Limassol (17 page)

He moved around freely. I was stuck between Ra'anana and Ashkelon and he was traveling in Sudan, Yemen, Djibouti, to all corners of the aristocratic Arab world, to all the places our clients went to get instructions, raise money, train. Even though he was cautious, things started coming together. He worked on several projects simultaneously, some of them routine, that concluded with a suicide bomber wraking havoc on Jewish flesh, and also on some big project whose details we couldn't figure out, causing us special concern. He put together the equipment, gathered the technicians, carefully chose the operatives; all our special means were useless. We still didn't know what it was.

The operation wasn't ours; the chance to help fell in our lap. Our job was to get him out of the dark holes to an exposed place where others could operate. He won't swallow that, he's too cautious, said Haim, he'd be very skeptical from the start. He'll never go to a non-Arab country. They've learned the lessons of previous liquidations.

I went with Haim to our neighbors on the hill to report on what was happening. There was always an aroma of the duty free shop about them, European clothes, an atmosphere of high tech. Haim and I came to them like a couple of venetian blind installers, one religious, plump, and limping, the other gray and taciturn. Ever since the project had begun, we had met with them for a weekly briefing. The previous meetings were drowsy, skeptical; this time there was some tension, the smell of prey was in the air.

The partners reported that his project was progressing: new equipment had arrived, the guy was visiting the training camps, they had all kinds of setbacks but they would apparently overcome them. The problem was we didn't know what they were planning.

“What will it achieve if we bring him down?” asked Haim, who loved to engage them in Talmudic dispute. “Their operation will go on even without him.”

“He's the head,” explained their representative, a fresh, ruddy guy who wore a light open-necked silk shirt. “He's the only one who knows all the details, everything is arranged in his head, all the connections are in his hands, without him, it won't work.”

“Why not bomb the development site and destroy the operation?” asked Haim.

“Because we don't know where the operation is based,” chuckled the partner. “We've only got hints, talk, movements. Nothing on the ground. We don't have an idea where it will go. There are too many possibilities. Could be anywhere in the world, from Thailand to America.”

“So why will he come out of his hole now?” I asked. I didn't talk much during the meetings and my voice came out hoarse, precisely because I wanted to make an impression so they'd take me seriously.

“Because he loves his father an awful lot,” smiled the redhead, who was tanned and fragrant as a yachtsman. “They've got great conversations between father and son on file, I wish my father and I had such relations. He misses him. He wants to say goodbye to him before he dies.”

I was angry that they had milked Daphna's phone like a fat udder and didn't let me read the material. They shouldn't forget that it was I who brought him there. I'm the brains behind the whole thing.

“They mentioned you, by the way,” said the man. “The father said he knew a great guy, that if all the Jews were like him, the whole thing would be different. That you're a good Jew.”

The table moved with a wave of laughter. I felt as if they had stood me on it naked with a dunce cap.

“What else do they talk about?” I asked quietly.

“Personal things,” said the yachtsman tranquilly and leaned back. “About the father's health, the sister in Kuwait and her terrific children. The father brings up memories of Gaza, the seashore, how the two of them went fishing together. Yesterday, the son said he bought a rug in the market in Tehran and sent it to his sister. A few days ago, he described to his father the pyramids he saw in the desert of Sudan, he spoke about the ancient black kings who built them. It really made me want to go on a tour there in a jeep. Ask people who met him, they describe an intelligent, charismatic fellow, sharp as a razor. A monster has grown right before our eyes.”

What else did Hani say about me? I thought. What did he say about Daphna? But around the table they moved to talk about flight instruments and means of dispatching, tiny submarines sold on the black market, all the nightmares that disturb their sleep.

“How much time do we still have?” asked Haim. Their meeting room was splendid, a big window open to the sea, insulated by three layers so no sound wave would leak out. I poured a bottle of bitter lemon into a glass of ice.

“No more than ten days,” said the senior member, with cropped, graying hair, who, from the beginning of the meeting, had been looking at me skeptically and I didn't like it. “Just get him out for us to a place where we can work on him. You need anything? You lack anything?” he asked me patronizingly, the way I talk to the lowliest of my subordinates, those who keep me informed about what's on the menu in the Kasbah.

“We've got everything,” Haim answered for me. “Just leave us alone for a few more days and we'll bring you the package.”

“Just a few days,” said their head and lit a cigarette. That amazed me—it had been a long time since I'd seen anybody smoke in a meeting, especially among those sterile characters. “We don't want the sky to fall on our head.”

“Something about this story stinks, there are too many holes in the intelligence,” said Haim on the way back.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Got to go on, no choice,” said Haim. “We're only bit players, but right now the whole stage is yours. Everybody's looking at you. Everything depends on you. Everyday I report upstairs on what's happening. You've advanced very well with him. Just be careful now.”

Haim got out of the car with great difficulty, hit the edge of the sidewalk and fell down, his
kippa
flew off his head. I quickly got out of the car to help him up. “I'm fine,” he muttered when I grabbed him under the arms, as you hold a baby. “I'm not hurt, just my head is uneasy. Promise me that everything's fine. I don't want us to fail with this.”

I called Daphna to invite myself for a lesson. I tried to sound relaxed so she wouldn't know how much I depended on her. “Hani's sleeping,” she whispered. “We went to the doctor who raised his dosage across the board, otherwise he'd be going mad with pain. They don't give him more than a few weeks. The doctor said that was absolutely positively the end.”

I went to town while waiting for Hani to wake up. I sat in a café, I looked at the girls, I bought a collection of Frank Sinatra records on sale, I walked from one end of Dizengoff Street to the other, past all the bridal shops. Evening had fallen and Daphna hadn't called, nor had she answered her cell phone. Just don't let him die on me, that nice Arab. But mainly I thought about her and what she was doing when she disappeared. I parked below the American embassy, at the sea. It was dark now. I sat in the car and my eyes closed to the sound of “Strangers in the Night.”

 

In the middle of the night, the cell phone rang. The parking lot around me was empty, the windshield was foggy with night moisture. I raised the seat fast, shut up Frankie who was singing in an unending loop. “Come to Ikhilov,” Daphna shouted. “They're slaughtering him, those whores.”

I didn't know which of the two of them she was talking about, I didn't have time to ask, I raced with the blue siren into the damp screen of the night and went into the ambulance bay displaying the document that opens every door. I saw Daphna at the end of the emergency room, getting explanations from a young doctor in turquoise scrubs.

I went behind the curtain, recognized Yotam's thin white back as he lay naked on his belly.

The art of carving on the ass was very familiar to me from my work. Collaborators had their penis cut off and stuffed in their mouth, and on the other side, on the ass, they'd carve all kinds of drawings, depending on how talented the murderer was. After we caught them, they'd give all kinds of interesting explanations, sometimes about the myths of Islam and sometimes about a basketball team.

They had given Yotam only an X on his behind, not too deep, but big. It took thirty colorful stitches to close him up. Daphna stood at his bed, her eyes swollen, trying to touch him, but he roared at her like an evil beast. From behind, you saw only long hair, an exposed back, a bandage. I went to the head of the bed to see his eyes. When he saw me, an awful smile of scorn and pain appeared on his face.

“What, my darling?” Daphna asked him, trying to stroke his head, offering him a glass of water. He answered her with a stifled roar. All around was the turmoil of a night in the emergency room, gurneys being moved back and forth, an incessant sound of distress hovered in the air. The doctor on duty left us and said somebody would soon come to take Yotam up to the ward.

The wounded boy mumbled something. Daphna wanted to hear, she was so eager to get to him she almost fell. I heard him clearly from where I was standing. “Now the picture's perfect,” he muttered with an effort. “Mother, man, and Yotam with an X on his ass. Your holy trinity is realized, Mother.”

“Why do you talk to me like that?' she flinched, but came back to him immediately, touched his dirty hair. “It will pass,” she told him. “They said they'd graft some skin and nothing will be seen.”

“As far as I'm concerned, they can leave it,” he squeaked. “I'll show my ass to people on Dizengoff and collect charity.” He groaned with pain and Daphna went to look for the doctor to ask them to give him something for the pain.

“Morphine,” he called after her. “Let them bring morphine.”

“What happened?” I took the opportunity to go to him.

“Go,” groaned Yotam. “Get out of here.”

An orderly came and took him up to the ward. We waited in the corridor. People were passing by around us, staring at the gigantic bandage wrapping his loins, saw him lying twisted. It was a strange and despicable vision. “Why don't they get him into a room? Look how he's lying!” I said to the young doctor on duty who was sitting at the computer. “This isn't a private hospital here, sir,” said the doctor. “At the moment, we've got a few more urgent cases. The guy is only scratched. He'll live.”

Yotam was pleading non-stop for help. Daphna said some calming words to him, hugged him, tried to protect him from the evil looks all around.

“Give him more morphine, please,” called Daphna. The doctor came to us in comfortable green German clogs, her ponytail jumped when she spoke. She said that Yotam had already gotten the maximum dose, any more was liable to kill him.

“He's a junkie,” Daphna shouted. “The quantities you gave him don't move him. Please, go consult with someone. He's writhing in pain!”

“I'll find out,” said the doctor. You could hear the contempt in her voice.

Daphna stood glued to the wall, shriveled. “How did that happen?” she asked with an accusing look. “You promised the area was clean. That he could come back. They found him tossed on the sidewalk in an alley behind Allenby Street, he couldn't stand up. My child was thrown into the gutter.”

He was lucky they didn't take off his legs and leave half a body lying on the sidewalk, I thought, that also happens to people.

“I'll give him another dose,” the doctor announced, emerging from the depths of the corridor. “I talked with my attending. He'll take responsibility for it and they'll clear a room for him right away. I'm sorry I was a little impatient before, I've got the shift from hell.”

Daphna tried to smile with a face crushed with grief. “I'm sorry I burst out, you must not have slept since yesterday, and here I am yelling at you . . . ”

The doctor stood facing her and then took her hand and they leaned on one another a moment. They laid Yotam at the end of a long room full of beds, at the window. The city was lighted beneath him. Daphna's eyes were lit with a red light and were flooded with tears.

Yotam got an IV with another dose of morphine and he began singing a song by Morrissey to himself. Daphna brought water and made him drink slowly, until the drugs kicked in and his eyes shut. That's what should be done with him, I thought, connect him to a sedative of drugs and let him sink. Take off.

I found two chairs and we sat at his bed. “I can't bear this anymore,” whispered Daphna and put her head on me in the gloom, until her breathing became heavy and she sank into a sound sleep. I saw the lights of the houses go off and the streets empty and I heard groans of patients all around, but everything was fine: I could caress her head, protect it from all sides. In the hours remaining until morning, I was her only guard.

Haim called me on the cell phone in my shirt pocket as dawn broke and asked if I had seen the latest stuff. “No,” I whispered, but Daphna had already woken up and was sitting up with her hair disheveled and barely remembered where she was until Yotam started pleading for more drugs. “Wait a minute,” I told Haim and went out to the corridor.

“You're with her?” Haim asked suspiciously. “What are you doing together at such an hour?”

I told him all I could. He said that some bad stuff had come that made our issue very urgent. On high, they wanted us to make every effort to get the guy out immediately, they couldn't wait anymore.

I suggested to Daphna that she go wash her face, I'd take care of him in the meantime. I sat at Yotam's head and talked quietly into his ear, I asked questions. His sad twisted smile wasn't wiped off his face. Indeed, why are you interrogating him? I said to myself. What can he tell you? That he came to buy drugs and got mixed up with the street dealers? Maybe he owed them money, and they threw him on the stinking ground where there were once dunes and now only filth, told him that next week they'd be cutting in front, and then the throat.

When the doctors made their rounds, we were sent out of the room. We went down to drink coffee in the hospital cafeteria. I looked around and thanked my lucky stars that I wasn't yet dragging around a bag connected to my guts and didn't have an instrument stuck in my throat and was standing on my own two feet. “You promised me he could come back to town, that you guaranteed his safety,” Daphna said again. You could measure her pulse by the contractions of anger in the blue vein in her neck.

“I thought you'd keep him at home,” I justified myself. “I can't protect him when he goes to buy drugs on the street. That doesn't even have anything to do with Nukhi Azariya.”

Daphna fell silent. “That was bad from the start,” she said gazing at nothing. “I sealed the kid's fate and he's not strong enough for it. I expected him to hold out. For years now, he hasn't called on me for help. And I look down on everything: I'm not like you, I'm not in your game, your prejudices don't touch me, my son was beautiful and strong and scared everyone; he's my sweet revenge. But he won't make it, that awful file is heavy on him and I don't help, I'm a coward . . . ”

“Go rest, you're just hurting yourself,” I said to her. “A kid can come out fucked even from the squarest family.”

“No, I'll stay,” said Daphna. “I have to make sure they take care of him. Anyway, I won't get any rest at home.” A minute later, she shook herself. “Go to my house,” she ordered me. “See what's with Hani. I left him alone like a dog. Give him something to eat and drink, see how he feels.”

I stood under Daphna's house. The gorgeous giant ficus tree methodically dropped filth on the cars beneath it. I wanted to leave the whole thing, the sickness, the torments. To find a healthy life, to do something positive, to take care of somebody. Maybe in Australia, but not here, no, it couldn't happen here . . . This lasted no more than a few seconds until Haim called and asked for an update.