by Moshe Sakal
When Menashe brought up the robbery, Achlama kept uncomfortably silent. Because, as Menashe now knew, the notorious robber was none other than her late husband. And this is the story Menashe told us that day:
3
It was 1991. January 16. Exactly the day when the ultimatum the U.S. gave Saddam Hussein was expiring. On the news they talked all day about the war that was expected to break out and the Iraqis’ chemical weapons. I didn’t believe even for a minute there’d be rockets launched at Tel Aviv, but I was a little worried, because not a single customer came into my shop that day. In those situations no one thinks about jewelry.
And another thing — for some reason on that day the security system was broken and the alarm didn’t work. I’d moved the workbench the day before to fix something, and a cable must have come loose. When I got here that morning, I discovered the alarm wasn’t working. I should have closed the shop and gone home, but I decided to stay. Big mistake.
I didn’t think any real customers would come in on a day like that, but I hoped someone might stop in for a repair, and then — if I was in good form — I might be able to palm off some new jewelry on them. Of course all sorts of people came in just to drive me crazy, and like I always do, I told them I don’t pierce ears, I don’t repair watches, I don’t sell candlesticks, I don’t buy silver, I don’t sell gold-plated jewelry, I don’t sell wholesale, and I don’t buy equipment from businesses going bankrupt. None of that. At five thirty my mother Adela called, as usual.
“Why are you sighing like that, Menashe?”
“Because people are making me crazy all day.”
“What crazy? Haven’t they heard there’s a war?”
“There’s no war, Mom.”
“Then why don’t you shut down and go home? It’s late already.”
“It’s only half past five.”
“Half past five is late. Your father used to close the shop at four and come home. Tell me, have you exercised?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe me.”
“I keep telling you and you won’t listen. You just sit there all day long on your chair like a potato. What’s going to happen if a hooligan comes into the shop? You have to be in good shape, like my father was. Did you know that Grandpa Menashe killed a man in the Argentine?” When we finished talking I stayed just where I was. It was one of those days when on the news they say things like, “The police are pleased: because of the security situation, all the thieves stayed home today.”
All except one.
He wasn’t tall and he wasn’t short, my thief. He wasn’t black and he wasn’t white, didn’t look like a square or like a criminal. I had no reason not to let him in, and anyway the buzzer was broken. I remember how he leaned on the door and it slid open like he’d said “Open sesame.” I didn’t have time to say Jack Robinson and he was already in the shop.
If anything looked strange to me about that man, it was the fact that he wore a scarf. It wasn’t an especially cold day. When did I really start getting suspicious? When he asked to see rings. Men almost never come in to buy a ring without their girlfriend or wife. Doesn’t happen. Still, I got up from my chair. When I turned around to the safe — one eye on the safe and the other on the guy — I saw him lean on the counter, looking around and whistling to himself. He wore blue jeans, a black button-down shirt, and a black coat. He had a little scar next to his eye. There are some things you never forget.
He kept whistling to himself while I took out the tray of men’s rings and put it on the table. My thief held the tray with his thick, hairy hands and glanced at his reflection in the mirror. He noticed the dish of candy and asked if he could have one.
“Of course,” I said.
He chose a ring and held it up to his eyes. “Is this gold?”
“Everything you see here is gold.”
“Eighteen karats?”
“Fourteen.” “All of it?”
“I have some eighteen-karats, and some that are less. The ring you’re holding is fourteen. That’s the standard in Israel.”
“How do you tell the difference?”
“In eighteen-karat gold, the ring will be slightly more yellow.”
“Did you make this ring?”
“I made everything you see here.”
“Talented man.” He smiled. “Did you learn, or was it a God-given talent?”
“A little of both. Do you want to try on the ring?”
“Wait a minute,” my thief said, “don’t rush me. Let’s see this one.” He put the first ring back and took another. “When did you open this shop?”
“At nine this morning.”
He smiled. “No, I mean how long have you owned it?”
“It’s a family business. My father started it in 1950.”
“Did your father make you work hard?”
“My father didn’t like to work. He was just a tradesman. He didn’t make jewelry himself.”
My thief said, “I used to work with my father, too. He was a plumber. Every morning I went with him to work in people’s houses. I was his assistant, I brought him all the tools from the truck, I got him falafel in pita when he was busy with clogged toilets, but he never said a kind word to me. Always complained: Why did you do this? Why didn’t you do that? One day I just got sick of it and I left. I decided to go work on my own. You have some very nice jewelry here. And your father, did he make jewelry, too?”
“No, I told you.”
“That’s why you wanted to make jewelry. It’s like me and my dad. Everything he did, I didn’t want to do. But I didn’t study and I didn’t have diplomas, so I went to be a handyman. When you’re a handyman, you go and knock down walls in people’s homes, and they don’t make your life easy. Treat you like you just picked up a hammer and broke down their walls without even asking them. I was at one lady’s once, rich as Rothschild, and she had loose floor tiles. But I didn’t touch her floor, because they asked me over to install a sink, not to fix the floor. Long story short, the next day the police come to my house. I open the door, ask them what happened, and they don’t answer but they take me to the police station and a cop tells me, ‘You saw the floor tiles were loose, so at night you broke into her apartment because you thought she was hiding dollars under the tiles.’ Didn’t matter what I said. They put me on trial and threw me in prison. You ever been in prison?”
“No. So what did you do?”
“I waited patiently in prison, killed time. And one day they found the real thief and let me out. That was a week ago. And here I am today.”
“Who sent you to my shop?”
“My wife once told me about your shop. You mark my word, one customer in the hand is worth a thousand in the bush. Bottom line, why am I here today? Because I want to treat myself to a ring. So what do you say?”
“About what?”
“About the ring I chose.”
“It’s very nice, and fashionable. But it’s the wrong size for you.”
“It is?”
“Yes, it’s too loose.”
“So what? Are you afraid it’ll fall off?”
“Yes.”
“Can you resize it for me now? You don’t look busy.”
I could have sent him on his way. Could have told him I don’t resize rings, I don’t have time for him — basically, all the things I do when someone drives me crazy on any other day. But that day was not like other days. It was a day not a single customer came in, and mostly it was a day when I did not sit on my chair like a king and make pronouncements: This one comes in, that one does not. Whether I wanted him or not, my thief was in, and I figured if he was already in and I’d already let him tell me his whole story, I might as well fix the ring for him. So I sat down to work.
“How long will it take?” he asked.
“I don’t know, depends if anyone disturbs me.”
“No one’s going to disturb you,” my thief said. “They’ll wait patiently.”
And as if to show me he was serious, he lifted his shirt up a little and I saw a pistol in his waistband. I remember, that was the moment I felt around under the table for the panic button. With the other hand I made sure my gun was in my pants, too. I took the ring and marked delicate parallel lines on the inside, then picked up the hacksaw and got to work.
My thief sat on a chair while I worked. He spread his legs out in front, took out a cigarette and smoked. After a few minutes he said, “You could tell me a story meanwhile.”
“What story?”
“I don’t know, something interesting. Did your father use to tell you bedtime stories?”
“He always told me the same one.”
“Go on, tell it.”
I carefully threaded a string through the ring and placed it on the parallel line, and to the sounds of the hacksaw screeching, I began speaking:
“It’s the story of a very rich man who went and bought himself a slave. He bought him because he wanted a personal servant who would go everywhere with him, but also because he wanted someone he could consult with or just talk to, to ease his loneliness. Anyway, one morning he goes to the slave market and finds a boy he likes. He takes him home, and the boy is pleased because his new owner seems like a good man.”
“Go on,” said my thief.
“At night the man can’t fall asleep. He goes to his servant’s room and finds the bed is empty. The boy is gone.”
“Ran away.”
“Maybe. Anyway, he’s not in the room. The man looks all over the house and in the yard, but he can’t find him. Later that morning, he suddenly hears the door open. His servant is back. He goes over to the kid like a father whose son was lost and he doesn’t know whether to slap him or hug him. But before he can make up his mind, the boy takes out an antique coin from his pocket and gives it to him. The master looks at the coin and realizes it’s worth a lot of money.”
“Where did the servant get the coin?”
“There’s no way to know, and the master doesn’t know either. He asks the servant, but the servant offers him a deal. He says, ‘I will give you a valuable coin like this every day, but you must not ask me how I got it. And you must not follow me. If you ask me even once where I find these coins, I’ll stop bringing them.’ The man agrees, of course, because rich people never get tired of making more and more money. And also he knows that even if he orders the servant to stay at home at night, it won’t do any good. Anyway, he takes the deal. And so every day the servant disappears in the middle of the night, and in the morning he comes home and gives his master a coin.”
“So what, he never sleeps?” asked my thief.
“It’s a fairy tale, my friend. In fairy tales people don’t have to sleep. Anyway, the master doesn’t dare ask questions, but at some point rumors start to fly. One day one of the rich man’s friends says to him, ‘They say your new servant is connected to a gang of grave robbers.’ The master doesn’t want to believe this, he’s convinced there’s a different explanation, and he decides to solve the mystery himself.”
“How?”
“He breaks his promise. At night, when the servant leaves the house, the master sneaks after him. He follows him for miles and miles. They leave the city, get to a desolate area, and there the servant takes off his clothes, puts on a Sufi cloak, and starts praying. He prays for hours, almost till morning. At the end of the prayer he shouts, ‘God, give me what I deserve!’ And suddenly a coin falls from the sky and the boy picks it up. When the master sees this, he’s so happy his servant isn’t a grave robber that he decides to set him free.”
“And then what?”
“When the servant hears the man wants to let him go, he is so excited that he picks up a handful of sand and throws it into his master’s lap. And they each go their separate ways, but with a heavy heart. The man goes home alone, and when he gets there, he finds that in his lap are many dinars made of pure gold.”
“Is that the end?”
“Almost. The man is happy with the gold dinars, but more than he is happy, he is sad, because he misses his servant very much. And then come all the people who told stories about the servant, and they mock him and say, ‘What did you do with your servant?’ And he tells them the whole story.”
“And what do they say?” asked my thief.
“They regret all the stories they made up and they repent.”
“Nice story,” he said. “But you know, that master shouldn’t have followed the servant.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, trust me, there are things you’re better off not knowing.” He looked at his watch, considered for a moment, then asked, “So tell me, how’s my ring coming along?”
“It’s almost ready.”
Then he asked out of nowhere, “Tell me, what’s the most expensive thing you have here?”
I put the ring down on the bench and looked at him. I felt dizzy for a moment. And that’s when I realized I was really done for. I repeated his question: “The most expensive thing?”
Then he asked exactly the question I was fearing: “Yes. Is there something here you hide deep in the safe, something you never take out?”
I decided that when he drew his gun, I’d pull mine, too. I’d draw my weapon, and whatever happened would happen. If it’s written above that today is my day to die, that today a criminal will put a bullet in my stomach, then so be it. I wasn’t afraid, because the dizziness passed and then I saw him for what he was: a thug with a scarf and a big mouth. And good taste, because after all he’d chosen a nice ring.
My thief didn’t wait for me to answer. He wasn’t interested in the ring anymore, wasn’t interested in anything. He repeated his question like a parrot: “What is the most expensive thing you have here?”
My father always told us to take good care of Sabakh. He said, “That diamond is the most precious thing we have. Thanks to Sabakh, everyone in our family will eat well, and get an education, and marry well.” And now the diamond belonged to Menashe Salomon from Plonit Alley. And I suddenly got so frightened by his gun that I told him about Sabakh.
My thief was confused. “What do you mean? One single diamond?”
“It’s not just any diamond,” I told him. I was covered in a cold sweat that made the safe key stick to my skin. It was too late now. From the minute I’d let that man into the shop, everything was decided: the conversation, the ring, Sabakh. So I told him how they’d stolen the diamond out of Shiva’s third eye in India, how it had reached France and been sold to the king for 147 kilos of gold, and how it was embedded in the royal crown for Marie Antoinette, and how King George IV of England had worn it at his coronation, and how the diamond wandered on and took revenge on anyone who bought it, until it got to Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who ordered that it be split in two, and he named the little one Sabakh. And how Sabakh came to my family because of my great-aunt Gracia, and since then it was our secret possession, the only souvenir from a life long gone.
“Show it to me,” my thief said.
At that stage I could have told him to go to hell. After all, he hadn’t pulled his gun on me or threatened me, he hadn’t even talked rudely. On the contrary — he was polite, just a bit nosy.
“Will you show me this Sabakh?” he asked again. He didn’t even order me, he just asked quietly, like we shared a secret, like he was dependent on me now and nothing else interested him. Just him and me and Sabakh.
I turned around to the safe. I thought I could still pull my gun and finish him off, like my mother’s father finished off that man in the Argentine. Just one thing stood in the way of my plan. I don’t know whether to call it curiosity, or maybe superstition, but it was clear to me that I absolutely could not pull my gun and kill him, or worse — let him go — without knowing what Sabakh had in store.
So I took out the keys from my pocket, opened the safe, then unlocked the little safe inside the main one, and took out the box with Sabakh. But when I turned back and put the box on the table, a minute before I
put the key in the lock, I saw out of the corner of my eye that someone was standing at the door. It was Dalia, the pharmacist from next door. She waved at me and smiled. I looked at my thief: His face was blank. I sighed and motioned for Dalia to come in. That day everything was wide open, it was all lawless. She pushed the door and walked in.
“Are you busy, Menashe?” she asked.
“I’m with a customer. Anything in particular?”
“There’s a registered letter for you, it came this afternoon.” She put an envelope on the table with my landlord’s name and address on it.
“Thank you,” I said.
Dalia didn’t leave. She smiled at my thief and asked, “Wedding ring?”
He said, “Something like that.”
“You’re in good hands,” Dalia said. “He has hands of gold.”
“Thanks for the letter,” I told her.
“No problem.” She stopped for a moment and looked back and forth — at me and my thief, at my thief and me. She furrowed her brow, held up a finger and tapped one of her teeth, but after pondering for a minute she smiled again, turned around, and left.
Now I didn’t waste any time. As soon as she left, I put the key in the lock and turned it, but before I had time to open the box, my thief put his hand over mine and slammed the box shut.
“Wait a minute.”
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“No problem, just a question. Didn’t you say this diamond was cursed?”
I sighed. “I didn’t say it was cursed, just that people claim it’s cursed. And anyway that’s not this diamond but the original one, the one they cut Sabakh out of.”
“So if there’s no problem with this diamond, why did everyone want to get rid of it so badly?”
“I don’t know.” I was getting annoyed. “Maybe they just wanted to be kind to other people, and that’s why they passed the diamond around. Did you ever think of that?”