Limassol (20 page)

We walked from the end of the boardwalk toward the center of town. The bay was open before us and the wind was clean. Daphna was gorgeous, statuesque; people looked at her as at a queen. I pushed Hani in the chair and Daphna walked close to us. “Go slowly,” she said quietly. “Let's enjoy the walk.”

The restaurant was almost empty. The owner was sitting at the entrance behind a wooden desk, and looked bothered by something. In the pictures surrounding him, photographs of local celebrities, you could see the trail of his old age. Daphna requested a table on the balcony, overlooking the sea. I peeped through the door to see when my companions would come in; they didn't plan in advance for this evening outing; they assumed that Hani would be too tired and weak to leave the hotel. The waiter came to offer drinks. I ordered a bottle of local white wine and some hors d'oeuvres. Below us dark, calm water came and went. Hani muttered something, I went close to him, he said in Arabic that it looked like Haifa here. I asked when he was in Haifa. “Ask her,” he said with a smile. I didn't bring him back to Hebrew, it was more comfortable that way.

“When were you in Haifa?” I asked Daphna in Hebrew.

“In Haifa?” she laughed. “Oh, that was a long time ago.” Her face was beaming. “We went on a big tour of the Galilee, Hani wanted to see Israel. We traveled for a week. A friend lent us his Subaru, one of those old, small ones. We took it up to Mount Hermon. Remember how I vomited on the way up, Hani? We went into places nobody heard of, we saw antiquities, we walked in rivers, in water, it was spring then and the snow had melted, the fields were full of anemones . . . ”

“She was the most beautiful woman in the world,” said Hani in Arabic. “Not even in my dreams did I meet a woman like that.” Somebody should have collected his words in a box of treasures and wrapped them in cotton, because they were the final words of a poet.

“And on the last evening, we ate in Haifa, in a restaurant in Bat Galim, which must have gone out of business a long time ago,” said Daphna, and put her hand on his, two such different hands, both long and delicate. “We ate fish, then we went to sleep in some crappy sailors' hotel in the lower city.”

“We should have stayed together,” said Hani in Arabic, quietly.

I poured the properly chilled wine. On the label was a vine on a rocky slope. The sea rolled to the stone wall beneath us and withdrew. I drank quickly because I had to lose myself.

“I want to touch him,” Hani said suddenly. “Afterward, I can go. Don't give me too many drugs, so I'll manage to get up early. He's coming only for a few hours, that's what he told me. You'll see him, that man. You'll like him, you remind me of one another. The two of you are quiet and loyal. Come, give me your hand. You'll get to Paradise because of what you're doing for me.”

I gave him my hand and he held it tight.

Daphna looked into my eyes until I trembled inside.

Some men sat down at the edge of the restaurant. You could see from a mile away that they were our tail. I laughed to myself as I drank, and Daphna asked what happened. “Nothing,” I said. “I remembered a stupid joke I was told.”

The food was good, the fried fish were fresh. I ate a lot; Hani tasted a little cheese and eggplant, and smiled sadly. I wanted to get up and run away from this cheap show, to go back where I belonged, where everybody knows exactly where he belongs. Calm down, you're starting to sweat.

Three musicians got up onto the small stage at the front, after they had been given supper. They slowly put out their cigarettes, took out their instruments. The group wasn't young, and they were dressed like clerks. They sat down, one with a bouzouki and one with a violin and the one in the middle held a drum and sang. As soon as he opened his mouth and plucked the first hoarse string, tears almost came into my eyes. That man, who looked like a customs official in the port, was singing only for me, about all my pains, as deep as possible.

“You aren't going to kill anybody tomorrow morning, right?” Daphna whispered in my ear in a soft voice that blended with the Greek, as if it was a verse in the song.

I let the song be played. We drank together, we moved to drink from the same glass, we had another bottle of white wine, we ate mullet with our hands from the same plate. Hani fell asleep and woke up and smiled at us, muttered something in Arabic. It was getting a little crowded there, a lot of locals came to hear the music.

We got up from the table at about eleven o'clock at night, when the evening was just beginning to get hot, but we had to put Hani to bed, fill him up with drugs again. I barely managed to wheel him in a straight line, the ground was spinning around me. I tried to hear the footsteps tailing us, I checked the cars driving by us, until Daphna hugged me, and together we pushed the wheelchair to the hotel, and nothing around us mattered.

We put Hani to bed. I took off his shoes and undressed him and laid his head on the pillows. I sat with him until he calmed down and fell asleep. Daphna leaned on the banister of the balcony. “Come here,” she said quietly.

We watched the strange lights and the dark water, we came so close there was no distance, we kissed. We slept together in my room, on the broad white bed, with the window open, above the quiet rustle of the sea. The night was sweet as honey and broad as a golden pond, I sailed far away to a new world, a new world.

 

In the cold light before dawn, I was awakened by a muttered wake-up call in Greek. I remembered that something wonderful had happened to me, but the instructions of the operation immediately took control of me. The big battle started ticking, all around were all the assistants of the matador and the spies, and the listeners and the tails, and the sniper was also already taking care of his instruments not far from here.

I got up to shave and brush my teeth. The man in the mirror smiled at me like a bastard, with clear eyes; I loved that smile of his, before it was wrapped in the everyday gloom. Soon it will be six. I had to wake up Hani, prepare him for the day, the meeting, to sit with him at breakfast, cheer him up, tell him words of peace.

Daphna wasn't with me; in the middle of the night, she had parted from me to go sleep with Hani. “Tomorrow we'll go to the mountains,” she promised.

Isolated cars were driving on the road, diligent Cypriots who got up early to go to work in the morning. Our guest was now in the terminal in Damascus, probably drinking a morning coffee. I got dressed and knocked on the next door. Daphna opened it, dressed in the hotel robe, a white towel wrapped her head like a makeshift turban. She smelled good, of toothpaste and soap. She kissed me. Hani was at the stage of putting on his pants. We greeted one another in Arabic: a morning of beans, a morning of cream. He couldn't stand up on his own, and his eyes were almost hanging out of their sockets he was so thin. He had the clear look of the world-to-come in his eyes. In another hour and a half, he'd sit in the lobby in the wheelchair and wait for his son who would enter with the confident stride of a man. I'll disappear a few minutes before, I'll say I have to go to the bathroom, to take a crap. That was the plan.

At seven, we were the first ones in the dining room. We sat at the window facing the bay. There was a lot of activity in the port, big ships were coming and going, honking their horns. Daphna brought an omelet and cheese and vegetables from the buffet. A waitress in a black apron offered us tea or coffee. I heard a humming sound all around, or maybe I only imagined it. The arena was sterilized. We sat alone in the dining room. Now there was no uncontrolled movement.

Hani told her she was as beautiful as a rose, as she put a piece of cheese in his mouth. He could barely swallow a crumb, and he coughed. “Awful empty here,” said Daphna suddenly and looked around. “As if we were the only guests in the hotel. That's strange.”

At that moment, a tall, older couple came in, two wanderers in shorts and walking shoes, and saved me the need for explanations.

“Maybe they serve lunch here,” Hani said in Arabic. “Find out for me, please, reserve a table for four and we can eat with my son. We won't have to go too far. It's very nice here at the window.”

“Wouldn't you prefer to eat alone with him?” I asked matter-of-factly.

“No, you're friends, I want him to meet you,” said Hani with foggy eyes. “I want to put a little love in his heart.”

We wheeled Hani's chair to the lobby. Daphna suggested we wait in the hotel garden, there were flower beds there and a little fountain and benches overlooking the sea. “Just bring Hani's hat from the room, and if it's not too much trouble, also a bottle of water and the bag of medicines I forgot,” Daphna asked me with her sweetest look.

“Just don't go too far,” I asked them. “I'll meet you in the garden in two minutes.”

I went to the elevator. On the way I thought of my child and of Daphna and of the night that was, and the sea sparkled in my eyes. I entered the elevator, my jaw was clamped, and I pushed the button for the third floor. I knew I was being watched from every angle. I walked quickly, I opened the door of their room. Her clothes were scattered along with the instruments of his care, a smell of perfume mixed with a smell of disease. I looked for his hat and the bag of medicines, and a bottle of mineral water left over from yesterday, and I ran out.

In the garden there were narrow paths covered with pine needles, a little slide whose paint was peeling, and green ferns around high tree trunks, and flower beds growing wild, and benches facing the enormous sea. They weren't there. All the instruments of communication connected to the orifices of my body started beeping and yelling all at once. I ran back to the hotel and asked the reception clerk, panting, where the beautiful woman and the man in the wheelchair were.

They went out to the garden. He looked at me severely, that Greek. I thought about the little apartment he lived in and his wife and their children and how much money he got to collaborate. Or he was a Greek refugee from Famagusta and had no affection for Muslims.

I ran back to the garden, in a panic, and looked for them on other paths. I heard my name rising in the distance. They were sitting hidden behind a tangled and fragrant bush, under a thick tree, in a salty breeze of sea wind.

“Did you think we had escaped you?” she laughed.

I gave her the hat and the bottle of water and said they had to start going back to the hotel, he should be arriving soon. I knew if the son didn't see him waiting in the door, as they had agreed, he wouldn't get out of the car, and then the work would be more complicated. And they wanted everything to be clean.

“And who else is waiting for him up there?” asked Daphna, erect and serious.

I couldn't lie anymore.

“Me,” I said.

“And you'll take care of him?” she asked.

Hani looked at me uncomprehendingly, and then his gaze filled with terror.

“You . . . ”

I ran up the path with heavy legs, flew above the thin branches blocking the way, I had to be there, I couldn't run away. In the tiny earphone planted in my ear, I heard: “Two minutes to arrival.” I slowed before the exit from the garden, entered the hotel calmly and sat down on the sofa. The parking area was spread out before me. I measured the seconds with my heartbeats. The reception clerk looked at me and went to pick up the phone. I saw silhouettes moving from every direction, in another minute they'd take shape and come out of their corners. And a white taxi is driving into the parking lot. Run, I was pushed through the glass doors, run, I dashed to the center of the drive, I jumped in front of the cab and waved my hands for it to stop. The driver got out and cursed in Greek and I burst into the back seat and closed the door behind me. The pavement in front of us suddenly filled with people bursting out of the walls and trees.

“Go, go back!” I yelled at him in English. “Fast!” I heard them connecting: currents passed through all the instruments, consultations in fragmentary words, how to stop them. “Go!” I yelled at him, and now we were on the coast road, on the way back to the airport, in the rush hour traffic of a regular morning.

I was breathing crazily. I looked to the right. He looked young and more vulnerable than in the picture, but his eyes were indescribably hard. I saw his eyes, and changed my mind. For eyes like that, I wanted to kill him with my own hands.

“Your father sends regards,” I gasped.

He looked scared and groped for something in his pocket, forgot he had had to leave the gun before he got on the plane.

“The traitor, the shit,” he said in Arabic and tried to find the door handle.

“No,” I told him. “He didn't betray you. Your father saved you.”

He looked around feverishly, suddenly everything seemed unstable. The two of us were in free fall without a parachute, without a hold. He opened the door quickly as the car was moving. I managed to shout at him, but he was already rolling on the side of the road, a curled up human ball. Honking started immediately, the driver looked in the rearview mirror and started yelling and cursing again, screeched to a stop on the shoulder. I sat inside another moment. I hoped he was dead, I wanted him to live for them. I got out and started marching fast along the guard rail, beyond it were the fleshy shore plants and a sparkle of the sea. On the road there was an enormous tumult, and the lights of the local police spinning. The driver shouted something and pointed to me. A moment before I was caught, a dark car passed by and a heavy hand came out and gathered me inside.

 

I didn't know when or how they took me back to Israel. I woke up in a small room on a kibbutz, or a boarding school: bars on the windows, screens, a narrow bed, bare walls painted a greenish hue. Rustle of eucalyptus branches moving in the wind. I went to the door, which was locked. Outside sat a man in civilian clothes. I heard him whispering into a walkie-talkie, reporting that I had woken up. I felt refreshed, but not for long.