To Kill a Shadow

by Ronen, Nathan

  “Things aren’t good,” Eva translated, halfheartedly this time. “Your mother won’t allow the nurse help her eat, but might starve without her help. She needs this gastric feeding tube operation urgently.”

  Arik shed tears in silence. Marushka handed him some tissues. Eva rose and placed her hands around his shoulders.

  “What happened to you earlier?” he asked.

  She shook her head, as if rejecting his question. “Can I see your room?”

  “Of course, but I hardly lived in this house. My parents had moved here when I was a young soldier. But there’s all this junk my parents brought from my childhood home in the poor Halissa neighborhood.”

  When they entered his room, she stood next to the spartan wooden bed he had used to sleep in as a child and youth, facing the bookcase containing old and yellowing books. Certificates and awards of excellence hung on the wall as well as photos from which peeked the face of a chubby boy dressed up like a Cossack and playing an accordion beside a girl dressed in a traditional Chinese suit and holding a yellow bamboo parasol. “Is this a photo of you and Naomi at the Purim Festival?” Eva laughed and hugged him. Arik nodded in embarrassment. The small apartment suddenly seemed extremely crowded and pitiably old.

  “Did you own a grocery store?” she asked and pointed at the sacks of rice, sugar, and flour placed in the corner of the room beside cases full of oil bottles and various types of canned food.

  “No, dear. What you see are the traces of World War II hunger. In 1991, Saddam Hussein of Iraq attacked Israel and launched rocket attacks against Haifa as well. From the moment the first siren and the first blasts sounded, my mother regressed back to all her Holocaust trauma and started hoarding basic commodities again.”

  Arik returned to the living room, sat beside his mother, and stroked her hands. She did not respond, her eyes hypnotized and fixed on the television screen again. Eva knelt beside her and stroked her emaciated and transparent hand as well. “I’m so ashamed of my grandfather and his generation for what they’ve done to you,” she said quietly in German and wiped a tear. A wave of compassion washed over Arik. Not only had Eva saved his life, twice, she also loved him with all her heart.

  “Tell me what happened to you earlier during dinner,” he asked again gently. “You hardly touched the food.”

  “It’s hard for me to explain, even to myself. I guess it’s something that has to do with your mother, my grandfather, and the sense of responsibility I feel for all of us as a nation. I don’t know, and I don’t want to talk about it now.” She held his arm. “Come, we need to go meet Naomi. The lawyer is waiting for you.”

  Arik went to his mother, kissed her head and stroked her wrinkled face. She turned her eyes to him, yet her face was still expressionless, as if she was seeing a complete stranger. He inhaled deeply, wishing to smell her old motherly scents but finding only the sour smell of an ancient body. He realized, in the sharpest and most immediate way, that the motherly figure of his memories was forever gone, and shed bitter tears without a sound.

  “You’re quite the crybaby for a tough Mossad warrior,” Eva told him fondly and placed her hand on his shoulder.

  “The older I become, the more I realize how I’ve repressed my emotions over the years. Now I finally realize a powerful man is measured by his ability to reveal his so-called weaknesses, by his ability to express his emotions,” he said quietly.

  Eva smiled at him and went to Marushka. “Thank you for taking such good care of Mother,” she said in Russian and placed two €100 bills in her hand.

  Arik slowly descended down the stairs. In his heart he knew he had just bid his mother a last farewell.

  When they sat in the car, he suddenly said, “When Mother celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday, Naomi and I wanted to take her to Poland so she could revisit her native village. When we told her about our idea, she spat contemptuously and said the day she had left Poland, she swore never to set foot again on the soil of that accursed country soaked with the blood of her family. Then she told us, for the first time, her personal Holocaust story.

  “At the end of the war, she returned from the Auschwitz labor camp to her home village of Sarnaki, not far from Warsaw. She was twenty-five, a muselmann, a human skeleton, a young widow and a bereaved mother. She was naïve enough to think she could reclaim her family’s lumber mill. When she finally arrived in the village, she discovered the Polish laborers who had worked for her family now ran the business. To her great fortune, the foreman’s daughter, who was about my mother’s age, whispered to her that her father and brother, at that very moment, sharpening the knives they normally used to gut pigs with so they could murder her and hide her body in the forest.”

  Arik gasped with excitement. “But we still wanted to give Mother a trip abroad as a present and asked her where she would like to go. She said she had always wanted to see Vienna, Prague, and Budapest. Our first stop was Prague. On the first day of our stay there, we hired a local guide with a vehicle to take us for a tour of the city, but my mother remained inside the Hilton Hotel’s lobby and refused to go outside. A strange and distant expression lay on her face.

  “We asked her, gently, if she wasn’t feeling well, and she commanded us in Yiddish, in a voice that seemed to come from another world, ‘Leibele, you sit on my right, close to me. Naomile, sit on my left. Now, hold each other’s hands and look straight ahead. Do you see the Nazis right in front of us?’ There was a group of German tourists in the lobby, chatting loudly and happily ignoring us.

  “Mother said with excitement, ‘The Nazis tried to kill me, and so did the Polish. Now I’m back in Europe with my two children. Both of them big, strong, educated, married, and both of them gave me grandchildren. I want these Nazis to know this is my victory over them, this is my vengeance—life!’ She burst into an emotional crying fit. Pretty soon, we were crying with her. Just imagine it: three people sitting in a hotel lobby, crying their hearts out. The reception manager came running to ask us if everything was all right, and our tears quickly turned to laughter.”

  Eva kept quiet, and Arik joined her silence. After a few minutes of driving down Haifa’s emptying streets, Eva said, “I’ve witnessed your special relationship with your mother and heard a lot about it, but you’ve never said a word about your father. Leon, right?”

  Arik hesitated before answering. “My father was a simple man who used to beat and humiliate me. He didn’t want me to grow up and outshine him, and he did his best to keep me small and under his control. But I was a rebellious child. And so our relationship was mainly comprised of an endless series of conflicts.”

  “I’m sad to hear that.”

  “The funny thing is that he turned out to be a warm and loving grandfather. His grandchildren loved him very much. Somehow, being such a good grandfather was a sort of compensation for being such a lousy father.” He shrugged. “I think I hated him.”

  “What about me? Do you love me?”

  “Can’t you feel that?”

  “I feel that you’re fond of me, but I don’t know if you have deeper emotions for me.” She smiled. “Do you know what’s the difference between, ‘I love you,’ and ‘I like you,’ in Buddhist philosophy?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “When you see a flower you like, you just pluck it, but when you love a flower you love, you water it daily.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “That perhaps it’s time we moved in together.”

  Chapter 51

  “Operation Survival”

  Arik dragged the phone closer to him across the large desk in his bureau and dialed the Sheba Medical Center’s hematology ward. “My name is Arik Bar-Nathan. I’d like to check if my test results are back.”

  A rustling sound was heard from the earpiece as the nurse sorted through some paperwork. Finally, she said, “Yes, but you’ll have to talk to Dr. Ben David about it.”

  Arik felt a pang of anxiety. “Any particular reason?”
<
br />   “No, not really. She’ll give you a call back.”

  The doctor called after two nerve-wracking hours and immediately said, “Mr. Bar-Nathan, we need to meet as soon possible.”

  “It sounds like an introduction to a requiem.”

  “It’s definitely not an introduction to a requiem, but if you insist on hearing about it over the phone, it seems that you have advanced multiple myeloma. We need to speak about the medical protocol urgently.”

  “What’s multiple myeloma?” asked Arik.

  “I don’t think this is a conversation we should be having over the phone. I see that you have a routine appointment scheduled a month from now, but I’d like to see you before that.”

  “If you say it’s urgent, I’d like to come right now.”

  “How soon can you get to the Sheba Medical Center?”

  “I’m in Jerusalem at the moment. If I leave now, considering the traffic, about two hours.”

  “I’ll wait for you.”

  Arik quickly went to a special room, which contained a computer station with a regular Internet connection.[22] With trembling hands, he typed the words “multiple myeloma” into the white and inviting rectangle of the search box.

  His heart sank as he read the words.

  Multiple myeloma is a malignant disease involving abnormal plasma cells that accumulate in the bone marrow, where they interfere with the production of normal blood cells. The disease may cause multiple organ failure and takes a different course in every individual. With conventional treatment, median survival is 3–4 years, which may be extended to 5–7 years or longer with advanced treatments.

  He froze in front of the screen. All right, he thought. If this is war, then I’m going to fight.

  Chapter 52

  Onco-Hematology Clinic—Sheba Medical Center

  Reception hours were already over. The clinic lobby was deserted, and Arik’s quick footsteps emitted a muffled, echoing sound. Dr. Ben David waited for him in her room, a look that spelled bad tidings in her eyes.

  “Sit down, please. I’m sorry I gave you the diagnosis of multiple myeloma over the phone. I assume you’ve already rushed to check it out on the Internet. Am I right?”

  Arik nodded.

  “The information on the Internet might be shocking, especially because the illness is described as incurable. In my experience, it can be treated with effectiveness. In recent years, clinical research has considerably advanced, and there are now plenty of medications and treatments at our disposal. As a result, the life expectancy of multiple myeloma patients is steadily rising. Today, myeloma can almost be regarded as a chronic illness.”

  “Cut the medical bullshit, Doctor,” Arik said with a bitter smile. “Since you’ve already guessed what my profession is, you know that I regularly deal with matters of life and death. I just want to know when I could expect to retire from this life with some dignity.”

  “I have some young patients, like you, who expected to live about three years before the treatment. Thanks to the treatment, they’ve all been with us for over ten years now and enjoy a reasonable quality of life.”

  “I come from a house in which being weak or exposing your weaknesses was strictly forbidden.” Arik stripped himself of all defenses. “I live in an environment which has very clear rules: when a chicken demonstrates weakness, the rest of the chickens in the coop peck it to death. Do you have any idea what my life would look like if people discover I’m about to die?” His hands trembled. He had always assumed he would die during combat or in a special operation and had imagined a short, sharp death for himself. He had never imagined a slow, agonizing death without being able to be in control over his final destiny.

  “Look, Arik… May I call you Arik?”

  Arik nodded. His face was frozen, and his thoughts drifted elsewhere.

  “Arik, try to think of it in a different way. It’s not that you have cancer. The cancer has Arik. And this means the cancer is in deep trouble because Arik is a real soldier, a shark who won’t let cancer get the upper hand, right?”

  Arik smiled and regained his composure. “That’s all right—I don’t need any encouragement. I just want to know what the test results are and what can be done.”

  “Unfortunately, the myeloma has spread through your body for quite some time. I assume you’ve noticed the fact you’re getting tired much faster than before?”

  “Yes, maybe. I was very busy with work and other things. I’ve always maintained a peaceful coexistence with my illnesses. I just suppress them.”

  “Your illness is at an advanced stage and mustn’t be suppressed. You also have severe anemia, and I’m afraid the myeloma has started attacking your pelvic bones. We’ve diagnosed a few lytic lesions in the pelvic area. The excessive protein in your urine, because of which you visited a urologist and a nephrologist before returning to us, results from damage to the kidneys.”

  “It sounds like multi-system failure,” Arik said with a calmness that surprised him as well. “So how long do I have left?”

  “No one can tell for sure. The effects of multiple myeloma are different from patient to patient. The most important thing is to start treatment immediately. I consulted with some of my colleagues in the department, and we all agree there can be no delays.”

  “What does the treatment involve?”

  “You are going to get different medications, possibly radiation therapy, and maybe surgical intervention. We’ll begin by prescribing a cocktail of medication. Later on, based on your condition, we will be able to determine the next stages of the treatment. We may end up implanting bone marrow to arrest the development of the disease.”

  “Will I still be able to work?” Arik asked.

  “I don’t see any reason why not,” said Dr. Ben David. “Except for about two to three weeks of absence, which you’ll be able to excuse as a vacation abroad” She held his hand. “Arik, you must be confused by all the new terms and the new reality you’ve suddenly found yourself in. We have an excellent service of social workers here, all specializing in clinical practice. They’ll be able to help you with all the important questions you must be asking yourself now, such as how will the illness influence your life, who should you share this new reality with, how should you tell your wife, your family, your children…”

  The small office closed in on Arik, and he wanted to run away, as far as possible. “I need to go outside and get some fresh air,” he said with honesty.

  “I’m going to tell you something which may sound completely absurd. You need to be healthy in order to be sick. Get it? You need to be mentally strong and stay physically fit. It’s the only way you could win. Here, take my card. It has my private cell phone number. Call me soon so we can get started with the treatment.”

  Arik took the card, placed it in his pocket, shook the doctor’s hand quickly, and went outside into the cold corridor.

  Chapter 53

  Beehive on the Cliff Neighborhood in the Palmachim Air Force Base

  The phones kept ringing, but he didn’t answer. Sitting in the iron chair next to his basement work table, he looked at his motorcycle collection and the ancient motorcycle parts he had collected over the years in the hope of fixing, assembling and riding them into the horizon with his son after his retirement.

  Just before midnight, he finished writing a will in which he had equally divided all his possessions among his children. He added letters addressed to each of them. In the letters, he apologized for not being a perfect father and accepted full responsibility for divorcing their mother He admitted he felt very proud of them and that he was sorry he did not tell them that before. Then he wrote letters to Claire, his sister, and Eva.

  He felt he lost control over his mood. He was overpowered by emotions. He felt sorry for himself and angry at his cruel fate.

  At the first light of dawn, Arik found himself sitting in the enclosed porch, his eyes turned westward and watching the winter sun playing games of light and shadow across th
e surface of the sea. All the letters he had written and his will were placed in front of him on the table, the topmost was a love letter to Eva. He placed them all in a large envelope and sealed it.

  Chapter 54

  The National Security Council Offices in the Prime Minister’s bureau—Jerusalem

  That morning, Arik arrived earlier than usual at his office, tired, unshaven, and pale. He was extremely serious and hardly smiled or joked with the security guards at the entrance or with the division receptionists. When Claire arrived, Arik asked her to come into his office.

  She went inside with a stony expression on her face. “What’s up with you?” Arik scolded her when he noticed she was giving him a strange look.

  “What’s up with me?” Claire yelled at him. “What’s up with you!”

  Arik was silent. He didn’t know he was so easy to read.

  Claire wouldn’t let go. “You’re hiding things from me! You constantly disappear without letting me know where you’re at. Just before the last operation you called me from the hospital and asked me to send someone to pick up your car. Now you have the nerve to ask me what’s up with me? It’s time you tell me everything, Arik. Other than fucking you, I’m virtually your wife. A ghost wife. I took care of your dirty laundry, I had your house cleaned, I filled your refrigerator with food while you were abroad, and I shared all your moments of happiness and those in which you were sad and depressed because of your miserable divorce. I briefly attended Nathalie’s wedding and was happy to see your son, Michael, getting close to you again. For a time, I was also happy to see you getting your life back on track with Eva. Talk to me! I’m not a stranger!” she screamed with desperation.

  “What I’m about to tell you needs to stay in this room,” Arik whispered and looked around nervously.