Martyrs’ Crossing

by Amy Wilentz

  Over the architecture of the objects on the desk, Doron looked at the strange dark figure opposite him. Yizhar’s face hovered there, and he stuck out his hand with the few sheets of paper in it, and the paper seemed to float above the blue star, above the shadows of two telephones, and above the open cell phone that was lying there open on its back, like a dog waiting to have its stomach scratched.

  Doron took the paper.

  “I’ve been working on it all day,” Yizhar said. “It’s very simple, short. It’s perfect. It’s true. Avram will ask his questions, and you will give answers that are a lot like the ones you see there. It will spare the country terrible stress and embarrassment. It will save your skin and your career.”

  “Sounds like a miracle,” Doron said. “Let me look.”

  “Remember, we need this,” Yizhar said. “I need to hear it. The Israeli people need to hear it. Most of all, the Palestinians at the checkpoints need to hear it. If you weren’t the one who was the commanding officer that night, and if you weren’t acting the way you’ve been acting, I might not ask you to put on this performance. But as things stand now, I’ve lost my confidence. We need to hear your voice.”

  Doron held the interview in his hand.

  “Do you mind turning on the lights?” he asked.

  Yizhar stood and turned on his desk light. The vacuum cleaner was fading away down the corridor. Doron read. Then he went back to the beginning, and read again.

  Finally, he looked up at Yizhar. Lit from below, Yizhar’s face had taken on an otherworldly pallor. His nostrils glowed, his earlobes shone, the slight dimple in his chin turned shadowy and mysterious. Above it all, his eyes kept watch. Doron shook his head almost imperceptibly, to himself. Yizhar picked up on it immediately.

  “You can’t say no,” Yizhar said. “Don’t even try.”

  “I can,” said Doron. “I do. I won’t lie. I will not say it was a ten-minute wait. I will not say the boy was not in trouble. I will not say I went by the book, and I won’t lie about that phone call.”

  “It’s not a lie. You are not remembering correctly. You were exhausted, as it says there. You did the best you could. Poor boy. Now, the enemies of Israel are trying to use you to injure Israel and her army. But you will not be a party to their manipulations. You know that the responsibility for the checkpoint that night was entirely yours. Am I right, by the way? Entirely yours, and thus any blame is also entirely yours. Correct?”

  Doron said nothing. He folded the sheets of paper carefully. He put the thing in the pocket of his sweater vest.

  Yizhar turned off the desk lamp, and seemed to disappear. His voice went on, out of thin air. It was piercing into Doron’s brain. Doron felt his fatigue kick in. As Doron’s eyes again became accustomed to the gloom, Yizhar’s shadow slowly gathered itself before him once more.

  “You can’t go on taking their side against us, Ari. In your mind, okay, maybe, but on the ground, impossible. We need to establish our facts—that’s what you do in a case like this. Just because their kid died doesn’t make them good or honest. They’re not good. They’re not honest. The Raads and Hajimis are terrorists and propagandists. They are the lowest of the Arabs, vile Jew-haters. I’m not protecting anyone but you, and I’m protecting you from them. Nothing will happen to the boy’s family because you and Avram have this little chat. They’ll go on being what they are. But you will have spared your country an ordeal. I appeal to your patriotism, truly.” Yizhar realized as he spoke that he more or less meant what he was saying. That felt good—strange, but good. “If you involve the army in some kind of scandal over this relatively minor incident, you will be playing into the hands of the enemies of the Jewish people.”

  “I am not going to involve the army in any scandal. The army has nothing to do with it,” said Doron. “By now.”

  “Nothing to do with it? You are crazy. Anything you do now reflects on the army. You’re the target, the bad guy, the guilty party. God, if the Authority finds you in Ramallah, if Hajimi finds you on his turf, hanging out, I don’t know what will happen. You see? You involve us, but you don’t consult us. How can we protect you and ourselves?” Yizhar looked at Doron as if he were a specimen from a primitive culture.

  “I will not go on the radio and tell lies,” Doron said.

  “We need you to get out there and say this, or something like it. We need you to tell Israelis that we did the right thing. And we want the Palestinians to hear it, too. To hear from us that there wasn’t an hour wait for this boy, as their people are claiming, to hear that you take full responsibility for your actions that night.”

  “I won’t do it.”

  Yizhar stood there, tapping a foot, thinking about court-martials. He wondered what he would have to say to get the chiefs of staff to go along. Ah, it would be nice to have Ari Doron under lock and key for a few weeks or months. Yizhar could tell his colleagues that the man was deranged, and, as evidence, show the tape of Doron in Ramallah. The outfit itself was enough to get an Israeli institutionalized.

  “Well?” Doron was waiting.

  “I’m not sure I see an alternative.”

  “How about this game plan, Colonel? I don’t say anything, you don’t say anything, and we let the whole thing die down.”

  “Yeah.” Yizhar sat down again. “Yeah. That would be good.” He was silent for a minute. The shuffling shouting sound of the nighttime crowd below poured in through the window. “In fact, that would be the normal thing, the thing I myself would advise. I would advise it, that is, if I hadn’t just seen you parading around at a rally organized—I mean, really, targeted—against you. If I didn’t think that, in some way, you were a dangerous lunatic and a very very loose fucking cannon. You are playing into their hands, no question. The Authority is not going to let this thing ‘die down’ if they can figure out a way to keep it alive. You’re helping them, and if you help them, you will lose our backing. And then, you will be utterly at their mercy.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means what it means. We will withdraw our protection from you.”

  “Protection?”

  “Our physical protection. You may not have noticed, but we’ve been following you with a small security detail.” Maybe that would put the fear of God into the soldier.

  “Right,” Doron said. He felt in his pocket for the pack with the number on it. It was his insurance against Yizhar. Doron had devised his own little test for the colonel, and he didn’t want to give it away.

  Doron seemed bigger to Yizhar in some way since their last meeting, taller, more powerful. Maybe it was the darkness. Yizhar remained quiet. He wondered if he should be just the smallest bit nervous. And yet, he was an old hand. Did Doron think Yizhar didn’t know how to do this? West Bank security: it meant interrogation first of all. Yizhar had been a master not just of the physical techniques—the humiliation of the little chair, the electric “stimuli,” the shaking methods, deprivations of every kind; all legal, by the way—but especially of the psychological aspects. And the miracle was, it worked with everyone! Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, the PFLP, the Intifada kids, petty street criminals. All human beasts. They all crumbled and talked and obeyed and collaborated, with the rare exceptional case, like Hajimi. And then they were okay after it. Yizhar didn’t have to feel bad. He was a nice interrogator. He was gentle, not like some of the other guys. There were no lasting bumps, no visible bruises. No maiming. He would never do anything like that, not even to a terrorist. No. Just a little lesson.

  He was a stylish interrogator, and his methods would work on Israelis, too, he imagined. Let’s see.

  “You’re my favorite soldier, Ari.” Yizhar let the statement sit there.

  Doron said nothing.

  “You know why? Know why I like you so much? Because you’re different. Because you care.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “No, I mean it.”

  “So do I.”

  “Just listen,” Yizhar said. “I care, t
oo. The thing is, right now, we think we care about different things. You care about the family of this boy who died, and I care about Israel. Right?” The boy was bound to assert his patriotism.

  “I care about the country, too,” Doron said.

  “Oh. Well, that’s good,” said Yizhar. “I thought maybe you didn’t feel that anymore.”

  “I care, but maybe I care in a different way.”

  “You want it to be a good country, right?”

  “Don’t try to make me sound naive.”

  “I don’t need to,” Yizhar said.

  “I shouldn’t have come here tonight,” Doron said.

  “You came because you know instinctively that I will help you,” Yizhar said. “Why don’t you believe me?”

  “Because we have a fundamental disagreement.”

  “Can you tell me what it is?” Yizhar asked.

  “You believe nothing bad happened; I believe we killed a baby.”

  Yizhar stopped on that. He leaned over and shoved his face close up to Doron’s.

  “We?” he whispered. “We?”

  Doron pulled his head back. He looked at Yizhar, the blade of hair, the sharp brow that hid those eyes lying in wait. He was like some great bird of prey, crouching over Doron.

  “We, the State of Israel,” Doron said.

  “Oh,” said Yizhar. “We killed a baby.”

  He said it without emotion, as if he were weighing the statement. “No. No, I don’t think so, Ari. We’ve been over this. A child is dead, is how I would say it.”

  “I’m tired of this,” Doron said. “You can’t do this kind of thing and not take responsibility.” He stood, and Yizhar noticed how the soldier towered over him. A head taller, at least, my God! But Yizhar never lost his nerve. A man’s courage is everything, Gertler had said.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Lieutenant?” Yizhar asked. “Ramallah?”

  “I’ll go where I want to,” Doron said.

  “You’ll go to Shell,” Yizhar said. “You’ll go to the studio tomorrow at one. I don’t like to be so crude, but it’s an order, Lieutenant.”

  Doron walked over to Yizhar and stuck his head down so the he was looking right into Yizhar’s eyes. It was too dark to see much of anything so close up.

  “Your orders don’t mean much to me at this point,” Doron said. “Not compared to what I think I have to do.”

  The two men were standing so close together they could have been dancing.

  Yizhar stood there, thinking: What next. He thought he heard a noise, then, a noise that was not his panting, not the soldier’s breathing, not his own heart.

  His office door flew open.

  No, Yizhar thought. What? What? He could feel Doron reacting to the sound, his interest failing, attention diverted.

  A roar blasted into the room. Blazingly, the lights went on.

  Doron wheeled around. In the doorway stood a squarish woman with a babushka tied around her head and the neck of a vacuum cleaner in her hand. Yizhar felt relief flood through him, followed by a wave of hilarity. In her other hand she carried a black garbage bag.

  “Oh, God, to excuse me, please, gentlemen. I did not know that anyone was here.” Her face was flushed. She put the garbage bag down. “Lights were not on, you see. I am not paying attention.” What must she think, Yizhar wondered. A homosexual assignation? They had been standing so close to each other, in the dark, and now both looked so taken aback.

  “That’s all right,” Yizhar said. Finally I know why this hideous creature whom I have always loathed and avoided was put on God’s earth, he thought. Fate gathered its strength, the East spewed forth its refugees, and then, suddenly, here she was, Mother Russia, at the door in Jerusalem, with a garbage bag, rescuing me from who knew what fate. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Kremlin. “We were just finishing up.” God is good.

  “So I am to be cleaning, Mister? Or what?”

  “You go right ahead,” said Yizhar.

  • • •

  DORON PUSHED PAST the Russian lady and out the door. He barreled toward the stairway, with Yizhar at his heels. One flight, another, Yizhar always pursuing, until Doron arrived at the side door, a few floors ahead of Yizhar. He could hear the other man’s footsteps coming down the stairway above. Doron breathed deeply. He twisted the door handle. It did not move in his hand. Next to it, a red light blinked. He blinked back at it, realizing what it meant. He breathed slowly again, trying to collect himself. The look on the cleaning woman’s face. Unexpectedly, he wanted to laugh, but in a second, Yizhar would be there with him. Footsteps clacked down the stairway, some distance above. Doron put his head down and balled his fists into his vest pockets. He felt something there, and pulled out a piece of paper.

  Right, the interview Yizhar had scripted for him, the smooth paper folded neatly. He replaced it. He scuffed at the floor. He was waiting for Yizhar, even though the guy had just threatened to court-martial him. It occurred to Doron that this was how he was spending most of his time these days. Waiting for Yizhar to decide, dispense, mete out his fate. That was over. Doron was waiting for Yizhar for the last time, waiting for him to open the door and let Doron out into the world to do whatever he was going to do. The footsteps came to a dead halt behind him. Doron turned and faced his pursuer. Humiliating to try a jailbreak only to end up back in the hands of the warden.

  Yizhar looked at him and gave him one of those small smiles, like the one that Doron had seen frozen on his face the first time they met.

  “Let me open it for you,” Yizhar said, with hyperpoliteness, almost as if he had swept his arm out before him and said, “After you.”

  Doron waited for him to open the door.

  “I’ll be listening tomorrow,” Yizhar said as he turned one key, then another, in the door.

  “You can listen,” said Doron.

  “Be there.” Yizhar’s index fingered hovered in the air in front of the computer pad. He looked at Doron. “By the way, we think they know who you are. We think Hajimi knows.”

  Doron gave him a small smile of his own. But the news jolted him. Should he believe it? His legs weakened for a few seconds as he went out the door.

  The dark city opened up before Doron as he moved into the night from the clammy confines of The Building. The enormous black sky. He closed his eyes and thought of the cleaning lady: someday he would go back into The Building and take her in his arms and kiss her right on the lips, adorable thing. The sweet chunk of moon hung like a piece of candy in the heavens. Something was cooking over charcoal—a piece of juicy meat being prepared somewhere for a late-night snack, with a smell that made his stomach cramp with hunger. Across the street, parking meters stood in rows, and the traffic light changed and changed back and changed again in a comforting automatic succession of stops and goes. Rooftops and antennae, domes, steeples, and lit-up signs, alleys that ran off in twisting blocks into darkness, cats crouching with stiff tails—all of this was here, outside, waiting for him.

  He heard the door clank satisfyingly shut behind him, with a metallic, prisonlike slam. Turning, Doron surveyed The Building’s exterior to make sure Yizhar had not followed him out. He couldn’t have withstood any more talk with the night creature. Out here, it felt like freedom, although he knew that that was illusory. For the moment, shadows hid him. He noticed a car double-parked down the block, its engine idling. Was this his security detail? If there was one, which Doron doubted. It was probably just Yizhar’s wife, waiting for him to come down. If Yizhar had one, which Doron doubted.

  Yizhar only came out after sunset, Doron was beginning to think. Yizhar could see in the dark! He remembered that Yizhar had been linked to Gertler’s wartime disgrace in some unknown way, and it didn’t surprise him. The man was capable of any stinking trick. Doron leaned against a parking meter near his car. He was exhausted. He’d come near to strangling the man, and put himself at great risk, he was certain of it. Yizhar was always armed. He was not a military man for nothing.

>   He knew that before it was all over, he would regret not having ripped the creature’s head off. Kill it before it kills you. He was beginning to wonder whether, beneath his khaki uniform, Yizhar concealed a pair of shiny black wings like a crow’s. After Doron broke his scrawny neck, the wings would spread out across the pavement, broken, with blood and bone, and pink and gray sinew, and feathers splashed everywhere.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MARINA TRIED TO REMEMBER BACK to the days when she was an intelligent person who could think logically. It seemed a long, long time ago. When Uncle Ahmed’s men had started driving them away from the rally in Ramallah, she thought, dramatically, that she and her father were finished. They had gotten in the way of the Authority, and Uncle Ahmed, when riled, was ten times more hotheaded and dangerous than the Chairman, whose greatest virtue—and greatest flaw—was his wariness, and his caution. When her father had fainted, sitting in the big black car between those sweaty men in suits, Marina was certain he was going to die, and right there, and she would be all alone with those frightening serious men in the dark car, speeding somewhere up into the empty unlit hills. Her heart raced and pounded as she tried to revive her father while remaining proud and aloof, not an easy assignment. The panic felt familiar. The grotesque bodyguards would dump her father by the roadside and take her away where no one could find her.

  Instead, the escort service sped Marina and George over to the Friends Clinic in Ramallah. Uncle Ahmed didn’t want dead Dr. Raad on his hands, thanks, no matter how badly George had behaved. Ahmed would have had his thugs punished if they had let her father die, Marina realized later. Ahmed could be vengeful, she had heard, but he was not stupid. At the clinic, she sat in the bright waiting room with other women. A group of old men in drooping gray robes smoked cigarettes in a corner. Sick babies sat politely on their mothers’ laps, waiting to be seen. She wondered what would have happened if she’d come here the other night. Probably they too would have sent her to Hadassah.

  Right now, her father was in the living room, resting on the couch, with Philip watching over him. He had recovered quite nicely. In a matter of minutes after coming to himself at the clinic, he began berating nurses, correcting doctors, complaining to her, asking for Philip, and demanding to be taken home. Hospitals make you sicker, he pointed out to the doctors. The doctors told Marina and Philip that a combination of exhaustion and palpitations exacerbated by chronic coronary weakness had caused Dr. Raad to black out. They told them that he needed to be examined soon by a specialist, to see how the heart was functioning, as they put it. It had been a month since his last electrocardiogram. He should go to Hadassah, they implied. George knew it all already, of course. After their consultation, Philip and Marina went into George’s room, where, propped up against his white pillowcases, with a copy of Al-Quds open across the knobs and bumps of his covered legs, and his glasses pulled way down to the bottom of his nose, he told them exactly what the doctors had just told them, and then said, “Now, get me out of here.” When they heard his petition, his doctors nodded and smiled and released Dr. Raad because he asked to be released, and because he was George Raad, eminent cardiologist and political commentator. He was weak, they warned Marina.