The Zigzag Kid (41 page)

I immersed myself in Zohara again.

She grew up, and still she was lonely. But she was popular now. Because she started to blossom. People couldn't help noticing her beauty, and those incredible eyes and the way they sparkled with the magic of Zohara. Deeper and deeper I plunged, not thinking in words anymore. I'm only adding the words now, but at the time I dove way
down under them to a place of inspiration, where I writhed and tingled inside, as though seeking the center, my point of origin.

Zohara was becoming a woman. More feminine, but wilder than ever; shapely but a real whirligig. Sweeping her admirers from party to party, indifferent to them all, flirting with them all, yet always lonely, even as the belle of the ball. She flashed through the night like a bolt of lightning, ever the ringleader of their shenanigans, their wagers and their cruel but hilarious pranks, and always unpredictable: a woman, but, like Felix, a curved line with a little zigzag—

2
.

“Two,” I said.

I could hear the pointer click in the lock.

And then Felix arrived on the scene and took her off to Paris. She didn't want to go home, so they continued on a tour of exotic places where exiled monarchs rode in gilded carriages and stolen diamonds were reflected in the black river and there were sea captains and nuns, and Zohara floated among them and from one to the other, swirling in circles where the figments of her imagination merged with the sights she saw around her, till she could no longer distinguish between dream and reality, and everything swirled like the smoke rings from the old king's pipe, and she closed her eyes and surrendered to the pleasure of inventing a fiction more sinuous than a snake, and learned that she, too, like her father, knew the trick of fusing true stories with the lies people believe; and all the while she was swirling down, down, down …

8
.

“Eight.”

The pointer moved.

I was getting tired. This process was killing me. The moment I closed my eyes, I went into trance. I was afraid of this moment. My heart was heavy, plunging deeper into an abyss of black quicksand.

“I can't go on,” I whispered to Felix. “I think I'm about to faint…”

“Keep trying,” he pleaded. “Don't stop yet!”

Rows and rows of numbers floated before me like a giant account
ledger, where the sixes and sevens and eights danced by, confusing me, tempting me to choose them, but I shut my eyes and squeezed them as hard as I could, searching for Zohara in their midst…

I saw her with Dad in their happier days together. He and she on the round side of the mountain, and Zohara at dusk, watching the pure and glorious sun go down, her belly swelling with me inside! Nonnik! She washed herself in a metal basin, and even though she didn't truly love Dad, she tried to be happy in the warm nest he had built and feathered for her, and perhaps this was the last time she made a sincere effort to be happy for his sake, content within the small circle of their home …

0
.

Zero? But my lips were hesitant. It wasn't actually zero. Not a perfect zero. It was round, yes, but with a swelling, like a pregnancy? Yes, and yet not a zero! Not empty the way zero should be! Because something was amiss there; something was kicking and writhing inside the zero, trying to break out of it, something that even then, during her happy days with Dad, was sharp and cutting, pushing through the peace of her pregnancy and the feathered nest—onward and upward!

5?

“Try five,” I muttered.

“Just one more number,” whispered Felix. “Is time for last number.”

This is ridiculous, I brooded; here I sit with my eyes shut, looking serious, and making a complete fool of myself as I try to guess five arbitrary numbers someone thought up thirteen years ago. I mean, really.

And I was so tired, I felt as if my soul had been drained out of me.

But again, the moment I looked inward, I could feel her loneliness slinking around me. Her baby was born. And she loved it, that's certain. But later it was like waking out of a dream. She looked around at the bald hills. Dad bored her, though she didn't like to admit it. And disappointed her a little. She already knew, already felt that she didn't belong here or anywhere else, and sometimes she would gallop to the jagged side of the mountain, to the edge of the cliff, and look down at
the vastness calling her to fly down, like an anguished bird, to speed herself out of her life like an arrow released …

7
, I thought.

“Seven,” I said.

“Are you sure?” whispered Felix. “Think carefully. This is last number.”

“Seven,” I said.

Silence.

And then I heard the pointer turning around the dial.

And a little click, like a key turning in a lock.

And Felix's breathing.

A small lid creaked open.

I opened my eyes. Felix was there, his white hair standing on end. In his hand he held a long wooden box with a note stuck to it.

“You did it,” said Felix faintly. My mouth was dry. I was wearier than I'd been the entire trip. All I wanted now was to curl up and go to sleep, even on the floor. To be no more.

“You read her from inside,” said Felix, croaking with astonishment. “That is blood talking.”

He handed me the box. On it was a note in a shaky young hand:

“For Nonnik, a bar mitzvah present. With love, from your mother.”

“Should I open it?” I asked in a whisper.

“Not here. There is no time. We must to get out of here. You can open it later.”

I put the box in my pocket. The minute I touched it, my strength flowed back to me. Felix closed the safe-deposit box, this time forever.

“I can't believe how dumb I am,” I said when I had finished. “I should have guessed immediately that those would be the numbers she'd choose.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it's the date of my birth. The twelfth of August, ‘57.”

Felix pronounced the numbers: “One and two and eight and five and seven! Bravo!”

He looked at me and I looked at him, and we both started laughing.

“You see that this is most important day for her,” he said. “Remember that.”

“Let's get out,” I said, “before anyone notices we're down here.”

“Wait, Amnon. Felix makes promise, Felix delivers.”

He pulled the fine chain out of his shirt, took off the last ear of wheat, and gave it to me. All that remained was the heart-shaped locket. He weighed it in his hand, looked at the bare chain. “That is all.” He tried to smile, but his face fell. “No more ears of wheat.”

I held the little ear of wheat in my hand. I slipped it on my chain, next to the bullet.

We walked out through the first iron door. Then the second. And then we noticed—simultaneously—that something wasn't quite right. We exchanged looks: the guard had left his table. Felix recoiled. He stood against the wall, narrowing his eyes like a panther. The cruel line over his lips turned white.

“They caught me,” he rasped, and grimaced at himself for having been outsmarted. “
La dracu!
They caught me, damn them!”

He squeezed his way behind the iron door, as though trying to vanish into the wall. His eyes darted hither and thither. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. He was in a full state of terror now that he couldn't move, or change, or get away.

As we turned to the staircase, a gun barrel appeared. There was no time to waste. No time to think. Everything depended on my speed and my professional skill. I drew the gun, my mother's pistol, and cocked it, spreading my legs for balance and supporting my right hand with my left. I raised the gun to eye level. All that took less than a second. I didn't have to think after the hundreds of hours of training of my instincts. “Don't think. Act!” he had taught me. “Let your instincts work for you! Draw!” I closed my left eye. I focused a little over the gun barrel facing me.

The man holding it was careful not to show his face. He moved cautiously and slowly down the stairs. Hearing his steady, circumspect steps, I knew that this was a real professional. But I wasn't afraid. My thousands of hours of training with Dad had prepared me for this moment. My finger was on the trigger, poised.

Then the hand that held the gun came into view.

Thick and tan.

And then the face.

Broad. And the rugged body. The head attached to it by a minimal neck.

“Don't move! Police! Glick, two steps to the right. Nonny, throw me the gun.”

Dad looked weary and unshaven.

Now what?

“Don't think! Draw!” How many hundreds of times had I heard him shout that at me. “The first one to draw will live to tell the tale to his grandchildren!” But I was the grandchild here! “Let your instincts work!” Which instincts exactly had he been shouting about during all our years of training? The instincts of a pro or the instincts of a son? And what about the instincts of a grandson who wants to defend his grandfather?

(From his own father.)

What a situation!

“Throw down the gun, Nonny,” said Dad again, tense and quiet.

His gun was shaking. So was mine. We traced a wobbly circle over the other's body. Suddenly Dad's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

He recognized the gun in my hand.

The woman's gun with the mother-of-pearl handle. Zohara's. The one which had wounded him once before and changed the course of his life.

I could see the memory strike him from out of the past. Suddenly they were face-to-face again in the chocolate factory … I was forgotten for the moment. He didn't even see me: their guns took aim at each other. Only the two of them existed just then. And I, too, was losing my grip: the two guns were engaged in a snaky dance of defiance, of push and pull.

“Throw it down now, damn it!”

He shouted the words in despair.

But I didn't throw it down.

To this day I feel bad when I remember that moment. The older I get, the less I think about myself just then and the more I think about Dad. About what must have gone through him when he saw his son pointing that gun at him. As if all those years he'd been with me and taken care of me were wiped out the moment I picked up her gun.

As if she had beaten him twice.

“It's okay, Dad,” I whispered. “Don't worry. I'm not going to shoot.”

“Lower the barrel now, relax … and drop the gun.”

“Okay.” I slowly lowered the barrel.

And stopped. “But what will happen to Felix?”

“Glick will go back to jail, where he belongs.”

“No.” I raised the gun again. “No. I refuse.”

“You—what?”

I recognized that expression, and it scared me. His face went red, his eyes turned small and mean, and the horrible exclamation point between them stood out like a wand or a stick waving over me.

“I said I refuse. Let him go.”

“Nonny, don't be crazy! Throw that gun down right now.”

“No. First promise me you'll let him go.”

His face looked distorted with rage. “He kidnapped you, do you understand me? He kidnapped you!”

“No, it wasn't a kidnapping,” I said.

“Shut up!” he roared. “I didn't ask you!”

“Let him go, or else—” I started to say, and a red fog spread over my brain.

“Or else what? What will you do to me?” said Dad, jeering at me, furious, his gun trembling in his hand.

“Or else I'll … I'll shoot!”

“Shoot who?” they shouted in unison, Dad and Felix.

“H-h-him …! Felix!” The answer came to me.

I tried to understand myself.

“I don't get it,” said Dad. “You want to shoot him?”

“I don't care! I don't care about anything! Not about him and not about you! You're both driving me crazy! Let him go or else I'll shoot him!”

The fog thickened. The events of the past few days were like a whirlpool in my brain. I'll shoot him. I'll shoot myself. I'll shoot all three of us. We'll have a general massacre, verging on mass murder. First I'll commit suicide and then I'll run away. I'll fight good, I'll fight evil. I'll live beyond good and evil!

I screamed, I blurted out incoherent words, I kicked the wall, I banged my head against the iron door. Mount Feuerberg was erupting! Anyway, I wanted Dad to watch me explode so he'd understand how dangerous I can be when I'm angry.

I don't know how long I raved like that, but there's one thing I'm sure of: at that moment, the moment I turned it into an act, I lost my ability to go wholeheartedly berserk. (Is that what Lola meant when she said, “Those who use emotion to make other people feel lose it for themselves”?)

“Wait a minute!” shouted Dad through the clouds of my theatrical fury. “Why do you say it wasn't a kidnapping?”

He sounded less sure of himself. Maybe my act had worked, after all.

“It's the truth!” I stamped my foot, but a little less vehemently, the kind of stamping that could start negotiations. “I went with him of my own free will! He didn't kidnap me!”

“What do you mean? Explain!”

“It all started with a mistake,” I said. “I got into the wrong train compartment for the game you arranged.”

Dad was listening morosely. “And what the hell was he doing on the train?” he said, tracing a circle of disdain around Felix with his gun.

Felix, who until that moment had been crouching as though frozen in mid-flight, now slowly stood up, relaxed his tense muscles, smoothed down his hair, and said sweetly to Dad, “What is problem, Mr. Father? I only want to look at him, what is wrong with that? Maybe he is not my grandson.”

I was shocked when he smiled like that and pointed broadly at me
as though showing off his own creation, because I realized how much he had managed to change me and distance me from Dad in only a few days. And maybe this was his greatest revenge.