Cafe Nevo

by Barbara Rogan

  Ilana clicked her tongue impatiently. “Was there ever a day in my life when I didn’t know she suffered? And I do understand. She suffered, you suffered, everyone suffered—but not everyone lost their humanity. I know you think I’m a terrible sinner, Papa, but at least I’m human, I have feelings! She has none for me. She never had.”

  “She had feelings,” Yitzhak said. “You just never understood them.”

  “She hates me.”

  “Did you say that to her?”

  Unwillingly, she answered, “More or less.”

  “And she said... nothing?”

  “What could she say? It’s true.”

  “Her charity lies in silence. Even as you rub salt in her wounds, she protects you.”

  “From what?”

  “From the truth.” He added with a terrible coldness: “But now you will hear it.”

  “No.” She stepped back. “I’ve heard enough.”

  “You must.” He came closer, until face to face she could smell his sorrowful breath. “You deserve to know.”

  “Let me go. Let’s forget I ever came back.”

  Closer still, he murmured: “How do you think she survived the camp? Didn’t you ever ask yourself? She wasn’t strong; she had no skills they needed. All she had was a pretty face, as pretty as yours, and a youthful body. How do you think she survived?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must have wondered.”

  “No, no,” and she pushed him away and stumbled into the forest. As she ran, half blind with tears, she heard his flatfooted, shuffling run crashing through the undergrowth, his harsh breath coming closer. In a short time he passed her and then turned, thrusting himself before her so that she must either stop or crash into him. She stopped. He crossed his arms over his chest and did not touch her.

  Lowering her head, she wept. “I’m sorry I came here.”

  Her father’s voice was not without kindness. “You can’t undo the things you’ve done, any more than we can undo the things that were done to us. You made your bed, and now you have to lie in it.” He reached out as if to touch her, but his hand fell short. He straightened his back and said, “I brought you here for a purpose. Come.”

  Powerless to refuse him, she followed. As they walked deeper into the wood, she felt herself diminishing in size and age until she was a little girl again, trailing in Papa’s foot-steps. She remembered other expeditions to the woods and knew suddenly and with absolute certainty where he was taking her now. Her legs quivered, and she halted.

  Yitzhak looked back sternly. “Come.”

  They emerged into a small copse lit by the filtered rays of the setting sun. In the center of the clearing was a circle of young pines, surrounding a twisted, hardy oak. Her father stepped into the circle and laid his old hands on the bark of the oak. “This was your mother and I.” Touching each young pine in turn, he said, “These were planted upon the birth of each of our children. Yehezkel. Joshua. Avram. Eliezer.” Then he pointed to a gap in the circle where stood the stump of a tree that must have been cut down young, for it was very slender, overgrown with moss and wildflowers.

  “That,” he said, “was my only daughter.”

  Ilana felt pieces of herself break off and disappear, like fragments of an ice floe swept away by an Arctic sea. Her legs could no longer support her body. Dropping to her knees beside the poor aborted stump, she laid her cheek against its blanket of moss. She felt a sense of mourning, of irreparable loss, as if her own child lay buried in this place. For a time she could see nothing but deep inner darkness, illuminated by intermittent flashes of lightning. Though frightened, she knew that she was not alone; a second heart beat inside her, shoring up her own. When she returned to herself, her father’s hand was stroking her head.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Four men pulled stockings over their faces and gloves onto their hands. While one hunkered down in the garden beside the house, the others slipped the lock and went inside. Moving silently over the carpeted floor, they checked the house to make sure they were alone (the children were away at camp). Upstairs they walked through the open door of the darkened master bedroom and took up their positions: Yaki by the door, Coby beside the wife’s bed, and Arik next to Pincas Gordon. Arik drew a snub-nosed revolver from his pocket and with a shrill and wordless shriek leapt onto Gordon’s bed, landing with his knees in the small of the sleeping man’s back. At the same time Coby dove onto the wife, pinning her to the mattress.

  Pincas Gordon started awake, breathless and with a crushing pain in his back, certain he was experiencing a heart attack until he felt the cold metal kiss of the revolver barrel pressed to his temple and heard his wife cry out. Twisting his head back, he caught a glimpse of Arik’s masked face; then his head was slammed back onto the pillow, his neck pressed down with what felt like an iron bar but proved to be a forearm.

  “What do you want?” he gasped.

  These words, that tone of abject terror, were shamefully familiar to Arik. Slipping into his army persona as easily as into battle fatigues, he barked, “Get up!”

  Gordon stiffened to attention but did not rise; he caught his breath and held it. “Hey, man,” Coby called softly. Suddenly Arik realized that he’d spoken in Arabic. Angrily, he repeated the command in Hebrew.

  The fat man sagged in relief. “D’you mind if I get dressed?”

  “Get your ass out of bed before I cripple you.” Without waiting (for in Lebanon the drill had been to carry out the first threat simultaneously with its utterance, so that the subject would not think of doubting the second), Arik jump-kicked the fat man in the side, sending him crashing to the floor.

  Gordon used a sturdy oak night table to lever himself up to his knees, then climbed shakily to his feet. He wore a pair of stained blue boxer shorts, overhung by his gross belly. In a voice higher than usual he asked, “What do you want?”

  “Open the safe.” As Gordon shook his head, Arik pointed a finger at his forehead. “There are two possibilities. The first is that you do it now, quietly, with no trouble. We take what we came for and get out.”

  “But there is no safe in the house. Only in my office.” Gordon glanced sideways at his wife.

  “The second,” Arik continued as if he had not heard, “is that you tell me there is no safe. I don’t think your wife would enjoy the consequences—but you never know.”

  The woman sat up in bed, clutching the sheet to her chest. “It’s over there,” she said. “Behind the mirror. Open it, take the money and go!”

  “You stupid bitch!”

  “Maniac! It’s only money.”

  Yaki was already at the mirror, lifting the heavy oak frame from its moorings. Behind it a steel safe with a combination lock was set into the wall. Arik asked the woman for the combination.

  “I don’t know it,” she said.

  Coby grabbed an inch of flesh on her upper arm and squeezed. “Then how are we supposed to open it, darling?”

  “Stop that!” she squealed. “Break into it; you’re thieves.”

  “Open it,” Arik told Gordon.

  Gordon spat in his face.

  It was the second time in Arik’s life and the second time that day. That morning he’d attended the funeral of a young soldier from his unit, killed by a sniper’s bullet in Lebanon. Half the unit had been given leave to attend the funeral; after services, a few of his men, as he still thought of them, came up to shake hands with their former commander. The rest turned their backs. At the grave site ululating women kept up a high keening. When Arik approached the dead boy’s father, the old man spat on his shoes. “Deserter!” he shouted. “Where were you?” Arik walked away, crying.

  But not this time. This time he reached out and whipped the gun across Gordon’s face. His nose cracked, and blood gushed out over his pale belly in two red streams, like firemen’s suspenders. The woman gagged.

  “Forget that asshole,” Coby said disgustedly. “Wifey here will tell us. What’s your name, d
arling?”

  “Liora. But I don’t know the combination. I’d tell you if I did.”

  “If you don’t know it, you must have it written down somewhere. Now where could you have hidden it?” Suddenly he twitched off the sheet, revealing a zaftig body in a pink satin negligee. The woman crossed her arms over her chest in a hopeless attempt to hide her plump breasts. “Oh, sweet, sweet Liora,” cried Coby in delight, “you have plenty of hiding places! This is going to take some serious searching. Hey, man,” he called to Yaki, who was ogling the woman, “want to give me a hand?”

  “Get away from my wife!”

  “Give it to them, Pinny, give them the goddamn combination, please!”

  “Liora, mon amour!” said Coby.

  With an inchoate cry of rage Gordon attacked Arik, grappling for the gun. But Arik was ready; tossing the gun across Liora to Yaki he hammered Gordon with his fists. Out of shape, hampered and shamed by his near-nakedness, the fat man was no match. When Gordon was subdued, Arik turned on Coby and Yaki with eyes so hot his stocking smoldered.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you,” he growled. “What are you, animals?”

  They looked up in astonishment.

  “Not in front of her husband,” Arik raged. “Take her outside.”

  Whooping, they fell upon the woman and half dragged, half carried her out of the room. Arik followed as far as the doorway, where he could watch both man and wife. He winced sympathetically when Liora screamed, and shrugged apologetically at Gordon.

  Gordon’s face was bright red with the effort of keeping silent. He moaned through tightly closed lips each time his wife cried out.

  Arik was intrigued. His work had taught him that where there is serious resistance there is something to hide. Gordon believed that his wife was being assaulted, and yet he was silent; therefore, either Gordon had a silent-alarm setup and expected help momentarily, or something in the safe was worth more to him than his wife. That something was not likely to be money, for the cash in that safe could not be more than a fraction of Gordon’s wealth, which was in land and numbered Swiss accounts; whereas if his wife divorced him over this night’s piece of work, as well she might, he would lose half his kingdom. Surely a rational man in his position would comply now, then comb the land to find the thieves.

  Minutes ticked by. Liora’s screams had changed to steady sobbing and the grunts of ecstasy from the men had grown ragged and quizzical. Arik was wondering what to do next when suddenly Gordon’s face disintegrated; he threw up his hands with a loud cry and screwed his mouth into a grimace, as if trying to prevent the words that issued forth. “Stop them, stop them, goddamn you. I’m opening the safe!” He hobbled over to the safe with as much dignity as his naked paunch and dimpled thighs would support. At the wall he faced Arik.

  “Tell them to leave my wife alone.”

  “Let’s get it open before we break their hearts, shall we?”

  Gordon glared but bent over the safe and opened it without further ado. Blocking Arik’s view of the gaping safe with his bulk, he demanded: “Call them off now.”

  Smiling, Arik pushed Gordon ahead of him into the living room. Liora sat upon a sofa, dressed in her nightgown, one arm held behind her back by a disinterested Coby. Her breast heaved attractively as she wept into a delicate lace handkerchief. Yaki stood at a window overlooking the garden.

  Gordon stared at his wife, disbelief and fury playing across his face. “They didn’t hurt you?”

  “They did,” she answered tearfully. “This one twisted my wrist, and the other one stepped on my foot!” As her husband advanced on her, she shrank back into Coby. “What are you looking at me like that for? Would you rather they’d raped me?”

  “You’ll wish they had, when I get through with you,” he muttered. “Jezebel!” Arik spun him into a chair and covered both with the gun, while Coby and Yaki returned to the bedroom.

  “My God, there must be fifteen, twenty thousand bucks here,” Coby crowed. “We’ll be able to—”

  “Shut up!” Arik said.

  Silence thereafter, broken by the rustle of paper and Gordon’s hoarse breath. The land broker sat rigidly at the edge of his seat, his eyes glued to Arik’s, his concentration on the bedroom sounds so intense he seemed to be toting his losses.

  Liora stared fixedly at her husband, her lips moving silently. Arik thought she was praying until she said aloud, “Ten minutes.”

  “What?” he asked politely, when Gordon ignored her.

  She spoke to her husband. “It took you ten minutes. You thought they were raping me and yet you waited ten minutes before you—”

  “Shut up,” growled Pincas.

  “Why is this happening to us?”

  “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Arik put in helpfully. “And you are good people, aren’t you, Pinny? Contributions to the arts, charity committees, and all that, right? Never mind where you got your money.”

  “There’s something else,” Coby called from the bedroom.

  Pincas Gordon jumped up. “That’s nothing for you,” he told Arik earnestly. “They’re just personal papers.”

  “Take them!” Arik ordered, his eyes on Gordon’s face.

  “No! They’re personal. You have no right.... They’re no good to you.” He was on his feet, advancing.

  “Stop right there.”

  “You said if I opened the safe you’d take the money and get out—you promised! Keep to your plan and you just might get away with this. Take those papers and I’ll hunt you down and crush you like roaches; I swear to God you won’t live to spend the money.”

  “Comrade Gordon, calm yourself. We’ll be gone soon, and then you can beat your wife or call the cops or do whatever you like. Don’t worry, Pinny, if they really are no use to us, I’ll mail your papers back to you myself.”

  “NO!”

  Coby and Yaki walked side by side out of the bedroom, grinning broadly. Coby carried a bulging cloth satchel slung over his shoulder. The moment Arik’s eyes flickered toward the satchel, Pincas Gordon took two steps and hurled himself onto the man he had marked as ringleader. They fell with a crash that shook the house. The gun slithered across the floor, but Gordon ignored it Grabbing the stocking’s slack, he yanked it upward to reveal Arik’s startled face. Gordon stared, then turned away, covering his eyes. “Oh my God.”

  “Holy shit,” Yaki hissed. “What do we do now?”

  “I can’t see a thing without my glasses!” Pincas Gordon scampered on all fours toward his wife, clutched her legs, and buried his head in her lap. “I don’t know you,” he puled. “I didn’t see you. Go away. Leave us alone.”

  “He recognized you,” Coby murmured to Arik.

  “Tie them and let’s go,” Arik said. He made no further attempt to hide his face.

  The city slumbered audibly, snoring buses rumbling through the streets. Arik sent the money away with Coby but kept back the folder that had been in the safe. A glance at its contents had relieved him of the fear that the police would be called in; any attempt Gordon made to recover the evidence would have to be extra-legal.

  Arik dared not return to his apartment until he had stashed the file safely, which could not be done until morning, so for the rest of the night he roamed the cloistered, mysterious alleys of Neve Zedek in a silence broken only by the yowling of cats in heat. At first gleaming he sat on a door stoop and thoroughly and systematically read through the papers in the stolen file. It took an hour, with crosschecking. When he was done, he replaced the documents in the folder and the folder beneath his arm, and resumed walking northward, through the maze of small factories, print shops, outlets, and wholesalers south of Shalom Tower.

  In a tiny hole-in-the-wall workers’ café he ate an omelette and drank his mud in the company of a dozen work-bound men, printers’ helpers and factory hands, who were arguing about Meir Kahane. One, a man with a thick Iraqi accent, said Kahane was the first politician with balls since Golda Meir, at which a burly man i
n a mesh tee shirt jumped up and said, “That’s an insult to Sharon!” —whereupon the Iraqi answered, “No, man, no offense intended. Sharon’s got guts, and his heart’s in the right place; he’s just too tied up in Likud politics. Kahane’s the man to get things done.”

  “He’s a fascist,” said the proprietress of the café, a granite woman of Sternholzian bent. “He wants to be the Mussolini of the Jews.”

  “So what if he’s a fascist?” said the Iraqi. “Do you want a Jewish state, or Arab, that’s the question.”

  “The question is,” Arik put in, “do you want a state that we control, or do you want our lives run by Kahane and his goon squads?”

  Silence. Everyone stared at the stranger who, though unshaven and dressed in worn jeans and a torn tee shirt, stank of privilege. He could not conceivably work in the quarter, though he might be the prodigal son of one of their bosses.

  The man who had defended Arik Sharon stood with arms akimbo. “I know what your problem is,” the burly man told Arik. “You’re pissed because you’re not drawing your cut anymore. It’s your type—”

  Arik leaned forward, hands on the table. “What type is that?”

  “The type that lived off the fat of the land while we sweated to feed our families. We were the niggers of this country, till Begin got in. Let me tell you something, boy. You and your kind have had your day.” He sent a chair crashing in illustration. “Your type are finished here. We’re running this country now, and we’re running it our way. And if you don’t like it, you can go to America.” Arik rose lazily, and the other man took a step forward. They measured one another.

  The Iraqi said to his friend, “Cool it. I know this guy.”

  “You know this pinko Arab-loving creep?”

  “Yeah, I know him. He’s okay. He was my brother’s commander in the army.”

  He whispered something to the big man, who answered, “I don’t give a shit who he is. That just proves my point.” He turned to Arik. “What gets you is, you’re losing control, you know it, and there ain’t a goddamn thing you can do about it.” But he sat down, relinquishing the present fight.