by Y. I. Latz
“Ask them.”
“We did, you piece of fly-shit. You told all of them, at various times, that your trips abroad are missions on behalf of the Mossad.”
“They’re confused. I’m a cook for the submarine fleet at the naval base. Sometimes I take over for the regular cook on one of the submarines and deploy in his place.”
“You told them you were involved in daring operations.”
“Of course.” I have a hard time suppressing some cynicism. “In order to maintain the freshness of the fruit and vegetables even during long runs.”
“You’re getting smart with me.”
“These people are just full of it.”
Jimmy opens his laptop and plays a clip for me.
A spasm goes through me.
I quickly look down—
Oh, no.
◊◊◊
“Are you familiar with this clip?” he asks.
“Sort of.”
“Just sort of?”
“It’s familiar.”
“Tell me how.”
“This film was made by my wife and a few members of the kibbutz and screened a few months ago at the surprise party they threw to celebrate my fiftieth birthday.”
“Where was it screened?”
“In the communal dining hall.”
“How many people watched it?”
“A lot.”
“How many?”
“Hundreds.”
“It explicitly states that you go out on secret missions on behalf of the Mossad. Remember?”
“Not particularly.”
“Let’s save us some time and agree that you remember, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Did you set them straight on that occasion?”
“No.”
“Did you say into the microphone that it’s a mistake? That you’re a simple cook and not a renowned agent?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“What’s the point? You can’t influence what people think of you in a kibbutz, anyway.”
He stalls—
Searching through the papers in front of him—
Finds something—
Reads the pages with interest, as if for the first time—
“The American journalist and your Korean whore. Did they watch the film too?”
“She’s not a Korean whore.”
“She’s not Korean?” he plays innocent.
“She’s not a whore!”
“No? How would you define her?”
“Shin Il Jong is a Harvard professor!”
He smirks. For a moment, I picture him as a gangster in a Hollywood movie. “She’s a Korean whore who works for the CIA.”
“Professor Shin is…”
“Professor or no professor, she’s a simple Korean whore who got your dick up and set you up, and you sold her information.”
“I didn’t sell information because I don’t have any information and I had no reason to sell it. I’m a cook, not a Mossad agent.”
“You’re not a chef?”
“Chef, cook, it’s all the same.”
“You’re a chef on IDF’s most secret unit. Israel’s nuclear combat submarine fleet. Now do you understand why the Korean whore from the CIA got the hots for you?”
“I didn’t commit any offense.”
He leaps up, screaming at me as loudly as he can. I don’t understand why it’s this issue that drove him wild. He’s maintained his cool in more difficult circumstances.
“You scumbag! Wake up! This isn’t a movie! This is your life! For each one of these offenses, you’ll be sentenced to a minimum of seven to ten years, for a total of forty years. And we haven’t even mentioned your ugly, intentional assault on our dear man in the South of France. If you want the long incarceration you’re facing to be consecutive, keep playing at ‘I didn’t know, I didn’t say, I didn’t do.’ But if you want us to try and make it easier for you, and agree to have at least some of the sentences run concurrently, you better snap out of it, go wash your face properly, and start telling us a story. So what do you say, scumbag?”
I intend to continue playing the innocent.
This is bad. Very bad. His instincts sense where I’m heading before I can blurt out even one more word of denial.
He grabs me by the collar of my shirt, lifts me to my feet and sticks his mouth in my ear.
And spits inside it.
* * *
6 Milan Kundera, The Festival of Insignificance, Harper, p. 77.
Chapter Six
“A Punch or a Spit”
An hour later.
“Ready to continue?” Jimmy asks. He looks calm. I’m already sitting in my spot. Breathing hard. The humiliations seem worse to me than the physical pain.
I stare blankly.
He leans in toward me, his expression innocent. “A punch or a spit?”
I flinch away.
He continues. “There’s no smoke without fire. You applied to join the Mossad three times, and were rejected.”
I don’t respond. His voice reaches me like an echo. “The question is, why were you so eager to work for the Mossad?”
“I already told you: I wanted to work in a meaningful role.”
He smirks. “You’re a cook. A chef at most. What did you want to be, a chef for the Mossad?”
I shift in discomfort.
He goes on. “And what if I told you that you wanted to work for the Mossad so you could screw it over on the first chance you got and sell all its secrets to the highest bidder?”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Did I not warn you about using the word ‘bullshit’?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Did they tell you why you were rejected each of those three times?”
“No.”
“You were an outstanding fighter in the Naval Commando until you were injured during a daring rescue. You have a commendation from the chief of general staff. You speak several languages, you have an authentic foreign passport, and a high security clearance. Do you have any theories why you weren’t accepted, despite these promising initial qualifications?”
“No.”
“Did you ever try to look into the reasons?”
“No.”
“You weren’t curious?”
“Even if I was, I wouldn’t have gotten an answer.”
“Are you curious about the reasons now?”
“What does it matter at this point?”
“This is your lucky day. I’ll present some of the reasons for you, as pulled from your personal, confidential file. Enjoy. ‘Unstable personality,’ ‘Tends toward exaggeration and excess,’ ‘Tends to confound reality and fantasy,’ and mainly, ‘Fucked-up trustworthiness.’ Fucked-up trustworthiness. You get that? But there’s one more opinion, which is stronger and more influential than the rest. You want to hear it?”
“What I want is irrelevant.”
“Have it your way. Aren’t I being nice to you? Let’s move on. What if I tell you that you insisted on joining the Mossad in order to be a mole and relay information to the CIA?”
“You know that’s bullshit.”
He slaps me powerfully. Actually, he tries to slap me. Misses. His fingertips hit my nose. My eyes are flooded with tears.
He doesn’t look impressed. “You were rejected by the Mossad, and then an idea popped up in your sick mind. Join the submarine fleet. And as what? A cook. Just between us? A brilliant idea. Since our guys don’t know how to keep their mouths shut. In one day in the fleet dining hall, you were exposed to more classified information than you could have obtained over ten years as a mole in the Mossad.”
“Bullshit.”
This time, his slap
doesn’t miss its mark. His palm is large and solid. My cheek mashes into the bones of my mouth. I let out a grunt of pain.
“We’ve already agreed that you keep that word to yourself. You can answer ‘yes’ or you can answer ‘no.’ I prefer ‘yes.’ Okay?”
I can’t answer.
He continues. “Some woman got your dick hard and you paid her with information. Her name is ‘the Korean CIA whore.’ Got it?”
“Professor Shin is…”
“‘My whore’! That’s how you’re going to refer to her from now on. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t hear you!”
“Yes.”
“How will you refer to her?”
I don’t reply.
He leans in toward my ear.
“She’s…uh…”
His lips are right on my ear.
I mumble, “The whore…”
“I didn’t hear you! Whose whore??”
“My whore! My whore!”
I’m about to cry. It’s not the label. It’s missing her.
Even under these circumstances, I feel excited when she comes up.
Shin—
He thrusts a notebook in my direction, in which he’s written down portions of our previous conversations, along with a simple plastic pen.
“So you admit that you relayed confidential material from operational Navy computers to the CIA?”
“No.”
“You said you did, just a short time ago.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I was tricked and didn’t know that I was relaying material to the CIA.”
“You admit to relaying material to an unauthorized party?”
“I don’t.”
“But you did relay it. That’s a fact. CIA whore or no CIA whore, you relayed material. Do you admit that?”
“I did it unknowingly.”
“But you did it.”
“Unknowingly.”
“Would you be willing to admit that you conveyed material, even unknowingly, and we’ll let you out of this nightmare?”
“No.”
“You’re a pissant cook, but you’re extraordinarily manipulative. No wonder everyone’s convinced you’re a chef. Come on now. Do you actually expect us to believe you’re the kind of innocent man you insist on describing to us?”
“As a ‘manipulative cook,’ I assert that the manipulations you’re employing in regard to me are amateurish, don’t hold water and are wasting all of our time,” I declare in one breath, immediately sustaining a loud slap, followed by another.
“What’s your opinion of the slap?” he asks, his face assuming an expression of interest.
I think he’s asking a legitimate question.
I prepare to give him a genuine answer.
I don’t have time.
He directs another slap at my cheek.
He uses the back of his hand. This time, the slap is especially powerful and therefore especially painful.
Tears well up in my eyes.
Jimmy speaks peacefully, as if everything he just did hasn’t actually happened. “From now on, think long and hard before you give us your smartass answers. I have no problem dry-slapping you, harder and harder, and a court won’t help you, either. You get it? Let’s start over. When did you understand that the Korean whore playing with your dick was actually a CIA agent?”
“Professor Shin is not a whore.”
The next slap is aimed at my nose.
The next two are even quicker and harder.
I fall off the chair.
I get bruised.
I burst out in tears like a child.
He tries to raise me up but I hold on to the table leg.
As I’ve already mentioned, I regress back to childhood.
“By the way,” he says, “maybe you should know that the person who kept you out of the Mossad is no less than your best friend. Do you have any idea what his problem with you is?”
“I don’t understand. Who?”
“What do you mean, ‘who’? Singer. You didn’t get that on your own?”
As I’m sprawled out on the floor, howls are emitted from my mouth. Jimmy grows quiet. Both of us are attentive. Listening to the sounds coming out from inside me. These are not human sounds. I myself am amazed. This is not my voice. I don’t have a voice like that. Only an animal could produce a sound like that.
A dog.
◊◊◊
After midnight, the interrogation resumes. Marina shows up in my cell, looking refreshed and all decked out. She’s accompanied by a flock of young investigators, like choirboys. The pimples on her face are covered with makeup.
The vivid colors around her eyes make her look inhuman. Or perhaps she only looks that way to me. I find her that repugnant.
Up to this point, none of my interrogations have commenced at such a late hour. I wonder what the urgency is. She allowed me to make myself a cup of coffee, but wouldn’t let me drink it. It’s standing on the table right under my nose.
Its steaming aroma engulfs me. Strumming on my nerves. I’m losing my mind. I close my eyes.
“Why did you go to Colombia?”
Colombia? Again?
I express my annoyance. I’ve already been asked about it a thousand times. Quickly, I come to my senses and alter my expression.
“My adult daughter, a backpacker, got stuck there. I flew out to rescue her.”
“What do you mean ‘got stuck’?”
“She was driving an open safari jeep with no license and no insurance. She flipped over and was injured.”
“Why would she do something like that?”
“She joined a group of young Australians. They were renting the jeep and she came with them. They let her drive. After they flipped over, they decided that in light of the problems they’d be facing with the insurance, the one who had a license and insurance would claim that he was driving the jeep.”
“And…?”
“Someone snitched and revealed that she was the one behind the wheel when the accident happened.”
“Who?”
“Someone.”
“Her friends?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then who? Other than them and her, who knew who was actually driving the jeep?”
“I guess they told someone.”
“Is there another possibility?”
“Like what?”
“You, as her father, knew the truth?”
“No… Yes…”
“No or yes?”
“Yes.”
“And who did you tell?”
“No one.”
“Try to remember.”
“I didn’t tell anyone, and even if I did, it was just someone in Israel. What would that have to do with the Colombia police?”
“That’s exactly, but exactly, what we’re trying to figure out. What the connection is between your friends in Israel and the Colombia police.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Haven’t I warned you that you’ll be severely punished every time you say ‘bullshit’ to us?”
My tongue feels petrified. Cold sweat is trickling down my body. I feel an immense hunger.
Marina continues. “Let’s move on. The police in Colombia took her passport, arrested her, and intended to prosecute her. According to Colombian law, someone accused of a traffic violation can be released on a minor amount of bail. In the great majority of cases, the entire affair can end with a fine, especially when it involves a foreign citizen. A bribe consisting of a few dollars is an option, too. But the Colombia police insisted on holding her under house arrest. Your wife flew to Colombia and couldn’t mana
ge to get her released. Why did you think you could do better?”
“My wife and my daughter were panicked. They were calling me twice a day. They begged me to do something.”
“And you went there as the rescuing, cool-headed dad?”
“Something like that.”
“Did you contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? Did you try the usual channels?”
“I did contact them. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs told me very clearly that my daughter had committed an offense, and there was nothing they could do about it. It’s not like the Colombians framed her.”
“So you flew to Colombia, and managed to get her released. How did you succeed where everyone else failed?”
I sigh. “Should I tell the whole story again?”
“You’ll tell it to me as many times as we want you to. How did you ultimately manage to get your daughter released?”
“I used bribes.”
“Who did you bribe?”
“A judge, a wheeler-dealer mediator, and a few other people.”
“Your daughter was driving with no insurance and no license; she flipped a vehicle, and injured herself as well as three young backpackers from New Zealand and Australia. You said yourself that the Colombians didn’t frame her. It was a real offense to which she confessed. In every other civilized nation, including Israel, she would have stood trial. But she was not only released, but didn’t even go to trial. How did you manage that?”
“Bribes, bribes, bribes.”
“Don’t get angry and don’t raise your voice. Who did you bribe? Huh? Who?”
“The prosecution, the state attorney, the judge, all kinds of people.”
“Who was the mediator?”
“Who was the mediator?” The question surprises me.
“Yes, who put the deal together? It’s not like you came to the prosecution, the state attorney, the judge and ‘all kinds of people’ and just put money on the table. If you did that, they’d take your money and then throw you in jail for bribery. Our question is who the mediator was.”
“Some locals.”
“Who?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Names? Places? Did you contact them or did they contact you? Is there a stall on the street with a sign that says, ‘We mediate in return for bribes’?”
“Stop it!!” I lash out. “I don’t remember! I! Don’t! Remember! Do you know how traumatic it is to have your wife and your daughter stuck in Colombia, with money streaming through your fingers for their sleeping arrangements and sustenance and you don’t even have a date for the trial?! Huh?!”