Black Box (7 page)

But you have not forgotten, my solitary evil Alec. You cannot fool me. Your silence is transparent to me, like tears. The spell I cast on you gnaws you to the bone. In vain do you hide in a cloud like a barren deity. There are a thousand things in the world that you can do a thousand times better than me—but deception is not one of them. No, in that department you don’t come up to my knees, and you never will.

“Your honor,” you said to the judge before the verdict was given on our case, in your drowsy, indifferent voice, “it has been demonstrated here beyond all possible doubt that this lady is a pathological liar. Even when she sneezes it is very dangerous to believe her.”

That’s what you said. And as you said it a sort of dirty chuckle ran around the chamber. You smiled faintly and didn’t look in the least then like a cuckolded husband whose hundred horns made him the laughingstock of the whole town. On the contrary, at that moment you seemed to me higher than the lawyers, higher than the judge on his dais, higher than yourself. You looked like a knight who has killed a dragon.

Even now, after seven years, at nearly three o’clock in the morning, as I record the memory of that moment, my body reaches out for you. Tears fill my eyes and there is a kind of shivering in the tips of my nipples.

Well, Alec, have you read? Twice? Three times? Did you get a thrill? Is it over? Have I just managed to make a single sapling of joy sprout in the wilderness of your loneliness?

If so, the time has come for you to pour yourself a fresh whisky. Fill a new pipe. Because now, Mister God of Vengeance, you are going to need your little whisky.

“Like a knight who has killed a dragon,” I wrote a moment ago. But don’t be too quick to celebrate. Your arrogance is at least premature, sir: for you are the crazy knight who slew the dragon and then turned and slew the damsel and finally dispatched himself as well.

In fact, you are the dragon.

And this is the delightful moment for me to reveal to you that Michel-Henri Sommo is much better than you are even in bed. In everything to do with the body, Michel has had perfect pitch since birth. At any moment he can always offer me, in plenty, what my body still does not know how much it yearns to receive. To hold me spellbound for half the night with voyages of love back and forth between the shores of pleasure, like a leaf caught by the breeze, through meadows of patient grace, through cunning and longing, through dappled forests and turbid rivers and pounding seas to the point of fusion.

Have you crushed your whisky glass yet? Say hello from Ilana to your pen, your pipe, your reading glasses too. Wait, Alec. I haven’t finished yet.

As a matter of fact, it’s not just Michel. Almost all of them could give you a lesson or two. Even that albino boy who was your driver in the army. Chaste as a lamb and perhaps barely eighteen, guilty, terrified, meeker than a blade of grass, all atremble, his teeth chattering, almost pleading with me to let him off, almost bursting into tears, and suddenly starting to spurt even before he’d managed to touch me, and letting out a howl like a puppy dog, and yet, Alec, at that moment that boy’s baffled eyes gave me such a pure glow of gratitude, of wonderment, of dreamy adoration, as innocent as the singing of angels, that he made my body and heart shudder more than you ever managed to do in all our years together.

Shall I tell you what you are, Alec, compared to the others I’ve had? You are a bare, rocky mountain. Just like the song. You’re an igloo in the snow. Do you remember Death in
The Seventh Seal?
Death winning the game of chess? That’s you.

And now you get up and destroy the pages of my letter. No, this time you don’t tear them carefully into pedantic squares, but throw them in the fire. And perhaps when it’s all over you sit down again and start hitting your grey head against the black desk top; the blood spills from your hair into your eyes. And so at long last your grey eyes run. I hug you.

A fortnight ago, when Zakheim handed over to Michel your amazing check, he saw fit to warn Michel with the words: Bear in mind, sir, that two can play at that game. I quite fancy that little sentence, and I’m inclined to send it to you now by way of wishing you good night. You will not liberate yourself from me, Alec. You won’t succeed in buying your freedom with money. You won’t turn over a new leaf.

And by the way, your hundred thousand: we are grateful. The money is in good hands, never fear. Your wife and son are in good hands too. Michel is extending the flat and we’ll all be able to live here. Boaz will make Yifat a slide and a sandbox in the garden. I shall have a washing machine. We’ll have a stereo set. We’ll buy a bicycle for Yifat, and Boaz will have a telescope.

I’ll close now. I shall get dressed and go out alone into the dark empty street. I’ll walk to the mailbox. I’ll send you this letter. Then I’ll come home and get undressed again and wake Michel and hide myself away in his arms. Michel is a simple, tender man.

Which is more than one can say about you. Or about me, my love. We are both, as you know, despicable, rotten creatures. And that is the reason for the hug that the slave girl is sending now to the faraway marble dragon.

Ilana

***

To Boaz Brandstetter
c/o Fuchs
4 Lemon St.
Ramat Hasharon

By the Grace of G-d
Jerusalem
2nd of Iyyar 5736 (2.5.76)

Greetings Boaz, thou perverse and rebellious donkey!

Don’t think I’m calling you names because I’ve suddenly seen red. I actually fought hard against my baser instincts and delayed writing this letter until I caught you this morning on the telephone and also heard with my own ears your version of what happened. (I couldn’t come to see you because your mother was taken ill, and in my opinion that was also because of you.) Now that we have spoken on the phone I can tell you, Boaz, that you are still an infant and not a man. And I’m beginning to be afraid that you are never going to grow into one. Maybe your destiny is to grow up into a hotheaded hoodlum. Maybe the time you hit that teacher in Telamim and when you beat up the night watchman were not just unfortunate episodes but a warning sign that we are going to have a mule growing up in our midst. Although “growing up” is hardly the right phrase in your case—it might be better if you stopped growing like some sort of beanstalk and matured a bit for a change.

Now tell me something, if you don’t mind: did it have to happen just two days after you’d stayed with me for the Sabbath? After we had all tried so hard (yes, you too) and we’d begun to feel that after all we are a family. Just when your sister had started getting used to you and we were so thrilled by the teddy bear you brought her? Just when you had given your mother a little hope after all the suffering you’d caused her? Tell me, have you gone raving mad?

I have to tell you that if you were my own son or my pupil I would not have spared you the rod—on the face and on the bottom too. Although on second thought I’m not so sure in your case. You might have hit me with a vegetable crate as well.

So perhaps after all we made a mistake when we rescued you from that institute for juvenile delinquents. Perhaps that would have been the most natural place for a customer like you. I understand very well that what happened was that Abram Abudarham gave you a little kick after you were insolent. And permit me to put down in writing that I consider he was quite justified (even though personally I don’t hold with kicking).

But what do you think you are? Tell me. A duke? a prince? So you got a little kick because of your big mouth, so what? Is that a sufficient reason to start hitting people with crates? And who did you hit? Abram Abudarham, a man of sixty, who for your information suffers from high blood pressure! And after he’d taken you on to work for him, even with your two police records and the third one, which Inspector Almaliah and I barely managed to have closed for you? What are you? Tell me. An Arab? A horse?

I nearly went mad when you told me on the phone that you really did hit Abraham with a crate because he gave you a tiny kick for being insolent. You may be my wife’s son and my daughter’s brother, but you’re not a human being, Boaz. Scripture says: “School a youth according to his way.” And my interpretation is this: So long as the youth follows the right way he should be schooled gently, but if he makes a mess of himself, then he deserves everything he gets! What, are you above the law? Are you the president?

Abraham Abudarham was your benefactor and a kindhearted man, and you repaid his kindness with wickedness. He invested a lot in you, and you let him down, and you also let me down and Inspector Almaliah too, and your mother has been ill in bed for three days now because of you. You have let down everyone who has had anything to do with you. As it is written in Scripture: “And he looked to make grapes, and it made sour grapes.”

Why did you do it?

Now you don’t answer. Very nice. All right, so I’ll tell you why: because of arrogance, Boaz. Because you were born big and handsome like a demigod and you were given a lot of strength of arm, and in your stupidity you think that strength is for hitting people. Strength is for self-discipline, you ass! For mastering your baser instincts! To take all the buffetings that life has in store for us and to keep advancing quietly but firmly along the path that we have decided to follow, that is to say, the straight and narrow. That’s what I call strength. Smashing someone’s head in—any plank or rock can do that!

That is why I said to you above that you are not a man. Certainly not a Jew. Perhaps it would really suit you to be an Arab. Or a gentile. Because to be a Jew, Boaz, is to know how to stand up to adversity and to practice self-mastery and to keep on treading our ancient path. That is the whole Torah on one leg: self-mastery. And also to understand very well why life has buffeted you, and to learn a lesson from it and always to improve your ways, and also to accept the just decrees of fate, Boaz. Abraham Abudarham, if you think about it for a moment, treated you like a son. Admittedly, a stubborn and rebellious son. And you, Boaz, instead of gratefully kissing his hand, you bit the hand that fed you. Take note, Boaz: You disgraced your mother and me, but first and foremost you disgraced yourself. It seems as though you will never learn humility now. I am just wasting words on you. You refuse to be taught.

And shall I tell you why? Even if it hurts you to hear it? All right, I’ll tell you. Why not. It’s all because you’ve got it fixed deep down in your head that you’re some kind of prince or something. That you have noble blood flowing in your veins. That you were born and bred a dauphin. Well let me tell you something, Boaz, man to man, even though you are still a thousand miles short of being a man, nevertheless I’ll lay all the cards on the table.

I do not have the honor to know your dear, famous father, nor do I hanker after that honor. But this I can tell you straight: that your father is neither a duke nor a king—unless he is the King of Villains. If you only knew to what shame and misery he reduced your mother, how he humiliated her and impugned her honor and drove you yourself out from his presence like a loathsome offspring!

So it is only right that now he has remembered to pay something as recompense for sorrow and disgrace. And right too that I should have decided to overlook our self-respect and accept his money. And have you perhaps asked yourself why I decided to accept his tainted money? For you, you ungrateful donkey! To try to raise you up onto the straight and narrow path!

Now listen carefully to why I’m telling you all this. Not to make you hate your father, Heaven forbid, but in the hope that you will choose to follow my example rather than his. Learn that in me pride and humanity are expressed through mastery of the baser instincts. I accepted money from him instead of killing him. That is my honor, Boaz: that I overcame my sense of humiliation. As it is written: “Whoever effaces his own honor, his honor is never effaced.”

I am continuing this letter to you in the evening, after an intermission to give two private lessons and get the supper ready and look after your poor mother, who is ill because of you, and then I watched the news and “Second Glance” on the television. I deemed it right to add something here about my own life, following on what I wrote about self-control and mastering the baser instincts. Without going into what we suffered, Boaz, in Algeria in our time, first from the Arabs as Jews and later in Paris from the Jews as Arabs and from the French as
pieds noirs,
if you happen to know what that means, I mention purely and simply what I myself have been through in this country and still go through because of my beliefs and opinions, my appearance and my origins; if you knew, you might realize perhaps that to get a little kick from a good, dear person like Abram Abudarham is really the equivalent of a caress. The trouble with you is you’ve been spoiled. You wouldn’t understand, anyway. I’ve been accustomed since the day I was born to get real, authentic kicks three times a day, and I’ve never raised a crate against anyone. And the reason for that is not just to fulfill the commandment “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” but first and foremost because I tell you that man must learn to accept suffering with love.

And are you prepared to hear something else from me? In my opinion it is better to receive a thousand sufferings than to cause even one, Heaven forbid. No doubt the Almighty has a few black marks in his ledger against the name of Michael Sommo too. I won’t deny it. But among my black marks you won’t find any item under the heading Caused Suffering. No—not that. Just ask your mother. Ask Abram, after you ask him nicely to excuse and forgive you. Ask Mrs. Janine Fuchs, who knows me well from way back when we were still in Paris. While as for you, Boaz, who were gifted with physical size and beauty and wonderful skills and the outward appearance of a prince, you have already started to follow your father’s tainted path: arrogance, cruelty, and wickedness. Causing suffering. Violence. Even though in fact I made up my mind not to say a single word to you in this letter about the terrible sufferings you have been causing your mother for several years, so that now she is sick because of you—because as I see it you are still unworthy to be talked to about suffering. Apparently you are simply still too young. At least until you can get up and show like a man that you have some shame in your heart.