by Amy Wilentz
Doron looked down at them and they all were looking up at him, taking him in. He wanted to hide from their stares, but of course, he was too big to hide: where was he to run for cover—through a door that would turn out to be a mouse hole?
He was here to take responsibility as an Israeli soldier, and then to surrender his Israeli soldierhood. Take my gun.
He wanted to surrender his gun to the enemy because the enemy was no longer his enemy. The enemy was a two-year-old in a Ninja sweatshirt.
Doron tried to stay still and self-contained in that tiny lobby, and not cause any damage. But he had to find Raad, if Raad was here.
He lumbered toward the reception desk. Why did no one at reception seem to notice the huge creature who required their attention?
“Excuse me,” he said, in English, so as not to offend with his Hebrew, but of course, he reminded himself, the uniform was enough offense. He got no response.
“Slicha,” he amended, switching to Hebrew.
A young man in an impeccable hotel jacket looked over at him with cold eyes, and then looked away again.
“Oh, come on,” Doron said, switching back to his stilted English. “I want just to call one of your guests.”
The only woman behind the desk approached him—slowly and cautiously, it was true, but at least she was headed his way.
“Yes, who is it, please?” she asked.
“George Raad,” he said.
All three receptionists looked at Doron.
“Well?” he said.
The woman looked at one of the men, and he shrugged at her.
“I’ll connect you,” the woman said.
• • •
GEORGE WAS PLAYING solitaire. He was sitting on the bed with his legs crossed and his hair in disarray, his back bent over at an angle that wasn’t comfortable. But you had to, for solitaire. This was the time-honored position, the way he’d always sat down to the game. He liked solitaire, loved it, really. Because if he wasn’t winning, he could just out-and-out cheat, which you couldn’t do in a game where other people might notice and not take so liberal a view of your cheating as you yourself did. He had tried solitaire once on Philip’s computer, but when he realized you couldn’t rearrange the cards on that program, he gave up in disgust. The fun of the game was cheating. Cheating the cards, cheating fate. What a preposterous idea. But if he could not do a switcheroo, it took everything out of it for George.
Things on the bedspread had come to a stalemate. He dealt himself a seven of hearts. No earthly use.
Let’s just slip ourselves the jack of spades or clubs here instead of that damn black ten we keep getting, shall we? He lifted his sleeve and looked at the new gauze pad he had put on his arm. Bloody again. Must be the anticoagulant. Was it an emergency? he wondered. Let’s ignore it. Jack of spades, it was.
The fun of being alone, too. Playing alone. No one to fuck you up.
Plus of course you had to win or there would be another heart attack.
I am not winning here.
Oh, let’s give the cards one more chance, George thought, reserving the jack of spades under a finger, but leaving it in the deck. This was an extremely fraudulent magic trick. Why the pretense, George? he asked himself. But he always did it this way.
He drew a four of diamonds.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Are you winning?” Philip called across the room. Philip knew that George always won in the end.
“Yeh-sss,” George growled at him. He slipped the jack of spades out of the deck into the place it rightly should have occupied all along, if only fate were on his side, which it wasn’t, was it? Don’t let that thought into your head.
In solitaire, the way George played it, you had only yourself to blame.
The phone rang.
“Pick it up, will you, Philip?” George said. His concentration was fierce as he played out the round. Now that the jack was in place, everything was working smoothly. Red, black, red, black.
Ta-da, he thought to himself, as he put the final king on each of the four final stacks. He looked down with satisfaction.
“Again,” he said to himself. As he began shuffling for a rematch, George watched Philip on the phone.
Philip put his hand over the mouthpiece.
“He won’t say who he is, Doctor,” he said in a loud whisper.
George began laying out the new game.
“So tell him I’m busy.”
“It’s an Israeli, I think.”
“Tell him I’m very busy.” George smiled at Philip over his glasses.
“I think it might be an official, or something,” Philip said. “Speaks English, and quite secretive.”
“You think I should talk to him?” George asked.
“I think.”
George turned over a disappointing hand including not only the three of clubs and the three of spades but also the fours of both those suits, and picked up the receiver. He pulled at his sock.
“Yes?” he said.
“Hello, Dr. Raad?”
“Yes,” George said. It was something untoward or sinister, he felt it immediately. He stopped adjusting his sock. Philip came over.
“Who is this?” George asked. The accent on the other end was heavily Hebrew, and the voice was very quiet and low.
“Um, I don’t know how to say this.”
“Well, just go ahead,” George said, dealing out his hand. Why was an Israeli calling him, and wasting his time?
“Come on,” George said. “Speak.”
“I was the commanding officer at the checkpoint the other night.”
Three of clubs, three of spades. George kept his eyes down.
“My God,” George said into the receiver. “My God. . . .” Then he thought: But was it some crank? Some insane nutter?
“Tell me your name,” George said.
“Doron. Ari Doron,” Doron said. “I’m downstairs.”
“Oh, Christ,” George said. “Why?”
“I wanted to see you,” Doron said.
“Why?” George said. He shook his head at Philip, who stood near the bed, watching the conversation. George’s heart fluttered in a disorganized way. So this was to be the end of the story, he thought.
“Just to, explain, or, I don’t know, apologize, or . . .”
“I feel this is very awkward,” George said. His spine stiffened, and yet there was the curiosity, he felt that, too. Would George want to kill this man if he saw him? Well, would he? Would he hate him? George hated him now.
“Please.” There was a pause. “Would you come down?” The man was pleading. For what?
George hesitated. He unhooked his legs and dropped his feet to the floor. What would it mean to see this man? Did the soldier wish him harm? That was possible, too, he supposed. In this world, anything was possible, even likely.
“You wait there,” George said. “I can’t decide like this. It’s too sudden, or something. You wait. And if I come down, then, then I come down. That’s how I can do this. If I can do this at all.”
“Okay,” said the soldier. “All right. I will wait.”
Ole rrrrrhite, George repeated to himself. I weeel wait.
• • •
DORON WAS TRYING to hide near the newspaper rack in a corner of the lobby where sentimental watercolors of Jerusalem were on display on a series of stand-alone easels. But people kept coming up to find or return a paper, and when they saw him there, lurking and cowering, they turned away, or looked at him with loathing.
But I’m here to humiliate myself, he wanted to tell them.
He kept his eye on the stairway that came up into the lobby from the elevator bank near the bar.
It felt like an assignation. Would the beloved show up? He was frightened that Raad would not come. And he was plain frightened of Raad and that superior stare he had seen on the book jacket. The man would not be impressed by Doron’s humility. It would be a miracle if he came down, really. But Doron was counting on curi
osity. Oh, fuck, what he really wanted desperately was coffee! You couldn’t be in this setting and not want coffee. Everyone in the lobby was drinking coffee. But Doron didn’t dare try to order it. He couldn’t meet another look of disdain without running away.
The watercolor canvases that nearly hid him from view showed a sun-drenched Jerusalem—monuments and temples, all built of pale pink stone and sprayed over with a spatter of blue skies and yellow sun, and gleams and patches of pink and pale blue. Looking at them while he waited, Doron felt disoriented. Who is right? he wondered. The person who painted those, or me? Does Raad think Jerusalem is like that or could be like that or once was like that? Was this some kind of Palestinian fantasy? Probably this is their image of Jerusalem without the Jews.
Jerusalem is a dark place—Doron always felt it. Even when there was sunlight, the city was stony and rubble-strewn. Even here, at midday, at the hotel, dark was descending, he felt that. Well, at this time of year it was dark. He liked dark. He liked those dark corners of stone walls in Yemen Moshe near the old windmill, the angles where the walls meet the stone pathways, and black pebbles and old dirt and bits of gray mortar and old piles of pigeon shit seem to grow like lichen, unprepossessing and unstoppable. Doron was sick of the domes and monuments and holy fucking places. The landmarks of Jerusalem are checkpoints, watchtowers, prisons and crowded unpleasant markets, pedestrian malls, and playgrounds dotted with dog shit. I know, I know. I know the dry, sagging willows overhanging the unused railroad tracks: I know those old trees. Don’t show me rays of sunlight, and warm walks. I drive a piece of shit through long tunnels to get to ring roads, and I park in dark piss-smelling underground lots. Let’s be honest. The real holy place of Jerusalem is some square little colorless synagogue in a remote undistinguished neighborhood, or an unwelcoming cement-block mosque across from a kindergarten, or that Russian immigrant church he had noticed once, down a forbidding alley off Bezalel, with a blond prostitute standing outside, one naked leg exposed to the cold through a slit in her skirt. The real holy place is Best Buy.
• • •
THAT’S HIM. George stood at the bottom of the stair. In the corner over there. It wasn’t as if there were any question about it. The man was in uniform, for Chrissakes. George had never seen anything so arrogant before. And yet the soldier seemed to be trying to hide.
Maybe someone called him a name, George thought.
Maybe someone stuck out his tongue at him.
The fellow had a kind of courage, to come here, and to see him.
Doron picked up his head. He looked searchingly at the door that led away to the elevator near the bar.
George watched him from the other side of the room. Doron was looking for George, of course, George realized. The soldier was tall, well made, handsome in uniform, like a propaganda poster’s soldier for Zion. My fate, George thought. He contemplated the soldier, quietly. A big boy, he thought—could be Leila’s dead son.
And there he was. So very imposing. What was this calm that was washing over George like lake water? It was the same as the quiet he felt in Dr. Rodef’s waiting room, on Dr. Rodef’s table. The peace of recognition, he told himself. Maybe I should just turn around before he sees me, and go back to my room and finish that bad hand. That’s what I’ll do. And he had just begun to turn when Doron saw the movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned to him, and started to come across the lobby.
George shook his head. No! Jesus, everyone was watching the soldier. Doron understood immediately, and moved back near his corner, sitting at one of the low brass coffee tables there, behind the newspaper rack. George walked over to reception and picked up his messages. He made a reservation in the dining room for the evening. Anything to put off the inevitable moment and to deflect attention. George hated the man for dressing like that. It was bravura. Yet he admired the soldier’s courage.
George walked out into the courtyard, past the fishpond, and then around through the other entrance, past the bar and the bathrooms, and finally into the lobby from the hallway Doron had been watching. He sidled past the bad watercolors into a chair at Doron’s table.
And then he didn’t know what to say.
They looked at each other, then both looked quickly down.
“So?” George said, finally. He shut his eyes tightly for a moment.
“I brought you something,” Doron said in English. He pulled the plastic bag out of his pocket and uncrumpled it. A grocery bag? thought George. An odd gift. George watched the soldier’s big, strong hands flatten the plastic against the brass table. He seems so competent, George thought. The soldier took the bag and put it behind his back.
What is this? George asked himself. In a day filled with bad magic tricks, was this another?
Doron brought the bag back in front of him, and laid it on the table. Now there was something in it.
“There,” Doron said, pushing the bag toward George. This is unseemly, George thought. But he took it.
He knew immediately what was inside. The shape was unmistakable. He felt the tip of the muzzle, the stubby barrel, the sweep of the trigger guard, and the hard, smooth butt. He looked up at the soldier.
“What for?” he asked.
“Oh,” the soldier said, trying to seem cool and remote. “To do with whatever you like.” But he looked wounded.
“Is it loaded?” George asked. Must be practical, after all.
“Yes, it is.”
“And what do you suggest I do with it?” he asked Doron.
“Whatever.” The soldier looked away from the table. “It’s yours.”
George looked at the soldier. His eyes were downcast, and his long lashes were like a child’s. I don’t even know how to shoot a gun, George thought. Don’t tell Grandfather. Anyway, George supposed, it couldn’t be too hard. I mean, look who usually shoots them.
“I don’t even know how to shoot a gun,” George said aloud. Does he think I’m some kind of a Vengeful Arab? There were plenty of people George would like to see dead. For example, right now, George wanted to kill the soldier in the way people usually say that: I just want to kill him! But he didn’t actually want to kill him. This soldier was not someone whom he had ever imagined in a pool of blood. He wondered why not.
Doron looked up again. Raad was more wasted and handsome in person than on television, Doron thought. Hollows in the cheeks. Yellowed teeth. And those deep black eyes, like sultans’ pools, and the incredible haughty demeanor that was not intended or cruel but was somehow superior and condescending. Don’t even know how to shoot a gun. The sound of Raad’s voice echoed in Doron’s ears. As if knowing how were somehow wrong. . . . Maybe he’ll shoot me—that’s one way to learn how: use it. Doron thought. And is that what I want? he asked himself. Is that what I’m searching for? To put myself up on the block for retribution? Doron wanted to tell everyone that he was sorry, but he knew it wasn’t enough. He didn’t want to die, didn’t want to be someone’s target practice—he wanted coffee, and to live for a long time, but with an innocent conscience. What he wanted was impossible. He looked at George. What was the Arab thinking?
Oh, Yizhar would be angry, so hopping mad. No contact with the relatives, that was one of the rules. If there was ever another meeting in his office, Yizhar would definitely take out his gun and not hesitate to use it, especially if Doron were to tell him that he knew, he knew who had given him his orders.
“What were you thinking?” George asked.
Doron tried to focus on him again. He had thought their meeting was at an end. He looked up.
“I’m sorry,” Doron said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what were you thinking on the night my grandson died?” He was the first person George had dared to ask a specific question about the incident. Not Marina, because it would hurt her. Not Sheukhi, because it hurt George. But this fellow, yes, because he was so obviously in some kind of pain, himself, already, and, as he had put it, he was the commanding officer.
Doron looked down at his hands lying flat on the table.
“You don’t really want to know.”
“No, you’re wrong. I do,” George said.
“I was thinking that this can’t be happening.”
“But it was.”
“Yes. I was thinking, This can’t be my fault.”
“But it was.” George felt bad saying this, but it did give him some pleasure to see the man wince.
“Yes, it was.”
“My daughter will never recover.”
“I know. Believe me.”
George could see that what had happened weighed heavily on this person who was sitting here in front of him with his big manly hands and solid, upstanding mien. Good. He deserved to suffer. Ayie noh. Beleef me. He couldn’t seriously think that George was either going to forgive him or to execute him here in the lobby of the American Colony Hotel, splattering blood all over the watercolors and inconveniencing the reception desk, but still, just being here showed the beginnings of a proper desire for some kind of atonement.
Doron sat there, looking down at his hands through long lashes.
George fiddled with the gun through the plastic bag.
“Why don’t you go now,” George said, finally.
“What?” Doron asked.
“Why don’t you just go now? You’ve done what you came here to do.”
Doron looked at the bag in George’s hands.
“Yes, you’re right.” He stood. “I’ll be going, then.”
George stood also. The correctness was habitual.
Doron stood there on the other side of the table and openly stared into George’s eyes.
George looked back, unfazed.