A Dove of the East (2 page)

“Three days from our village and any other I arrived at a great pass in the mountains, to which I had been only once before, as a child. This pass is essentially a vast gorge with paths cut into the rock walls on either side. Once you have chosen a side you must stay with it until the end, about an hour's travel, because a sane donkey would not walk backwards with no room to turn. The other path is completely inaccessible although only a stone's throw distant, because the gorge in between is easily a kilometer deep. It was this pass which kept the railways, armies, and telegraphs from our village. It was this barrier which allowed us to follow our own desires freely, and yet because of it the bandits were also free and they plagued us.

“But no bandit had ever struck there, simply because were he to have done so and encountered greater force he would have had no way to escape, and besides, the place was dangerous enough just to traverse. At the end of the pass was a government station full of troops. So if one reached the entrance he assumed himself safe from attack. Naturally the troops themselves exacted a small extra-legal tax, but that was looked upon as inevitable, as a sort of toll.

“I found myself at the entrance to the pass, thinking I was safe from bandits and even exempt from the soldiers' ‘tax.' If the Grand Rabbi had treasure coming to him from all parts of the country, he had undoubtedly donated part of it to an official in the palace to make sure that it arrived intact. My donkey had a bad right eye, which was lucky for me. My natural inclination was to travel on the left, with the gorge on my right, and since the animals left eye was best, that is what we were forced to do. I made sure the sacks were evenly balanced, put a blinder on his right eye so that he would look only at the path, and said a prayer. Then I led him out.

“We were doing well, and the animal's brown legs were steady and not shaking as they would have done had he been other than a donkey and smart enough to fear heights. Halfway through I saw two men, one on each path. They were bandits, and each one had a rifle. How clever they were! The one on the far side trained his rifle on me, while the other calmly awaited my approach. What have you got there, Jew, said the one closest to me. Just dung for fires, I said. (I must also have said sir.)

“He believed me, and was going to let me pass when the other one, on the far side, said, Look in his sacks, little brother, for I think there is gold there. It seemed very strange that he should know that, and he too was rather strange. Even from that distance I sensed something about him which frightened me, and the donkey was very agitated in his presence. Well, they thought they had the mastery of design in that matter, but they hadn't. Perhaps if I had been carrying just smoked meats or tools or my own money, I would not have been able to think out a way to beat them. There were after all two of them, each with a rifle and a knife. I had only a sword and dagger. And most important, I could do nothing to the older one across the gorge who in complete safety had his rifle aimed at my heart. Even were he not there I could not have gone in any but one direction, straight into his little brother, who was by no means little. But I was carrying the wealth of my father and my father's father, and of all my cousins, and of the synagogue in the village. And it was for a very special purpose, very special indeed, so I thought so hard my head began to boil and the veins in my hands stood out. (I was also quite frightened.)

“After I had thought of what to do it seemed so simple and obvious that I laughed out loud, and it echoed in the gorge. They looked at one another in confusion, but then the older one said, Little brother, we can also rob madmen. Then the little brother ordered me to spill out my sacks for him. No sir, I said, you cannot make me do that, even if you kill me. If I am to be robbed that is one thing, robbing myself is another.

“He thought for a while and then said, That makes sense, Jew, and then very casually went to the sack of dried fruits and meats and began to go through it. You see he was not afraid of me because I was a Jew. When you say ‘I am a Jew,' they think you are weak. But of course we are as strong as anyone else, and because of that we often give them big surprises. Afterwards they hate us because they think we have tricked them. But usually it is they who have tricked themselves. Their eyes have done the tricking. As soon as little brother saw my clothing he lost all fear, because knowing that I was a Jew he did not think there was a man underneath.

“He has false sacks of dung, he yelled to his brother, and then began to lay out the meat and fruit against the wall of the path next to the donkey. I knew exactly what to do; it had come to me in a flash. I came close to him and said, Keep the meat and fruit, eat well, but in God's mercy let me pass. He looked up and said, I am going to eat well, but I am also going to kill you, for if I don't kill you I will have no appetite, and he laughed.

“At this I imagined as best I could that he was a branch on a long timber which awaited trimming before being sawed into logs. How many tens of thousands of times I had knocked off those thick branches with one stroke of my ax. But it was different with a man. I had never killed a man, and I found that I could not move. I was paralyzed. Then I realized that I could not fool myself into imagining that he was a branch to be severed, because he clearly was a man. So I thought, This is a man, not a tree, and I am going to kill him. I was afraid, and I knew that the minute I reached for my sword all hell would break out. I knew that if I hesitated they would kill me, and that if I did nothing they would kill me. This made me so angry that I pulled out my sword and with the most powerful stroke I had ever given (and the fastest), ten times as powerful as was necessary, I simply cut him in half.

“I dropped my sword immediately and grabbed the lower half of his body, throwing it with all my might over into the gorge. Meanwhile his brother had begun firing his rifle and had hit my donkey, who went down on one knee. I could not stand the idea of having the body of the man I had just killed next to me, so at further risk of losing all the gold and my life I picked it up and sent it flying in a wide arc into the gorge. It seemed to hang motionless at the top of the arc, and since the other had stopped firing in his horror at this I had time to grab the faltering donkey and pull him back onto the path. Then the big brother began to fire many bullets, quite accurately I must admit, but they all went into the poor dead animal in front of me. He was smart though, because he began firing into the rocks, which broke into shrapnel and bloodied me all up. I took a silver bowl and some trays from the sack and put it over my head and them over my body, remaining there quite comfortably for another half hour eating lamb and pears and wincing at each shot and ricochet. Then he stopped, thinking either that I was dead, or that if I were not he wasn't going to change the situation.

“I looked at him through a little space between the donkey's neck and the ground, and I cannot adequately describe what I saw. I was not afraid of him until that point, because I had planned to stay there until dark and then carry the treasure to the army station. Were he to move back to where I had begun he would have given me an hour's head start, during which I could easily get to the army base. Were he to wait until dark, the darkness would shield me from his fire. I knew he could not go forward for fear that the troops ahead would kill him, so you see I had turned what they believed to be their great advantage, the safety of the gorge, into
my
great advantage. And I was unafraid, until I looked under the curve of the donkey's neck and saw big brother.

“What had been a simple ordinary bandit was suddenly something most different. I could not believe my eyes, and rubbed them.
His
eyes were red circular coals, but made of fur, and they flashed and glowed. His chin had extended until it looked like the flat wooden pallet bakers use for taking bread out of the oven, and he was foaming at the mouth. Up and down the rock walls sparks flew, and as he gesticulated and mouthed the words of evil animals a hot wind came through the crevasse, and hot drops of rain, and then thunder. The wind, at least it seemed to me, was trying to blow the donkey's body off the path. The more big brother danced and fumed, the higher the wind became and the more the donkey moved bit by bit, almost imperceptibly. After a while big brother seemed to get tired, the wind died down, and darkness began to fall. Then he seemed to be like a bandit again, with the almost pitiful exaggerated half-bearded chin, and he called out to me: I am going to hunt you down and cut your throat with a razor. I will follow you anywhere on earth, in these mountains, on the seas, in cities, anywhere. I will strike when you think you are safe and comfortable. I can walk through walls—nothing can keep me out—and when I cut your throat I will be laughing and wild with pleasure, and you will be frozen like a board, unable to move as the razor glides. I can do that. You know me, and your life will be far worse than your death, which will be a well of terror.

“Well, I don't scare that easily, so when darkness fell I cut the treasure from the donkey and pushed him off the ledge, as if to bury him. I heard a hissing of air as he fell into the blue-black darkness. Then, even though it was dark, I almost ran over that path all the way to the army station. I dared not tell them what had happened for fear that they would go mad (those peasant soldiers living alone on mountaintops were really crazy, believe me), but they took me in for a night.

“You don't believe that they were really crazy? They spent hours slapping each other's faces. They moaned and whimpered like dogs. They used to go around on stilts to scare away devils. This is not crazy?”

By this time it was dark: no more light came in through the louvres, and the old man had been talking into the night for longer than he thought. Yacov reached out to touch him as if to make sure he were really there, then got up to turn on the light, which blinded them both. Surely this was something his father had imagined long ago on a terrifying day and night in the mountains, and yet even if not entirely consistent, it was convincing. With the excitement of a fool who knows one small thing, Yacov asked his father, “If he were really the Devil, why could he not have flown across the gorge on the wind and killed you with his teeth, or have sent a snake from above to poison you?”

“He wasn't the Devil. He was only a half devil, perhaps the son of the Devil and a human woman. He had powers, but they were limited. That is why he has grown old, and why I was able to beat him. Very few men, at least not the likes of me, can beat the Devil. But one of his sons, well, that's different.”

“How can you be sure he knows you are here?”

“Because
he
is here.”

“Well, I think we should wait and see what happens. Maybe it's nothing at all. Maybe we are dreaming.”

“Of course my son,” said Najime, “of course we'll wait, that's part of it.” He expected the weeks to pass, and they did.

Meanwhile, stories had been spreading about the newcomer. It seems he had arrived from nowhere with a large wagon full of the finest avocados. Since avocados were out of season, he sold them at a very high price and was almost immediately transformed from beggar to prosperous merchant. When people asked him, as they did, where he had gotten so many thousands of avocados he said that his brother had a farm in the desert, where it was so hot that he could grow anything he wanted year round, even at night. It was said that beggars were envious of him, a beggar become rich, and so spread stories such as the one asserting that he sold avocados from his wagon for two weeks day and night and never seemed to run out.

A hundred men threw themselves at his feet and begged to buy this wagon. He picked the richest of them all and told him to run and get his daughter. When the man returned with the beautiful young girl she went wild with desire for the hideous old man and asked for his wrinkled hand in marriage. With tears in his eyes, the father gave consent. They were married the next day. Twenty-five minutes after the wedding feast the father died suddenly of what an autopsy later revealed as starvation.

The stranger then moved into the family house, sold it that evening at a great profit even though everyone knew the city was about to tear it down to build a melon exchange, and pooled his considerable assets to buy up all the salt in Tel Aviv. This was considered a foolish move, until several days later when news came from the south that the country's salt mines had become filled with hot poisonous gas from fissures in the earth. The salt merchants got together and put all their capital into a large order of Turkish salt to be brought on a ship they purchased as a consortium. News came that the ship had been sunk by the Lebanese. The stranger bought what remained of their businesses for practically nothing, and went to the docks to meet the ship, which had not been sunk, but had doubled in size.

From this point, his dealings became unknown to the people of Ha Tikva, except that it was known that he had somehow gained control of the area's crime. Every robbery, every drug transaction, every prostitute, fell ultimately under his direction. He caused otherwise friendly murderers to fight among themselves, shoot, miss, and kill innocent bystanders. Dancers pulled their muscles. Hats would not fit on old men who had worn them for thirty years. Honest citizens would suddenly kick a police officer, and when brought to trial full of regret and shame, find themselves able to speak only Japanese.

Something was wrong in Ha Tikva. It became the topic of conversation at all the tables and in all the cafes. A man suggested to his friends that the strange things which happened were only a concealment and distraction in the case of the stranger who had arrived and done so well so suddenly. “You know, you may have a point there,” said one of them just before the house collapsed, from termites said the newspaper, even though the house was made of stone.

The stranger was not to be seen, except on Friday nights, when a uniformed Cossack drove him through the streets in a lacquered red car. They invariably stopped in front of the house of Najime the Persian, the old sawyer, where the stranger sat from eight-thirty to nine-fifteen turning his feet to the front and then to the back again and again, and laughing a very ugly laugh that made children run to their mothers and rats race into their darkest tunnels—only to crash headlong against one another.