the Debba (2010) (21 page)

42

E
VERY DAY
I
VOWED
anew not to read the newspapers besmirching my father's name, still alluding to the similarity between the play and Paltiel's work, yet I could not stop. I seriously considered suing some of the newspapers. But what good would that do?

"So write an article to
Ha'Olam HaZeh
magazine, with any evidence you have that he--wrote it," said Ben-Shoshan, the factory's accountant, after I had ranted about another poisonous editorial. "Let everyone read it; at least they'd hear the other side, too."

This struck a chord, and that afternoon I began to call around. But within a few hours it became clear I would have no such testimonies--none beside Abdallah's, that is; and I knew just how much good that would do, an Arab's word.

It dawned on me that the only one who actually saw my father write was Mr. Glantz. Yes, it was not the play he saw him write, but rather some poems, alongside Paltiel, but it was better than nothing. So by evening, after Ehud and Ruthy had gone to the last technical rehearsal, I called him.

"I need a testimony from you," I said bluntly, "that he wrote it."

If he interpreted this to mean that I would not mind if he stretched the truth, it was fine with me.

There was silence on the line, and I steeled myself for a morality speech about the importance of truth, like my father used to give me. I was not prepared for the animal sob. "There's a ... something I ... I didn't tell you ... if you want to come--"

I grabbed Ruthy's car keys and ran downstairs.

Mr. Glantz opened the door, his old eyes puffy, and before I could speak he thrust two blue copybooks into my hands. "Please, Davidl ... please forgive me--I didn't want to give them to you before ... because I knew you'd take them ... and he left them for me ..."

I sat down and opened one copybook. It was filled with Arabic script. The other was in Hebrew.

"They're not in the will," Mr. Glantz wept, "but your father said I could have them ..."

My eyes raced along the crabbed lines. "I'll bring them back. I promise." I devoured the words with my eyes. Then as their meaning sank in I looked up, dazed.

Mr. Glantz wiped his cheeks. "The other one I can't read, it's all in Arabic that they translated. You keep it--"

"Who translated?"

"Him, Isser, and his Arab friend, the cripple from Yaffo. He used to come sometimes Friday evenings, and they would sit on the terrace ... maybe eat a watermelon, then translate this ..."

I picked up the second copybook and opened it at random. The odd graphic pattern of Syrian double meter jumped at me.

I began to read:

For in the darkness of the cruelest night,

Amidst the hatred of a thousand kin,

'Tis you, O you, my love,

My friend, O beast,

O candle of my youthful blood--

I closed it quickly as if blinded by sudden sunlight. "This is what they did?"

"Yes," Mr. Glantz said. "Translating old poems of Rubin."

"Of Rubin." My knees were weak.

This was not a poem of Paltiel's. I knew them all by heart. This was a new poem. A new one. So much like Paltiel's as to defy comprehension. But new.

Mr. Glantz blubbered, "Your father said I could have them, after they finished translating ... because I took him in again ..."

"Yes." I was eating up the poems with my eyes, lapping at the lines, hearing their sound, like a voice singing--

Mr. Glantz babbled on about how Abdallah and my father used to work until midnight sometimes. "So you'll bring them back when you finish? You promise?"

"Yes," I said. "That I can promise you."

From a kiosk in Allenby I called Abdallah's store in Yaffo, but there was no answer. I got into the Beetle and raced to Tel Aviv University in Ramat Aviv.

As I barged into his office, Professor Tzifroni was standing near the window, leafing through a book.

"One question," I said to his back. "Can I ask you one question?"

He kept reading obstinately, refusing to turn, but I saw his shoulder quiver.

Using my military voice I quoted the first poem I had just read in my father's copybook, but stopped in the middle of the last line. "Did you ever hear this one?"

It was amazing how I already knew it by heart after only one reading. How easy it was to memorize.

He turned slowly. "Where did you get this?"

"Doesn't matter. Do you know it?"

He shook his head, his eyes on my lips, as if trying to extract from them the remainder of the last line.

I persisted. "Who wrote it? Can you tell?"

He licked his lips. "Rubin, for sure! It's his meter, but with an extra beat." He shuffled forward and clutched at my hand. "You found some more fragments somewhere? Where?"

Mr. Glantz had also thought these were Rubin's poems. But who wouldn't? The same floating meter, the same incomparable line reversion, the same heart-stopping mystery, the spurious simplicity--

I pulled one of the copybooks from my knapsack and put it on the cluttered desk. The professor licked his lips again, then opened the copybook with the tips of his fingers and began to read. Once or twice he looked up, his eyebrows knotted.

"Nu?"
I said.

"Rubin, sure it's Rubin," he whispered. "But where did you copy this from? It's clean, not in fragments."

I said, "Look at the last three poems. See this ditty, about Rabin and Peres? And Carter?"

He read, licked his lips, then looked up.

"Same meter?" I asked sarcastically. "Prosody? Style?" There was a pause as I took the copybook out of his hand. "You still think they wrote it together? In seventy-six? That Paltiel's ghost came back, maybe? Like the Debba?"

The pause lengthened as Professor Tzifroni tried to speak; at last he whispered, "So he wrote them all?
Shimshon, Ben HaTan, Zonah Tamah--
"

"Yes," I said. "My father wrote them all."

"You fucking donkey," Ruthy screeched, her eyes white with wrath. "If you write this in the newspaper, I will do not do it. You hear me?" Her voice rose into a shriek. "I won't do it."

I stuttered that I'd only write about the play. "Not the poems, not the sonnets--just so that the newspapers won't drag my father's name in the sewer--"

"Well, I don't give a
zayin!"
Ruthy shrieked. "I am not going to stand there and sing, when everyone--nobody is going to say that my father stole--that he didn't--" She broke down.

I shouted at her, "But did you read what the papers are saying about my father--"

"So they are saying!"

She and I glared at each other; her father against mine.

Ehud whispered, "So maybe you'll write it only later--" He was pale, looking neither at me nor at Ruthy.

"When later?" I said. "A day after the show, who would care?"

"Well I am telling you," Ruthy hollered. "I am not going to act in it if--if David's going to say that he--that Paltiel stole--"

"But you have to," Ehud whispered, the pallor of his face darkening. "It's too late to get someone else--it's in one week. You have to do it!"

"Have to? I don't have to do anything if I don't want to!"

After a while Ehud said to me, "So maybe you--just postpone this article--what do I know--" He stared at me with eyes suddenly wet.
"He
also would have ..."

I could not speak. "All right," I whispered at last.

To fufill my father's wish, it seems, I must let his name be dragged in the mud.

I stumbled blindly down the stairs.

43

D
OWN IN THE STREET,
buses roared by, billowing black smoke. All I could think of was my father relinquishing his work.

For what? Was it for money?

That my father gave money to actors, I knew. He had always given. But his work?

My father, who had never done a crooked thing in his life; my father, who noted down every shekel he had received, and paid tax on every penny. My father, who had refused to be reimbursed for his bus fare to his weekly meeting at the Wrestling Club, where he volunteered as a board member. My father, the honest Jew, who had never cheated, who had done only favors; except for his sons.

And for his wife?

I stood awhile in the hot sizzling sun, then, without premeditation, took bus number 63 to Pinsker Street, got off on the corner of Trumpeldor, and went to visit my mother's grave.

The old Trumpeldor cemetery had an aura of dereliction, as if it was a Muslim one about to be bulldozed. The trails were overgrown with
injill
, Arab weed, and scraggly dandelions and
hubeiza
poked between the stones. I made my way to the end row, looking around. It was seven years since I had been here last.

Grandpa Yoel and Grandma Leah were buried at the westerly end, and my mother just behind them, under plain mounds overlaid with rough slabs of rock. The
khamsin
had made the stones too hot to touch, so I sprinkled some sand on my mother's gravestone, and sat down gingerly on it.

All around me were graves, graves, with Stars of David on their faces, and square Hebrew letters half smothered with sand. Most were of rough sandstone and dark basalt, and just plain gray marble. Here was Nachman Shein's headstone, engraved with a large musical note, there Paltiel Rubin's, a pencil, or perhaps a quill, incised at its base. To the side, half fallen, were the headstones of Sirkis, and Gurevitch, and Shaposhnikov, the early dramatists, and three gravestones whose lettering had long ago been obliterated by the salty wind. Flies flitted everywhere, also a few sparrows.

Why was my mother not buried by my father's side? They, who were so loving in life; who often, after the Shabbat meal, sang together old songs from '48, and before, or recited Hebrew poetry in tandem, each quoting alternate stanzas, then alternate lines, then alternate words, faster and faster, until one stumbled and had to wash the dishes while suffering pinches ...

What made them part?

The sun was warm on my neck but my heart felt cold.

I sat for an indeterminate while, looking around me, trying to imagine the old hatreds and the loves, the passions and the sorrows, all gone now; all but the one that had remained, the one hate that had come back to kill my father.

After lunch in Cafe Cassit, I sat drinking beer after beer. Presently Leibele came up and said someone was waiting for me outside.

As I emerged into the sunshine I saw Abdallah Seddiqi seated on an empty Tnuva milk crate at the edge of the sidewalk. Ten paces away, behind the wheel of a black Peugeot, sat his nephew, smoking.

When Abdallah saw me he rose creakily onto his thin legs, climbing up on one cane, then another. He said he had just been to the apartment in Ibn Gvirol but the lady said I had gone, probably to Cassit. "So I came to here," he said, in that odd Arabicized Hebrew of his. "I thought maybe I should tell you something." He gave me a gray stare.

I suggested we go inside, but he shook his head and pointed to the car. "There."

The nephew banged the car door open and Abdallah shuffled in. He patted the seat beside him. "Sit here, near me."

The air in the car was thick with the odor of sweat and acetone glue, so much like my father's, but also tangy with the smell of half-raw skins. Abdallah looked at me sideways, making a humming sound in his throat.

"No," the nephew said in Arabic. "He's with them."

Abdallah told him to be quiet. "He's not with anybody."

"He's with them, I am telling you. You are making a black mistake,
ya
Seddiqi--"

"Enough!" Abdallah turned to me, "I used to sell him leather, and also sandals, and sometimes glue--" He paused. "So Saturday afternoon, I came to see him, in the store."

"That
Saturday?" My heart gave a jerk.

"A black mistake," said the nephew.

"Quiet,
ya
Fa'uz. Yes, Saturday, to talk about the shipment, also about--other things." He leaned forward. "Fauzi, turn on the radio."

Without speaking, Fauzi obeyed. To my surprise it was tuned to Galey Tzahal, the popular army music station. Voices of two women came on the air, singing of Jerusalem of Gold, Ne'omi Shemer's song from 1967, the unofficial paratroopers' hymn.

"Leave it, good."

There was a lengthy pause. I felt Abdallah carefully choosing his words; I couldn't even begin to guess what he had wanted of me.

"In thirty-six," he said, "we were partners in the store. You know of this?" He tapped with his aluminum cane on the floor, lightly.

"Yes. Before the First Events--"

"The Rebellion," Fauzi said over his shoulder. "The first Arab Rebellion."

A guitar began to strum harshly on the radio, accompanied by a flute.

Abdallah said, "Ya Fa'uz, don't stick your nose in. Let old men talk." He tapped his cane. "I had to sell him back my share in thirty-six. You know of this?"

I hoisted my shoulder and gave a diagonal nod.

"He didn't want me to, Isrool, but they forced him." Abdallah turned and looked at me. To my discomfort he put his hand on my knee. The hand was astonishingly hot, as if he were feverish.

I said lamely, "Glantz, his landlord--I saw the poems you were working on--" A muscle-bound waiter stuck his head in the window and spoke to Abdallah. "Where do you think you--" He saw me and stopped.

"We're talking," I said in English. "What's your problem?"

The waiter--one I hadn't seen before--disappeared.

Abdallah said, as if there had been no interruption, "As a favor. I helped him with some words."

"Words of a thief," said Fauzi. "Stole our land, then our stories--" He made a soft sound in his throat.

I felt myself redden. Abdallah's hand on my knee twitched. "We were friends once, so we met again, when he asked me to do this translation, of the poems." Another twitch of the hand. "Also we talked--discussed--like in thirty-three--"

"Discussed what, in thirty-three?" I felt myself suffocating in the heat, and the stink, and this talk of the prehistory.

"We had a committee, in thirty-three, Isrool and Baldiel, and I and my brother Haffiz, and the Nashashibis, from Jerusalem--" He stared at me hard, to see if I had grasped his meaning.

I shook my head. The Nashashibi family had once ruled Jerusalem, during the early days of the British Mandate, and were the main political opponents of the Grand Mufti, the Nazi sympathizer. Half the land around Jerusalem used to belong to them.

"We met, to see if we could make a compromise, between you and us--you see?"

I said, "What kind of compromise? Peace?"

I felt my face redden, saying such a foolish word.

"Not peace, just a compromise. So we can sell to each other, buy from each other, live together--"

"Live together." Fauzi's voice was thick. "Live? He who lies with the Viper--"

"Quiet,
ya
Fa'uz. Quiet." Again, Abdallah turned to me, "We came to an agreement, slow down Jewish immigration in some areas, purchases of land, a joint representation before the British authorities, a joint bank--" His voice droned on, like some radio announcer, clear and precise now, the Arabicized lilt gone.

I listened, dazed with beer and heat. At last he stopped. I said, "In thirty-three? All this?"

"Yes. Unofficial, it all was. Just some private people talking. Only merchants." He coughed, a caw of bitter laughter. "Just some Arab and Jewish merchants."

"But," I said, "in thirty-three he was already in the Haganah."

Abdallah gave another terse nod. "Yes, I knew. And my brother Haffiz, he was in ... the Istiqlal. Isrool knew, too. So what? Talking--so what if we talked?" Then, without warning, he spat. "But nothing came of it. The hotheads on both sides--" He stopped.

I said, "And that's what you wanted to tell me?"

I couldn't see what was so secret about some committee of merchants forty-four years ago, trying to arrive at a half-assed private peace, so they could continue to sell shoes and do business with each other, and make money.

Abdallah went on, "Then, four years ago, in seventy-three, after the Yom Kippur War, he asked me if we could continue to talk." The hot bony palm massaged my knee tenderly, absently. "So I said, 'All right.'"

"Talk about what?" I tried removing my knee, but he had grabbed it with alarmingly powerful fingers.

"Some things ... that people wanted to pass along ... after seventy-three ... first we talked about the things ... before we let them know ..." His eyes were unfocused, his words disjointed, as if some inner censor was wary of revealing too much.

"Let who know?" I suddenly began to pay attention. A gust of breeze came through the open window, carrying in it the smell of rotting garbage.

"Whoever asked us to pass it along. What we thought of it."

The understanding inside me was like a sudden radiance. "You acted as go-between? The two of you? That's what you came to tell me?"

A nod, slow and deliberate.
"Hada hoo."
That's it.

"Ach," said Fauzi, in pain and disgust, but whether at the stupidity of Abdallah and my father, or at Abdallah's foolishness for revealing it to me now, was left unclear.

"But--but why you? Why him?"

"Because he was no longer in--in any of this--" Abdallah paused. "And I--because I was never in any way--" A longer pause, now. "Our word was good."

"Merchants' words," Fauzi said in disgust.

"Merchants have honor," Abdallah said. "When we give our word, it's given."

Ten paces away, two new waiters conferred with each other.

Abdallah said, "In this place, many people want to tell something to the other side. It goes through embassies, through Americans; once the message gets over there, no one can say he believes it. Why? It came from the Jews. A message arrives here, same thing. No one wants to believe. Why? Because it's from Arabs."

"Because it's from Arabs," said Fauzi. "We are worms, only now the worms are growing teeth."

"But who?" I said, not looking at Fauzi. "Who wants to send messages?"

"Everyone," said Abdallah. "Fatah, someone in Egypt, maybe in Lebanon, Iraq--" At the Arab names, the very air in the car seemed to congeal into a different substance, heavy with danger and expectation.

I said, "You passed messages back and forth?"

"Yes. I to our people, Isrool to yours. But first we would talk, to decide if they were true--no, not true--but--" He searched for the word.

"Sincere," I said. I felt myself reddening again. Talking with an Arab about sincerity.

"Hada hoo
. We gave our word, together with the message. That we believe it's sincere, what the message says."

"And if they lied to you?"

"Then next time we don't take messages, from those who lied."

I said, "You mean, you and--my father--you two they would believe, but not each other?"

He nodded with placidity. "Yes, yes.
Hada hoo."
He had extracted a chain of yellow worry beads out of his pocket, and was now rolling them between his fingers.

It was so absurd and yet so very like the Middle East that I knew it must be true. Those who would lie without remorse to a whole people would not lie to a man whose word of honor they respected.

There was a pause. Fauzi twirled the radio dial, then raised the volume. A commercial for Reznik chocolate came on the air. Something to do with sweet delight.

I said, "So that's why he was killed, you think?" I was surprised how normal my voice was. How ordinary.

The commercial ended with a jingle, and flowed into an old song by the Nachal army band, about preferring guns to socks.

Fauzi hissed, "They couldn't let it go on, all these generals. I told him, the Seddiqi. You think anyone here wants to talk? To Arabs?"

I felt my face darken. "And you, you want to talk?"

"Quiet," said Abdallah.

But I was in full flight now. "In forty-eight," I snarled, "you could've made peace, then in fifty-six, we asked you again, and in sixty-seven, after every fucking war we asked you, but you--" I stopped. Who was "we"? I wasn't even a citizen here anymore. Both he and Abdallah were. Arabs, but citizens.

Fauzi raised his hand, the fingers spread, and slapped it against his neck. "Talk? Lying on the ground with your foot on our throat and we'll talk? And honor? Where's honor?"

"Fauzi, start the car," said Abdallah.

I turned to him. "What did you talk to him about, when you saw him--last?"

"Like the week before it ... There was--something someone wanted to ask, of the Egyptians."

"Ask what?"

A shrug. I saw he was considering something, as before, as if wondering if he should go on.

Fauzi let up on the clutch; there was a scratchy sound and the car lurched ahead.

I said, "And he, my father, he gave you this message? To pass along?"

"Yes."

"What kind of message?"

"Something, from someone old, he's no longer in the government. A kibbutznik. Maybe someone in the government gave him the question, and asked him to ask it."

I waited, but obviously he wasn't going to tell me who it was.

"Who was it for?" I asked at last.

Abdallah tapped his cane. "For Sadat."

The fingers left my knee, or maybe I had jerked my knee away. And all at once Abdallah began to talk. I listened in stunned silence as he spoke of messages, and suggestions of meetings, mutual visits, a grand gesture.

Fauzi said over his shoulder, "And leave us Palestinians rotting in the ditch."

Abdallah stopped talking and folded his hands on his chest, and once more had become just a dried up old Arab with a narrow unshaven face and a blue-black bow tie knotted crookedly at the throat of his
abbaya
.