Mitla Pass (45 page)

Gideon reeled into the bathroom and threw up. He tore back into the bedroom and took the pistol down from its high shelf and staggered about like a water buffalo who had taken an arrow in the chest.

God damn! There’s honor among thieves. A man doesn’t go screwing around with his buddy’s wife! They balling the shit out of each other at that sleaze joint—and then she comes home and makes love to me. Next day, a little doubles at the club and good old partner John. Holy Jesus!

Two and a half hours ticked by tortuously until Gideon heard the front door being opened and the girls ran in jabbering.

“Hon, I’m home,” Val called.

In a moment she entered the bedroom to find Gideon sitting on her chaise longue by the fireplace, with a lap robe over him and his head wavering from rage, weariness, and fever.

“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” she said.

“Close the door,” he rasped, “and lock it.”

Val smiled. Oftentimes, the sicker Gideon was, the more passionate he became. He looked terrible. She’d try to talk him out of it. She stood over him and reached to feel his forehead. He took the motel key from his robe pocket and nipped it down at her feet.

Val stared at it a moment, then sagged into the easy chair opposite him. “Thank God it’s over with,” she croaked, “it’s been a nightmare.”

“You and our old pal Johnny been making a little bang-bang. Funny, John came over to my studio for lunch yesterday. He never mentioned a word about it. We had a lot of laughs about a couple of hookers he’d been seeing. Now pick up the phone and call him. Invite him over tonight, without Cindy. Tell him I’m out of town and you’re hurting. Don’t take no for an answer.”

“Hadn’t we better talk about this first?”

“No, ma’am,” Gideon answered as his hand came from under the blanket and he leveled a pistol at her. “Do as I say. Maybe you guys will put on a little dog and pony show for me ... if I don’t blow his head off first.”

Val tried to dial but was unable. The receiver fell from her trembling hand.

“Leave it for now,” Gideon commanded, “and start talking.”

“Can I get a glass of water?”

Val staggered into the bathroom and fought for composure. Half the water spilled down her front and she gagged as she drank. She returned and sat, hands folded, rocking back and forth in misery, eyes cast down.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything. Every God-damned last thing!”

She tried to look at him, but it was not possible. “Maybe you want to know where my head was at that time, maybe not.”

“Just start talking.”

“You were writing
The Tenderloin
and you were very unhappy. You kept going up to San Francisco alone, as often as you could. You didn’t want me with you to clutter up your prowling.”

“Our daughters were in school!” Gideon snapped.

“Mom always came up to take care of them before that. You didn’t want me.”

“It was too filthy a job for you, Snow White. You didn’t want to come, so don’t give me that shit.”

“All right, but you let me know you were taking off for parts unknown without us, just as soon as you could ... Israel ... China ... always trying to run away. I felt, so ... so unwanted. And then there was that visit to Dr. Murray. No more children, he said. It meant we couldn’t try for a son. I was depressed as hell and you were gone.

Then I came to realize that my going back to art school was just a sham. I had to face the fact I didn’t have the talent. So, I was alone and low and terrified of losing you. Oh, baby, let me take your temp. You look terrible.”

“Keep talking.”

“You went up to San Francisco over the Fourth of July and we were angry. You missed Penny’s birthday. ...”

“So it’s my fault and Penny’s.”

“It was my fault! Mine! There were lies I had to tell myself in order to do it. I had to justify it! I even pretended that if you knew about Johnny, it would turn you on.”

“Oh God!”

“You and I ... we ... we had been talking about swinging. I’m not making it as an excuse. If I’ve learned one thing out of this, it’s that we all have to take the responsibility for our deeds. But I needed excuses because there was some kind of bile starting to come out of me and I couldn’t stop it. So, I turned on the one man I loved to justify failing him.”

“What happened?”

“Johnny popped over one afternoon looking for you. He was about to start shooting that Western at Fox and he wanted you to clean up a scene for him. You had just left for the airport and I was really down. He told me things were very bad between him and Cindy. He ... he said they hadn’t made love in almost three months ... and that started it going. ... I was ... more aggressive than he was ... and we did it!”

“Where?”

Val shook her head.

“Where!”

She pointed to the bed.

“In our bed?”

“Yes ... we slept together in our bed.”

“You mean fucked, don’t you?”

“Yes!” Val screamed. “I fucked him!”

“Did he go for rubbing his face around where the black stockings end and your soft white thighs begin? Did he bury his face in your muff!”

“Come on, Gideon, stop torturing yourself.”

“We’ve seen that son of a bitch bare-assed. He’s got a
shvantz
on him like a horse. How’d you like giving head to that great big salami? Did you soap him down in the shower and give him a super-deluxe job?”

“I did it. We did it like people do it. I swear to God, I don’t remember half of it.”

“Bullshit. He had you up on speed.”

“Yes ...”

“And you kept fucking him in our bed?”

“No, just that once.”

“How many times, where?”

“Out at their beach house a few times. And ... three ... four times at the motel.”

“You came, didn’t you? Screams and flailing and sweating and moaning. You had one orgasm after another! You enjoyed every minute of it, didn’t you? Especially when he had you put on a show. You put on a show with your fingers up your pussy and he came all over you!”

“No ... I don’t remember, I tell you. Neither of us knew why we kept coming back. He’s ... he’s a fair lover. But, Gideon, he wasn’t you. Nobody is you.”

“Sure, that’s right, baby. Let’s establish the fact that he was a lousy lover. That makes me feel real good. Oh, he was just terrible, a real bum in the sack.”

“I wasn’t doing this to hurt you. I was messed up, baby, just messed up. At the end of a few months, it was over with. We both became just ... disgusted with ourselves.”

“But he came back to our dinner table. We all went skinny-dipping together, didn’t we? God damn, what a laugh you two must have had behind my back.”

“We thought it best to go on like nothing had happened. And nothing did happen after we quit. Only the God-damned lie. It has been like a cancer in my soul and it wouldn’t stop growing.”

“Take a look in the mirror!”

“I can’t.”

“You’ll see a slut, a whore, a tramp, a pig, scum. The Admiral’s daughter and all her Protestant bullshit. The only thing you’re sorry for is that you got caught.”

“Sometimes I swore you wanted me to be a whore. We’ve played at it a hundred times. It’s no excuse. I got mixed up between fantasy and reality. Look, honey, it’s no excuse. I could’ve always said no to the games you and I played ... but I loved playing them with you. Honey, honey, I just want to live long enough for you to trust me again. I love you, man. ...”

“How about Penny and Roxy? You love them too?”

“Please don’t. I beg you. Please don’t.”

“What are you going to tell them when it comes time to let them know they’ve got to learn to keep their legs crossed? You going to tell them what a sweetheart Momma was to their daddy? You junky whore, going down for a toot of speed, just like the two-bit pigs in the shooting galleries. Give me a sniff and I’ll give you a fuck.”

“Kill me!”

“Why don’t you be quiet. Our daughters will hear you.”

Val became hysterical, and after a time she took her hands down from her face. It was wet with tears, and her eyes screamed silently in pain. Val clenched her trembling fists and pulled herself together once again. “I’ll tell them their mother is a human being and human beings make mistakes. I’ll tell them to try not to make mistakes as a woman, because there is no free lunch in that game. I’ll tell them, if they make mistakes, there’s no escaping having to pay the price. I’ll tell them their own consciences will drive them crazy. I hate myself, Gideon, almost as much as I love you.”

Gideon’s face became wet with perspiration, and his eyes fluttered and his head rolled. “Get out of here. Pack your shit and go visit your mother. I’ll take care of the girls.”

“I’m not leaving them,” Val said. “If you want me out, we’ll take a place nearby, so they can finish their school term.”

Gideon picked the pistol up from his lap, stared at it, then tossed it on the coffee table. He dialed the studio.

“Good afternoon, Pacific Studios.”

“Gideon Zadok’s office. Hello, Belle, Gideon. What the hell’s the name of the hospital near the studio?”

“You mean St. Joseph’s? Say, you sound terrible.”

“Get me a private room and have the studio doctor come see me later. Get a typewriter and whatever we’ll need to write over there. Then, come pick me up.”

“What the devil is going on?”

“Will you do what the fuck I say!”

“Let me speak to Val.”

“Just do what I say, Belle.” He hung up and he wept.

“Oh God, baby,” Val cried, “forgive me. Gideon, you’ve got to forgive me.”

“In a pig’s ass I’ll forgive you.”

MITLA PASS

October 31, 1956

0800 HOURS, D DAY PLUS TWO

T
HE FIRST KISS
of daylight began to melt away the darkness and the stars blinked themselves off. There was the soldiers’ anger at morning, stretches, groans, bitching all along the Lion’s foxhole. The paras took their morning piss, brushed their teeth, and dug into their rations. The night had gone fairly well. An Egyptian patrol had come out of the Pass after midnight to probe, but was easily beaten back. Word from Para 202 was that the attack on Nakhl had already taken place, or was about to begin. It wasn’t clear. The next few hours would tell the story.

A distant sound of bombing was heard coming from the other side of the Pass and the Canal. Someone might have been hitting the Egyptian airfields.

“So, you never forgave her?” Shlomo asked Gideon.

“No, how could I? I was playing around all over the place and now I had an excuse. If I had forgiven her, she would have had to forgive me. I wanted to keep on doing what I was doing ... balling starlets .going out on pot at my agent’s house in Malibu ... gang bangs ... fun and games. I never forgave her, but I know from how much she hurt me, how much I have hurt her. I never knew about that kind of pain until then. I’d give anything ... anything if I could tell her now.”

“And Natasha?”

“I suppose we deserve each other. I was smug. There wasn’t a woman in the world I couldn’t walk away from. I had my fortress home. I had a guilty wife, well fixed inside the moat, and the castle walls. I was safe ... until I got messed up with Natasha.” Gideon squinted out to the endless sea of rocks and sand. “Come on, Para 202, where are you, you bastards? Come on, Zechariah, stop farting around.”

“That’s the worst thing two people can do to each other,” Shlomo said. “If you live together, have children, share the same bed, if there is a morsel of love left, you have no right to withhold forgiveness. You have no right to hold it over her head.”

“Tell me about it,” Gideon snapped sarcastically.

“There’s an evil streak in all of us,” Shlomo went on, “which we must control. When it takes over, we become the devil’s advocates on earth.”

“Yeah ... I know and Val knows.”

“Do you trust Val?”

“Yes, but not all the way. Not like it once was.”

“Do you trust any woman?”

A sudden smile lit Gideon’s eyes. They were no longer sad. “There are two women in my life ... yeah ... I trusted them all the way.”

“Your mother and ...”

“No, not my mother. One, Miss Abigail Winters, a teacher. She thought I would become a writer one day. The other woman? Molly, my sister. I wouldn’t have made it without her. I love Molly. When I knock this book, I’m going to bring her to Israel and show her around ...”

They were suddenly interrupted by a half-dozen jets screaming over the Pass. Shlomo spotted the unmistakable twin tails of enemy Vampires.

“Egyptians! Hit the deck!”

MOLLY

1922

M
Y MOTHER
, Leah, worked at the Ginzburg Brothers clothing factory in Baltimore, and so did my Aunt Fanny. All of us lived in Bubba Hannah’s house on Monroe Street. Zayde Moses lived there too, but nobody counted him.

I was four years old in the spring of 1922 when Momma and Aunt Fanny went out on strike, and don’t remember much of it, but in our family the strike was discussed for years and years, so I was able to fill in all the details.

Conditions at the factory were very bad and the strike was long and bitter. Just when it seemed that the strike was going to be smashed, two union organizers came down from New York from the Jewish Workers Federation. One of them, Nathan Zadok, was to become my pretend daddy.

I’ve heard the story a hundred times of how the union organizers tricked the Baltimore police into making a mounted charge against the women pickets at the Ginzburg Brothers gate. They were clubbed and twelve of them, including my mother, Leah, were taken off to jail and received six-month sentences from a crooked judge.

This created an incident to exploit, because the women became known as the Ginzburg Brothers Twelve and eventually the union won the strike. Although my mother spent only ten days in jail, she seemed to like being a martyr.

W
ELCOME HOME,
L
EAH
! a big sign read over the front door. A hundred people must have jammed into the house. The whole family was there, Uncle Jake and Uncle Lazar and all my cousins and Aunt Pearl, even though her husband, Uncle Dominick, was a member of the police force.