Black Box (12 page)

On hearing the offer of a partnership Michel stood up and, as usual, did the right and fitting thing at the most appropriate moment. That is to say, he suddenly climbed onto the window sill and opened up the box of the roller blind to dismantle and reassemble the screw and so release the blind, which was stuck. Then he remained standing on the window sill, and thus was able to talk to your son
de haut en bas,
as though from the bridge of a ship. Michel explained to Boaz dispassionately, without either losing his temper or in any way softening the blow, that there was nothing to talk about, neither loans nor investments, and that even if Boaz was “the epitome of wisdom, like King Solomon in his day, still the Sommo family will not finance either the harem or the ships of Tarshish.” And he also nailed Boaz with the verse “in the sweat of your brow you shall eat your bread.”

But immediately afterward he got down from his launching pad and went to the kitchen and made Boaz and his friend regal hamburgers, fried potatoes, and a virtuoso salad. And in the evening he asked the neighbors’ boy to baby-sit Yifat again and took the two of them and me out to the cinema and afterward for ice cream. It was only when we returned home, close to midnight, that Boaz summoned up enough courage to ask Michel whose “that money from America” was. Michel, who symbolically had not got down for an instant from his pedestal, replied calmly: “The money is your mother’s, your sister’s, and yours in three equal parts. But for the time being you and Yifat are still minors as far as the law is concerned, and naturally as far as I am too. Meanwhile your mother is responsible for the two of you and I am responsible for her, so go and tell that to Mr. Zakheim, and tell him to stop boring us all. As for you, Boaz, even if you grow to be taller than the Eiffel Tower, for me you will still have the status of a minor Eiffel Tower. If you want to study, that’s another matter altogether: just say so, and the money’s yours. But to waste money that you didn’t earn on fishes and tourists and girls? That I won’t finance, even if it is happening in the liberated Sinai. That money is intended to make you into a human being. Now if by any chance you have an urge to hit me over the head with a vegetable crate, go ahead, Boaz; there’s one under Yifat’s bed.”

Boaz listened and said nothing, merely spread that thoughtful smile of his on his mouth, and his regal, tragic beauty filled the room like an aroma. He did not stop smiling even when Michel changed over to French and plunged into a lengthy conversation with the girl student. I am fascinated by the way my husband and your son, out of the depths of contempt and humiliation, are silently fond of each other. Be careful, sir: your victims are only too likely to make common cause against you. And I get a thrill out of your jealousy, which no doubt has just made you purse your lips like wire. And close by an inch or two the space between your spectacles and your pen on your desk. But don’t touch the whisky again: your illness is outside the rules of the game.

This morning some friends of Michel’s, skullcapped Russians and Americans, came in a van and took Michel and Boaz and his friend for a trip around Bethlehem. So I am here by myself, writing to you on pages torn out of an exercise book. Yifat is at the nursery. She looks like Michel but with a sort of comical exaggeration, as though she had been specially made to be a parody of him: she is thin, curly-haired, has a slight squint, and is obedient, even though she is given to occasional tantrums. But most of the time she radiates shy friendliness, which she lavishes indiscriminately on objects, animals, and people, as though the world were waiting to receive grace and favor from her tiny self. Almost since the day she was born Michel has addressed her as “Mademoiselle Sommo.” He pronounces it “Mamzelle,” and she responds by innocently calling him
mamzer,
“bastard.”

Did you know, Alec, that Michel has decided to leave his job as a French teacher at the end of the year? To leave the school and also give up his private lessons? He has dreams of dealing in real estate in the territories, of a political career, following in the footsteps of a brother he hero-worships. Not that he tells me much about it. Your money has changed his life. It may not be what you had in mind, but it happens sometimes that even a dragon produces some noble result, fertilizes a plot of land that will one day yield crops.

At eleven o’clock I have to go to the Café Savyon, to give this letter to Zakheim at a secret rendezvous. As you have instructed. Even though Michel knows. And Zakheim? He is thrilled. He comes to these meetings arrogant, stylish, and deadly. Wearing a sporty jacket with a bohemian silk scarf around his neck, his Tatar shaven head gleaming and perfumed, his fingernails carefully manicured, the effect spoiled only by the clumps of black hairs sprouting from his nostrils and ears. Time after time he manages to break down my resistance and force a coffee and cake on me. And then he starts to ooze extravagant compliments, double entendres; sometimes he even touches me accidentally, and hastens to apologize with veiled eyes. By our last meeting he had advanced as far as the flower stage. Not a whole bunch, of course, just a single carnation. I forced myself to smile and to sniff the bloom, which smelled of Zakheim’s scent rather than its own. As if it had been soaked in it.

You ask what I saw in Michel. And I have to admit it: I was lying again. And I am taking back that tale about Michel the virtuoso lover. So meanwhile you can relax. Michel is all right in bed, and he’s trying hard to go on improving. I even found a handbook in French that he had hidden from me in his toolbox. I’m sorry if I’ve taken away one of your instruments of mortification. I’ll let you have others, even sharper ones. Michel and I met a year or so after the divorce. He used to come to the bookshop where I was working, and he used to wait for me, browsing among the magazines until the shop closed. Then he used to take me to a cheap restaurant, to the cinema, to public discussion groups. After the film we sometimes walked mile after mile through the empty night streets of south Jerusalem—he did not dare to invite me up to his room. Perhaps he was ashamed of his lodgings in the laundry room on the roof of a house belonging to one of his relatives. And he would shyly describe his views and plans to me. Can you imagine a bashful ego trip? Even to put his arm through mine was beyond his courage.

I waited patiently for nearly three months, until I had had enough of the sidelong hungry-but-well-trained-dog looks he kept giving me. Finally one night I grabbed his head and kissed him in a back street. So we began to kiss occasionally. But he was still apprehensive about my meeting his family and about my reaction to his partial piety. I liked his timidity. I tried not to put pressure on him. When several more months had passed, and the winter chill had turned our strolls to martyrdom, I took him to my room, undressed him like a child, and folded his limbs around me. Nearly an hour passed before he managed to relax a little. And after that I still had quite a struggle before he showed signs of life. It transpired that the little he knew he had learned as a youth in Paris from girls who were apparently as frightened as he was. And perhaps, despite his denials, in some paupers’ brothel. When I let out a little sigh, he was terrified and began to murmur:
Pardon.
And then he got dressed, went down solemnly on his knees, and desperately asked for my hand in marriage.

I became pregnant after our wedding. Another year passed after the baby was born before I managed to teach him how to wait for me. How to wean himself from behaving like a bicycle thief whenever he made love. When he finally succeeded in wringing from me for the first time the sound that you can draw out of me even by mail, Michel resembled the first astronaut to land on the moon: his modest, ecstatic pride made my heart tremble with love. The next day, in a transport of enthusiasm, he did not go to school but borrowed some money from his brother to buy me a summer dress. He even bought me a little electric mixer. And in the evening he cooked me a regal four-course meal, complete with a bottle of wine. He did not stop plying me with little treats and favors. Since then he has slowly improved and sometimes manages to get a clear sound.

Have you relaxed, Alec? Did the vampire’s smile appear like a crack between your lips? Are your fangs shining white by the light of the flickering fire? Is the grey malice capering behind the cold stare? Wait. We haven’t finished yet. You have never reached and never will as far as Michel’s feet. The silent respect, Alec, the shy flicker of gratitude with which he defers to my body before love and after it, the dreamy glow that spreads over his face at night: like a humble restaurant violinist who has been permitted to touch a Stradivarius. Every night, as though this were the first time in his life, his fingers explore my body, surprised by a blow that never falls. And afterward, by the light of the bedside lamp when he gets up to fetch me my nightie, his myopic eyes tell me in fervent silence that the regal favors that I have undeservedly bestowed upon him exceed his humble deserts. A wavering, spiritual glow, like a prayer, lights up his brow from within.

But what can a scaly, bone-plated dragon like you understand of grace and kinship and tenderness? You have never had anything, and you never will have, besides your torture dungeons. Which my flesh longs for. Your tropical hell. The steamy jungles bubbling with warm decomposition, and glowing dimly in the half-light filtering through the foliage where the oily rain rises from the earth that simmers with fat wanton marrow, catches in the dense treetops, and spills back again, melting, from the treetops to the mud and to the rotting roots. After all, I was not the one who got up and ran away. It was you who smashed it all up. I was prepared to carry on, and I still am. Why did you divorce me? Why did you bring me to the heart of darkness and leave me and run away? And you are still hiding from me in your black-and-white room. You will not return. You are paralyzed by fear. You exhausted, feeble male, hiding, trembling, in your hole. Is the dragon really so shabby? Such a floppy, sloppy dragon? A vampire stuffed with rags? Write and tell me where you are. Tell me of your doings. And the truth about your health.

Weeping Willow

***

To Mr. M. Zakheim, Attorney
Zakheim & di Modena
36 King George St.
Jerusalem

Tel Aviv
18.6.1976

PERSONAL—ATTENTION OF ADDRESSEE ONLY

Dear Mr. Zakheim,

Following your telephone request earlier this week I flew to Sharm al-Sheikh for a few hours and checked out the story. My assistant, Albert Maimon, also succeeded in tracking the youth and discovering his whereabouts up to two days ago. The report is as follows:

During the night of 10th to 11th June the tour boat on which BB has been working lately was stolen from the civilian anchorage at Ophira. The same night, at two o’clock in the morning, the boat was discovered abandoned not far from Ras Muhammad, after apparently being used by Bedouin smugglers to transport drugs (hashish) from the Egyptian coast. The patrol that discovered the boat set off in pursuit of the smugglers. At five o’clock (dawn on 11 June) a young Bedouin by the name of Hamed Mutani was arrested. He was living with BB at a gas station, together with three young women from abroad. The Bedouin resisted arrest (he denies this) and I have reason to believe that he was beaten up on the spot by the police and the military (they deny this). BB got involved in the incident, and with the help of a tire attached to a rope he went berserk and injured nine soldiers and five members of the Ophira police force before he was eventually overpowered. He was arrested and charged with obstructing a lawful arrest. BB’s version, as it was taken down at the police station, is that it was those conducting the arrest who employed violence against his friend the Bedouin, who was acting, as was BB, in “self-defense.” The Bedouin was released after a few hours, once his interrogators were convinced that he had had nothing whatever to do with either the theft of the boat or the smuggling.

After less than twenty-four hours, during the night of 11th to 12th June, BB succeeded in breaking down the wall of the prefabricated structure housing the police station and escaped. The officer on duty at the time believes that the youth is still wandering around in the desert, and may have taken shelter with the Bedouin. It was in this direction that the Ophira police continued to search for him. As mentioned above, investigator Albert Maimon of our staff (who submitted a brief report on BB to you on a previous occasion) turned in a completely different direction (MHS) and indeed quickly obtained positive results. The youth BB stayed until two days ago in a rented apartment in Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, inhabited by a group of five unmarried religious men of American and Russian origins. These young men are attached to a small right-wing organization calling itself Jewish Fellowship. As you are aware, MHS is also associated with this cause.

In accordance with our legal responsibility, we communicated this discovery to the police. But meanwhile the youth disappeared again. That is the extent of the information in our possession. (Invoice enclosed.) Please inform us promptly if you wish us to continue working on this case.

[Signed] Shlomo Zand
S. Zand Private Investigations Ltd., Tel Aviv

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A GIDEON HILTON AMSTERDAM

ARE YOU STILL INTERESTED IN MY SELLING PROPERTY ZIKHRON I HAVE PURCHASER ON EXCELLENT TERMS ADVISE PROMPT ACTION AWAITING INSTRUCTIONS MANFRED

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PERSONAL ZAKHEIM JERUSALEM ISRAEL

NEGATIVE ALEX

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GIDEON GRANDHOTEL STOCKHOLM