Authors: Avner Mandelman
I stared at him.
"Shoo-shoo."
This muscleman was not just a bruiser--they did not carry guns. He was an operative. Most carried their guns at the small of their backs, but a few preferred calf holsters, because they were easier to hide, and easier to draw when crouched in wait.
This was not a mere Samson. It was one with brains--the rare kind. Why the hell did they send such a high-level operative after me?
I turned the little gun over on my palm, looking for the serial number. It didn't look as if it ever had one.
The Samson spat into my face. "Son of a whore--!"
In a fit of rage I cuffed him on the temple with the gun butt, then once more on the forehead, and he toppled back, arms and legs akimbo, like a dying donkey.
I dragged him under one of the rotting boats and left him there, with the little gun stuck down the front of his pants, then stumbled quickly back the way I had come, swiping at my eyes as I ran.
Fifteen minutes later I staggered into the Shekem supermarket on Ibn Gvirol Street. No one had followed me as far as I could see, when I fought my way through throngs of shoppers, to get to the public phone. I called Yaro Ben-Shlomo, my Unit buddy.
Luckily he was in his office.
"Could you check something out for me?" I said without preamble. "I think someone really, really doesn't like me, from the Shkettim." The silent ones.
There was a brief pause.
Yaro said, "You sure?"
"Yes." I squeaked with my lips to let him know I didn't want to talk about this over the phone.
There was another pause. "All right, come by."
Less than a half hour later, after another jog all the way down Ibn Gvirol and up King Saul Boulevard, I arrived at his office, which was in a ten-story building at the edge of the Qirya, the army and Defense Ministry HQ.
Yaro's office was a bare whitewashed room with yellow files piled along the walls. Below an agency certificate from HaSneh Insurance Company hung a few framed pictures of holy places: the Cave of the Machpela, the Tomb of Rachel, the Wailing Wall. The only furniture was a metal desk, two frumpy plastic chairs, and two metal filing cabinets. An empty Howitzer canister stood in the corner, with wild brambles inside, for decoration. No photos from the Unit, no mementos. Yaro was apparently trying to make an honest living selling insurance.
He himself had gone to seed in the last seven years. The thick arms had turned to flab, the chest had migrated downward and turned into a belly, and the curly red hair was nearly all gone. Only the eyes were the same as before, small and hard and pale blue, like prayer-shawl fringe knots. He wore faded khaki pants and shirt, like the kibbutznik he had once been, like his father.
He sat quietly as I told him of the Kach thugs' clumsy attack and Amzaleg's serendipitous appearance, of Gershonovitz's warnings, and of my recent tangle with the Samson. Of the ephemeral attacker in Tveriah I said nothing. Somehow that seemed too ridiculous to mention.
"Look here," Yaro said when I finished. "I am in insurance now, I know nothing anymore. So right after you called, I phoned someone, a friend of my dad. He told me to stay away from you, that you are not kosher. Why?"
"Someone from the
shoo-shoo?
They told you that?"
"No, no. Someone ... higher up." He stared at me with his pale blue eyes. "You've been talking maybe to the PLO in Canada, or something? Playing politics?"
"Me? I am working in a bakery and screwing shiksas." I said shiksas, plural, to make it more convincing.
"So why?" He kept staring at me, his eyes unmoving, as if I were a prisoner he was interrogating.
I tried to suppress my anger. "I don't know. Maybe because I'm doing this play."
"What play?"
Apparently he read no newspapers. A typical ex-kibbutznik, reading only mushy leftist Hebrew novels and the Bible, and maybe poetry books that his kibbutz friends published through Shomron.
I repeated yet again the story about my father's will, and the play.
"That
he
wrote?" Yaro said "he" with the same inflection that everyone in the Anonymous Recon used, when speaking of my father. The Founder of the Mountain Jackals. The First Tracker. The Debba Slayer. More than once Yaro had clumsily weaseled an invitation to come home with me to visit during furloughs, just to see my father. Then he would sit mute and awestruck in our kitchen as my father poured us tea laced with 777 while my mother cooked chicken and farfel for dinner.
I hoisted a shoulder for a yes.
"What's it about?" He really read nothing.
I summarized the play for him while he fidgeted with a paper knife.
"About the Abu Jalood tall tale? So?"
"So that's it. Maybe it's the elections. Begin finally has a chance to kick Labor out, so they are jittery." It sounded idiotic in my own ears. "Or maybe they know who killed my father and they don't want me to find out." This sounded even more idiotic.
For a long moment Yaro stared at me with his protruding pale eyes. "Look," he said at last. "I'll talk to my dad."
Yaro's father, Asa'el Ben-Shlomo, had been one of my father's best friends in '48. Little Asa, they called him. He had commanded a unit operating Davidkas, the small noisy cannons, and nearly went to jail after refusing to fire on the
Altalena
, the Etzel ammunition ship that had arrived from Europe in '48, to supply the Jewish splinter forces in their rebellion. Finally they pulled him off and put in his place someone else who sunk the ship in front of Gordon Beach in Tel Aviv. A few dozen Jews were killed, but the State--so they said--was saved.
Asa retreated with his family into a kibbutz, but after a while came out and joined the
shoo-shoo
. I am told he had helped catch Eichmann. Some rumors said he and two others tracked down Josef Mengele in Brazil in '64 or '65, and killed him by themselves, slowly, against orders. I don't know if it's true. There are many other such stories about that generation of maniacs who had built the State. The Rishonim. The First Ones.
Today he is retired, back in the kibbutz. Not even kibbutz secretary. Just manager of the cowshed.
I said, "And I also need some help, something." Meaning beyond finding out what the hell was going on.
Yaro didn't say anything, just waited.
I said, "Maybe some Unit guys to watch my ass, until I finish with ... the play."
I didn't say "his play" but it hung there, between us. At last Yaro repeated, "I'll talk to my dad. Come see me Thursday. Okay? No, I'll meet you somewhere."
"Where?"
"In Cafe Piltz? About twelve?"
"All right."
Nobody followed me home, as far as I could see.
36
D
URING THE NEXT TWO
days Amzaleg dropped in on the auditions in the mornings and sat at the back of the hall, listening and watching intently, his black eyes seemingly blank yet drilling into everyone, ignoring the rhythmic shouts outside.
The first time he came I accompanied him out. On the way to his car he stopped before the factory's gate and scrutinized the two opposing camps on the sidewalk, taking in both crowds, before driving off. Whether he had come because he wanted to keep an eye on them, or just because the play had struck a chord in him, I could not tell. The second day he stayed half an hour only; and this time, like the ex-Anon that he was, he left without anyone seeing him go.
I still hadn't told him of the Samson, nor did I tell Ehud; I no longer knew whom I could trust.
The next few days passed in a daze of pain and heat. The
khamsin
had soared and Tel Aviv lay smoldering under an anvil of boiling air. Also over the last few days the Arab garbagemen had gone on strike, and piles of rotting garbage, on which thousands of blackbirds had descended, had begun to accumulate on street corners. The chocolate factory had to detail two employees to transport the factory's refuse to the municipal dump in Chiriyeh. Since one of them was also our soundman, every rehearsal had to be delayed until his return.
"Shoot those
Arabushim,"
snapped Amatzia Besser, our Debba, "then they'll learn."
"Then they'll stink, too," said Yaron Chamdi, one of our musical directors.
Ehud said nothing. Lately he had turned silent. Perhaps it was the play--he seemed consumed by it, like the plays he used to read obsessively at the Unit after operations. Every night now he pored over the script with a pencil, read and reread Kagan's notes, and made notes of his own. The last few rehearsals, Kagan had indeed begun to defer to him, often accepting his suggestions and his whispered comments, as if he, Ehud, not I, were fulfilling my father's wish.
Did Ehud know that Ruthy and I were screwing behind his back? I doubt it. We took care to display only the rawest enmity in front of him. For Ruthy this may have been easy. But for me, this subterfuge proved the sheerest hell, as bad as my black dreams, which had intensified, barely kept in check by the play. It was as if with every passing day, my proximity to Ruthy brought back old-new memories of her and of this murderous place, my father's land; and so my love for both, which I thought I had managed to shed, now gripped me anew with a hundred talons of heat. It would be hell, I knew, when I must leave the land again, and her.
I tried not to think of it.
37
T
HURSDAY MORNING
I
SKIPPED
the rehearsal and went to meet with Yaro.
I got off the bus well in advance and walked down to Gordon Beach. An open space was best for shaking off a tail. So for half an hour I walked up and down the edge of the surf, my sandals slung over my shoulder, idly watching around me.
There was no one.
At five to twelve I put on my sandals and climbed the rickety stairs from the promenade to the glass-fronted cafe.
Yaro was sitting behind a thick stone column, reading
Ha'Olam HaZeh
magazine, oblivious to the view. There was a huge pair of bare
tzitzes
on the back cover.
"Shame on you,
ya
maniac," I said.
He put the magazine down. "You clean?"
I began to say I was, but suddenly I felt a prickling at the back of my neck. "Fuck! There's someone on our ass!"
I knew I hadn't been followed, so he must have been.
Yaro said, "I asked two guys from Detachment Bett if they could give us backup."
My nose stung. "From Bett? Who?"
Detachment Bett was my brother's old outfit in the Unit. One of their specialities was waiting hours without moving, to provide covering fire if needed. You had to be a bit phlegmatic to enjoy the wait, also a bit weird.
"You don't know them. Younger guys. Two kibbutzniks, came in after you left. They said they wouldn't mind. They've heard of you."
I threw a casual glance around the high-ceilinged room. Only old farts sipping their coffees, and a few tourists. Nobody young.
"Are they outside?"
"I don't even know."
I said desperately, "Yaro, I wouldn't ask for backup if it was only the Kahane maniacs--but these
shoo-shoo
fuckers sent a Samson--"
Yaro said abruptly, "It's not the
shoo-shoo
, or Kach. I talked to Dad. He said your name came up in the Mo'adon."
I felt a trickle of fear course down my spine.
The Mo'adon, the Club, was an informal committee of the current prime minister and all former prime ministers, whoever was still alive, usually not more than three or four. It gathered only infrequently, to decide on the most important matters of state that the prime minister didn't want to handle alone; for example, major peace overtures, or takedowns abroad.
I wiped my upper lip with a finger. It felt icy.
"You sure?" I said stupidly.
"Last week."
"But why?"
"My dad said he doesn't know. Or maybe he does and he didn't want to tell me."
"Yaya," I said desperately, "these
shoo-shoo
idiots flipped! I am telling you--"
"Yah."
The warm air suddenly felt cold. There was a long silence.
Yaro said, "Dad also told me you gave up your citizenship."
I said with an effort, "Yes." I looked away.
There was a pause.
"Because of--Um Marjam? Of what happened?"
"Also." I did not meet his eyes.
He nodded slowly. "So what? You are still a Jew."
My eyes stung again.
Yaro said in a matter-of-fact voice, "Gidi and Ami will stay on your ass, I don't care what they say about you. These
shoo-shoo
fuckers--" He paused, his nostrils white. "Don't you go killing anybody."
"Sure. They are Jews, too."
When we left I looked back. I couldn't see anybody, neither my regular tails nor the Detachment Bett guys. I should have felt better, but I didn't. As we were descending the stairs to the promenade, I said wildly, "I swear to you, Yaya, I never did anything against--" I stopped. What was I going to say? Against the State of Israel? Against the Jews? The Bible? Or what?
"Leave it," Yaro said. "We both came out of the same cunt."
As I walked home, I saw nothing and nobody. My name had come up in the Mo'adon. I couldn't quite grasp it.
I had seen the room where they met, in the Mossad complex near Glilot, on the hill beyond Ramat Aviv, where Ehud and I took a refresher course in jail endurance, before we went deep into Syria, to take down a captain in the Syrian
mukhabarat
. Five days of lying shackled in your own shit, being punched and kicked, with unshaven Moroccans shouting in your face in Arabic, pretending they are Arabs.
When it was all over, they gave us a tour of the premises.
I remembered the small room with the round table, and the six pink plastic chairs. Yellow flowers in a glass vase, and a platter with American oatmeal cookies for Golda. Her pad still had doodles on it: crooked flowers, a trio of small Stars of David, and two Arabic names crossed out with round angry swirls of ink.
I felt my teeth chatter.