No
,
he didn’t require
an
y
explanations.
She still loved him. She belonged to him
.
She would never have betrayed him
in anything, and what had to be done had to be
done
.
. . . . .
It
w
as nearly morning, and
h
e
had
t
he
i
mpression he had been asleep for
someth
i
n
g
like
half a
n
hour,
wh
e
n he
he
a
rd
th
e
t
a
pp
i
ng on
the ho
t
el room
door
.
He
tr
i
ed to
ge
t
out of
bed
w
ithout
waking Esthe
r
,
but she had her arms around his neck and, besides, she had
he
ar
d the
tapp
i
ng
too.
“It
’s
on
e
of th
e
good guys
,
” he said
,
slipping his arms into
th
e
sleeves of
hi
s
b
a
throbe.
“Go bac
k
to
sleep.”
It was Faglin. He was
still in his suit and looked as if he hadn’t been near a bed in
days
.
“Mordecai wants to talk to you. Can you come
right down?”
“Sure. Just let me get dressed. Come
inside—you can babysit until I get back.”
“Sure.”
It was the off season for seaside resorts,
and three quarters of the hotel’s rooms were empty. Mordecai had
installed himself in the front of the building, where he could
watch the street. Still, it was an ugly little box he had chosen,
with a cold linoleum floor and paper that threatened to come
peeling off the walls in great sheets. But it was next door to the
stairwell—probably you could hear people through the wall. From a
practical point of view, Mordecai had chosen well.
“We had a policeman here about half an hour
ago,” he said. He was in the bathroom, standing over the sink,
shaving. His voice seemed to come from nowhere. “He had your
description. He even had your name. It was only with some
difficulty that Jerry was able to keep him from searching the
hotel. He said you had killed three men at the Café Pícaro.”
“The third man died? I’m glad.”
Mordecai stepped into the bathroom doorway
and looked at him almost as if he had to confirm for himself that
there really was someone else in the room. He was in his
undershirt, and his face was still half covered with lather.
Christiansen grinned at him.
“It was dangerous, Inar. And it draws
official attention to us, and we don’t need that.”
“I was supposed to provide the
distraction—that was the idea, wasn’t it? Hagemann will have
something to think about now besides where all the trip wires and
trap doors are in this thing you’ve set up for him. He’s frightened
now. He knows that I’ll kill him if he hangs around much longer.
There’s a time limit now. It’ll make him careless.”
“That’s a good reason, but is it the real
reason?”
“No.”
“You feel like telling me what is?”
Christiansen sat down on a peculiarly ugly
wooden chair with a circular seat, took the pack of cigarettes out
of his shirt pocket, and lit one. He felt like a schoolboy called
into the headmaster’s office to explain why he had been found
scratching his name into the top of his desk.
“I told you, I was there tonight.” He
crossed his legs and stared up at the ceiling. The cigarette smoke
drifted up and then seemed to lose energy, flattening out like a
layer of silt. “I sat up in the little box from where they run the
lights, and I watched Hagemann playing the great man for close to
three hours. I had my gun—it would have been the easiest thing in
the world to blow the back of his head out, to make such a mess of
him they wouldn’t even have bothered to bury him, just feed him to
the dogs. But I didn’t do that. I remembered you, and General von
Goltz’s nerve gas, and the Jewish homeland. Why the hell am I
supposed to do my bit for the Jewish homeland, I might think to
inquire? So don’t ask me why I felt the need to burn down a few of
Hagemann’s soldiers.”
“All right. I won’t ask.”
Mordecai had wiped his face clean by the
time he came out of the bathroom. He looked quite bright, as if
someone had gone over him with metal polish. Mordecai was one of
those men who could wash his face and make a brand new start in
life. It was a gift.
“Would it be still all right if I asked you
something else?”
“Ask.”
“This business about going up the cliffs
behind Hagemann’s villa, is that because you want to keep Esther
out of his way? I have to know.”
“I don’t want her used as bait, but the
cliffs are still the only way to reach him. He knows all about the
bait. Use her like that and he’ll steal her right off your
hook.”
“And are you sure you can make it up the
cliffs without being found out?”
Christiansen wanted to laugh, but he
couldn’t. He felt rotten and his nerves were played out, and half
an hour’s sleep and a little sex hadn’t worked their magic. He
wasn’t up to being sardonic.
“I’m not an idiot, Mordecai—I’m not sure of
anything.” He took another drag on his cigarette, but it tasted so
dead in his lungs that he put it out. “All I know is that some
chance is better than none at all.”
“Then talk to Faglin. He can help, and he’ll
know enough not to say anything to Hirsch. Tell him you’re going
climbing.”
18
Burriana, Spain: March 18, 1948
He didn’t know exactly what had happened
last night. He might even have decided to dismiss the whole subject
from his mind, except there was still substantial evidence that
Inar Christiansen was not the forgiving type. On that basis,
Mordecai Leivick decided that it would probably be best to keep
Itzhak out of the way for a while.
In any case, the boy had served his turn,
and Hagemann knew him by sight now and had made certain threats.
There was nothing wrong with his nerve, but he had a mother who
worried and Leivick would just as soon keep him out of harm’s way.
What he needed was something to keep him pleasantly busy—too busy
to think about Esther Rosensaft.
Because Esther Rosensaft seemed to be
gnawing at his insides like the Spartan fox.
“Forget about her, boy. She’s not for you.
Anyway, she’s not the sort of girl you could bring home to meet the
family, is she.”
They were having breakfast together in a
little restaurant about half a mile from the hotel, just the two of
them. Leivick wanted to have a talk, and it wouldn’t do for one of
Hagemann’s thugs to see them together—their cover story was
threadbare enough as it was. They were seated across from each
other at a long table, at the end nearest the stove because it was
a cold morning, and Itzhak was in a sulky sort of mood.
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” he
said, in a voice that told Leivick he knew perfectly well what he
meant. He had hardly touched his fried eggs. He was in a bad
way.
“She has a past, Itzikel. Your mother is a
nice lady, but she knows even less about the world than you do. She
wouldn’t understand about a girl who’s been an SS prostitute and
God knows what else.”
“In Israel no one will care about the
past—we’ll only think about the future.”
“That’s a good speech, but it isn’t so. When
we forget our past in that brave new world we’re making, we’ll be
finished. We’ll disappear, like morning mist. That girl isn’t ever
going to forget, and neither would you. Leave her to Inar, boy.
He’s been through enough to entitle him to forget for the both of
them.”
Leivick drank his coffee, wishing he had a
cigarette—wishing that just once, sometime or other, life could
work itself out to everyone’s satisfaction. He was tired of the
mess and the trouble. If, God willing, they ever got their
homeland, he thought perhaps he would retire to a kibbutz somewhere
and spend the rest of his life picking oranges.
“If you’re not hungry, let’s get out of
here,” he said. As he rose from the table he dropped a handful of
coins beside his plate. They clattered against the wood with enough
noise to rouse the waiter from his slumbers.
Outside, there was hardly any traffic. Women
in heavy shawls carried their shopping home in net bags, and here
and there one saw men in felt hats and business suits, their
collars high and heavily starched. It was the middle of the
morning, perhaps the quietest time in the day.
Itzhak had a thick knitted scarf that went
around his neck God alone knew how many times. Some female relative
had made it for him, and it was his only concession to the time of
year. He seemed positively to be enjoying his misery.
They had walked nearly two blocks before
Leivick found a tiny stall where he could buy a pack of
cigarettes—not American cigarettes, but one had to learn to
compromise. The girl behind the counter, who was probably every day
of seventeen and looked at Itzhak as though she would have liked to
make a meal of him, counted out his change and gave them
both—Leivick found himself included, probably out of pure,
simple-hearted generosity—a smile that should have set any man’s
shirt buttons smoking. Itzhak hardly even noticed. It was a bad
sign. That sort of selfabsorption could mean real trouble in their
business.
“Why don’t you spend the day at the movies,
Itzikel?” he said as he tried lighting a wooden match in the faint
stirrings of the morning breeze. He finally had to take shelter
against the corner of a building, almost burning his fingers in the
process. Even with the first puff, he could feel his chest
loosening. It was a lovely thing to have rediscovered a lost vice.
“Take a seat in the last row, just so that no one can put an ice
pick in your ear. You’ll be around people, so Hagemann’s thugs
won’t feel free to kill you just to stay in practice. They can
watch you—it will make them feel safe. Young husbands do sometimes
spend the whole day at the movies when they’ve been fighting with
their brides. Just make sure we know where to find you.”
“Am I supposed to stay away so that Hagemann
can have his chance with Esther?”
“More or less—yes.”
“I thought you told Inar to get ready to go
after Hagemann in his villa.”
“I did. We’re doing it both ways. It never
hurts to have two plans.”
Itzhak gave him a funny sidewise glance, as
if he thought that somehow the thing wasn’t quite honest but was
too polite to say so out loud.
“We’ll see how it goes,” Leivick went on.
The wind had stilled quite suddenly and he was surprised at how
quiet everything was. In a week he had grown used to the Spanish
street noises, but just at that moment there seemed to be nothing,
not even the ever-present sound of a baby crying. It made him feel
nervous for some reason. “We’ll set our trap as planned. Perhaps
Inar is mistaken. If he is not, then we can do as he suggests. If
the years have taught me nothing else, I have at least learned not
to depend upon anything.”
“Do you think he is mistaken?”
“I don’t know. He might be—he has an
interest to protect now. He isn’t the same, not like he was in
Vienna. Perhaps you haven’t noticed it, but there’s a change. A man
like that, who has been alone a long time, he meets a young girl. .
. I’m not sure we can rely on his judgment anymore. Do you
understand?”
Did he? Who could say? Itzhak buried his
hands in his trouser pockets, staring at the paving stones as they
walked along together. It was perhaps only his sexual vanity that
had been wounded, but did that matter, at his age? If Inar
Christiansen could no longer be trusted, how could he?
“That goddamn bitch, what’s she doing to us,
Mordecai?” His face had tightened into a mask. He looked, poor boy,
as if he might actually begin to cry. “Last night she. . . Oh,
shit.”
“That’s what some women are like. That’s why
we went to so much trouble to bring this one here. Let’s just hope
and pray the poison works as well on Colonel Hagemann.”
It did the job, after a fashion. At least
Itzhak no longer seemed on the verge of tears, which was not a good
place for a nice boy from Tel Aviv to be. He didn’t look any
happier, and his hands were still curled into fists in his pockets
as he walked—perhaps he was merely cold—but now he had a little
fiction he could believe, something more intelligible and less
painful than the truth. Esther, that pathetic, abused little waif,
could be his Theda Bara, the Siren to whom he must now learn to
shut his heart. It was a story fitted to his capacities.
And as for Mordecai Leivick, the Ibsen of
comfortable lies, he had, as usual, eaten too much breakfast and
was experiencing that intestinal melancholy that felt so much like
a bad conscience. Or perhaps it really was a bad conscience. As he
had so grandly informed Itzhak, he had learned enough of life to
give up the idea of being sure.
Did he really, for even a moment, believe
that Hagemann would fall into their arms, rendered helpless by some
twisted passion for little Esther Rosensaft? Yes, sometimes, just
for a moment. But not as a working hypothesis. If Hagemann kept his
appointment it would be for hard, pragmatic reasons—he knew Esther
was the key to more than just his own happy fantasies of pain and
humiliation and death. Hagemann was an adult, so, unlike Itzhak, he
did not believe in love.