Black Box (4 page)

Alex. What the hell do you owe them? You, who drove me mad during your divorce, in the best tradition of your deranged father, making me fight like a tiger to make sure she didn’t get a penny out of you, not a roof tile of the villa in Yefe Nof, not even the pen she was eventually forced to sign the papers with! It was only reluctantly that you agreed she could keep her underwear and a few pots and pans, as a special favor, and even then you stubbornly insisted on recording that this was “an
ex gratia
concession.”

So what’s come over you all of a sudden? Tell me, is somebody threatening you with something by any chance? If so, tell me all about it at once. Treat me like a family doctor. Send me a quick signal—and then you can sit back and watch me making mincemeat of them for you. It’ll be a pleasure.

Listen to me, Alex: The fact is, there’s no reason for me to get involved with your lunatic schemes. I’ve got a nice juicy case on the launching pad right now (concerning the property of the Russian Orthodox Church), and what I make from that, even if I lose it, is worth approximately twice the widow’s mite you have made up your mind to donate as a Passover gift to North African Jewry or the Association for Aging Nymphomaniacs. Go fuck yourself, Alex. Just give me my final instructions, and I’ll hand over whatever you like, whenever you like, to whomever you like. To each according to his greed.

Incidentally, the fact is, Sommo does not whine greedily. On the contrary, he speaks very nicely, in soft, rounded tones, with a smiling, didactic refinement, like a Catholic intellectual. These people have apparently undergone, on the way from Africa to Israel, a thoroughgoing refit in Paris. Outwardly he seems almost more European than you or me. In a nutshell, he could give Emily Post a few lessons in polite behavior.

I ask him, for example, if he has any notion why Professor Gideon is suddenly handing him the keys to the safe. And he smiles at me mildly, a sort of “come on, now” smile, as if I have put a truly childish question to him, beneath his dignity and mine, refuses to take one of my Kents and offers me one of his own Europas, but deigns—possibly as a gesture of Jewish solidarity—to accept a light from me. And he expresses his thanks and shoots me a sort of sharp look, which his gold-rimmed spectacles magnify like the look of an owl at midday: “I am sure Professor Gideon could answer that question better than I can, Mr. Zakheim.”

I contain myself and ask him whether a gift of the magnitude of a hundred thousand dollars does not at the very least arouse his curiosity. To which he replies: “Indeed it does, sir,” and shuts up like a clam. I wait for maybe twenty seconds for him to say something more before giving in and inquiring whether he has by chance any theory of his own on the matter. To which he replies calmly that, yes, he does indeed, but that, with my permission, he would prefer to hear my own theory.

Well, at this juncture I determine to fire at point-blank range; I put on the grim Zakheim face I use in cross-examinations, and shoot, with little pauses for added effect between the words: “Mr. Sommo. If you don’t mind, my theory is that somebody is putting strong pressure on my client. What you and your friends would call ‘hush money.’ And I am tempted to discover as quickly as possible who, and how, and why.” That ape, unabashed, smiles a sweet, sanctimonious smile at me and replies: “His sense of shame, Mr. Zakheim; that’s the only thing that’s putting pressure on him.” “Shame? On account of what?” I ask, and the answer is ready on the tip of his honeyed tongue even before I’ve finished asking: “For his sins, sir.” “What sins, for example?” “Putting others to shame, for example. Putting people to shame in Judaism is tantamount to shedding their blood.”

“And what are you, sir? Are you the tax collector? The bailiff?”

“Me?” he answers, without batting an eyelid. “My role is a purely symbolic one. Our Professor Gideon is a man of letters. He has a world-wide reputation. He is enormously respected. One might say admired. The only thing is, until he has put right what he has done wrong, all his good deeds count for nothing. Because they are built on sin. Now he is smitten with remorse, and it would seem that he is finally beginning to seek the path to repentance.”

“And you are the keeper of the gate of repentance, Mr. Sommo? You stand there and sell tickets?”

“I married his wife,” he says, fixing me, like a projector, with his eyes magnified three times in the lenses of his spectacles, “I healed her shame. And I also watch over his son’s footsteps.”

“At a price of one hundred dollars a day times thirty years, cash in advance, Mr. Sommo?”

And so, at last, I managed to ruffle his calm. The Parisian patina shattered and the African fury erupted like pus.

“Mr. Zakheim, with all due respect, you earn for your merry japes more money in half an hour than I have seen for all my labors. Kindly take note, Mr. Zakheim, that I did not ask to receive a penny from Professor Gideon. He was the one who offered. And it was not I who asked for the present meeting with you, sir. You asked to meet me. And now”—the little teacher suddenly got to his feet, and I had a momentary feeling that he was about to pick up a ruler from my desk and rap me over the knuckles; without offering his hand, barely concealing his loathing, he ejaculated—“and now, with your kind permission, I shall put an end to this conversation because of your malicious and indecent insinuations.”

And so I hastened to appease him. I effected what you might call an “ethnic withdrawal.” I put the blame on my impossible Germanic sense of humor. I begged him to be kind enough to ignore my unsuccessful joke and consider my last words as unsaid. And I immediately expressed an interest in the financial contribution he had sought from you toward some zealot monkey business in Hebron. Here he adopted an impassioned didactic air as, still standing on his short legs and with field-marshal-like gestures toward the map of the country on the wall of my office, he favored me with a free (apart from my time, which in any case you pay for on his behalf) mini-sermon on the subject of our right to the land, etc. I shall not weary you with matters we both know ad nauseam. The whole thing was embellished with Biblical quotations and allusions, and simplified, to boot, as though he thought me somewhat slow on the uptake.

I inquired of this miniature Maimonides whether he was aware of the fact that your political views happened to be more or less at the other end of the spectrum, and that all these lunatic schemes for Hebron were diametrically opposed to your publicly stated position.

He retained control of himself this time too. (I tell you, Alex, we shall hear more of this mad mahdi!) He replied patiently, in honeyed tones, that in his humble opinion “Dr. Gideon is currently undergoing, like so many other Jews, an experience of purification leading to intimations of repentance which will soon bring about a general change of heart.”

At this point—I shall not try to conceal it from you, my dear Alex—it was my turn to lose my European patina and to explode at him: What, in heaven’s name, gave him the idea that he knew what went on in your mind? How could he have the nerve, without even having met you, to decide for you—perhaps even for all of us—what is going on or what is going to go on in our hearts, even before we know it ourselves?

“Surely Professor Gideon is attempting even now to expiate the sins that stand between man and man. That is the reason why you invited me here to this meeting in your office, Mr. Zakheim. So why should we not take advantage of the occasion to open up, by means of this donation, a way to expiate the sins that divide man from the Almighty?”

And he was not content to leave until he had taken the trouble to explain to me the inherent ambiguity of the Hebrew word for
blood,
which can also mean
money. Ecce homo.

My dear Alex, I hope that you have been duly infuriated on reading this account. Or, better still, that you had a good laugh and changed your mind about the whole business. That was the reason I took the trouble to reconstruct the whole scenario for you. How does the little preacher put it? “The gates of repentance are never closed.” So repent you at once of your strange idea and send the pair of them to hell.

Unless there is something in that old intuition of mine, which whispers to me that somebody somehow has got wind of some embarrassing detail, and this devil—or whoever is hiding behind him—is using it to threaten and blackmail you so as to use your money to buy his silence (and also the ruins of Hebron). If that’s the way of it, I implore you once more to give me the slightest signal and you’ll see how elegantly I defuse their explosive device for you.

Meanwhile, following the instructions in your telegram, I put a small private investigator onto Sommo (our old friend Shlomo Zand), and I attach the report. If you take the trouble to read it attentively, you will no doubt realize that if it comes to intimidation, we also have something to go on, and we can easily persuade the gentleman in question that two can play at that game. Just give me the go-ahead, and I’ll send Zand to him for a nice little tête-à-tête. I guarantee that within ten minutes it’ll be all quiet on the eastern front. You won’t hear another cheep out of them.

So there are three documents enclosed with this letter: (a) Zand’s report on Sommo; (b) Zand’s assistant’s report on the boy B. B.; (c) photocopies of the decision of the Rabbinical Court in the matter of the termination of your marriage and of the decision of the District Court on your lovely’s claim against you. I have underlined the important parts for you in red. But do try not to forget that the whole business ended more than seven years ago, and that now it is no more than ancient history.

So much for what you asked me to do in your telegram. I hope that at least you are pleased with me, because I’m not at all pleased with you. I await further instructions, in my usual humble way. Just don’t go mad, for God’s sake.

Your very anxious
Manfred

***

PERSONAL ZAKHEIM JERUSALEM ISRAEL

YOU HAVE EXCEEDED YOUR AUTHORITY PAY THE HUNDRED
PRECISELY INSTANTER AND STOP PESTERING ME ALEX

***

A GIDEON NICFOR LONDON

IVE PAID RESIGN FROM HANDLING YOUR AFFAIRS AWAIT IMMEDIATE
INSTRUCTIONS ON TRANSFER OF YOUR PAPERS YOU ARE STARK STARING MAD MANFRED ZAKHEIM

PERSONAL ZAKHEIM JERUSALEM ISRAEL

YOUR RESIGNATION NOT ACCEPTED TAKE A COLD SHOWER CALM
DOWN AND BE A GOOD BOY ALEX

***

A GIDEON NICFOR LONDON

MY RESIGNATION STANDS GO TO HELL ZAKHEIM

PERSONAL ZAKHEIM JERUSALEM ISRAEL

DONT LEAVE ME IM MISERABLE ALEX

A GIDEON NICFOR LONDON

IM LEAVING THIS EVENING ARRIVE AT NICHOLSONS EARLY MORNING
JUST DONT DO ANYTHING STUPID IN THE MEANTIME YOURS
MANFRED

***

To Michael Sommo

Tarnaz 7

Jerusalem

Hello Michel. Look Ill come strate to the point with you—I need a lone. Im working hard for your brother in law Abram Abudram, Im shifting crates of vegtibles all day. You can check with him that Im OK. Im happy too because he treats me fare and pays daily and even gives me two meals a day. Thanks for fixing it up. The lone is to by materials to build a do it yourself telescop. Your friend Janin (Mrs. Fuks) as you no also fixed me up as a night watchman (with acomodation) at the Planetarium for nothing. I mean they dont pay me and I dont pay them. But if Im good enough at optikal equipment that Im getting the hang of and theyve got a vacancy their even going to pay me a little. The outcome is I havent hardly got any expenses, only incom. But I want to start on the telescop rite away and the price is 4000 pounds so Im asking you to lend me 3000 (Ive already got 1000 put away). Ill pay you back 300 a month out of my pay, assuming you dont want any interest. If you cant or its just dificult for you forget it never mind. In the meantime I havent killed anyone yet. The only thing Im asking is dont let the woman know anything about it. To you personaly and the little girl all the best. Thanks

Boaz B.

***

For Boaz Brandstetter
Via Abraham Abudarham
The Wholesale Market
Carlebach Street, Tel Aviv

By the Grace of G-d
Jerusalem
First intermediate day of Passover
(16.4.76)

Dear Boaz,

I received your letter and I was very sad that you did not come for Seder Night in accordance with our invitation. But I respect the agreement between us, according to which you can do whatever you like as long as you do it uprightly and in the sweat of your brow. You didn’t come—so you didn’t come. Never mind. Whenever you want to come, just come. Abram phoned and said you were excellent. We also received very positive greetings from you via Mrs. Janine Fuchs. Well done, Boaz! I was almost the same age as you when I arrived in Paris with my parents from Algeria, and I worked hard as an apprentice to an X-ray technician (he was my uncle) so as to earn a little money. By the way, unlike you, I only worked in the evenings, because during the day I was studying at the lycée. And it is interesting to compare that I once asked this uncle for a loan for the purpose of purchasing a Larousse dictionary that I needed badly (but he refused).