Black Box (2 page)

Now I’ll tell you something you can use against me. My in-laws in Paris send us a little money each month to keep him in this boarding school, even though they have never set eyes on Boaz and he has probably never so much as heard of their existence. And they are not at all well-off (they’re immigrants from Algeria), and they have, besides Michel, five more children and eight grandchildren, in France and Israel.

Listen, Alec: I’m not going to write a word about what happened in the past. Apart from one thing, something I’ll never forget, even though you’ll probably wonder how on earth I know about it. Two months before our divorce, Boaz was taken to Shaarei Zedek Hospital with a kidney infection. And there were complications. You went without my knowledge to Dr. Blumenthal to find out whether, if necessary, an adult could donate a kidney to an eight-year-old child. You were planning to give him one of your own kidneys. And you warned the doctor that you would make only one condition: that I (and the child) should never know. And I didn’t until I made friends with Dr. Adorno, Blumenthal’s assistant, the young doctor you were planning to sue for criminal negligence over Boaz’s treatment.

If you are still reading, at this moment you’re probably going even whiter, snatching up your lighter with a gesture of strangled violence and putting the flame to your lips (because your pipe isn’t there) and saying to yourself all over again: Of course. Dr. Adorno. Who else? And if you haven’t destroyed the letter already, this is the moment when you destroy it. And me and Boaz too.

And then Boaz got better and then you kicked us out of your house, your name, and your life. You never donated any kidney. But I do believe that you seriously intended to. Because everything about you is serious. That much I will grant you—you are serious.

Flattering you again? If you want, I plead guilty. Flattering. Bootlicking. Going down on my knees in front of you and hitting my forehead on the ground. Like the good old days.

Because I’ve got nothing to lose and I don’t mind begging. I’ll do whatever you command. Only don’t take too long, because in a fortnight they throw him out on the street. And the street is out there waiting for him.

After all, nothing in the world is beyond you. Unleash that monster of yours, your lawyer. Maybe with some string pulling they’ll take him into the naval college. (Boaz has a strange attraction to the sea; he has had ever since he was a small child. Do you remember, Alec, in Ashkelon, the summer of the Six-Day War? The whirlpool? Those fishermen? The raft?)

And one last thing, before I seal this letter: I’ll even sleep with you if you want. When you want. And any way you want. (My husband knows about this letter and even agreed that I should write it—apart from the last sentence. So now if you feel like destroying me, you can simply photocopy the letter, underline the last sentence with your red pencil, and send it to my husband. It’ll work like a charm. I admit it: I was lying when I wrote earlier that I have nothing to lose.)

And so, Alec, we are now all completely at your mercy. Even my little daughter. And you can do anything you like to us.

Ilana (Sommo)

***

Mrs. Halina Brandstetter-Sommo
No. 7 Tarnaz Street
Jerusalem, Israel

London
18.2.76

EXPRESS

Dear Madam,

Your letter of the 5th inst. was forwarded to me only yesterday from the United States. I shall refer to only a small part of the matters you chose to raise therein.

This morning I spoke on the telephone with an acquaintance in Israel. Following this conversation the headmistress of your son’s school telephoned me on her own initiative. It was agreed between us that the expulsion is canceled and his record will simply carry a warning. If, nevertheless, your son prefers—as is vaguely hinted in your letter—to transfer to a cadet school, I have reasonable grounds for supposing that that can be arranged (via my lawyer, Mr. Zakheim). Mr. Zakheim will also convey to you a check in the sum of two thousand dollars (in Israeli pounds and in your husband’s name). Your husband will be asked to acknowledge in writing receipt of this sum as a gift to you on account of hardship, and not in any sense as a precedent or as an admission of any obligation on our part. Your husband will also be required to give an assurance that no further appeals will be forthcoming from you in the future (I hope that his indigent and very extended family in Paris is not planning to follow your example and demand pecuniary favors from me). Over the remaining contents of your letter, including the gross lies, the gross contradictions, and the simple common, or garden, grossness, I shall pass in silence.

[Signed] A. A. Gideon

P.S. I am retaining your letter.

***

Dr. Alexander A. Gideon
London School of Economics
London, England

Jerusalem
27.2.76

Dear Alec,

As you know, last week we signed on the dotted line and received the money from your lawyer. But now Boaz has left his school and he has been working for several days in the central market in Tel Aviv with a wholesale greengrocer who is married to one of Michel’s cousins. It was Michel who fixed him up with the job, at Boaz’s request.

This is how it happened: After the headmistress told Boaz the news that he was not going to be expelled, but only cautioned, the boy simply picked up his kit bag and disappeared. Michel got in touch with the police (he has some relations there), and they informed us that they were holding the kid in custody in Abu Kabir for possession of stolen goods. A friend of Michel’s brother, who has a senior position in the Tel Aviv police, had a word with Boaz’s probation officer on our behalf. After some complications we got him out on bail.

We used part of your money for this. I know that was not what you had in mind when you gave it to us, but we simply don’t have any other money: Michel is merely a nonqualified French teacher in a religious state school, and his salary after deduction of our mortgage payments is barely enough to feed us. And there is also our little girl (Madeleine Yifat, almost three).

I must tell you that Boaz hasn’t the faintest idea where the money for his bail came from. If he had been told, I think he would have spat on the money, the probation officer, and Michel. As it was, to start with he flatly refused to be released and asked to be “left alone.”

Michel went to Abu Kabir without me. His brother’s friend (the police officer) arranged for him and Boaz to be alone together in the office at the police station, so they could talk privately. Michel said to him, Look, maybe you’ve somehow forgotten who I am. I’m Michael Sommo and I’m told that behind my back you call me your mother’s pimp. You can say it right to my face if it’ll help you let off steam. And then I could come back at you and tell you you’re off your rocker. And we could stand here swearing at each other all day, and you wouldn’t win, because I can curse you in French and in Arabic and you can barely manage Hebrew. So when you run out of swearwords, what then? Maybe better you should get your breath back, calm down, and make me a list, what exactly it is you want from life. And then I’ll tell you what your mother and I can give. And then we’ll see—perhaps we can strike a deal.

Boaz replied that he didn’t want anything at all from life, and the last thing he wanted was to have all sorts of people coming along asking him what he wanted from life.

At this point Michel, who has never had it easy, did just the right thing. He simply got up to go and said to Boaz, Well, if that’s the way it is, the best of luck, chum. As far as I’m concerned, they can put you in an institution for the mentally retarded or the educationally subnormal, and that’s that. I’m off.

Boaz tried to argue; he said to Michel, So what? I’ll murder someone and run away. But Michel just turned around in the doorway and answered quietly: Look here, honey child. I’m not your mother and I’m not your father and I’m not your anything, so don’t go putting on a show for me, ’cause what do I care about you? Just make your mind up in the next sixty seconds if you want to leave here on bail, yes or no. For all I care, you can murder whoever you like. Only, if you can, just try to miss. Good-bye.

And when Boaz said, Hang on, Michel knew at once that the boy blinked first. Michel knows this game better than any of us, because he has seen life most of the time from the underneath, and suffering has made him into a human diamond—hard and fascinating (yes, in bed too, if you must know). Boaz said to him: If you really don’t care about me, why did you come all the way from Jerusalem to bail me out? And Michel laughed from the doorway and said, Okay, two points to you. The fact is I actually came to see close up what sort of a genius your mother had; maybe there’s some potential in the daughter she had by me, as well. Are you coming or aren’t you?

And that’s how it happened that Michel got him freed with your money and invited him to a kosher Chinese restaurant that’s opened recently in Tel Aviv and they went to see a movie together (anyone sitting behind them might have got the idea that Boaz was the father and Michel the son). That night Michel came back to Jerusalem and told me the whole story, and meanwhile Boaz was already fixed up with the wholesale greengrocer from the market in Carlebach Street, the one who’s married to Michel’s cousin. Because that’s what Boaz told him he wanted: to work and earn money and not be dependent on anyone. So Michel answered him then and there, without consulting me: Yes, I like that, and I’ll fix it up for you this very evening right here in Tel Aviv. And he did.

Boaz is staying now at the Planetarium in Ramat Aviv: one of the people in charge there is married to a girl who studied with Michel in Paris back in the fifties. And Boaz is rather attracted by the Planetarium. No, not by the stars, but by the telescopes and by optics.

I am writing this to you with all the details about Boaz with Michel’s consent. He says that since you gave the money, we owe it to you to let you know what we’re doing with it. And I think you’ll read this letter several times over. I think you also read my first letter several times. And I enjoy thinking about the fury I’ve caused you with these two letters. Being furious makes you masculine and attractive, but also childlike and almost moving: you start to waste an enormous amount of physical effort on fragile objects like pen, pipe, glasses. Not to smash them but to master yourself and to shift them two inches to the right or an inch to the left. This waste is something I treasure, and I enjoy imagining it taking place now, as you read my letter, there in your black-and-white room, between the fire and the snow. If you have some woman who sleeps with you, I admit that at this moment I am jealous of her. Jealous even of what you are doing to the pipe, the pen, the glasses, my pages between your strong fingers.

To return to Boaz: I’m writing to you as I promised Michel I would. When we get the bail money back, the whole sum you presented to us will go into a savings account in your son’s name. If he decides to study, we’ll finance his studies with this money. If he wants to rent himself a room in Tel Aviv or here in Jerusalem, despite his young age, we’ll rent him one with your money. We won’t take anything from you for ourselves.

If you agree to all this, you don’t have to answer me. If not, let us know as soon as possible, before we’ve used the money, and we’ll return it to your lawyer and manage without it (even though our financial situation is pretty bad).

One more request:

Either destroy this letter and the previous one, or—if you have decided to use them—do it now, right away, don’t keep dithering. Every day that goes by and every night is another hill and another valley that death has captured from us. Time is passing, Alec, and both of us are fading.

And another thing: You wrote to me that you responded to the lies and contradictions in my letter with silent contempt. Your silence, Alec, and your contempt too make me suddenly fearful. Have you really not found in all these years, in all your travels, anyone who could offer you a single crumb of gentleness? I’m sorry for you, Alec. What a terrible business: I’m the one who did wrong, and you and your son are paying the full penalty. If you like, scrub out “your son” and write Boaz. If you like, scrub out the whole lot. As far as I’m concerned, don’t hesitate, just do anything that’ll relieve your suffering.

Ilana

***

Mr. Michel-Henri Sommo
No. 7 Tarnaz Street
Jerusalem, Israel

Geneva
7.3.1976

REGISTERED POST

Dear Sir,

With your knowledge—and, as she herself claims, with your encouragement—your wife has recently seen fit to send me two long and rather perplexing letters which do her no credit. If I have succeeded in penetrating her vague language, there are indications that her second letter is also intended to hint to me about your pecuniary shortcomings. And I will wager that you, sir, are the puppet-master who lurks behind her demands.

Circumstances make it possible for me (without any special sacrifice on my part) to come to your assistance once again. I have instructed my lawyer, Mr. Zakheim, to transfer to your bank account an additional contribution of five thousand dollars (in your name, in Israeli pounds). If this does not suffice, either, I must ask you, sir, not to address me again via your wife and in ambiguous terms but to inform me (through Mr. Zakheim) of the final and absolute sum you require to solve all your various problems. If you will be good enough to specify a reasonable sum, you are likely to find me ready to go some way toward meeting you. All this on condition that you do not bother me with inquiries into my motives for giving the money, or with effusive expressions of gratitude in the Levantine style. I, for my part, naturally refrain from pronouncing any judgment on the values and principles which permit you to demand and to accept financial assistance from me.