The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories (8 page)

T
he son of the Head of the Mossad didn't even know he was the son of the Head of the Mossad. He thought his dad had an earthmoving business. And when his dad used to pull the snub-nosed Beretta out of his bottom drawer every morning and check the .38-caliber bullets one by one, he thought it was because he spent so much time working with Arabs from the West Bank. The son of the Head of the Mossad had long skinny legs and a funny name. They called him Oleg, after a friend of his dad's who was killed in the Six Day War, and in the summertime, whenever you saw him in shorts, swaggering on those two skinny white stilts of his, you thought that he was about to topple over at any second. And there was that name of his, Oleg. He seemed such an unlikely candidate for son of the
Head of the Mossad that sometimes you couldn't help asking yourself whether it wasn't just another stunt that his father, the Head of the Mossad, had thought up to disguise his true identity.

There were days when the Head of the Mossad didn't leave the house. Other days, he'd get home very late. On those days, when he'd get home, he'd give a tired smile to the son of the Head of the Mossad and his mother, and say: “What a day I had, don't ask.” And they didn't, they just went on watching TV or doing homework. Even if they asked him, he wouldn't have answered anyway.

The son of the Head of the Mossad had a girlfriend. Her name was Gabi. They'd talk together about everything. He and Gabi did most of their talking lying on the floor in his room. They'd form a T, with Gabi's head on the stomach of the son of the Head of the Mossad. Gabi's mother died when she was a baby, but she told Oleg that she could actually remember being breast-fed. The son of the Head of the Mossad said that his earliest memory was when he was about two and a half. They were in the car, and someone was honking like crazy behind them, and his dad was at the wheel, serene as a Buddha. “They can honk till hell freezes over, for all I care, Aviva,” he said in his serene voice. “They'll give up in the end,” and, “He can cry till hell freezes over too, for all I care. He'll give up in the end too.” Gabi used to have a different boyfriend, Simon. Simon had been in their class in high school, but they threw him out at the beginning of eleventh grade, and he went to work for his dad, because he'd thrown a brick at
Sylvia, the vice principal. Simon's father was an earthmover too, and he couldn't stand the Head of the Mossad. “Everyone's always talking about the contracts his company won,” he told Simon once, “but I've never once seen him on a bulldozer, getting a single project off the ground.” Simon and his dad thought there was something fishy going on, like the company of the Head of the Mossad was getting paid by the government for work it wasn't really doing. A thought that certainly had a leg to stand on. And if you add the fact that the son of the Head of the Mossad stole Simon's girlfriend from him, it's pretty easy to understand why Simon hated the son of the Head of the Mossad in the worst possible way.

Once, the son of the Head of the Mossad was playing basketball at the sports center. He went there with his friend Ehud. Ehud was tall and strong, and was always quiet. Lots of people thought Ehud was quiet because he was stupid. That wasn't true. He may not have been the smartest kid on the block, but he was no moron either. In some ways, Ehud was better suited to be the son of the Head of the Mossad than his real son was. His cool-headedness and his inner calm were just two of the qualities that made him the ideal candidate. And sure enough, the Head of the Mossad liked Ehud a lot. Whenever Ehud came over, the Head of the Mossad would give him a man-to-man slap on the back and say: “What's up, big guy?” And Ehud would smile and keep quiet. It was really out of character. The Head of the Mossad never gave the son of the Head of the Mossad a slap on the back, for example. He never gave a slap on the back to
anyone except Ehud and the Deputy Chief of Intelligence, and even then it was only because the two of them had been in officers' training together and had a two-digit list of the times they'd saved each other's lives. When it started getting dark, they stopped playing, and the son of the Head of the Mossad headed home. Ehud stayed behind on the court after everyone had left, so he could practice shooting baskets, as usual.

The son of the Head of the Mossad walked through the playground and looked at the old swings and ladders. There was nobody there, because it was already getting dark. Nobody except Simon, who was sitting on the edge of the sandbox, looking like he'd had too much to drink. Simon was very down that night, partly because he'd wrecked one of his dad's bulldozers, but mainly because he'd discovered that his sister was fucking one of the Arab workers. He'd had five beers by then and felt like he was going to throw up. The son of the Head of the Mossad walked by, very close to Simon, without even noticing that Simon was Simon, because Simon's face was in the dark, whereas the face of the son of the Head of the Mossad was lit up. “You're all I needed,” he said, and grabbed the son of the Head of the Mossad by his shirt. “You're all I needed,” he said again and pulled a switchblade out of his pocket. It went
click
and the blade sprang out. And the son of the Head of the Mossad closed his eyes and swayed on his long legs. Simon was so glad to see the son of the Head of the Mossad frightened that he didn't feel sick anymore. Dozens of ideas raced through his head, about how to humiliate the son of the Head of the Mossad. “You know,” he
lied to the son of the Head of the Mossad, “Gabi always gets a kick out of telling people what a small dick you've got. How about pulling them down so I can see for myself.” And after he made him take off his pants and underpants, Simon took away his shirt too. Then he went home, and the following day he woke up with a terrible headache. The son of the Head of the Mossad had to swagger home on his stilts, only to discover, when he finally got there and opened the door, that his father was standing in the hallway staring at him, dumbfounded. His dad demanded an immediate account of everything that had happened. And he told him about the blade, and about Simon. His dad asked if Simon had actually touched him at any point, and whether he had tried to stand his ground, and whether Ehud had stripped too, because the son of the Head of the Mossad forgot to tell him that Ehud had stayed behind on the court to keep practicing. When he'd finished the interrogation, the Head of the Mossad said: “OK, you can go get dressed,” and he sat down at his desk, fuming. The son of the Head of the Mossad got into bed naked, pulled the blanket over his head, and started to cry. His mother, who had just stood there the whole time his father was interrogating him and hadn't said a word, came in and hugged him till he stopped crying, and she thought he was asleep. After that, for the first time in his life, he heard his father yelling in the living room. Only some of the words reached him through the blanket, like
your fault
,
not even a scratch
,
no—I'm not overreacting
, and
Ehud, for one.

The next morning, the Head of the Mossad checked
the clip, and put the gun back in the drawer. Then he gave his son a ride to school. They didn't say a word the whole way, as usual. At two o'clock, the son of the Head of the Mossad finished lunch and said he was going out to play basketball. That night, when the son of the Head of the Mossad came home, he gave his father and mother a tired smile and said, “What a day I had, don't ask.” And they didn't. Later, when his father went to the bathroom and his mother was already asleep, he put the gun back in the bottom drawer. Even if they asked him, he wouldn't have answered anyway.

W
hen I got to seventh grade, they had a psychologist come to school and put us through a bunch of adjustment tests. He showed me twenty different flashcards, one by one, and asked me what was wrong with the pictures. They all seemed fine to me, but he insisted and showed me the first picture again—the one with the kid in it. “What's wrong with this picture?” he asked in a tired voice. I told him the picture seemed fine. He got really mad and said, “Can't you see the boy in the picture doesn't have any ears?” The truth is that when I looked at the picture again, I did see that the kid had no ears. But the picture still seemed fine to me. The psychologist classed me as “suffering from severe perceptual disorders,” and had me transferred to carpentry school. When I got there, it turned
out I was allergic to sawdust, so they transferred me to metalworking class. I was pretty good at it, but I didn't really enjoy it. To tell the truth, I didn't really enjoy anything in particular. When I finished school, I started working in a factory that made pipes. My boss was an engineer with a diploma from a top technical college. A brilliant guy. If you showed him a picture of a kid without ears or something like that, he'd figure it out in no time.

After work I'd stay on at the factory and make myself odd-shaped pipes, winding ones that looked like curled-up snakes, and I'd roll marbles through them. I know it sounds like a dumb thing to do, and I didn't even enjoy it, but I went on doing it anyway.

One night I made a pipe that was really complicated, with lots of twists and turns in it, and when I rolled a marble in, it didn't come out at the other end. At first I thought it was just stuck in the middle, but after I tried it with about twenty more marbles, I realized they were simply disappearing. I know that everything I say sounds kind of stupid. I mean everyone knows that marbles don't just disappear, but when I saw the marbles go in at one end of the pipe and not come out at the other end, it didn't even strike me as strange. It seemed perfectly OK actually. That was when I decided to make myself a bigger pipe, in the same shape, and to crawl into it until I disappeared. When the idea came to me, I was so happy that I started laughing out loud. I think it was the first time in my entire life that I laughed.

From that day on, I worked on my giant pipe. Every
evening I'd work on it, and in the morning I'd hide the parts in the storeroom. It took me twenty days to finish making it. On the last night it took me five hours to assemble it, and it took up about half the shop floor.

When I saw it all in one piece, waiting for me, I remembered my social studies teacher who said once that the first human being to use a club wasn't the strongest person in his tribe or the smartest. It's just that the others didn't need a club, while he did. He needed a club more than anyone, to survive and to make up for being weak. I don't think there was another human being in the whole world who wanted to disappear more than I did, and that's why it was me who invented the pipe. Me, and not that brilliant engineer with his technical college degree who runs the factory.

I started crawling inside the pipe, with no idea about what to expect at the other end. Maybe there would be kids there without ears, sitting on mounds of marbles. Could be. I don't know exactly what happened after I passed a certain point in the pipe. All I know is that I'm here.

I think I'm an angel now. I mean, I've got wings and this circle over my head and there are hundreds more here like me. When I got here they were sitting around playing with the marbles I'd rolled through the pipe a few weeks earlier.

I always used to think that Heaven is a place for people who've spent their whole life being good, but it isn't. God is too merciful and kind to make a decision like that. Heaven is simply a place for people who were genuinely unable to be happy on earth. They told me here that people who kill
themselves return to live their life all over again, because the fact that they didn't like it the first time doesn't mean they won't fit in the second time. But the ones who really don't fit in the world wind up here. They each have their own way of getting to Heaven.

There are pilots who got here by performing a loop at one precise point in the Bermuda Triangle. There are housewives who went through the back of their kitchen cabinets to get here, and mathematicians who found topological distortions in space and had to squeeze through them to get here. So if you're really unhappy down there, and if all kinds of people are telling you that you're suffering from severe perceptual disorders, look for your own way of getting here, and when you find it, could you please bring some cards, 'cause we're getting pretty tired of the marbles.

I
think she cried at my funeral. It's not that I'm conceited or anything, but I'm pretty sure. Sometimes I can actually picture her talking about me to some guy she feels close to. Talking about me dying. About how they lowered me into the grave, kind of shriveled up and pitiful, like an old chocolate bar. About how we never really got a chance. And afterward the guy fucks her, a fuck that's all about making her feel
better.

in which Mordy finds a job and a hard-core bar

T
wo days after I killed myself I found a job here at some pizza joint. It's called Kamikaze, and it's part of a chain. My shift manager was cool by me, and helped me find a place to live, with this German guy who works at the same store. The job's no big deal, but it'll do for a while. And this place—I don't know—whenever they used to sound off about life after death, and go through the whole is-there-isn't-there routine, I never thought about it one way or the other. But I'll tell you this much: Even when I thought there was, I'd always imagine these beeping sounds, like a fuzzbuster, and people floating around in space and stuff. But now that I'm here, I don't know, mostly
it reminds me of Tel Aviv. My roommate, the German, says this place could just as well be Frankfurt. I guess Frankfurt's a dump too. By the time it got dark, I'd found a bar—an OK place called Stiff Drinks. The music wasn't bad either—not exactly up to date, but with character, and lots of girls chilling on their own. On some of them you could tell straight off how they did it, with the scars on their wrists and everything, but there were some who looked really good. One of them—definitely hot—came on to me right on the first night. Her skin was kinda loose like, kinda droopy. Like someone who'd done it drowning, but she had a bod to die for, and her eyes were something else. I didn't make a move though. Kept telling myself it was because of Desiree. Cause dying and all just made me love her more. But who knows, maybe I'm just repressed.