The Zigzag Kid (29 page)

The clock on the wall at Lola's showed a quarter to seven. I got up and took another shower, to wash away the perspiration of the sultry day. How can anyone stand to live in Tel Aviv, I wondered. Lola had already gone to the theater, leaving Felix a long list of “Instructions for minding the house, the kitchen, and Nonny.” You might have thought I was three years old and made of glass. Felix was sitting in the living room, reading the newspaper by the light of the Chinese lamp. He was wearing a red bathrobe tied with a sash. His hair was freshly shampooed, combed in neat little white waves, yellowing at the ends. When he saw me, he stood up, folded the newspaper, and asked what I wanted to eat.

There was tension in his voice, I noticed. We set the table in the kitchen, neither of us speaking. I sat down. I got up. I wanted to call home. Felix said the omelette would be ready in a minute and it would be a shame not to eat it hot. I said I just wanted to tell them I was okay at home, it wouldn't take long. Felix said all the lines to Jerusalem would probably be busy at this hour. He spoke fast and sounded firm. I sat down again. Why would the lines be busy? He served my omelette, garnished with a crown of pimiento and a sprig of parsley, like an artist's signature. He must have missed the good old days, with thirty guests for dinner.

“Is okay this way, Amnon?”

“Sure. That's style, eh?”

There was a wan smile on his lips. I was alarmed. Whenever Felix was down like this, I felt as if someone were trying to blow out the candle we'd succeeded in lighting together. I reminded him how the night before we had charged on the bulldozer and made the rampart fall.

“So what you want to do tonight?” he interrupted absentmindedly.

I returned the question: “What do you want to do?”

“You can go home, if you want.”

“What? Are you kidding? Quit now?” I was just starting to enjoy myself.

“We don't have to,” he sighed. “You decide.”

“I'd like to stay like this forever.” I laughed. “Only, I have a bar mitzvah in a few days. What did Dad tell you? What did the two of you decide?”

“Once again, I tell you, Amnon: is for you to decide.”

That was a strange answer. As though he was avoiding my question.

“Wait a minute: what if I decided that we should stay together for a week? Or a month? And that I won't go to school anymore, that we'll just roam around at night and do things?”

Gravely Felix answered, “For me that is greatest compliment.”

But his answer sounded wrong. Dad would never let him keep me. A little warning bell started ringing inside me. People always say that it rings in their heads. With me, it rang in my stomach, just under my heart and to the right.

Felix wandered around the kitchen. He washed the glasses, he retied the sash of his bathrobe a few times. He opened the refrigerator and shut it…

I stopped eating and watched him. What was the matter?

“By the way, Amnon,” he said, with his back to me, “there is something we must to talk about, you and I. Just we two. Before we go on.”

“What is it? Is anything wrong?” Oh please, don't let anything be wrong, I prayed, don't let anything spoil this beautiful dream. Just a little while longer, another day or two. In any case, I had to be back by Saturday. Felix was searching for something. He found it on his chair. The newspaper. The folded newspaper. He threw it on the table, right into my plate. What was the matter with him? He indicated that I should open the paper and read. What was I supposed to be looking for? It didn't take me long to find out.

In big red letters the headline screamed:
SEARCH FOR BOY'S KIDNAPPER WIDENS
.

And underneath, in heavy black letters: “Police have called for total news blackout. Kidnapped boy is reportedly the son of senior police officer.”

Below was a picture of the engineer standing outside the train in the middle of a field. And then I read another line: “The father of the boy is organizing the search. The identity of the kidnapper is known. The boy's life may be in danger.”

I was very cold. That I remember. I felt cold all over, as if someone had snipped me out of a warm, glowing picture with a pair of frosty scissors.

“What's this?” I asked. Or said. I didn't have the energy to perk my voice up into a question.

“I tell you story,” said Felix wearily. His eyes were closed.

“What is this …” I asked again, my voice trembling like the newspaper in his hands. The words “boy's life in danger” were flashing at me. On the table, between me and Felix, lay a large bread knife. I couldn't take my eyes off it.

“Did you kidnap me?” I asked cautiously. I couldn't believe it. I knew all along, only I hadn't wanted to understand.

“You might say that,” he answered. He still hadn't opened his eyes. His face looked pinched and drawn.

“You actually kidnapped me?” My voice cracked.

“You choose to come with me,” he said.

He was right. I was the one who'd approached him on the train and asked, “Who am I?”

“It is long story … very complicated,” said Felix, leaning against the wall. “But if you don't wish to hear it, tell me now.”

I felt numb. No emotions or sensations. I didn't want to exist anymore. Going home was out of the question. How could I go home to Dad after what I'd done? Had all my adventures with Felix actually been crimes? Yes, crimes. I had committed crimes. The buzzing bored
through my head, directly into my left eye. I. deserved the pain. But how did it happen? Was it coincidental? And did Dad plan any of the things I did? And if he didn't know, then he wouldn't come and leave a big fat tip for the big fat waiter, which made me Felix's accomplice in all those crimes. How could I have believed him? What's the matter with me? Who am I, indeed?

And why had I enjoyed it all so much?

“Why did you kidnap me?” I asked, carefully pronouncing the word “kidnap,” which sounded horribly ruthless all of a sudden.

He didn't reply.

“Why did you kidnap me?!” I shouted. He shuddered, looking old and weak suddenly.

“Because … because … I want to tell you something,” he said.

“Tell me what? Why are you lying?” I shouted, so loudly that I startled myself. The knife was very close to his hand.

“This is story about you, Amnon. Also about me, but mostly about you.”

“And what are you going to do to me now? Ask Dad for ransom money?”

Now I understood: this was his revenge on Dad! That's right. He was a criminal, he had hinted as much, but I was too stupid to understand: he wanted revenge on Dad for arresting him and sending him to prison! But where was my guilt in all this? What had I ever done to him?!

And what about their secret agreement to train me as a criminal so I would make a better detective, what about their manly handshake? I had made it all up.

“I want nothing from your father. I do not need his money.”

“What do you want from him, then?”

“His son.”

“What for?!”

The question erupted from inside me with a howl, rending my heart in two. Because I had liked him and I believed he liked me, before I realized I was kidnapped. But everything had gone wrong, everything was twisted now. How could I have believed for one minute that Dad planned the operation, when, in fact, the only arrangements he and
Gabi had made were for a magician, a contortionist, a policeman in disguise, and a phony prisoner to come aboard the train—which is not a whole lot, compared to what I did with Felix.

“You kidnapped me for revenge,” I said, spitting out the word with disgust. “To get revenge on Dad. That's why!”

He shook his head and closed his eyes. I had the feeling he was afraid to open them again, because he, too, was sorry everything was spoiled. “No, Amnon. I kidnap you only because I want to see you and be with you. This is not connected to your father. It is something just between you and me.”

“Me? Come on! Why me? I'm not famous. I'm just a kid! You wouldn't get anything for me if I weren't his son!”

“Amnon, go if you want—you are free,” said Felix. “I am not holding you against your will. But I want you should know: only you are important to me here. Not your father. Only you, Amnon.”

“What, you mean if I want to, I can just get up and run away?”

“You don't must to run away. Running away is only when people are chasing after you.”

“And you won't… chase after me?”

At last he opened his eyes. They were veiled with sadness, resignation. I believed his eyes, but I couldn't help remembering all the people he had fooled with those same eyes.

“The way you look at me now …” he said, pressing his head with his hands and shaking it, “this is my great punishment for seventy years of lies—your eyes, the way you look at me …”

I got up. My knees were trembling, and so were my arms. I tried to hide it from him. I didn't want him to see I was afraid. I walked away slowly, never turning my back. He groaned. I could see how much it hurt him that I didn't trust him anymore. How could I trust him?

“I'm going,” I said.

“You decide. I always say to you, you decide when this game is over.”

I backed off toward the door.

“I must to tell you important story,” he said quietly. “Story about your life.”

To hell with you and your stories, I thought. You spoiled the beautiful dream, and now everything seems ugly and frightening.

“I only want for you to know one thing,” said Felix. “If you give me few more hours, not long, just until tomorrow morning, I can tell you this story.”

“And if I don't? If I don't believe you?”

With every word I said he bowed his head lower, as though stricken. “Don't go. No one else can tell you this story.”

“I bet you'd swear to that.”

I bumped into the door handle. I was sure that it was locked, that the key was clenched in his hand, that he would dangle it before my eyes soon, smiling like a maniac, and that would be the end of me, as it was for the other children he had brought to this house. And then my picture would appear on a missing-persons notice, and the police would ask for volunteers to help search for me, and they would find my remains in the Jerusalem Forest.

“No, Amnon, I don't swear anything to you,” said Felix softly. “To you I only promise.”

But the key was in the lock. I turned it and the door opened. I skipped out, slammed the door behind me, and bounded down the stairs. I cleared three or four steps at a time. For a second I imagined he was hot on my trail, and I may have screamed. My hair bristled, my body bristled. But he wasn't running after me. I tore out of the building. It was dark in the street. Cars were passing with their headlights on. I rested against a fence, panting like a dog. All the while I kept thinking, I'm free! I'm free! But I felt no joy somehow, only terrible pain and humiliation. I remember that the air was fragrant with honeysuckle, that it seemed like a perfectly ordinary evening. No one could have guessed what I was going through then, and the fate I had eluded. A couple passed, arm in arm, and then a man with a dog. He carried the newspaper with the headline. What would he do if I stopped him now and revealed that I was the one, the boy the whole country was searching for?

The man walked past me, but the dog dawdled along and sniffed my
shoes. It looked up suspiciously and started growling at me, as dogs are wont to do. But the man tugged at the leash and dragged the dog off before it could give me away.

I walked quickly up the sidewalk, thinking I would need a whole year's quiet to unravel the tangled events of the past two days. What shocked me most was that I had never realized what was going on around me. That while so many people were searching frantically for me, I had been lost in my own little fiction.

As usual.

Idiot. What was I thinking? That Dad would place me in the hands of a certified criminal so he could teach me some tricks of the trade, offer me a speed course in lawbreaking? My own father, who'd tried so hard all his life to abide by the law and fight against crooks like this Felix character.

What was the matter with me? How could I have made such a mistake? It was as if I'd been sidetracked in my sleep but went on smiling like an imbecile, believing everything I saw, when it was all a lie. A lie and a crime. And after so many lies, I had deceived myself.

The kiosk on the corner was still open. I glanced cautiously at the headlines as I scuttled by, all of them seemingly about me, though the only information they revealed was that I'd been kidnapped. They didn't even give my name, because the police were keeping that a secret.

Kidnapping. Kidnapped. Life in danger. I muttered the words to myself. They sounded tinny. They had nothing to do with Felix's treatment of me. And my life was not in danger. Why did the papers lie like that? To attract readers.

I crossed the street and hurried on, where I didn't know. To get away from Felix. To run as far as possible from the danger in him. What was he doing now, alone, in the kitchen? He had escaped, no doubt, slipped out like a shadow, and was already searching for another sucker.

I circled around, back to the street behind Lola Ciperola's house. I just wanted to see whether he would try to get out through the window. He didn't, though. I figured I'd better report to the police. I could ask to call from the kiosk. I didn't have any money on me, but maybe
I could explain to the man that I was the kid in all the newspapers, the victim of the kidnapping. Right.

I slowed down. Such things required serious consideration. I wondered whether Micah knew already, whether the rest of my classmates had guessed that it was me. The ones who'd never been my friends, who used to make fun of me and Dad and our silly detective games and the way we saluted each other, and the ranks he did or did not confer on me, the “police mascot,” who couldn't even get accepted into the traffic patrol for reasons A, B, and C.