The Zigzag Kid (34 page)

I started walking faster. My heart was pounding. I was like a hunted animal. A siren wailed somewhere and I jumped in alarm. No one noticed, though. Across the street I saw a policeman checking the papers of an old pedestrian. The pedestrian was furious and started gesturing excitedly. The policeman explained something, and the pedestrian immediately relaxed.

Get out of here. Beat it. Don't let Dad catch you. You don't belong to him. Not only to him.

I used every bit of know-how, every bit of training, everything he'd been teaching me since I learned how to walk. I took it all in at a glance, the phony license plates on the squad cars, the gleam of binoculars on the rooftops, the Palladium shoes worn by the young couple who'd just walked past me, arm in arm, and also, what was happening to me with Dad, or as opposed to Dad, and how both our lives were changing now.

I walked at a medium pace, taking notice of anything that might interest little Zohara. She was me. I found some pretext to look over my right shoulder. I checked the roofs. Lola's quiet neighborhood was bustling with mysterious activity. Everywhere there were cops rushing around, manning positions, getting their equipment ready.

I knew cops, I knew everything about them. I could smell their agitation in the air now. I hoped that Felix would make it out of there before they closed off Lola's street. I'd go nuts if they caught him before he could tell me the rest of the story. Before he could give me the present from Zohara.

I wondered what the present was. What could she send me from her land of the dead?

It was an eerie night. A light breeze shook the pointed tops of the cypress trees. Everything whished and rustled. I felt as though I were walking on air, detached from the world. As though I were missing, or lost. It felt strange, like floating in space. Maybe that's why the police have so much trouble finding missing persons. Maybe some missing persons don't want to be found. Because when you're missing, you are yourself alone. Free-floating through the world. You can choose what to be next. You are unique.

I was so alone at those moments. A tiny point in a vast world, me.

But who was this “me”? How had things gotten so screwed up that I turned into a criminal on the run from my own father? What was this powerful force sucking me further, deeper into the story?

I was plunging dizzily down, with no will of my own.

From the depths of my soul, an unfamiliar entity rose up to meet me, spreading like a cloud through my innermost recesses, whispering, “It's you, it's you on the run from Dad. You were always like this. You sensed it and it frightened you. And now you've learned the secret: this is who you really are. But only in part. Yet because of this part you will always be a bit of a fugitive, a bit of a criminal, and probably never your father's successor and the best detective in the world.”

And along with this anguished whisper, I heard another voice inside, cackling fiendishly: “If you choose, you can follow in the footsteps of your mother … and Felix.” And then I realized that maybe he had kidnapped me in order to pass on some of the tricks of his trade, his professional skills …

On the outside, I had my clothes for cover, and their softness pervaded me. They rustled to the rhythm of my walk. Once upon a time there was a woman named Zohara, and before that she was a girl. I still didn't know much about her as a girl, but her clothes communicated to me. They spoke right to my skin, her skirt and her blouse, and even the sandals that had absorbed the sweat of her feet.

I could practically walk there with my eyes closed. As though my feet knew the way from Lola's house to the Habimah National Theater. I simply stopped thinking and let Zohara's sandals whisk me there. And they did. They walked me down the sidewalk, aware of every pothole
and street crossing and row of trees. Once when I tried to turn right, they forced me to go left. I never met such a determined pair of sandals. Twenty-five years had elapsed since they last took this route, but the memory was embedded in them. As I walked, they sent little messages through my feet, until finally I began to understand. I am so slow sometimes, it drives me crazy. Once there was a girl named Zohara. Don't you dare call her a girl, though, or she'll punch you. Zohara inhabited a lonely world, rejected by other children, a prey to grown-up thoughts, running for her life sometimes to fantasy and fairy tale, to the tiny creatures behind her lids that performed plays and films just for her. And what else? Oh yes, she loved strawberry jam and chocolate.

She lived in a tall building, and her bedroom looked out to where the sea was widest and bluest. She liked to hide raspberry candies inside a secret hole in the mattress. And to hang picture postcards from all over the world on the wall. And to collect soldier dolls from faraway lands. But why did she collect those dolls? Who gave them to her? And who sent the picture postcards?

Maybe it was her father. The father I hadn't thought of till now. Obviously she had a father, didn't she?

I reeled like a drunk. The sandals made me dance as though they had been possessed by a sudden joy. My eyes filled with silly tears. Ridiculous—me, a boy, crying like a girl. Like a girl trying not to cry, who scratched a lightning bolt on the wall to keep herself from crying. Why hadn't I seen what was going on during those two crazy days? The bedroom in Lola's apartment. The smell of the pillow and the clothes in the wardrobe. And the picture postcards from around the world.

Because I was afraid, afraid to know.

Lola sat up with me all night long. And she knew my birthday.

How could I have missed that?

And Dad had guessed that Felix would take me here, to Lola's house.

My route. The route that was planned for me in advance.

Like fate.

The story Felix was telling me.

I stumbled, I staggered. How many more surprises could I take, and what else would happen on this journey?

“There is little hill near traffic light, there, turn right, then left,” Felix said in his directions.

I turned right, then left.

“Then look sharply to left.”

I faced left, and looked up like an hour hand approaching nine o'clock.

There was a woman beside an electric pole, waving her scarf at me. It was Lola.

She was standing next to a motorcycle with a sidecar. I was struck by a long-forgotten memory: the motorcycle, the sidecar, the tomato plant. A wild stallion of a man who laughed like a horse, until one day he stopped and became very sad and law-abiding. But sitting on the motorcycle was Felix, wearing a peculiar pair of goggles and a leather helmet.

Naturally he'd made it past Dad's men. And naturally he had arrived here before me. He stepped on the gas and started her up.

Our Rolls.

And Lola Ciperola, the famous actress.

Who was Zohara's mother.

And Felix Glick, the man with the golden ears of wheat, who loved my mother.

But not like a lover, the way a man loves a woman. He loved her like a father. The way he would love a daughter.

Why hadn't I seen that before?

Felix was her father. Lola was her mother.

The golden ear of wheat and the purple scarf.

The parents of my mother, Zohara.

Both of them beckoning me to hurry up.

My grandmother and grandfather.

We sped through the night on the motorcycle with the sidecar, me and Felix and Lola Ciperola. The wind slapped our faces and ruffled our hair, and we had to shout over the noise to hear each other. Felix drove, with Lola behind him hugging his waist, and I sat in the sidecar, snug as a bug. Then we changed places—I sat behind him, hugging his waist, and Lola Ciperola curled up snug as a bug in the sidecar.

On into the darkness we sailed. The city lights glared overhead, reflecting us in the smoky glasses of blind beggars and elegant display windows. The shadow of the motorcycle lapped up the sidewalks, the billboards, the benches where lovers sit, clinging tightly to each other; like a paper silhouette, we whizzed past the cafés, the sleepy boulevards, the late-night street sweepers, and a pack of dogs out on the town, barking boisterously as we rode by, a Dalmatian, a German shepherd, and the leader, a little white poodle, or a little dachshund, a huge Great Dane, and an ugly sheepdog, like delegates sent by the dogs of Tel Aviv to see us off on our nocturnal voyage in search of Zohara.

Perhaps I should begin with a description of the meeting that took place outside the National Theater, the meeting with my grandfather and grandmother, the incredible double gift I received for my bar mitzvah, without an exchange slip, of course.

I started walking up the street at an easy, casual pace, but a few steps later I broke into a run. Lola waved her scarf at me, in a self-restrained way at first, as befitting the first lady of the National Theater, but as I approached she started running toward me. No one in the street (or in
the world) would have recognized her the way she looked then—wearing blue jeans, with her long hair down and no makeup. We flew into each other's arms. She could tell by the expression on my face that I already knew. We collided and hugged, and I burrowed my head into her shoulder. “You're Zohara's mother,” I said, and she answered, “Yes, oh yes, and I'm so glad you found out. I couldn't keep from telling you anymore.” My neck became wet after a sudden barometric drop outside the theater.

Felix stood nodding, with his hands on his hips. “Are you ready? Beg pardon, but we must to get moving! There will be plenty of time later for schmaltz and tears and coochie-coo.”

“Aren't you the hero!” said Lola, wiping her nose. “I know why you're wearing that helmet, but I can see your eyes all the same!”

“He's my grandfather, I know that too now,” I said to Lola, a little surprised at myself for running to her the way I had.

“If you dare call me Grandfather in public, I turn you over to police,” grumbled Felix. “I am too young to be called Grandfather.”

“Poor child.” Lola wrung her hands. “To have Felix Glick for a grandfather.”

“Why poor child?” protested Felix. “You know any other grandfathers who take grandchildren to hijack trains?”

He was right.

“I would be happy for you to call me Grandmother,” said Lola, “and Felix will get used to it, too, eventually.” Again I was enveloped in a cloud of her perfume. At last I have a real grandmother, I thought, a grandmother who hugs me, not a knitting-needle grandmother.

“So did you get married, then?” I blurted out, seeing that she was a woman of principles.

“Did I get married, he asks.” She smiled. “What kind of question is that for a grandson to ask his grandmother?”

“No, because once you said that—”

She laughed. “Yes, Nonny, it's true, I like to be alone, to do whatever I please, that's the kind of woman I am, I've always been as free as a Gypsy, and if I love someone, I don't wait for him to come around, I walk right up and tell him so! And I did fall in love with this old man
here.” She patted him fondly on the helmet. “And I wanted his baby, but I refused to give him the keys to my life.”

“For me, screwdriver is good as key.” Felix laughed, and I was proud of Lola, my new grandmother, because I knew she would always be true to herself.

“Where did you find this motorcycle?” I asked Felix, and he smiled mysteriously, shrugged his shoulders, and muttered something about Felix the wizard, Felix the mastermind, and other little boasts and brags, intended mainly to annoy Lola. But Lola merely laughed as she massaged the back of his neck, and said, “Seventy years old and still behaving like a child!”

“Hi-deh.” Felix stirred himself, and we were on our way.

I had so many questions to ask her. And him. Why hadn't she tried to contact me all these years? Did she know about me? Did she recognize me when Gabi and I met her in front of her house …

Gabi. Gabi Gabi Gabi.

How had she managed to conceal the most important things about Lola Ciperola from me? That she had been in love with Felix Glick. That they had a daughter, now dead, who had been, well, a criminal, and who also happened to be my mother. All these years Gabi had been throwing out subtle hints, insinuating that Lola Ciperola, and Felix, too, were important figures in my life and destiny, and planting little seeds of curiosity—with her talk of the purple scarf, and Felix and the golden ears of wheat, and her impersonations of Lola singing—all of which had sprouted in due course, a few days before my bar mitzvah.

How cunningly they had worked behind the scenes, Gabi and Felix, though neither was aware of what the other was doing.

And they had trapped me. But I wanted to be trapped, I wanted it badly.

I couldn't stop glancing at Lola and Felix, trying to get used to their being my grandparents. It still felt strange, because before I knew Lola, she had seemed so remote, and now all of a sudden she had entered my life, which made a huge difference, as big as the difference between someone called Lola Ciperola and a woman named Lola Katz, and I
still didn't quite know how it would turn out for us, how close we would become, what it's like to have a real grandmother … And then suddenly our eyes met.

“Looking at you, Nonny,” she said, leaning out of the sidecar, “I realize how silly of me it was not to defy your father. I never once attempted to meet with you.”

“He wouldn't let you? Why not?” I shouted, not only because of the wind.

“After Zohara died, you see, he didn't want any contact with her past—God forbid anything of her character should rub off on her son, which is why he decided to put me out of the picture, too. Oh yes!” She tied her hair up so I'd be able to hear her better. “But enough of that! I have an agreement with you now, not with him. I would very much like to be your full-time grandmother. Am I hired?”

I laughed. All these women wanting to be my full-time mother and grandmother. I reached over to the sidecar and shook her hand. Of course she was hired.