Limassol (3 page)

I hadn't had time to write a thing since the previous week, and I'd have to improvise. “I thought of putting in a storm at sea,” I said. “But maybe that would be too dramatic.”

“Put in drama, I'm for that,” she said with an exaggerated laugh. She sat down across from me on the broad sofa. “The Jewish Odysseus, why not . . . ” Her mind was definitely not on our meeting. This was the stage in the interrogation where detainees are sent to rest in a cell because it's clear we won't get a single rational sentence out of them.

“I want to tell you something,” I said in a quiet voice, as if I were confessing. “I don't know where to go with this story. I feel stuck with it. I almost called you to cancel the meeting today, the whole thing suddenly seemed so artificial. What do I have to do with that? Maybe it's just a fantasy.”

An afternoon glow capered in the big back window of the living room, a bird passed by it on its way somewhere, Daphna's look stuck in me and passed beyond me, as if she saw something fateful through me. “You can go,” she said.

I searched for a sentence to continue the conversation, struggled with myself not to get up and go to my real work. “You know that feeling?” I asked.

She sat with her arms crossed, folded up in herself. “Of course it's a delusion,” she said in a lucid voice. “With real things there is no beauty or reason as in a story. After the first of life's setbacks, you understand that. I wrote a book when I was twenty-three, everything was as clear as a little girl strolling on the shore, easiest thing in the world, like breathing. Now I'm trying to write something new. It's harder than hell. I torture myself. After all, this book won't change the world, I know that, and there's nothing genius about my thoughts, I know that, too. Which leaves the story. But every story has already been told—turn on the television and see all the variations. Nevertheless, I turn out pages and tear them up and am awfully sorry when it doesn't work, sorry enough to cry. Don't know why I'm bothering you with all this, maybe because I've had two hard days, with people coming and going in my house. You came here for my professional services, and instead I bring you into my life. You listen very well.”

I asked: “Who came to your house?” I was mad at myself for not listening to her recent phone conversations.

“People.” She looked at me with frozen eyes, but she went on: “They were searching for my son. They were searching for his things in drawers and under the mattress and in the pots in the kitchen. They tore my whole house apart. When they didn't find anything, they took my jewelry. I don't have anything left. They told me that when they found him, they'd cut his throat, that he owed them a lot of money. Here, take the story. Raw material for a novella.”

She turned her face toward the big window, the treetop was moving slowly between its corners, and she wept. Maybe I'd reveal myself now, in her moment of weakness, I'd offer the deal.

Too soon, I said to myself. Not professional.

I asked how old he was and what he did in life, even though I knew everything.

“I'm scared they'll catch him,” she wept. “Those people have no fear. Say thanks, sweetie, that we don't bash your face in. Maybe we'll break something anyway, as a souvenir, I trembled next to them and waited for them to finish me off . . . ”

I got up to look for some Kleenex for her. I could never bear women crying; they used tears to buy pity for themselves, or a little more time. It only infuriated me.

“Did you call the police?” I asked.

“I can't call the police. What world do you live in? I can't get my son involved any more than he already is.” She went to the bathroom and turned on the faucet again and washed her face and when she came back with her face puffy and red, she said, with a strange laugh: “Don't worry, they aren't your problems. Come on, let's work with your historical tale. Have you thought of who will play your
etrog
merchant in the film?”

“Would you believe,” I laughed. “I'm hesitating between Pacino and De Niro. The question is which one would make me more money.”

“You're a good fellow,” she said with a smile. “I'm glad you came. You're so normal.”

She made tea and brought us some dates. Then she put on some quiet new age music in another room, folded her legs under herself on the sofa and asked me about my childhood in Rehovoth, my mother, my father. I told her about the child I was, secret things I had never told, a reward for the lie I wrapped myself in now. Daphna said that if she were me, she would write about those things, take the materials from there, before she'd flee to the
etrogs
of the rabbinic period.

“That doesn't sound so interesting to me,” I said. All those memories seemed to be dyed gray and dark blue.

“In the beginning, you don't need a story,” she went back to guiding. “Just train yourself on the details. Before you go splashing paint about, making a gigantic picture of Hannibal's battles, you need to know how to draw a horse.”

“You think I can ever draw a horse?” I asked.

“Try,” she said. “I don't yet know how far you can go.”

She gave me a homework assignment for the next meeting. Small exercises for beginners, miniatures of writing on an eggshell. At the door, I asked again if I could help with something, I offered to change the lock. I hadn't yet pulled out the box of solutions.

Daphna smiled, held onto my hand and the bare middle finger with both her thin hands, and said: “It's really good you came. You helped me. See you next week.”

 

I made an urgent request for her recent phone conversations. The woman with the white braid from the Jewish branch brought them to me herself, and again proclaimed how sensitive that material was, that I should take that into account. I almost kicked her out of the office, I didn't know why she suspected me so much, as if I were stamped with some sign I didn't see.

She made call after call, like a madwoman, trying to get hold of some money. Girlfriends rejected her. Sorry, but we don't have anything to give. Some men talked to her very nicely, even offered to meet. I need money, she said firmly, urgently.

“Of course, I understand,” one of the voices pounced on the chance. “Come on, let's meet this afternoon and talk about it.” She didn't want to meet them this afternoon, or evening, and the conversations ended with nothing.

Afterward, she called her son's friends to find out if they knew where he was, to tell him he had to be careful, that they were looking for him. They all said they hadn't seen him in years, that they hadn't been in touch with him for ages.

In the middle of all that, Hani called from Gaza, asked gently if the people from the Peres center had answered her. On the verge of tears, she replied that she couldn't help him now.

“What happened, Daphna?” he asked her.

“It's the boy,” she said. “Problems with him.”

“Drugs?” he asked, as if that was a repeat conversation.

There was static on the line in place of her answer.

He coughed a long time and when he calmed down, he said: “I used to play with him. He was such a beautiful child. You said with a laugh that he was ugly, against the evil eye, so nothing would happen to him. I taught him to swim in the sea, remember? He swallowed a little water and got scared, I told him not to be afraid. Too bad I can't see him now. I'd talk with him, he'd understand how lucky he was to be born to you. So he'd know what he's losing . . . ”

“I don't know why he hates life so much,” sobbed Daphna.

Hani coughed again, at length, tearing up his lungs. I imagined the dirty bed he was lying on, his face sweaty from the disease, the unplastered wall. How did he manage to emit that soft voice?

“I'll call you, Hani,” she said in a weepy voice. “When the situation improves a little, we'll talk. Meanwhile, hold on. I'm thinking of you.” A sharp beep signaled the end of the conversation.

I wrote Hani's details to our contact in civilian management. A few minutes later, he called back and said there was no problem, they'd take him to Ikhilov Hospital. We're like gods for those people, in one phone call you can save a life. Informers and traitors live longer these days, it's well known; Primo Levi wrote the same thing in his memoirs. “They'll expect him in the oncology department,” said the older officer. “He has to come alone to the crossing, just don't let anybody try to play any tricks on us. An ambulance will take him from our side.”

I took Haim's suggestion and ordered tickets for Sigi and me for a play on Thursday evening, a time when normal people are starting to calm down after managing to get through another week. My week had no beginning and no end. Sigi dressed up and told me cheerful things about the child, and avoided her usual complaints. When the lights went out, she clung to me and clutched my hand. A few minutes later, my cell phone began quivering against my leg with gentle electric currents. I ignored it. The republic will get along without me for one evening. I tried to immerse myself in the play, but it was old-fashioned and boring and too long. My head wasn't into stories anymore and I couldn't bear a bad ending. Most of the time I looked at Sigi's profile and tried to understand what she was thinking of. Finally, I dozed off a little and woke up with a start now and then when an actor raised his voice too much.

We planned to go eat after the play, the babysitter could stay until twelve. We wanted to talk. Sigi tried with all her might to smile, to be a good friend, not to bother me, to be nice.

“I'll only answer one call and we'll go,” I said when we came out to the lobby. I went off to a dark corner, next to the bushes. The conversation went on a long time. I tried to avoid the nightly trip to the interrogation center. I tried to get more and more details on the phone and guide the young fellow who was there. “It won't work,” I said at last, angrily. “Hold him downstairs another hour. I'll come to you right away.”

When we sat down in the restaurant, I was already starting to glance at my watch. “You aren't coming home tonight?” asked Sigi.

I apologized, explaining the threat in detail. I wanted her to understand. She didn't argue but her face said that wasn't enough for her. She wanted to go.

“I hope I didn't snore too much at the play,” I tried to joke. “It really didn't work for me. The characters were too hysterical.”

“It's considered a classic,” she said quietly, offended, as if she had written it herself.

 

The restaurant was in downtown Herziliyah Pituah, center of the local nightlife. Groups of people out for the evening passed by in the street, suntanned and calm and dressed up. The waiters explained the daily specials at length. The damn cell phone vibrated again.

I listened to the details of the interrogation and saw Sigi gazing into space. “I'll get back to you soon. Put him in a cell so he'll calm down a little. I'll leave right away,” I whispered strongly, to overcome the tumult of the pedestrians in the background.

We hastily ordered our food. I asked about the child, how he was doing in kindergarten. “Fine,” she said and picked at her food. I devoured mine because I was very hungry.

“Does everybody there work as hard as you do?” she asked angrily. “Nobody ever goes home?”

“It's a crazy time,” I said. “And there are a lot of new people who don't yet know the job. Got to teach them.”

“What do you teach them?” Sigi asked quietly. She was sad and down. My feelings for her were like those of a person in freefall, heading down, unable to stop. “How to interrogate, how to get information out of a suspect. Fast. Before the bomb goes off.” She was rarely interested in my work, and I wouldn't have told her on my own. I didn't understand where she was leading me now.

“Do they all have bombs?” she asked with a bitter smile I didn't like. “They're all blowing up all the time?”

At the table next to us a jubilant group sat down, men and women about our age, who looked like they could be lawyers. My eyes were caught by one of them, with a spreading baldness and an artificial smile, and he understood that I was looking at him, and muttered something to himself, as if he were cursing me in a whisper, couldn't help looking at Sigi with his small, lustful eyes. I could have sliced him up for that look.

“I thought I might take the child to the sea on Saturday,” I said. “I want to teach him to swim.”

“Do you beat them up?” asked Sigi.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you beat them up?”

I threw my napkin on the table and said something about protecting her and all the crappy puffed up people sitting around us, so the bomb squad wouldn't have to scrape them off the walls at the end of the evening. A few heads turned to us from the next table, as if I had hit her, at the very least.

“I want to go.” Sigi picked up her bag and stood up. I tried to grab her hand, to prevent her, delay her, as if that was the last chance, I even muttered an apology. “Leave me alone,” she said. I heard the loathing. I knew it was too late.

We went out into the street separately. She walked ahead quickly. I chased her in damp mists, covered with the sweat of a panicked animal. “You can't walk alone like that at night,” I said. “Wait a minute, I'll take you.”

“I'm alone all the time,” she said. “For years I've been alone.” A cab stopped for her and she got in.

“Don't go!” I shouted. “Stop right now.” The driver turned his head to me indifferently. I didn't have the power to stop anything here. Sigi quietly told him to go.

I sat in the car in the parking lot, in the dark, and put my head down on the steering wheel. I didn't have the strength to move. I called and she didn't answer. Across from me, under the street lamps, relaxed and satisfied couples passed by, all the weekend pleasures in store for them. I desperately sought faces to talk with. After a lot of calls, she answered. “I'm at home,” she said quietly. “The babysitter says the child vomited all evening. Got to go now.”