no pleasure, either. It’s a despicable job she has to carry out, and she carries it out in the best way she can.
My face ignites with both pain and frustration. I want to die. This is the first time that thought goes through my mind, but not the last.
Marina continues. “Don’t be a wise guy. Don’t make me be mean to you. You’ll tell us as many times as we want. Understood? Why did you ultimately decide not to go to Kenya?”
“I felt bad because of the lie. I got cold feet. I understood it was a ridiculous idea.”
“And yet you didn’t tell your wife or any of the kibbutz members about your decision. And, in fact, you stayed in Israel.”
“Yes.”
“Where did you pass the time?”
“I already told you. In Tel Aviv.”
“Did you stay in the country to spend time with a woman?”
“No.”
“A man?”
“No!”
“Which hotel?”
“I slept on the beach.”
“What beach?”
“I don’t remember.”
“And your suitcase?”
“It was with me.”
“For four days?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you change?”
“I didn’t.”
“And why didn’t you actually go stay in a hotel, or with a relative or an old friend? I’m sure you have quite a few of them in central Israel.”
“Because my cover story for my family and the kibbutz was that I was in
Africa, and I was afraid that my secret would be revealed.”
“Does that make sense to you? A fifty-year-old, supposedly normal man stays in the country and doesn’t let anyone know? And then you sleep on the beach and not in a hotel?”
“I wanted to save some money, and also to feel young, like I used to.”
“Well, at least you’re telling the truth about one thing. We checked all the hotels. You didn’t stay in any of them under your own name. We also showed your picture around. No one had seen you. That means you either slept in parks or on the beach like you say, which you’ll agree with me makes no sense whatsoever, or else you rented an apartment. We’ve already checked rental sites and real-estate offices. No one had seen you or heard of you. We’re kindly sparing you the need to deny.”
I almost smile—
“Did you make friends with anyone on the beach?”
“Here and there.”
“Do you have names? Details? Proof? Receipts for sandwiches, coffee, cigarettes?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“But you do eat. Or don’t you do that either?”
“I didn’t take receipts.”
“You insist on a label of ‘present yet absent’ in Tel Aviv, and expect us to swallow this fairy tale?”
“It’s not a fairy tale.”
“And what would you say if we told you that you were lying, and that you were actually with a woman?”
“That you’ve seen too many Bollywood movies.”
“Is she married? Are you scared of her husband? Is she scared of him? Is that the reason?”
“I wasn’t with a woman.”
“How about with a man?”
“I already told you, no!”
“Are you gay? Is that it? Deep in the closet?”
“No.”
“Don’t be ashamed. These days, every other man is gay. Married men are also exposed as such. The world has changed. Even our Shin Bet has quite a few gay guys. Do you admit it? Is that the whole story?”
“No.”
She is silent for a moment.
“Where did you shower? Where did you take a shit?”
“In the changing rooms on the beach.”
“They’re closed at night.”
“The taps are still accessible.”
“How was your relationship with your wife?”
“What do you mean?”
“How was the personal relationship between the two of you? What’s unclear about that question?”
“It was fine.”
“Did you cheat on her?”
“No.”
“Did she cheat on you?”
“No!”
“Don’t yell. It’s a legitimate question. You know she has someone else now.”
That’s a low blow—
A real missile strike—
She takes a long look at the pages in front of her. “And then came the terror attack in Mombasa.”
“Yes.”
“Your wife called you in Mombasa, concerned. Or at least that’s what she thought. That you were in Mombasa. But in fact, you were in Tel Aviv the entire time. You lied to her. You told her you’d been present at the site of the attack, and had miraculously escaped unharmed. Why was that necessary?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you did it anyway.”
“I had the idea that it was a good way to ‘launder’ the money the kibbutz members had given me, by telling them all the money was lost during the terror attack.”
“So you could keep all the money given to you by your good friends, who trusted you and hoped you would pass it on to their kids?”
“Something like that.”
“‘Something like that’ or ‘yes’?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s assume that’s true. Do you have another explanation why you did that?”
“What’s wrong with the previous explanation?”
“It’s a complete fabrication.”
I pretend to be insulted. I have to be more vigilant.
My fatigue wins out. My head falls to my chest. She shakes me. I startle. Lose my balance and fall to the ground. I stay lying there, like a deflated balloon.
She resumes. “After a few days, you supposedly ‘returned from Kenya’ and continued the masquerade. Your wife and the entire kibbutz couldn’t contain their worry for you and their concern over how you were doing, and you still didn’t see fit to tell them that you you’d been nowhere near Africa, that actually, this entire time, you were pulling one over on them and roaming the beach in Tel Aviv like some hippie dipshit. And of course, you didn’t tell them that you were no longer working as a cook for the submarine fleet. Isn’t that a bit much? How long were you planning to string along this surreal story?”
“I meant to tell them on the day I ‘came back.’ But on that day, my family and the kibbutz members decided to surprise me, and threw me a surprise party. It wasn’t the right time to tell them.”
I try to get up.
She won’t let me. Her foot is on my shoulder. I think I’m mistaken. I try again.
I’m not mistaken. She’s preventing me from getting up. And so the interrogation continues as I’m sprawled out on the floor and she is imperiously stepping on me.
I remain sprawled out and she sits down next to me. My back is itching urgently. It’s driving me crazy. I don’t dare move. It’s a wonder to me that after all that, I’m still alive.
And maybe I’m not.
◊◊◊
Six more weeks go by. On some mornings, I feel dejection. A kind of melancholy. I have every reason in the world to feel that way. Another unique reason joins the others: it’s hard for me to wake up to another day of doing nothing. But I smile. Rise energetically. The cameras are documenting my every move. The moment I let the dejection take over, they’ll diagnose me as suicidal and will cuff me to the bed, as they’ve done to others in the past. They let me keep the kettle and make myself black coffee. The black coffee is the reason for my good spirits. I hide this as well. If they knew what a positive influence it has on me, they would have taken it away a long time ago. They have no interest in being kind to me, but in keeping me lucid until my trial.
It’s going to be a show trial.
I peer in my notepad every morning. I’ve written down an inspiring sentence by my favorite writer. Milan Kundera. Although I know it by heart, I prefer to read it from the written page.
“Only from the heights of an infinite good mood can you observe below you the eternal stupidity of men and laugh over it—”6
The black coffee has a short-term influence. Once it evaporates, I can’t help but calculate the course of my life from this point onward. Soon I’ll be fifty-one years old. Even if they reduce my sentence by a third, I’ll be sixty-nine when I’m released. My daughter Neta will be forty-one. I don’t have many friends, and they don’t count, anyway.
But I’ll have Shin—
Odd. I never asked her about her age. I have an estimate. Between thirty-four and thirty-eight. The last time I saw her, several months ago, she was slim as a stalk, with taut skin like a baby’s. Every motion of her body, however trivial, moves me. How will she look in eighteen years, when she’s fifty-two or fifty-six? Good lord, what does a Korean woman of fifty-six look like?
And most importantly, how will she feel about me?
This thought is enough in itself to increase my depression. I hurry toward the kettle. My third cup of black coffee and it’s not even six in the morning.
◊◊◊
A hard rain is falling outside, although according to my calculations, it’s already spring out there.
I cannot see or hear the rain. There’s no window in my cell. No one has told me about it, either. But its presence infiltrates even the packed
air of my cell. Winter makes me cheerful. I’ve always preferred winter to summer. Thanks to it, although I’m in my foul-smelling cell, without being able to see daylight or a light at the end of the tunnel, for a brief moment, I feel festive.
I cheer up. This is the reason why I opened the day with a decision to cling to life. That was in the morning. At night, this day will end with me yearning for my own death.
The interrogation resumes in the evening. I’ve had time to nap. This time, Jimmy is the one running the show. No sign of Marina. I find myself almost glad to see him. Out of the two of them, I consider him “the good interrogator.” I picture him as a professional party guy, as if he has just arrived from the pub next door. A shiny bald head, tall and dusky-skinned, stylish glasses in a dark red hue that are occasionally replaced with a different pair, just as stylish, with a cosmopolitan style of dressing comprised of a T-shirt under an unbuttoned dress shirt.
For the most part, he’s even-tempered, almost jocular. Or so, at least, I thought until today.
“Have you ever worked for the Mossad?”
“You know I haven’t.”
“Have you ever been dispatched on a mission by the Mossad?”
“I’m a cook.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“You know I wasn’t.”
“Have you ever carried out an independent project of any kind for the Mossad?”
“No, no, no.”
“Are you familiar with any of the following names? Avi Yardeni, Yitzhak Goldman, Moshe Kaploto, Yossi Conforti, Raffi Zheldatti, Ilana Sisu, Rena Levi, Avi Ben Yitzhak, Meir Pinto, Ora Benitta, Miriam Wertsberger?”
“Yes.”
“Who are they?”
“Kibbutz members.”
“Do you know what they have in common, along with some other people?”
“No.”
“Try to guess.”
“They’re my friends?”
“No. They all swore you told them that you also work for the Mossad.”
“They’re wrong. I’m a cook in the Israeli Navy.”
“You know that, and so do we. Why do your best friends think otherwise?”