Cafe Nevo

by Barbara Rogan

  “Only land purchases by Israelis.”

  “That is a position of tremendous power, which is properly invested in elected, not appointed, officials.”

  “This overseeing committee would not usurp your power, Minister. It would draw from it.”

  “But to what end?” Brenner said quickly. He pointed the pencil at Arik’s face. “To what end, Eshel?”

  “To the end that no more Palestinians will be forced or tricked into selling their land; that no more developments will be built on stolen land; that no more facts will be created on the ground. I would ensure,” he added deliberately, “that there are no further conflicts of interest, no land speculation by people with inside information.”

  The Minister glared.

  “That can’t continue,” Arik said softly. “It’s finished.”

  “For the Arabs you’re doing this?” Brenner burst out. “For the goddamn Arabushim? Have you forgotten that your precious Ein Hashofet was built on what was previously Arab land?”

  “Not for the Arabs. For my country,” Arik said with obvious embarrassment, “and myself.”

  “Mostly for yourself,” the Minister sneered. “You’re more like Uri than I thought. Fighting for the underdog was his shtick. Made a damn good living at it, too.”

  “I’ve heard a lot of assessments of my father’s career,” said Arik. “That was by far the most offensive.”

  “I know him better than most,” the old man said drily. “Like father, like son. But tell me, young Eshel, what would you do with your power, should it please me to grant it?”

  “I would review the applications that came in.”

  “And?”

  “I would interview the buyers and the sellers. I would visit the sites. I would institute title searches.”

  “These things take time.’’ the Minister said. It was a phrase he used so often, it slid off his tongue like oil.

  “Precisely.”

  “It’s a dangerous position, for a man of your moral caliber. Temptations abound.”

  Arik smiled through his teeth. “I put up with your talk of blackmail and robbery, but I draw the line at bribery.”

  Brenner gave him a sharp look. “So it’s power, not money. You dream of glory. You want to make yourself into a one-man stumbling block on the road to Jewish settlement. That’s like putting a stop sign in the path of a herd of stampeding elephants.” He laughed.

  “I like a challenge,” Arik said blandly.

  “But seriously, boy, what do you hope to gain? What do you hope to accomplish? At most you’d be delaying the inevitable.”

  With immense enjoyment, Arik stuck his hands in his pockets and drawled, “Mr. Minister, suh, I am just holding the pass, waiting for reinforcements.”

  Brenner scowled. “I hear your father talking.”

  “We have pockets of agreement,” Arik said.

  “So it seems, and yet I wonder.” Brenner emerged from behind his desk, motioning Arik to remain seated. He sat beside Arik and leaned forward with an avuncular smile. “You cut short a promising army career on a matter of principle. You then took a social working job far below the level of opportunity open to you. These are the acts of a man of quite fanatic conscience. And yet you come into my office, blustering and threatening—”

  “I’m not—”

  “You attempt blackmail, you commit a robbery—and I understand that Mrs. Gordon was deeply upset by her treatment at the hands of the thieves.” Arik shifted involuntarily; the Minister registered the movement and continued sorrowfully: “These things are out of character; what is more, among men of honor and good will, they are unnecessary.” He took a cigar from his jacket pocket and offered one to Arik, who shook his head without speaking. The Minister lit his and puffed, with a sigh of gratification.

  “Had you come to me as the son of an old, respected colleague, then regardless of party affiliation I would have gone out of my way to make room for you. You will forgive the immodesty if I point out that with my support, you could have gone far.” He waited. Arik said nothing.

  “You still can. It’s not too late. We would attribute this unpalatable incident to distress over your mother’s illness and start with a clean slate. But I cannot allow myself to be moved by threats. I’m sure you understand that,” said the Minister.

  “Restore what you have taken to its rightful owner, and then come to me. Then it will be possible to discuss a position... of power.”

  Against his father’s advice, which had been emphatic on the subject of relinquishing the documents, Arik said, “Will you return what you have taken, to its rightful owner?”

  Brenner’s face flooded with color. His eyes fixed on Arik. It was not a look of love.

  “If you are referring to these” —the Minister waved disdainfully at the papers—” they have nothing to do with me. They are forgeries. But even if I were in a position to do so,” he said, “I would never lend a hand to those who would return liberated Judean land to Arab ownership.”

  Arik reached out for the stack. Brenner caught his wrist in an iron grip and lifted it away. “In the interest of harmony,” he purred, “I am willing to take the first step. Call it a demonstration of good will.” Smiling unctuously, he lifted the receiver of the desk phone.

  “Bianco? I want the Jaffa Youth Center reopened. Take care of it, will you? Right away.” He hung up without waiting for a reply.

  “It’s as easy as that,” the Minister said, with the smile of a man too long in politics. An inch of ash detached itself from his cigar and fell onto the Persian carpet. He ground it underfoot.

  “One phone call. And my orders will be carried out, I assure you.

  “That’s power, my boy. Oh, you’ve got a fine poker face, but I can see that you covet it. And you can have it, too, but not this way. Not by trying your strength against mine. I am a powerful man, and in the exercise of my power I can destroy, as well as create. With all due respect to your expert coach, you are out of your league. A man in your position needs friends, not enemies.

  “I have proven my good faith,” the Minister said reasonably. “Will you now prove yours?”

  Arik shook his head in wonderment. “Minister Brenner, that was very impressive and most persuasive. Your generosity is staggering. I hope you won’t think I’m being ungrateful by refusing to profit by your advice, sir, but I think I’ll sleep better at night knowing the documents are in my possession.”

  “You go to hell,” said the Minister, in a voice as cold as ice.

  “Is that your answer?”

  “It is my prayer. I haven’t given you my answer.”

  “I have to hand in my article by Wednesday, the day after tomorrow.”

  “Whatever the outcome may seem to be,” the Minister said, “you will live to regret what you’ve done today.”

  “Wednesday morning,” said Arik. “You’ve got my number.”

  What Caspi hated most about Khalil Mussara, besides his having screwed Vered, was his BMW. It was not envy that prompted his hatred, but indignation on behalf of the suffering Palestinian masses. The fact that he himself drove a six-year-old Fiat had nothing to do with it.

  Thus it was with a warm sense of political righteousness that Caspi placed the explosives in Khalil’s car. He’d considered placing it under the house, which stood on pillars, but was deterred by the thought of the children. Not, he told himself, because Khalil deserved clemency—had he not tried to destroy Caspi’s family?—but because the children were innocent. Vered was wrong: he was not a racist.

  Acquiring the material, once he decided what he needed, had not been a problem; if one knew the right people and had the right currency, it was easily arranged. Khalil lived in a house on the outskirts of Nablus. It was not a large house, hardly bigger than the detached garage that stood beside it. Caspi thought with deep satisfaction that whatever money Khalil had must have gone into the luxury car, which was not even large enough to hold his entire family.

  After at
taching the bomb to the car, and setting it to go off in ten minutes, Caspi hid behind a stand of olive trees in the middle of a deep field across from Khalil’s house. His own car was parked on the far side of the field.

  At that hour there was a definite chill in the air, but Caspi, clad in jeans and a black sweatshirt, did not feel it. He was a veteran of three wars, four counting the Sinai war of attrition, which was in some ways the nastiest; he knew that feeling of lightheadedness that precedes combat and recognized the feeling now. Events that were now totally out of his control had been set into motion. He felt the peacefulness of being a pawn.

  A loud explosion rent the air. The windows of the garage shattered, and debris rained down from the roof. Lights went on in the house. A moment later the front door burst open and Khalil ran out, wearing only a pair of pants. As he caught sight of the collapsing garage, his steps faltered; he stopped and stared, holding his head. A woman appeared beside him, a passel of children visible behind her. Khalil said, “Call the fire department. Stay inside,” and herded them back into the house. He walked down the porch steps and stood in the yard, peering out into the black night.

  “Caspi!” he screamed.

  Caspi watched through infrared binoculars. He could see Khalil’s face perfectly. He had no difficulty hearing him, either.

  “Come out here, you fucking coward,” Khalil hollered. “Show your face, you fucking kike—get it out here. Show yourself, you motherfucking bastard, you chickenshit Nazi swine.” The garage had caught fire, and Khalil was silhouetted by the flames, a perfect target, had Caspi chosen to kill him. But Caspi wouldn’t have killed him for the world. The Arab was sobbing. He punched the unresisting air furiously, his body palsied with frustration.

  “I know you’re out there,” he shouted through his tears. “I know you’re watching. You coward, Caspi—come out and fight like a man!” He danced on his toes. “I’m not armed. What are you afraid of? Come out!”

  Hearing sirens, Caspi turned away reluctantly and sprinted for his car. Khalil heard his heavy footsteps and plunged into the field. Khalil was faster, but Caspi knew where he was going and reached his car without being seen. Not that it mattered; he was sure Khalil would identify him anyway. Over the revving engine he heard Khalil’s last despairing cry.

  “I’ll kill you for this, Caspi. I’ll kill you.”

  Driving home, Caspi was suddenly struck by fear, not for himself but for Vered and especially Daniel. Was Khalil canny enough to strike at his heart’s blood? He imagined a bomb going off in his home, Daniel lying torn and bloody— and Caspi got to shaking so badly that he had to pull over and stop. How could he have overlooked the danger? His action so far had succeeded beyond his wildest hopes—might not the inevitable reaction exceed his wildest fears?

  He had reckoned on Khalil’s fury but, despite the evidence, had persisted in regarding the man as impotent; this led him to overlook his own vulnerability. A serious error, and one that needed to be rectified, Caspi decided. He had brought a clean gun with him, in case of emergency, but even as he put his car into gear he realized that it was too late. The police would be there already; the Shin Beth and the press would soon follow. It was too late now to do anything but carry out his original plan.

  But when he thought of Khalil’s stricken face, mourning his car as if it were a child, Caspi’s panic subsided. A soothing contempt stole over him. Khalil had the will but not the intelligence to pinpoint Caspi’s Achilles’ heel. That Caspi truly loved Daniel, would kill for him, would die for him, was a secret known only to himself; no one else believed he gave a fig for his family. In his eagerness to tear out Caspi’s heart, Khalil would certainly assume that it beat in Caspi’s body.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “David’s coming,” Ilana said.

  “David? Your... ?”

  She nodded.

  “Oh, Ilana. Does that mean you’ve decided to go ahead with it?”

  “Decided?” Ilana said, laughing. “By default, perhaps. I kept postponing and postponing a decision, and last night, I know it’s impossible, but last night I could swear I felt it move.

  “After that,” she said, “I couldn’t possibly... Even if I just imagined it, I couldn’t. So you see, I’m stuck.” She didn’t look stuck, though. She looked triumphant, like a child who’s just pinned the tail squarely on the donkey’s rump.

  Vered said, “I’m so happy for you,” and her smile momentarily eased the lines of tension etched on her face. “It’s the right thing,” she said.

  Ilana was observant, but needn’t have been, for even a blind woman (or a sighted man) could have seen the trouble on Vered’s face. She leaned forward. “Is there any way I can help you? There must be. Tell me how.”

  Vered’s eyes filled with grateful tears, which she blinked back. She shook her head.

  “Have you decided what to do?”

  Vered laughed helplessly. Even if she wanted to explain, it was impossible. The problem of her pregnancy had been utterly subsumed by another more urgent problem: Caspi. In her desperation she had this week consulted those organizations designed to help women like herself, who were trapped by the state’s archaic divorce laws. But their legalistic remedies took no account of Caspi’s devastating anger, and their tactics relied on attrition, which would take more time than Vered thought she had.

  They all asked if Caspi ever beat her. She told the truth: he never had. They advised her to remain in the home and try to get him to move out. She laughed. One young woman had looked very grave then and suggested a shelter for battered women. “But I’m not a battered wife,” Vered had retorted indignantly.

  “Not physically,” the young woman gently replied, “but brutality takes other forms as well. Your husband sounds like a dangerous man.”

  Vered knew the shelters. The women who ran them were all friends or acquaintances of hers. Appearing as a supplicant on their doorsteps would be an unbearable humiliation, fatal to her pride; the scandal when it got abroad, and the pity of her colleagues, would be insupportable.

  She was afraid of Caspi. She was also afraid for him if she left. He would go to the devil. She oughtn’t to care, but she did. It was a no-win situation, a classic double bind that left her paralyzed.

  Emmanuel Yehoshua Sternholz sat shamelessly nearby, pretending to nap, with a newspaper spread over his face to protect him from importunate customers and flies. Nevo on this hot Tuesday afternoon was full of the latter pests but almost free of the former. Mr. Jacobovitz dozed upright on a bar stool. An overhead fan drowned out most of the women’s conversation. Sternholz inched closer.

  Vered, that inveterate smoker, had not lit one cigarette since she came in. Sternholz was almost confirmed in his diagnosis, despite the fool’s denial when he confronted her with it. It was enough to drive a poor waiter mad. How in God’s name was he supposed to get people out of trouble if they didn’t confide in him? Those who should didn’t, and those who shouldn’t did. He wasn’t a magician; though, by the look of her, he suspected it would take a magician, or at least a sympathetic doctor, to get Vered out of the mess she was in.

  “I have a plan,” Ilana said.

  “Yes?” Vered said politely.

  “You need to get away for a while, to sit and think quietly without interruption.” Ilana chose her words carefully. Caspi had not yet been mentioned between them. She did not know what Vered knew or suspected about the bombing, but there were lines on her face that had not been there two weeks ago. “Take Daniel, and both of you come stay with me,” Ilana said.

  Vered looked at her in amazement. “You have no idea what you’re suggesting.”

  “I think I do. Vered, my building has twenty-four-hour security. No one can get in, without our permission.”

  Vered closed her eyes. Turgidly, as if half asleep, she said, “I thought of going to my mother.”

  “But you haven’t gone.”

  “No.”

  “Have you told her?”

  “No.�
�

  “Why not?”

  “It would just hurt her without helping me.”

  “But she must see that something is wrong.”

  Vered raised her face. Two red patches glowed on her cheeks. “Jemima and I don’t talk very much,” she said.

  Ilana thought of her own mother and sighed. Then she said, “I know Jemima. She’s obviously a very strong-willed woman, but I found her sympathetic.” Vered snorted. “I suspect that she might be more helpful than you think. But as far as staying with her... I know Jemima’s house. It’s a lovely home, but I would feel terribly exposed, up there alone on the cliff.” As Vered looked at her in perplexity, she added briskly, “I think you would feel better in my place. There’s plenty of room. You could stay until you decided what to do, or—Vered, are you listening to me?”

  Vered said vaguely, “It sounds a little far-fetched.”

  “You haven’t even heard half of it. After our last meeting, I had an idea, a fantasy, really, about the two of us deciding to have our babies and going through with it together, helping each other.” Ilana paused. Vered was silent. “I guess you think it’s a dumb idea,” she mumbled.

  “It’s a lovely idea,” Vered said in a gentle, sad voice, as if she knew it would never happen.

  “Why not?” Ilana stared insistently into her eyes. “You’ve got to make some decisions. You can’t seem to do it at home. My suggestion is a perfectly good, practical first step.”

  Vered did not speak for five minutes. Then she said, “What about David?”

  “He’s coming for just a few days. A week from Wednesday he’ll be gone. You could move in then.”

  Just then, loud voices from the pavement heralded the entrance of Caspi and his entourage.

  Sternholz hustled over, waving his white apron like a farmer’s wife shooing hens. “Get out, get out,” he shouted, “I told you I don’t want you here.”

  Caspi was at the vanguard of his little band of merry men and women. One arm was around the waist of his current flame, an American girl named Judy, who had been kind enough to supply his alibi for the night of the bombing; the other he slung around Sternholz’s shoulders, to the old man’s evident disgust. “Sternholz, old friend, you are too harsh. Even if I had played that little trick on the Arabush, which I did not” —he winked broadly—” the punishment does not fit the crime. Am I to be exiled forever from the one vale of peace in my otherwise turbulent existence? Cannot a man, hounded by the police day and night, persecuted by the press, find a moment’s refuge in his own café?”