The English Teacher (27 page)

T
HE PLANE DESCENDED, DIPPING BELOW TH
E
thin layer of cloud. She gazed down at the city, reflexively looking for the Presidential Palace and the large buildings of the Defense Ministry. Rachel remembered the first time Rashid took her for a drive on the switchback road, and their desperate search for a secluded spot. “Stop here,” she said, and couldn't help thinking that their budding romance would provide a good excuse for coming back here with a camera—and getting shots of the fences and the perimeter walls. Rashid slowed and stopped the car by the roadside. A thin dust cloud rose behind them, and the lights of passing cars cast a murky radiance and left them in darkness. He cut the engine and doused the lights, and she knew this was unprofessional; at any moment a police patrol car might pull up alongside, or another vehicle could run into them. But she repressed these thoughts, sat with her hands between her knees, and waited for him to make the first move. She knew perfectly well this was against the rules, this wasn't what Ehud meant when he talked about cultivating friendly
relations with the locals, but a moment later she wasn't thinking, because Rashid was leaning toward her, holding her head and giving her a long kiss, and she closed her eyes and let him unfasten the buttons of her blouse.

The pilot told the cabin crew to take their seats for landing, and she fingered her passport, which she made a point of keeping in the front pocket of the denim skirt. Rachel glanced at her picture; it seemed to her she was looking at someone else. She knew she had beautiful eyes. Suitors often told her this but still lost the battle since Rashid whispered to her, after the first time, that he could see her heart through them. The eyes in the passport photograph smiled at her and kept a secret. And her eyes now? She took the miniature makeup kit from her handbag and looked at them in the mirror—sad and tired.

Long live old habits and hurrah for convention, she thought as she fixed her makeup and filled in her landing card. This time it was all true, and there was no need to remember what her name was supposed to be on this assignment. Rachel Goldschmitt, born in London, April 10, 1965. Mother's name: Eva. Father's name: Michael. Profession: Teacher. Nationality: British. So far it was all correct. She came to the box marked purpose of visit, and wrote: Expedition. If they don't understand, she'll explain it. And while writing slowly and in big letters, she told herself she had come to restore something that had been lost. And then came marital status: Single. That was true too. What could I have done differently? she was thinking as the wheels hit the runway with a loud thump. Did I not know what to expect when I abandoned Oren, my safe haven? “I'm like one of those offshore oil rigs,” he said. “Big and stable, and people can tie their boats up to it and land their helicopters on it. But in a few years from now I'll be moving on. Like the oil rig. I won't be here forever.”

“Old soldiers never die, they just fade away,” someone or other said, and she thought of Rachel Brooks, Canadian citizen born in England, who one day disappeared without a trace. Where is that Rachel, and what about the scars she left on the woman who took on her identity and did her duty until it was time for her to fade away? There are those who believe that the soul leaves the dead body and moves to a different place, but what about someone forced to leave behind a living personality, a woman who had a name and work and friends, even a lover, and one day she faded away but didn't die? I was like a snake, she thought, I shed my old skin and moved on.

The plane came to a stop and she stood and retrieved her luggage from the overhead compartment. One small case, as always, that's all she needs. Anyway, she isn't staying here long. How much time does it take to check into a hotel, wash her face, which had aged with the passage of time, pick up the phone, and tell him she's back? Rashid speaking, he'll say, and she'll want to erase the years, the lie—that unbearable weight—and tell him she still loves him.

Rachel handed her passport to the immigration officer sitting in his cubicle and smiled at him, the way she had been trained and her standard technique whenever she needed to cross a border or smuggle illicit goods. All about gaining trust. He smiled back at her and focused on the passport in front of him. No chance of anyone remembering her. Eighteen years ago she was someone else.

A moment passed. The official looked again at the passport and at her face, and she felt her heart beating steadily, as if she had nothing to reveal, as if she had nothing to hide.

“First time here?”

“Yes, and I hope it won't be the last,” she said, and it occurred to her she was actually telling the truth. Rachel Goldschmitt, British subject, is visiting this place for the first time. And that other woman?
Rachel Brooks? She doesn't know her. “Welcome home,” the official said, and she forgave his mistake.

From the start she knew she would be going to that hotel, she would try to travel step by step the way she had traveled before, and when she reaches the intersection this time, perhaps she'll choose another option. “If you lose your way,” Ehud told her once, when she had trouble finding him in the streets of Rome, “always go back to the point where we separated.”

The Arabic she remembered was enough for her to charm the driver, and he was sure that at long last a tourist had arrived who understood him, and he talked incessantly. She didn't understand what he was saying, but to her his nonstop patter was like fresh water cascading over rocks, a cataract of meaningless words in a language she had learned to love. Now and then she picked up a word she remembered, and she had no doubt he was talking about politics, the economic situation, and other things that taxi drivers the world over talk about when they're taking tourists to their hotels, and she agreed with him, saying, “Naam, naam”—yes, yes—so he wouldn't stop.

The scenery on the way to the city had changed little; it was just the trees that were taller, and the neon advertising signs were more prolific than before. She leaned back in the seat and looked up at the cloudy sky. In training they had taught her how to land a helicopter, how to check the cloud cover and the air temperature, how to choose the landing site, measure the wind speed, and ignore anything not germane to the mission. “A course in the destruction of romance,” she wrote once on the blackboard in the lecture room, and when the bewildered lecturer asked her what she meant, she said you would need to be a woman to understand. And now, she reflected, it was impossible to see the sky and the clouds without thinking of helicopters, just
as it was impossible to sit on a beach without estimating the height of the waves, and deciding whether rubber dinghies could come ashore. You even look at people differently, listen to them in another way, assessing every word and inflection. This is the punishment of the liar—the one who lies habitually can't trust anyone.

T
HE BELLBOY PUT
THE SUITCASE DOWN
on a worn divan, insisted on explaining how the air-conditioning worked, and pointed to the view from the window and seemed quite willing to carry on and on until she gave him the dollar he was expecting and sent him on his way. Rachel slumped on the bed, stared at the ceiling, remembered the fear she felt the first time she came here, and wondered how much of it remained—just a vague apprehension that everything would be as it was, a new lie replacing the old one, and she would be unable to tell the truth.

Through the closed window she heard the familiar noises of the street. She had grown accustomed to listening to the muffled clamor of the teeming city, the rustling from the room next door, footsteps in the corridor. Old habits die hard, and she was a veteran and experienced combatant, once described by the head of the Mossad as a sophisticated war machine. Rachel listened, searching for the exceptional sounds, the siren of a police car, heavy footsteps outside her door, and especially the silence. The ominous silence that falls after a black car has squealed to a stop at the entrance to the hotel and men in suits have emerged. The sound of the silence in the lobby as they go up in the lift or take the stairs, and then the waiting for the knock on the door. Because even today, when she's probably a tourist like all the rest of them, she still has something to hide. A secret has an odd quality. It doesn't grow old. It doesn't lose its value. It just becomes
harder—harder to reveal, harder to confess, harder to receive absolution for it.

And suddenly something that has been on her mind for a long time becomes clearer to her. What is the difference between this time and previous times? What thought has been with her from the moment she boarded the plane in Brussels? This time she's on her own. No one sent her, Ehud isn't waiting for her call, and the command center, with all its clever gadgetry, isn't tracking her movements on a computer-generated map and checking her contact codes. Who cares that she took the train from London to Brussels so the British wouldn't know which way their citizen was heading? Who wants to know that she got a visa from the consulate in a few hours? Who will know that she spent the night in a transit hotel where they don't check the names of guests?

She felt the isolation touching her and spreading through her limbs, and she resisted the silly urge to say something in Hebrew into the void of the room. Nobody knows I'm here, she was thinking, no one can listen to me, tell me I'm valuable to them. Rachel stood up and sighed. Her joints ached, a migraine was threatening to kick in, and she calculated the number of pills she had brought with her. She stripped slowly, put the clothes on the bed, and again the first time came to mind. The fear of hidden cameras, microphones, feeling exposed. And what has changed since then? Perhaps the confidence that age and experience bring, or perhaps it's down to fatigue, or the fact that now she's here to reveal, not to hide.

The stream of hot water washes over her, and she closes her eyes and wonders who she will see when she stands in front of the mirror. Who will promise her that everything will be okay? Ehud said nothing good just comes on its own, good things have to be made to happen. And she's ready for anything, but nothing will happen until she
begins to act. Thoughts don't move anything. She has wrapped herself in a towel before going into the cool of the bedroom, even though the curtains are closed. Modesty? Perhaps. Habit? Definitely. But she has no one to hide her body from. She lets the towel fall to the floor. There are women more beautiful than she is, there always were, but her body is long and lithe and her skin soft to the touch, and her breasts, which never suckled a child, are still as firm as they were then, when she waited for Rashid.

The lobby was empty. Late afternoon is always dead time, the right time to talk to the concierge, to survey the place at leisure and understand that the differences are in the heart, not in the structure. Not much has changed. They've made some improvements, added an outdoor pool, but they haven't succeeded in getting rid of the smell, or wiping the bored expressions from the faces of the hotel employees.