The English Teacher (7 page)

The official looked up. She saw his black eyes behind thick-frame spectacles, and his tie, which was carelessly knotted, and she had time to think of what her father would have said about somebody going to work like that. “Where did you come here from?” he asked her, and she misunderstood him because of his accent and said she'd arrived just now. “No! Not when, from where?” She blushed. In training they had told her there was nothing worse than offending people in authority, the ones who think they know. All she needs is someone having a
go at her now. “Sorry,” she said, “I didn't understand you. I'm coming from Italy.” He flipped through her passport.

“First time here?”

“Yes.”

“Ever been to Israel?”

If Rachel had been a regular tourist, or a businesswoman concealing a visit to the Holy Land, perhaps she would have been confused. Nothing wrong with being confused, so long as there's nothing to hide. She was ready for this question, since Ehud trained her to answer it when they rehearsed the questions to be asked on entry to the destination country. “Not yet. It isn't far from here, is it?” she responded. The official smiled back at her and wanted to know what hotel she was staying at. Rachel didn't tell him to look at the document she had handed over with the passport. She repeated the name of the hotel twice and saw him checking that the details matched what she'd written. The official extended his hand to the heavy stamps, put a finger in the middle of the page, and stamped the page alongside the entry visa. She took the passport that was handed to her and began moving toward the baggage area. This is only the first hurdle, she told herself. Too soon to feel relieved. As if to prove to her that something unexpected can always happen, a male voice was heard behind her: “Lady, lady!” She carried on walking as if the call weren't addressed to her, and was alarmed when she saw the official who checked her passport overtaking her in an ungainly run and stopping in front of her. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, and handed her the customs declaration that she had left on the counter. Rachel thanked him and cursed herself.

The suitcase was already awaiting her on the conveyor belt, and Rachel gave due credit to the host country, and to what would for the next few years be her home port. Some of the passengers who arrived
with her on the flight had already collected their belongings and were gathered in three ragged lines leading to the customs counters. She walked slowly and tried to take in more and more of her surroundings before choosing the customs officer who would check her out. She had nothing that could incriminate her, but she wanted to locate a friendly and cooperative person. The young and pleasant-looking customs man proved that it's a bad bet to anticipate behavior according to outward appearance. He took the document, studied it, and asked her to bring her suitcase forward. She took it in both hands and lifted it onto the bench between them. The customs man looked at the suitcase and then at Rachel, who stood facing him. “Open it,” he said, and he checked all the contents meticulously, especially the toiletries, packed in a trendy pouch that she bought herself as a leaving present. “This is yours?” he asked, and held up the emptied pouch. “Yes,” she said, and realized that it might seem too chic compared with the student clothes she was wearing. “Have you brought anything else?” She showed him her handbag. He signaled to her she was free to go.

Rachel took the case and headed to the automatic door to exit the terminal. She felt the sweat in her armpits and figured a thousand eyes were fixed on her back. And then she stood outside, under an awning, and all around her there was commotion. The sun was high above the buildings surrounding the airport, and the Arabic signs, which she couldn't yet read, seemed to be speaking to her.

A new sense of power overwhelmed her. She resisted the temptation to laugh uproariously, to tell casual passersby she had done it. She was taking her first steps in a place where, as far as she knew, no Israeli had been before her. Uniformed drivers tried to persuade her to travel with them, a sweating porter offered his services, and the tourist who arrived with her invited her to share the cost of a limo. Rachel
rebuffed them politely and stood in the long queue at the taxi station and enjoyed the quiet moments granted to her as she waited.

S
HE SAT
DOWN ON THE DOUBLE
bed, kicked off her shoes, and lay down on her back. The phone on the table came to life, and she counted the number of rings before answering, exactly as she had been taught. A woman asked her in English if she needed anything, and suggested she try the newly opened sauna. “A few steps and two floors in the lift, and you'll enjoy an experience like no other. Why don't you try it?” the pleasant voice pressed her, and promised lockers, total privacy, and all chargeable to the room. She promised to think about it, and when she put the receiver down she stayed sitting by the phone. It was crucial to think clearly and stick to basic logic. She repeated to herself the words that Ehud had drummed into her again and again. This is not an attempt to tempt her into leaving her room with her passport and cash stowed in one of the drawers, nor a tactic designed to make it possible to steal them from the room safe. They could have photographed the passport at the border crossing, or at the reception desk. If they want, they'll find a way of stealing it and blackmailing her. The hotel is marketing its new services, that's all. This isn't surveillance, they're not stalking her. But suddenly it seems to her the walls are closing in, and whoever is pacing around in the hall by the door of her room might as well come inside. She took a deep breath and began to unpack. Later she told Ehud that the situation reminded her of the interrogation that she went through at the end of the course, but at the time she did not know why.

T
HE “OPERATION” THAT SHE UNDERTOOK ON
that occasion wasn't a simple one, and her second visit to the Haifa Port Authority didn't go well. She was supposed to make contact with the public relations department, and con her way into a guided tour of the bay and the docks. The instructor who prepared her for the exercise asked her to gather information about the naval base and security provisions against potential seaborne assault. Rachel studied the documentation given to her and wondered how a young Canadian who came to Israel just for one week was supposed to gain access to secure installations. The instructor said that was her problem, that was what the training was for, and he left her in the modest hotel room that she'd been assigned for the duration of the course to prepare her cover story. She decided to pose as a zoology student making a comparative survey of marine pollution levels in different ports, and after a few days spent in the university library researching the subject she printed up an ornate business card and letters of recommendation from some institutions in Canada and told the instructor she was ready. It soon became clear to her that obtaining authorization for a guided tour was going to be a lengthy process and her explanation of the urgency, the need to send the results to her tutor in Montreal, made no impression on the clerk, who gave her a hostile look and said to her colleague in Hebrew, This tourist thinks she's entitled to everything just because she's young and beautiful.

Rachel returned to the small hotel; from its window the port was visible. She took a few pictures and made a point of including the Bahai Temple in the frame. From this room a lookout could make contact with an assault team out at sea, she thought, and wondered why this hadn't been included in the critical information she was meant to bring from this exercise. Then she checked again that the door was locked and the chain in place and sat down to write the
coded telegram summarizing the fifth day of the operation. And then there was a knock at the door. Through the peephole she saw a workman in hotel uniform, and it was only when she opened the door that she noticed two men standing in the corridor, a policeman in uniform and beside him a muscular young man who showed her a document and asked in Hebrew if he could come in. Rachel put a hand to the collar of her blouse with an instinctive movement and asked in English what they wanted. In halting English the policeman asked her name. For a moment a list of names flashed through her head, the names she had used in various exercises and also her real name, but she gave the name on her passport. Again, the young man asked politely, in English this time, if they could come in. She made space for them and saw they were looking at the table, which was laden with the tourist brochures and publicity she had gathered in the course of the days spent in Haifa. There was nothing about the exercise that could incriminate her, no hidden gun or secret cache of explosives. Her papers were perfectly in order, and she was prepared to explain to anyone who asked what flight she had arrived on and how she had been careless and lost her ticket. “We want you to come with us to the police station. We have some questions to ask you,” said the young man, who was obviously the one running the show. “Ask your questions here,” she said to them, and wondered if the women in the Port Authority had suspected her. The crumpled bed and scattered clothes testified to what she was, a young student staying in a two-star hotel on the Carmel. “It's for your own good,” he insisted, and at her request he took from his pocket a short document written in English. She read slowly, recognized the stamps of the police department and the high court, and knew she had no choice. “Bring your things with you,” he told her. “If we let you go, we'll send you to a better hotel.” They stood beside her, and while she packed her things they checked
every item. They seemed to be looking for something in particular. When she said she needed to go to the bathroom, they told her to leave the door open and promised not to peek. As far as she remembers, she wasn't afraid. She had a number abroad she could contact and leave a message, and also a local one, which was ostensibly of a friend who lived in Israel. They didn't suggest she call someone and she didn't ask. As they were about to leave, the police officer surprised her—he took handcuffs from his belt and signaled to her to hold out her hands. She refused and said she had rights, but the young man told her not to cause problems and not to make them use force. When they got into the vehicle they sat her between them, and their thighs pressed against hers. The long minutes of the car ride she spent reviewing her actions since she allegedly arrived in the country, and preparing for the questions she'd be asked. The car stopped outside a dark and menacing gate, and when it opened with a loud creak, the taciturn driver drove on and stopped by another door. Pale floodlights illuminated the police station, adjacent to an old British building, and Rachel couldn't rid herself of the feeling that this was a genuine arrest, although at any moment she could tell her jailers to phone her course instructor. The two of them helped her out of the car and walked beside her along a dark and desolate corridor. Only the sounds of their footsteps and the wheels of her suitcase, which the policeman was dragging, broke the hostile silence that pervaded the building.

A fat policewoman handed her a gray blouse and trousers and a pair of shabby plastic flip-flops and told her to change her clothes. Rachel thought perhaps it was worth arguing, and telling the female cop that detainees don't wear prison clothing, but at once she realized there was no way a Canadian tourist would know what was and what wasn't correct procedure in Israel. She held the clothes in her fingers as if they were unclean and it seemed her face expressed the outrage
that the policewoman expected to see. The woman pointed silently to a dirty curtain. She went with Rachel to the other side of the curtain and turned away while Rachel quickly undressed and put on the clothes she'd been given. The clothes were too big for her and were smelly, and she tried to fight against the feeling of powerlessness that the tattered jail uniform was imposing on her. “How long will I be here?” she asked in a high and indignant voice, and tried to express all the anger of someone sure she is in the right. The policewoman held her silence and the young man who arrested her said it all depended on her. “You know I have a flight tomorrow?” Rachel said to him, and tried to look angry. He shrugged his shoulders and said this wasn't his concern.