Black Box (28 page)

I can see before my eyes your supine form reclining on the leather sofa at the Nicholsons’ house in London the night of our last meeting (even though you are back in America now, if not in Ceylon or Timbuktu). Your patrician features fixed in a brazen effort to conceal your pains from me. Your fingers curled around a teacup as though at any moment you might hurl its contents in my face or smash it over my head. Your voice was clear and cold, and your words like lead soldiers. Every now and again you closed your eyes slowly, as though you were a medieval castle raising its drawbridge and dropping the portcullis. While I was waiting for you to deign to take notice of me again, I looked at your back, stretched stiffly on the sofa, at your blank, pale face, at the expression of bitter disgust etched permanently around your lips, and just for a moment, as though peering through the firing slit of a tank, I could discern the child I remember from forty years ago: a large, pampered child, a decadent boy emperor who might at any instant signal to his servants with a lazy nod of the chin to chop my head off. Just like that. As a little nocturnal diversion. Because I had stopped interesting him.

That is how you looked to me at that moment in London. And I experienced a mixture of submissiveness and a vague paternal compassion. Physical awe combined with a sudden urge to rest my fingers on your brow. As when you were a child.

Your gladiator’s body, which had become so skinny and bony, your expression of a tortured prince, the power of your grey eyes, the radiance of your tormented spirit, the icy shield of your iron will. Perhaps it was this: your fragile savagery. Your defenseless tyranny. The childish wolfishness which gave you the air of a wrist watch that had lost its glass. That is how you mesmerize us all. Arousing even in a man like me an almost womanly feeling toward you.

Even if you explode I shall not restrain myself this time from writing that at that meeting of ours in London you stirred a sort of sympathy in me. As though I were a peeling old eucalyptus that had all of a sudden surprised itself by producing figs. I was sorry for you. For what you have done with your life and for the way you are now planning your death. Surely you developed the disease like a deadly, sophisticated missile that you targeted on yourself (I have an inner certainty that you can command the choice, whether to stifle the illness or submit to it entirely). Now you will chuckle dryly to yourself, twisting half your mouth, and maybe make a note that Manfred the villain is dancing unctuous attendance on you once more. But Manfred is worried for you. For that strange child of solitude who, forty years ago, used to call him Uncle Malfrend and climb up on his lap and feel in his pockets and sometimes find a chocolate or a piece of chewing gum. Once we were friends. And now I too am a monster. Albeit only a carnival monster. When I get up every morning and shave I see in front of me in the mirror a bald, ugly, wrinkled satyr, dragging his ugliness from day to day so as to bestow his money when the time comes on his precious grandchildren. What is precious to you, Alex? What makes you get up every morning? What looks back at you out of the mirror?

We were friends once. It was you who taught Uncle Malfrend how to ride a donkey (a spectacle that ought to have been immortalized by Chagall!), and I taught you to cast on the wall a whole theater of animals created from the shadows of our fingers. During my frequent visits to your home I sometimes used to read you a story when you were in bed. And we used to play a card game I can still remember: it was called “Black Bear.” The object of the game was to arrange everybody in pairs, the male dancer with the ballerina, the tailor with the seamstress, the farmer with the farmer’s wife; only the black bear had no partner. The player who was left with the bear was the loser. Every time, without exception, I was the loser. More than once I was obliged to resort to complicated maneuvers to insure that you won without discovering my renunciation, because otherwise you would have been seized by a fit of terrifying rage—if you had lost or, even worse, if you had suspected that victory had been given to you as a gift. You would have started to smash, throw, and tear, accused me of cheating, bitten the back of your hand till the blood came, or gone into a dark depression and crept away like an ichneumon to hide in the darkness of the narrow space under the staircase.

On the other hand, every time I lost a game you would go overboard—according to some strange code of justice—to compensate me. You would rush to the cellar to fetch me a cold beer. Or make me a present of a marble or a basket of white snails that you had industriously collected in the yard. You would climb on my lap and slip one of your father’s cigars into my jacket pocket. And once, in the winter, you slipped into the closet and scraped the mud off my galoshes. Another time, when your father was roaring at me at the top of his voice and cursing me in Russian, you caused a short circuit with a broken iron so as to plunge the house in darkness in the middle of his thunder and lightning.

And then in forty-one I volunteered for the British Army. For five years I wandered from Palestine to Cairo, Cyrenaica, and Italy, from Italy to Germany and Austria, from Austria to the Hague and from the Hague to Birmingham. All through those years you remembered me, Alex. Every two or three weeks the gold soldier Malfrend would receive a package from you. From you, not your father. Candy, woolen socks, Hebrew newspapers and magazines, letters containing sketches of imaginary weapons. In return I sent you postcards from all the places I visited. I collected stamps and banknotes and sent them to you. When I came back, in forty-six, you vacated your room for me. Until your father rented me my first apartment in Jerusalem. And I still have standing on my bedside table a photograph from April of forty-seven: good-looking, sad, and a little violent, you are standing like a dreamy wrestler holding one of the poles of the canopy at my wedding. Seven years later, when Rosalind was killed, you and your father invited little Dorit to spend the whole summer at Zikhron. You built her a hut of branches, with a rope ladder, in one of the pine trees and captured her heart forever. When you went to the university in Jerusalem, I gave you the key to my apartment. When you were injured in the back in the raid north of the Sea of Galilee, you stayed with us again for a fortnight. It was I who prepared you for your examinations in German and Latin. Then came your meteoric wedding, and soon afterward your father began dispersing his fortune to all sorts of charitable funds and handing out checks to confidence men who assured him that they were representing the ten lost tribes of Israel. Until he sent his Circassians on a night raid on the neighboring kibbutz, and then the two of us got together and decided to plan a coup. We have not forgotten, you or I, the eleven lawsuits I conducted on your behalf before we managed to extricate the property and put the Tsar away. Nor will you ever be able to forget everything I did for you during your divorce suits. I have set down these brief notes to tell you that Uncle Malfrend has been carrying you on his back ever since your childhood, while you were establishing your world-wide reputation and your book was being translated into nine languages. You for your part paid for Dorit and Zohar’s honeymoon in Japan and even opened a generous savings account on the birth of each of my grandchildren. Was this merely a calculated, coldblooded investment? I’d be grateful if you’d enlighten me. And if you would confirm in writing, at least between curses and insults, that what I have written here really happened. Otherwise I shall be compelled to infer that one of us is already decrepit and sees things. Are we friends, Alex? Answer me yes or no. Just to set the record straight. And the main thing: send me a sign and I’ll invest the proceeds of Magdiel in purchasing the meadows of Bethlehem. Take care of your health and let me know how I can help.

Uncle Malfrend
Keeper of the Signet

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PERSONAL ZAKHEIM JERUSALEM ISRAEL

DEDUCT WHAT YOU ARE OWED FOR PAYMENTS TO BOAZ FROM MY ACCOUNT TAKE ANOTHER TWO THOUSAND AS A TIP AND STOP WAGGING YOUR TAIL ALEX

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GIDEON SUMMER PROGRAM PRINCETON NJ

I AM A MONUMENTAL FOOL AND YOU ARE A LOST CAUSE IVE TAKEN FIVE THOUSAND AM SENDING DETAILED ACCOUNT ROBERTO REFUSES ABSOLUTELY TO RESUME MANAGEMENT OF YOUR AFFAIRS REQUEST URGENT INSTRUCTIONS ABOUT TRANSFER OF YOUR PAPERS MAYBE YOUD BEST HAVE YOURSELF INSTITUTIONALIZED VOLUNTARILY BEFORE THEY PUT A STRAIT JACKET ON YOU MANFRED

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PERSONAL ZAKHEIM JERUSALEM ISRAEL

YOUR RESIGNATION NOT ACCEPTED YOU ARE AUTHORIZED TO CONTINUE MANAGING THE PROPERTY ON CONDITION YOU KEEP YOUR MEDDLESOME NOSE AND PAWS TO YOURSELF IM LEAVING YOUR GRANDCHILDREN IN MY WILL THE DEVIL KNOWS WHY ALEX

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GIDEON SUMMER PROGRAM PRINCETON NJ

MY RESIGNATION STANDS IM THROUGH WITH YOU REPEAT REQUEST INSTRUCTIONS RE TRANSFER OF PAPERS MANFRED ZAKHEIM

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PERSONAL ZAKHEIM JERUSALEM ISRAEL

MANFRED CALM DOWN AM GOING INTO MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL NEW YORK FOR A WEEK FOR RADIOTHERAPY MY ESTATE TO BE SHARED AMONG MY SON HER DAUGHTER AND YOUR GRANDCHILDREN DONT LEAVE ME NOW THINKING OF COMING BACK TO ISRAEL PERHAPS AFTER TREATMENT CAN YOU ARRANGE ME A QUIET PRIVATE CLINIC WITH FACILITIES FOR CHEMOTHERAPY YOU HAVE A FREE HAND IN MANAGING MY PROPERTY ON CONDITION YOU STAY WITH ME DONT BE CRUEL ALEX

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GIDEON MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL NEW YORK

FURTHER TO MY PHONE CALL YESTERDAY EVERYTHING ARRANGED IF YOU DECIDE TO COME INCLUDING EXCELLENT CLINIC PRIVATE DOCTOR AND NURSE HAVE INSTRUCTED ZAND TO DROP SOMMOS AND BOAZ AM INVESTING YOUR CASH IN TENTPEG BUT NOT TOUCHING REAL ESTATE UNDERSTAND YOU DONT WANT ME TO TELL ILANA OR BOAZ ABOUT YOUR CONDITION DORIT AND I LEAVE FOR NEW YORK AT THE WEEKEND TO BE WITH YOU FAILING OTHER INSTRUCTIONS WITH YOUR PERMISSION A BIG HUG MANFRED

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PERSONAL ZAKHEIM JERUSALEM ISRAEL

THANKS DONT COME NO NEED UPDATED WILL ON ITS WAY I MAY COME OR NOT FEEL FINE AND BEG YOU TO GIVE ME A BREAK ALEX

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SOMMO HOTEL CASTILLE RUE GAMBON PARIS

MICHEL DONT BE ANGRY IVE GONE TO ZIKHRON WITH YIFAT I HAD TO YOULL UNDERSTAND FOR YOUR SAKE ILL TRY TO KEEP SABBATH AND EAT KOSHER NO NEED FOR YOU TO CUT SHORT YOUR TRIP BOAZ SENDS AFFECTIONATE GREETINGS AND TELLS YOU TO ENJOY YOURSELF AND NOT WORRY LOVE YOU ILANA

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MRS SOMMO GIDEON HOUSE NEAR ZIKHRON YAAKOV ISRAEL

ILANA GO HOME WITH THE GIRL AT ONCE OR ILL GET ALMALIAH TO FETCH YOU WITH A PATROL I HAVE TO STAY HERE A FEW MORE DAYS ON A MATTER VERGING ON LIFE AND DEATH I FORGIVE YOU ON CONDITION YOU GO HOME TODAY I HAVENT WRONGED YOU SO I DONT DESERVE THIS FROM YOU IN GREAT SORROW MICHEL

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To Mrs. Janine Fuchs
Lemon St. 4
Ramat Hasharon

August 31, 2335 hrs.

Dear Janine,

It’s two days now that I’ve tried to get you on the phone and this evening I came to your house personally and found everything closed and locked. From the neighbors I discovered that you’ve taken an organized holiday in Rhodes, supposedly flying back El Al from Athens in the early hours. Since I have to be in Eilat on official business, I’ve decided to slip this under your door in the hope that you’ll find it. It’s in the matter of our mutual friend Michel (Sommo). Michel went to Paris on a certain matter of public interest (and also to visit his parents, who are living now near his sister in Marseille). When he returned the day before yesterday he came upon a very bad situation following on the step taken by his wife on her own initiative, who has gone with her little girl to stay with her son by her previous marriage, who is living in an abandoned building between Zikhron Yaakov and Binyamina. And now it turns out that approximately one day before Michel’s return her first husband (the scholar who emigrated to America) also turned up there. You can imagine the shock to Michel and the unheard-of shame to our friends the Sommo family because of this dishonorable situation, that she is cohabiting with her first husband, causing tongues to wag and refusing for the time being to return home to Michel, whose world has collapsed in ruins around him.

I went there yesterday with Michel’s elder brother and two more friends to talk to her, but what do you think? She refused to see us! And so we went back to Jerusalem empty-handed and sat there in grief and despondency with the whole family until half past three in the morning and then we came up with the following plan: that Michel should register a formal complaint against her for taking the girl away from home without his consent, which is verging on kidnapping.

The sad thing is though that Michel is suffering from a terrible depression and insists like a mule that he will never issue a criminal complaint against his wife. He would rather die, he says, what’s done can’t be undone, and even worse things of the same sort. He seems to me completely shattered and even quite desperate. And you see without a formal complaint from him my hands are tied. His brother and the cousins were thinking of going there and taking a rash step which I don’t even want to mention in writing, but I talked them out of it with great difficulty.

In short, dear Janine, seeing as how you and Bruno have good personal relations with all the various parties, that is to say with Michel and with Ilana and with her son Boaz who was living with you for a while after I got him out, and seeing as Bruno served in the army at one time under the first husband and knows him from then, perhaps it would be worth the two of you going and trying to talk to them? Before heaven forbid a public scandal breaks out with the newspapers and all sorts of unpleasantness and disgrace, which will be a terrible blow to Michel and the whole Sommo family. I beg of you in the name of family and friends in the strongest possible terms. We are all pinning our last hopes on you!