The Rainy Day Man: Contemporary Romance (Suspense and Political Mystery Book 1) (25 page)

He did not say anything, merely finished his cocoa.  His
adam's apple rose and fell rapidly, which I regarded as a sign of yearning and sadness.

"One of your women," a tired voice said behind me, "wants to talk to you, providing you pay for the call."

I grabbed the receiver.  "Are you prepared to accept a reverse charge call from Paris?" the operator asked, "from a Madame Joubert?"

"Yes," I said, "I'll take the call."  Jonathan gave me a pained look.  Hannah stroked his head. 

"Monsieur Vincent?" the concierge shrieked.  "Monsieur Vincent.  I went there."

"Well?"

"It's far away, past the
Pѐ
re Lachaise cemetery.  On the way back I took a cab, otherwise I wouldn't have managed to wash the stairs this evening.  They were so nice, those people, they phoned for me and ordered a cab..."

"I'll pay.  Now tell me, what does the house look like?  Who lives there?"

"No one.  There's just a shop there, actually a warehouse...  Of old books, that is..."

"Just a minute!"
I tore the next day's page from the calendar on the wall and took a pen from my pocket.  "Now tell me!"

"It's an old building, very dirty, not like mine.  In the staircase there was only one mailbox and a door with a bell on the second floor.  I rang, but no one answered.  I went around the whole building and didn't find any other entrance, just that shop.  So I went in and asked the salesman.  He didn't know anything.  The cashier said that I must mean the old woman who lived upstairs.  He didn't know what she was called but when I said that name,
Khamis, he said that she may have been an Arab."

I wrote everything down.  "Is that all he said?"

She was quiet for a moment, then said:  "You'll have to tell him that she's...she's dead."

"Oh," was all I could say.

"I'm really sorry.  It happened just over a month ago, and she was very old, that's what they said, and they were sad and so very nice, they phoned and ordered..."

"A cab..."

"Yes, I've only just got back and the whole day's gone...  Will you bring me the money or send it?"

"I'll send it. 
How much?"

"I haven't worked it out."

"Fifty francs?"

"Everything has gone up since you left
and..."

"A hundred?"

"A hundred and fifty would be more appropriate, Monsieur Vincent, and may God bless you and the old lady who is with Him now..."

"Thank you, Madame
Joubert, good night."

"To you, too, Monsieur Vincent, good night."

Jonathan shifted in his place, waiting.  Hannah was on guard. 

"Go to sleep," she commanded
him, "you have to get up for school tomorrow."

"Just a few minutes more," I pleaded, "in a few days I'm going back..."

"You said you'd stay," Jonathan said, "the day before yesterday, at lunch."

Hannah looked at me in silence.

"It's not working out..." I began, but he was already in retreat.  I started after him.  Hannah moved and blocked the doorway with her body. 

When we heard the door of his room close she said, "Now you've begun doing to him exactly what you did to me all these years."  Anger rose into her face.  "You're a terrible pain, Danny Simon; you destroy whatever you touch.  But there's one thing that comforts me - you're also your own punishment.  I know how tormented you are..."

***

After she had gone back to her room I fell into the armchair and switched off the reading lamp.  In the darkness I was not at all sure about what I had preached to Jonathan.  In front of me were ranged all the lies of my life and the victims of them.  And behind, enveloped in embryonic mists, waited the lies I was yet to tell and wounds that I was yet to inflict.

It was then that I made up my mind not to go to Dura, whatever the Head might do.  It was even clear that no trial or punishment could outweigh the alienation, injury and pain of my son.  Even to remain at home was not repugnant when I realized my fierce desire to knock on Hannah's and Jonathan's doors to volunteer to make them happy with my presence from now on.  I put my legs up on the table, wrapped myself in a blanket and waited, as submissive as a child who has seen the error of his ways, for a sleep that would appease.

I knew that it would not come.

There would always be Dura and there would always be Yvonne, a place and a woman to draw me with the promise to calm the overwhelming tension within me.  The force drawing me back to Dura, to my role as munitions expert-cum-saboteur, deceiving lover and vessel destined for controlled destruction, was the same that had caused me to flee from it three days ago. The only consolation was the thought that I was going back to grapple with the very weakness I had run away from.

Weary sleep spread through my limbs, intermingled with a sense of apprehension:  I would have to be careful.  The person who was so anxious for me to return to Dura not only knew those weak points, he was counting on them.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

              Dura was again something else.  The light had diminished and the trees had discarded their leaves.  The autumn, which in Tel Aviv was most noticeable as a slight change of atmosphere, was reflected here in a violent stripping which revealed nature's skeleton.

At the Athenaeum, soldiers went up and down stairs, dragging furniture, hammering at walls and giving one another orders over the loudspeaker.  A new notice announcing a 'Storeroom' was hanging on the door of my room; the lock had also been changed.

I walked down a corridor soaked with water overflowing from the toilets.  Through various open doors I saw new arrivals engaged in all sorts of surprising activities.  One of the rooms was being painted white.  Soldiers were sawing away parts of the doorframe to another room to allow a metal cupboard to go through it.  On the door of Scheckler's old office hung a notice: 'Commander's Office.'  I knocked lightly on the door, pressed the handle and went in.

             
The captain was standing at the window, inspecting the little world he had created in the garden.  As I came in he pointed down to a group of paratroopers standing along a long, white rope, passing bricks from one to another.  A short distance away from them several uneven rows of soldiers were marching in haphazard parade under Scheckler's command.

             
“Dis-miss" Scheckler yelled into the loudspeaker.  The soldiers moved off in various directions.  Most were carrying various hoes, spades and pickaxes.  "Group A - begin digging on the left-hand side," Scheckler called out. Group A was lost in the commotion.

"My room..."  I said.

"We're using it now."

"I sleep there."

"We've arranged something else for you," he cupped his hand over his mouth and called outside: "Scheckler!"

"Coming,"
came the reply.  The captain smiled.  "He's so efficient I decided to keep him here..."

Only then did I notice the absence of the sound of engines in the general bustle.  "What's happened to the garage?"

"Went back to Israel.  Only Scheckler stayed on."

The main event was nearing, then, and would take place within a few days.  Had the tin been stolen from the rabbit warren?  The door behind me opened.  Without turning, I could recognize the nervous step. 

The captain called out, "Sit down with us, Scheckler," and flapped his beret to drive a stream of flies away.  "Where have these come from?"

"From the wine cellar,"
Scheckler said.  "There are thousands more there."  I turned my head to look at him.  His staff-sergeant insignia had vanished, and was now replaced by a fig-leaf: he now held the rank of sergeant-major.

"Where's he going to sleep?"  The captain pointed to me.

Scheckler gave me a blank look, without even the usual squirming.  "With everyone else, I think?"

"By what right did you take over my room?"

The captain turned to face me.  "I'm the commander here," he said calmly and glanced at Scheckler.  "You haven't given him the new instructions..."  He rifled through the desk drawer, the key to which still lay in my pocket.  "Here are my orders," he read out from a telegram form.  "One, you are subject to our command, and two," he gave me a confident look, "you are not allowed to leave the place."

"Do you intend to imprison me here?"

"I presume that there won't be any need, that you'll understand for yourself that it's not healthy to be too involved with the locals."

I went over to the window.  In the garden, in various shades of khaki, was a far larger force than was needed in a remote village on the edge of no man's land.  Was I still the only one who knew what everyone was waiting for?

"And supposing a bullet is fired accidentally," I said, watching his face closely," or someone simply reacts to a stupid provocation and an incident develops?"

He shrugged his shoulders.  "It's war.  Things like that happen..."

"And the price?"

"The price..." he repeated angrily.  "You Arab-lovers forget there's a price to be paid for everything you get...  You live here without fear and have time to question the price only thanks to people like me, people who don't hesitate to pay it when necessary..."

"I didn't get anything for nothing either."

"Yes?" His voice grew hoarse.  "How many funerals have you attended?  How many parents have you paid condolence visits to?  And what would you say to those parents? 'I'd be prepared to negotiate for peace, but some stupid officer decided that we should fight...?'  Here," he struck his forehead, "a whole cemetery has
accumulated, dozens of boys whose lives could have been bargained for, maybe even successfully.  The whole way from the border to this village is full of mountains, roads, strategic junctions, key points.  What do you think they're called?  Beit A-Din Junction?  Sil village?  The Beaufort?  No, they're called Uri and Hezi and Motti and Shai and Zvika and Yossi and Ron.  Friends, officers, soldiers.  Don't you think we owe them something?"  Angrily, he picked the papers up from his desk, fitted his beret on top of his knitted skullcap and left the room.

"Why do you annoy him?"
Scheckler said in a low voice, "he's a terrific fellow really..."

"And you," I touched the insignia on his wrist.  "What's happened to you?  Have you left business and gone straight?"

"It's my chance," he answered, embarrassed.  "Till now I was in the army's asshole..."

             
“Where do I sleep?" I interrupted him.

He opened the door in silence, let me go through it in front of him and led me, as on that first day, along the long carpeted corridor, which was now muddy and slippery.  In the courtyard, tents had been pitched in straight, dense rows.  Numbers had been painted in whitewash on the flap of each.  In tent number thirty-seven the flaps had been rolled up, exposing four bare camp-beds. 

"So that you don't feel underprivileged," he said suddenly, "everyone sleeps like this, the captain too."

Maybe, then, the Athenaeum is the target of the planned explosion? The thought went through my mind.  I threw my rucksack onto one of the beds, beside a pile of blankets. 

"Who else is in this tent?"

"No one," he gave me a benevolent smile, "just you."

I turned my back on him and fiddled with the buckles of my rucksack.  His shadow continued to hover over me.  I turned round.

"Have you been told to guard me?"

His voice oozed appeasement.  "I only wanted to say: you'd better not take any risks; since you left there have been changes..."

I sat down on the bed.  "So I see," with my hand I gestured toward the bustle of activity around us.

"I'm talking about her,” he breathed.  "Something's happening there.  The vegetables in the garden are drying out, the dogs wander about freely and she spends most of her time in the church..."

***

I spent the following hours idly, dozing off every now and again.  I tried to think, to plan, even to fall asleep.  But it was all in vain.  Snatches of dreams were lost in the dust and noise.  Together with the suspicions and apprehensions I had brought with me from Tel Aviv, everything moved into a general nightmare, a kind of journey of chastisement, which aroused a great wave of anxiety and depression within me.

If I had hoped to slip away under cover of darkness, that was also foiled when, towards dusk, huge projector lights were switched on up on the roof of the Athenaeum.  A flood of light fell across the garden, along the paths of patrolling guards, who walked in pairs along the fences and the wall.  One floodlight wandered over the nearby streets.  I measured its route on my watch.  Forty seconds of light each minute.  Even if I managed to slip through a part of the fence which had not yet been blocked, there was no doubt that I would be discovered on the street.

In a nearby house a light suddenly went on at a window.  Inside I could see two women, maybe a mother and daughter, folding an enormous sheet.  Their movements were coordinated, suffused with the careless confidence of total belongingness to one another and, together, to that place.  A tremendous envy suddenly engulfed me - confidence and belongingness.  All my limbs ached with a kind of communal erosion.  The sharp pain of an old cavity pierced one of my molar teeth.

Then the movement of one of the floodlights lost its way and lingered in the middle of the street.  Tiny figures could be seen, bent under bulky bundles:  children carrying pillows.  A little further on several women trod with rolled-up bedding on their heads.  Men were carrying suitcases on their shoulders.  The loudspeaker at the center of the encampment issued measured orders.  From the tents around me armed paratroops went quickly out to the fence.

"What's happening?" I stopped one of them.  "Where are those people going?"

"To sleep somewhere else.
  It's dangerous to be our neighbors."

"But everything's quiet..."

He waved his hand dismissively.  "They always know beforehand.  When we were in Sidon they began to move to other places early in June.  The trouble began right after..."

For a moment I remained standing and watching the parade, proceeding with restrained urgency, like the evacuation of a forest before an earthquake or a fire.  Then I examined the movement of the floodlights again and the density with which the soldiers were posted along the fences. 

"Do not approach the fence," the loudspeaker instructed the marchers.  I knew that here was my chance.

I returned to the tent and pushed my rucksack under the bed.  After that, with blankets on my arms, I slipped out to a corner of the garden.  In the interval between two rounds of the searchlight I threw the blankets over the wall.  I waited for
another four or five rounds, then carefully jumped over, onto the strip of bare ground between the wall and the street.  When the next group of itinerants passed I placed the blankets on my head and joined them.

The Athenaeum looked like an enchanted spaceship, scattering light from a nucleus enclosed in darkness.  Along the fence, the faces of the soldiers were in shadow; they talked among themselves in subdued voices.  Those around me were silent.  Somewhere, in a cellar of my memory, sprung a forgotten recollection of a similar walk. 
A film, maybe a book.  Beneath their bundles, children squinted at me, women peeped with downcast eyelids, the men ignored me.

With each step away from the Athenaeum another nerve in my attachment to it was severed.  Shafts of white light searched in circles along the path, reflecting in the brown eyes of the marchers.  That country became a matter of color: brown was the prevailing shade.  And now the brown people, who had been identical to one another, became familiar figures.  I recognized the shoemaker in whose shop I had tried to buy glue, the garage attendant and some of those who had been sitting in the café.  From the inhabited, safe houses at the top of the street we were watched with brown compassion.  A lorry laden with brown earth moved aside for us, a brown bicycle sped across the road.

The market square was empty.  Remnants of vegetables and refuse lay around the church steps.  I pushed open the heavy wooden door of the church.  Inside was the usual smell of incense and old furniture.  A row of candles sent a soft glow onto the marble ledge at the foot of the altar.  A dark figure leaned over them.  The gust of wind I brought in with me made the flames dance.  The figure put out its hands to shield them, but did not turn round.  Silently, I walked along the aisle.  The high ceiling amplified even the faint sound of my trouser legs as they brushed against one another.  The figure hunched its shoulders beneath a black shawl.  I went forward until I passed the front row of pews, then I stopped.

She turned her head to the side, then her body.  Her face was sallow and serious.  Around her eyes were lines of tiredness and sorrow.  I took a few steps back and sat down in a pew, which responded with a
creak.

"Go away," she said.

I stood up and took a step towards her.

"Please, go."

"I must talk to you."

She shook her head.  Among the candles, I now saw, was one of the photographs of Anton which had stood on the mantelpiece.  For a long moment my thoughts whirled haphazardly. 

Then I asked in a low voice, "How?  When?"

"Don't pretend innocence."

Bewildered and rebuked, I tried to reconstruct my offenses.

"They found his suitcase, two days after you disappeared."  Her voice splintered into light echoes which flowed between the columns.  "Michel saw you digging in the
wadi.  He had to wait two days, until the curfew ended.  Then he went down and got it out of there."

I retraced my steps and sat down in the pew.  The light of the candles shimmered in Anton's paper eyes, giving them a doubting brightness.  I tried to remember.  What the hell had that suitcase looked like?  Something small and
rectangular, made of yellow cardboard. 

"I haven't seen it since the arrest..."

"You'd better go," she said in a tired voice.  "Michel has sworn to kill you."