The Fury of Rachel Monette

by Peter Abrahams

  I even had a third, so hard do I labor in your behalf. You won’t know the author of this one, a certain Captain I knew in my early years, but he is a true friend of yours. In the past decade he more than anyone else, far more, has been responsible for making me the tough uncompromising champion of the Sephardim you came to see today. I have a notion it was just the sort of thing you wanted: it called for action. Nothing irresponsible. Merely a two-hour nationwide strike of all Oriental and Sephardic Jewish workers, to begin today at one P.M. Tough, yes—it wouldn’t have left the government much time to react. But hardly an act of revolution these days. No, nothing wrong with it at all, except that you needed the right copy of Crime and Punishment to decode the text, and the Captain was keeping company with a few friends who may have come from the wrong side of an obsolete canal.

  Calvi paused at the end of one of Grunberg’s tedious phrases and raised his eyes from the pages in his hand. He looked over the heads of the crowd, scanning the top-floor windows of the L-shaped library on the far side of the quadrangle. He didn’t see the boy.

  He returned to the text and read a sentence about the need for cooperation. An analogy was drawn to the story of the Tower of Babel. In no way could he find it apposite. He mumbled quickly through it, deleting what repetitious parts he could. He hoped that nothing was keeping the boy, that nothing had gone wrong.

  One step at a time. In a few minutes if all went well, it would be out of his hands, and he would be beyond the reach of Grunberg’s power. Or the Captain’s. Then it would depend on the undertaker’s boy, his sons, the undertaker, and, by the following dawn, Gisela. By the following dawn. If all goes well.

  Perhaps she loved him after all. Perhaps he could even learn to love her.

  In a way he knew he was relieved that Grunberg had forced this abject little speech on him. How often had he asked himself what would happen in those two hours from one to three? Nothing, he had answered every time, but the question never went away. Now he would never know. To comply with the Captain and get out, or not to comply and get out. He preferred the latter. But the important thing was getting out.

  Where was the boy?

  He sensed the crowd growing more restless. Did someone jeer, there, by the economics building? Let them jeer: how they will regret it very soon.

  Behind him he heard a door softly open and close. He felt eyes on his back, could almost hear Grunberg breathing. A woman said, “I want my hour.” There was such menace in her tone that he almost turned around. Then he recognized the voice. The American woman. She was far more clever than he had thought. Had she been working for Grunberg from the beginning? No. Still, in only a few hours she had been able to find him and set him into action. She was very impressive. But it wasn’t going to be enough.

  As he turned a page he saw an ambulance approaching on Magnes Boulevard. It pulled to the curb and parked nearby. No one would have looked at it twice. At any moment in a crowd this size someone could have a stroke, or a baby.

  And then like a fish about to break the surface a shadow flitted behind one of the windows on the top floor of the library. Calvi’s pores opened wide. He felt the sweat streaming over his body, soaking his silk shirt and his worsted trousers, making the hot water bottle slippery on his chest. The words crawled over the page like bacteria under a microscope. He stumbled over them, skipped two lines so that the beginning of one sentence married the end of another, plunged on. His throat felt dry as ashes.

  The window opened. His heart beat so violently that his whole body pulsed to its rhythm. Sweat ran off his face in torrents. Couldn’t anyone see? Couldn’t Grunberg, a few feet away? But no one moved behind him, and the sour mood of the crowd remained unchanged.

  The boy leaned out the window. Calvi realized that he had almost forgotten to hook his thumbs over his belt. He found that his hands were glued to the speech. It required all of the power of his will to relax his fingers. The pages fluttered to the floor of the balcony. As slowly as a somnambulist he lowered his hands to his waist and felt for his belt. He stood there, thumbs hooked over the belt, the way men do when they are about to talk tough. But he wasn’t talking tough; he wasn’t talking at all. His text lay at his feet. A wild urge seized him suddenly, an urge to call for the strike after all. A crazy thought, and Grunberg right behind him. He fought it down.

  Seeing him abandon his prepared speech and strike an aggressive pose, the crowd began to stir. Here was the old Simon Calvi at last. But he had nothing to say. He heard himself muttering again the idiotic analogy with the story of the Tower of Babel.

  Why was he so slow, the boy? He seemed to be gazing out the window, watching the crowd. At last he poked his arm out. There was a small black object in his hand. He pointed it toward the ground. Calvi’s thumbs were knotted around his belt, the muscles in his wrists and hands rigid.

  Hurry. For God’s sake. Hurry.

  A quick movement caught Calvi’s eye. A movement on the roof of the library, almost directly above the window where the boy was. A figure stepped out from behind a steam vent. A tall figure, his face almost covered in thick black beard. He wore a black hat with a round rim, and his body was cloaked in a long black robe, or coat. He looked like an Orthodox rabbi. A rabbi. A rabbi who knew that Simon Calvi was not going to call for a two-hour general strike, that day or any other.

  Oh God. Now. Pull the God-damned trigger. God make him pull the trigger. The boy was very still. He seemed to be watching Calvi. A hush swept over the crowd. They were watching him too.

  Pull it.

  The figure on the roof withdrew something from the folds of his long black garment. A rifle. In one economical movement he brought it to his right shoulder. He handled it the way a man handles a rifle when he knows what he is doing. And something in the way he held it made Calvi certain who he was. He swept the barrel in a short arc and pointed it at Calvi’s head.

  The boy fired the starter’s pistol at the ground. It sounded no louder than a single genteel hand clap. But Calvi heard it. He shoved his hands down on his belt, felt the wetness, and reeled back in a falling pirouette that would take him into the room and safety. Before he landed he felt a hard hot finger poke at his chest. And heard a loud crack, a crack like a whip. Perhaps the whip preceded the finger; they were so close he couldn’t tell. The whip cracked only once. The hard hot finger stayed where it was. He felt his chest grow wetter. For the first time he found the hot water bottle constricting. It had worked perfectly of course, but now it was terribly constricting. He could not breathe at all. He had a moment of panic. Then he found that he could get a bit of air by breathing in shallow breaths. Sniffing, almost, like a dog. It was very tricky and demanded all his concentration. Soon someone would remove the hot water bottle and everything would be all right. He shitted diamonds.

  “Stand back, please. I am a doctor.” His son. Perfect. The hot water bottle would be off in a moment. It was going like clockwork. From outside he heard with satisfaction the wail of a siren. Right on time.

  A face lowered itself to his, like a lover maneuvering for a kiss. A face like Victor Mendel’s. His eldest son. How well he looked in his white doctor’s coat. Was he a resident yet, or still an intern? It didn’t matter. Young dark eyes like Victor Mendel’s. Careful. Concerned. A little nervous. That was natural. This was the difficult part, getting him out of there, away from Grunberg.

  And suddenly the eyes filled with horror. Buck up, for God’s sake: don’t go bad on me now. “The stretcher. Quick,” his son cried. That’s better. Don’t give Grunberg a chance to take command.

  “Can’t you do something about the bleeding?” Grunberg. He couldn’t stop interfering. Lifelong habit.

  “I’m not sure.” Oh come on. You’ve got to do better than that, or we’re sunk.

  “Try something,” Grunberg shouted. “What kind of a doctor are you?” Someone make him stop shouting. Doesn’t he know how much the finger is hurting me? His son’s face again, tears in his eyes. That was going a li
ttle too far. Hands groped at his shirt. Good idea.

  “Just loosen that hot water bottle a bit,” he whispered. His son didn’t seem to hear him, so he repeated it a little louder. He still didn’t hear. Was he panicking completely?

  He felt air on his chest, and heard a gasp from somewhere in the room. Gasp, gasp, gasp. Haven’t you seen red dye before? A hand touched the hot water bottle. Wait. Grunberg might see. He looked his son in the eye and said urgently, “Get rid of Grunberg. Send him for bandages. Anything.”

  No reaction. Just those eyes full of horror. What kind of a son was this? At least he should be able to manage a simple task like removing the hot water bottle. “At least get the hot water bottle off me,” he said with exasperation. He knew he shouldn’t allow himself to show irritation with his son, but there is a limit. Then he saw him put the hot water bottle on a chair. It made no sense at all, because he still couldn’t breathe. Perhaps the straps had left an imprint in the skin that continued to bind him. That must be it; he’d take a few deep breaths and be back to normal. He tried one, but the finger in his chest didn’t like it. The finger was less hot now, but seemed to be pressing harder, and deeper. He must have broken a rib as he fell. Wouldn’t that be his luck? He had never broken a bone in his life.

  “What the hell is that thing?” Grunberg again. He never quit. “It’s a hot water bottle,” Grunberg said in surprise. He heard him shaking it, felt a drop strike his cheek. “It’s got water in it. Red water. What the hell is going on?” God. He was so afraid of anyone knowing something he didn’t.

  Footsteps on the rug. He wished they would walk more lightly. “The shaking hurts. I don’t like to make a fuss, but it hurts.”

  A stretcher was lowered beside him. His two other sons looked down at him. They had done a nice job getting the right sort of ambulance attendant uniforms, but he was beginning to lose confidence in the lot of them. The horror quickly spread to their eyes too, like a contagious disease. He and Grunberg were apparently the only people in the place with any presence of mind at all. That suited him: he could handle Grunberg.

  Hands gripped his shoulders and ankles. Someone held his hips. “Careful. He’s heavy.” A son, he didn’t know which. They lifted him onto the stretcher. They crushed his heart in a vise. He supposed he had cried out, because his eldest son kissed him on the forehead and said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” This nonsense had to stop. He was going to miss his plane.

  He closed his eyes and went to sleep. Breathing in the coffin was much more difficult than it had been during the test at the undertaker’s. That pig. It surprised him because that was something he had checked very thoroughly. Perhaps he had forgotten to remove the wooden block which hid the air holes. He felt above him in the dark. No, the block wasn’t there. It must be a factor of the air supply in these cargo planes. It was possible he had already breathed most of the available air. He had no idea how long the plane had been flying. It couldn’t be much longer. Until then he would have to do his best to conserve air. He tried to imagine how a mouse would breathe, and breathed like that. It was all he could think of to do.

  He listened to the roar of the big jets, pushing the plane through the cold black sky. They must be landing soon. The distance from Tel Aviv to Munich really wasn’t great, although, he reflected, it had taken half of his life to make the trip the other way. The thought made him laugh; he would have laughed more, but it used too much air. He realized he was becoming excited, like a schoolboy going home for summer vacation. He tried to picture the look on Gisela’s face when she opened the box. Surely he could learn to love her; was that so much to ask?

  At last he felt the airplane begin its descent. A good thing too: there was almost no air left to breathe. Down it went, somewhat too steeply he thought. His back was pressed against the bottom of the box in a very uncomfortable way. In a few moments he felt a leveling out, and then the big wheels hit the runway, bouncing once, twice, three times. The bouncing was even more uncomfortable than the descent, but he could endure anything now. The plane taxied for a long time before finally coming to a stop. Then the engines were cut off. Silence. A welcome silence. A long silent wait, but he didn’t mind. It was very peaceful. At last he heard Gisela’s voice.

  “Where is he?”

  Careful, Gisela. You’ll give the game away. That would be heartbreaking now. He stayed very quiet, very still. They were lucky. Despite her indiscretion no suspicion had been aroused. He felt the box being lifted, being carried, being slid across a metal floor. Then the floor began to move. They were alone in the van. It had worked.

  After a while the floor stopped moving. He heard a car door slam, heard another door slide open.

  “Oh God,” Gisela said.

  Of course. She’s frightened by the coffin. He should have expected that. “There’s nothing to worry about Gisela,” he called. “It’s me.”

  He opened his eyes and there she was. She was so full of joy that tears were rolling down her cheeks. “There, there, Gisela. Stop crying. Everything is all right.”

  “He’s trying to talk,” she said. “Listen.”

  She seemed to be speaking to someone else. Has she hired a van with a driver? How foolish. He looked around, and saw that he was lying on the floor of the president’s office at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

  “Gisela. We’re not in Munich?” Was it possible? “You’re not in Munich.” It must be one of Grunberg’s tricks.

  “He is. He’s trying to say something.” She was sobbing. He’d made a mistake. She wasn’t happy at all. Grunberg appeared behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder in a comforting but impersonal way. And it was all very clear. She worked for Grunberg, had been working for him the whole time.

  He gathered all his energy into his throat, and spoke as loudly as he could: “Go away.” With a wail Gisela drew back and passed from his sight. He didn’t care. He didn’t feel anything for her, he never had. All he felt was the finger in his chest.

  Another face. Would they never stop bothering him? But this one was different: he found its angles fascinating, its skin rich and full of life, the eyes as deep as the sea. The American woman. He tried to recall her name.

  “Simon,” she said. He found her voice soothing. It reminded him of his mother’s voice. Long ago. “Please don’t think I’m being cruel. This may be my last chance to find my son. It may be your last chance to buy back a piece of your innocence. Remember we talked about that?”

  “You unfeeling bitch,” he heard Grunberg say. He had had enough of Grunberg. He happened to enjoy listening to this woman.

  “Please, Simon. Have you thought of any connection that will lead me to my son? There must be one. Does it explain this, too?” She held her hand out to the room. At least he assumed she did: it left the range of his sight.

  A connection. Wasn’t it obvious? He remembered the day the Captain had walked into his office, about five years after he had gone into politics. How had he begun? Like the woman: “Victor Reinhardt.” He had worn his rabbi outfit then too. And the only other time he had seen him since, in the desert south of Beersheba. It was his only joke.

  He saw the rifle barrel turning in a short arc. He thought again of setting this woman on the Captain. But what was the point? He was past feeling, past caring. Not even the finger bothered him now.

  The room became very cold. His mother was rocking him on her lap. She called him shainer bocher over and over again. In Yiddish it meant pretty little boy. He looked one last time into the deep, dark eyes. Shainer bocher, his mother called him.

  “The Captain,” he said as he rose to meet her.

  33

  Major Grunberg and Rachel sat in the back seat of the green Fiat, waiting for Sergeant Levy. The campus was deserted, except for the few remaining soldiers who patrolled the green lawns, bobbing from time to time like birds for scraps of paper left by the crowd. The late afternoon breeze had made its way over the plain from the Mediterranean: patiently it prodde
d the litter across the grass, and swept the stale air out of the car.

  Two red blots stained Grunberg’s uniform, a small one on the collar and a larger one on the right sleeve. “I think it would be a good idea if you left the country as soon as possible,” he said without looking at her. “This evening would make me very happy.”

  “Why?”

  “Please don’t take it personally.” Grunberg turned to face her. There was nothing in the sunken eyes to show whether he cared how she took it. “My aim now is to avoid any public indiscretions.”

  “And you find me indiscreet?”

  “Very. I can’t afford to have you poking around any longer.” His tone did not encourage discussion.

  “I find you a very fickle man, Major Grunberg. A few hours ago Sergeant Levy told me you were thinking of giving me a medal.”

  Grunberg was not a man who appreciated irony. He did not even notice it. “It’s true. You will receive a medal. We will mail it to you if you leave us your home address.”

  Rachel laughed. There was no mail slot at home, no doorbell for the postman to ring. “Never mind the medal.”

  Grunberg shrugged. “It has nothing to do with me. A committee decides all questions relating to the awarding of medals.”

  In his tone and phrasing Rachel heard the bureaucrat, ceaselessly trying to draw a blanket of routine over anything abnormal. He wanted nothing more than to close the file. She could not prevent her voice from rising slightly: “Don’t you want to find out why he did what he did? Whether he acted on his own or was forced?” Grunberg had his eyes on the soldiers picking up the litter. “Don’t you even want to know who killed him, for Christ’s sake? Isn’t that your duty?”

  His head whipped around. “Don’t tell me my duty. My only duty is to Israel. It is best for Israel if none of this ever becomes public knowledge. That is not my decision: it was made at Cabinet level an hour ago.”