A Dove of the East (3 page)

Najime stood slightly bent in back of the closed wood louvres, looking calmly at big brother from the mountain pass of a quarter of a century before. Yacov begged to be allowed to shoot him. “That is not the way,” said Najime, “either the gun would explode, or you would miss and kill a friend. You see, he has undoubtedly grown in powers, but so have I. Like you, I probably would have wanted just to go and shoot him, and maybe then, when he and I were younger, I would have had a fair chance. But a young man is no match for him now. Look at all he has done and can do. He can kill effortlessly, but he must kill me as he said he would because I would not fear otherwise. And because he must kill me that way, he will not allow himself to be killed beforehand. So put your gun away. Either he will come here, or 1 will go to him. But I must think about this, because if I am right he has become so skillful in evil that we may even be dealing with the Devil himself. Anyway, this is beyond you, Yacov, because it calls for the strength of the past, the power of memory, the resolve of an old man's history, and because you are stupid.

“I have one advantage. I am not afraid. I must beat him down if only for the sake of the people of Ha Tikva. Even if I lose he may leave of his own will, but there is no guarantee. Now let me think about it, as if I were trying to find a way to move a large timber through a small door of a little house. Let me think for a while.”

Najime walked every day to the seaside, and stayed there from noon to evening, smoking his pipe and staring at the white foam of the waves and their curling, like his smoke. He knew that an idea of victory could come either deliberately or on the air. But he knew also that ideas of victory which seem to travel on the air alight always on the shoulders of those who have been laboring in thought.

So for a week he left every day, descending the stairs and walking across crowded boulevards, past great white ruins in the old part of the city, which was being leveled and cleared. But one morning as he and Yacov both were shaving in front of a copper bowl filled with boiling water, he clenched his fist around the razor, lifted his eyes, and said, “Aha! I did it once, and now I'll do it again!” He began to dance around the room, singing, jumping, and prancing, because he had solved his problem.

“Wonderful!” said Yacov, “What are you going to do?”

“Shut up!”

“Why shut up? I'm your son. Tell me.”

“Shut up. I'll tell you, assuming that I'm alive, by tomorrow night.”

The next morning, Najime arose and put on his best clothes. It was the day before a holiday and many people were dressed for the occasion even then. He wore an old double-breasted pin stripe suit, the stripes hardly visible, the cloth rough, deep, and blue. On his head he carried a Greek straw hat with a chocolate brown band, and in his belt under the coat was the knife he had brought from Persia. The handle was of leather washers, unusual for such a good knife since it deserved an ornamental grip. But in commissioning it Najime had not wanted that. The finest quality leather had become smooth and black over the years from the oil of his hand. A heavy nickel guard, curved inward, made it seem like a small sword. The blade itself was about a foot long, double edged only a few inches back from the tip in a fluted curve. It was cast from the best Swedish steel, which the smith had purchased from a Russian. Najime had sharpened it over the years, and especially carefully the night before. He had spent a good deal of his life sharpening blades. The knife was so sharp that he feared for the scabbard.

“Goodbye Yacov my son. I am going to the synagogue, and then to the barber.” He winked.

Najime left and crossed the street, nodding and greeting as was his custom; alert as a young man hunting in the mountains he stood and prayed by the side of the road, since they were cleaning the synagogue. “Dear God, help me to know evil and to fight it. Help me to resist it, not that I would be evil myself, but that one of its principal parts is to appear as right and proper. And that is something I have wanted to discuss for a long time, but later. I am going, I believe, to do what you would have me do. Although I have not heard from you about this it seems the right thing to do.”

He came to the street of the barber shop and walked toward it, adjusting his knife. Once inside he went directly to one of the old chairs and sat down, asking for a shave. The barber, a little Moroccan, began to lather Najime's face, already as cleanly shaven as a man's face could be. Najime had taken pains to do that just an hour before. The barbers manner was casual but somehow very mechanical and automatic, as if he were teaching young barbers. He then went to the razor drawer, picked out a very large razor with a transparent ice-blue handle, and began to sharpen it.

Within the white cloth Najime drew his knife, and as the barber approached with a look of boredom and sleep, Najime jumped from the chair, teeth exposed, the two sides of his mustache raised, and with a tremendously loud cry (the kind that used to go from one mountaintop to another), he stabbed the barber deep in his heart, pushing the knife right up to the hilt.

The other barbers and customers froze while their coworker and barber of many years staggered in a half-circle, and then fell face down on the floor. Najime dropped back into the chair, feeling like a man who has just beaten the Devil. While the police were summoned, a soldier who had witnessed the incident through the window entered the shop and pompously trained his rifle on Najime, who had an angelic look.

The police came. They handcuffed Najime to the chair, and began to write in their books the statements of all concerned. The barbers stated that this man had come to their shop and killed Amzaleg, who was a third owner. They then described the killing in great detail, gesticulating, and glancing now and then at the body for fear of offending it with the color of their portraiture. Najime was silently shaking his head no. To everyone in the shop (by that time about 350 people, various animals, hawkers and vendors of every description, prostitutes plying their trade, entertainers, musicians, etc., etc.), he looked like a madman from an entirely different civilization.

A policeman turned to him and said, “What do you mean, shaking your head no like that?”

Najime replied, “That man is not their friend Amzaleg. Amzaleg is probably in bed with stomach trouble.” The two remaining barbers looked at one another, confirming the presence of a madman. “He,” continued Najime, “is an old enemy of mine from Persia who swore to kill me with a razor, and that was what he was about to do.”

“Nonsense!” screamed the two remaining barbers like twins. “That is Amzaleg, our friend and partner.”

“Turn him over,” said Najime, hardly able to wait until it was done. And when it was done, the long, flat, half-bearded chin was not that of Amzaleg the Moroccan barber, but of the big brother on the mountain.

“Incredible,” said the two barbers in unison.

Later, after he had been released by the police, Najime went home under what seemed to be lighter and cooler skies. Ha Tikva was awakening from a week of hard work and about to await the sunset and fine food of the holiday. It felt as though there were going to be a rainstorm, although there was not going to be one. Yacov was inside, having heard out the window of all the strange events in the barber shop. When his father came in and took off his coat, the son was reverentially silent. But seeing that the older man was in a good frame of mind, to say the least, he cautiously asked, “How did you know he was the barber?”

“Well,” said Najime, “as a precautionary measure I shaved this morning as cleanly as I could, and that seemed to make no difference to this ‘barber.' But that was just a precaution, for any barber might have been tired, and overlooked it.”

“Then how did you know he would be there?”

“I didn't know for sure, but I took a chance. You see, he vowed to kill me with a razor, and I have never been to a barber in my life. Therefore, if I went to a barber, it would have to be him. That is Devil's conduct, and I have encountered it before. My suspicion was confirmed when I noticed that he had no wedding ring. Every barber in Israel wears a wedding ring. And then, I could feel his presence the way sheep in mountains can feel the approach of a hunter. I have spent a lifetime waiting. I have won.”

And both father and son heard the bakers screaming, “It rises! It rises!” about their newly baked bread. For during the previous few weeks the bread in Ha Tikva Quarter had not risen. Najime was left to spend the rest of his life pondering on whether he had beaten the Devil or just the Devils son, and thinking about the clear air of his mountains and the championships he had been born to take in sawing, chopping, and many village games.

J
ETS FROM
airfields in Nevada trailed fine white lines across the sky. At the head of white columns the planes themselves looked like silver ticks. When she looked up, there was a roundness of light as if she were seeing through glass or a lens, but she was only looking through her eyes. All her life the B-52S had left their smoke trails above her. It was almost a part of nature, akin to the rising of the moon, or setting of the sun.

They were miles from Tippet, a town of about thirty-five, and Tippet was miles from anywhere else. You could pull in two or three country music stations. Sheep grazed in the lower depressions of the mountains and drank from clear pools, near gray porous rocks. In summer Henry made a fire, and lining his sheep up one by one he pulled off the ticks and cast them into the flame. Always the air was cool and deep. Around the house was no argument, no lawn—just pine trees, wind, and a view of mountains. Winter was hard and sometimes it snowed late in June, though only at night. They were high up where the air was thin. They didn't waste it. Stories were therefore short, expressions clipped, and Agnes had a habit of giving long looks without saying a word, during which her mouth was slightly smiling and her eyebrows slightly raised. When she looked this way, everyone knew she was good-natured and wanted to kiss her and twirl, eyes closed, with so much in reserve.

She cooked. Steam swirled upward around the spoon as she looked into the pot, her body arched away from the stove. The kitchen was full of windows. Through them was miraculous blue and white of mountains, hanging aerial ice, and sky.

And her face. Her face was an extremely beautiful face. When she laughed you did not laugh at her face nor did she become less pretty. When she was angry it was the same. The eyes were blue. There was a mirror in the hall, surrounded by a frame of grayish-white tin. When she looked at herself in the mirror she saw the blue eyes, shining out, and the simple blond hair, energetic. “Bong Bong,” she said as she patted her hair into place and went to the porch to wait for Henry.

She was wearing a loose white dress held together at the neck by a button which said, “All the Way with Alf Landon.” The wind blew her hair. She settled her eyes to stare into the valley, past the rocks, past the sheep that looked like moving cylinders of cream or cloud, past the pools and pines, to the road where Henry would be coming. She picked up a knife and stuck it into the chopping block on which it had been lying. She loved Henry, and had doused everything to marry him. Those are the only marriages that work—where you say to hell with it, and hurt three or four dozen people, and tell fifty more to go to hell, and then move out to Nevada or Alaska, or Brazil. If you don't do that, you're not really married. She was married to Henry. Henry tried to tell their parents about how to marry.

“Why?” said their parents.

“Because,” said Henry, “if you love you make no concessions—none at all. And in the beginning this is especially true. And Agnes and I are angry at concessions—little ones, big ones. We want to start clean. I love Agnes. We bought a sheep ranch.”

The pot was boiling over. She went in and turned off the heat. It was a simple principle: if the pot boils over, turn off the heat. She always thought passionately that to think is somehow dispassionate. Henry said she was right and drove her in his car up the mountain to their house with the whitening tin-framed mirror where they saw themselves in dusty silver and wondered what was the toughest road they knew.

She went back to her chair on the porch. She led an orchestra with the spoon, and sang several songs. Henry was a hard worker, very strong for his size, and he made up stories. He never went anywhere without adventures. He once had wept in her lap at the top of a mountain. She kissed her hands, ran them down her breast, and said a prayer, for she believed in God, as did Henry—in His power, and that He made everything. That is really why they told everyone to go to hell, for they needed no one, and saw that no one believed.

She prayed to God, surveying His hills and rising high above them, glancing at green pines, and turning humorous circles in heaven. She loved God, and she loved Henry. God made her shake like a true priest, and although she was quiet she was thundering at the hills for His sake, and for Henry's sake.

Henry came up the mountain in the wooden station wagon. There were books on the seat next to him, and groceries in the back. He was driving to music. She could see by the way he moved his head from side to side and was rhythmically intent on making the car sway gracefully up and down turns, through the cool sunshine air.

 

H
E PULLED
up and left the radio on. He got out of the car and walked around the front to face Agnes, who was on the porch, as still as a branch.

He was dark-haired and had a wide smile. He wore a bulky olive Navy N-
I
jacket, denim pants, and brown leather boots. She looked at him and remembered what she had looked like in the mirror—tan, her nose a little shiny, in a white dress and crown of blond, with blue eyes sadly piercing the leaded glass darkened from age in the mountains.

They were still, and the wind ceased. “Well,” she said, and raised her eyebrows slightly.