Limassol (14 page)

 

I came to her the next evening. The apartment looked like a field hospital. Yotam opened the door to me in his underwear, limping ridiculously; his leg had developed an infection caused by a dirty needle. His foggy eyes indicated that he had taken something. “Oh, aha, it's you,” he neighed. “You came to collect the payment, come sit down, take a seat in the waiting room.”

“Mother, an honored guest has arrived,” he declared mockingly; what he said could barely be understood, and he tottered off to the inside rooms.

Hani was sitting upright in an armchair in the living room, well dressed, looking like an Egyptian mummy, as if he were afraid death would catch him in pajamas.

“Just a minute,” Daphna called from the bathroom.

I stood in the doorway of the living room. A strip of plaster was peeling from the ceiling. Downstairs in the street, a crazy driver was honking. “Come sit down,” Hani invited me and turned his head slowly. “Why are you standing in the doorway?”

I came to him and asked how he felt. His bag fell on the carpet and his hands were shaking as he tried to catch it and push it back into its hiding place.

“Pretty good,” said Hani. “The medicines help. It barely hurts now.”

“I read your stories,” I said. “I liked them.”

He was glad, his cheeks were sunk deep into their bones, and he made a dismissive gesture. “It's like pictures in the sand,” he said. “They may be nice for a moment, then the sea washes them away. Thank you very much,
habibi
.”

We sat in silence. Daphna lingered in the bathroom. That was the right moment to move ahead with him. I asked if he missed Gaza.

“What's to miss there,” he laughed. “You don't miss a place like that. Maybe I miss people, not Gaza. It's hell. I miss my children, who aren't there anymore.”

I asked how many children he had. I had to be empathic with him, devoid of all aggression, I tried very hard.

“Only two,” he said. “A son and a daughter. The daughter got married a few years ago and moved to Kuwait.”

“And the son?” I asked.

“The son,” he sighed. “The son isn't here either.”

Daphna came out washed and wearing makeup and a tight dress. Her shoulders were strong and gleaming.

“Come on, we're going out,” she declared. “I'll just ask Yotam if he wants to come with us.”

Dull syllables were heard from the inside rooms, he raised his voice in a shriek for a moment. Daphna came out less jolly than when she had gone in.

I asked where we were going. “To a party,” she answered, and started down the stairs.

“Wait a minute.” I ran after her. “I thought we had a lesson, I wrote some new pages . . . ” But she galloped down. I won't say I didn't enjoy watching her.

Daphna sat between us in the back seat of the cab. She opened the window, even though it was damp and hot outside, because she didn't like the cold of the air-conditioner. The cab driver sat alone as we headed for the sea. The last of the swimmers was climbing onto the boardwalk, suburban families were ambling back and forth with strollers, from Charles Chlor Park rose pillars of smoke smelling of meat. I silently tallied the attacks that had occurred on that short stretch of beach; I stopped at four and wasn't sure I remembered them all; after every one of them I had been up all night. At that moment, with Daphna's orange blossom perfume in the air, they felt like a bad dream. At the Dolphinarium, the driver turned left, toward Neve Tzedek. Daphna was happy, getting out inspired her. “She's an awful writer,” said Daphna. “But awful rich, and she's got a fantastic house. They bought it from the Shalosh family for more than two million dollars, God knows how much it's worth now. They publish her books only because of these parties. And she bribes her editor, everybody knows that.”

The big house was surrounded by a high fence and a jasmine hedge. A guard delayed us at the entrance, Hani and I looked suspicious to him, but just before it got embarrassing, Daphna pulled us inside. Our hostess, the writer, stood in the gigantic entrance hall—the ceiling was twice as high as the one in our cottage in Ra'anana—and greeted the guests with kisses on their cheeks. We got ours, too. “How beautiful you look,” the hostess said to Daphna. “You forever seem to be growing, all the time like a teenage boy.” I liked that comparison. We followed Daphna's dress up the internal staircase to the crowded terrace. On one side were the lights of the seashore, and on the other side were the high towers of the financial center. Daphna quickly blended in, flooded with smiles; Hani and I were left leaning on the concrete ledge above the quiet street. I saw that it was hard for him to stand like that. I brought a lemonade for Hani and a beer for me, and I also got him a chair. We were swallowed up by the gigantic plants. Here and there, I recognized a famous face. A dwarf olive tree planted in a big ceramic pot loomed over us. There was a fine wind from the sea and German artisan beers, standard serving girls, with the interesting faces of acting students, who walked around with small elaborate snacks. Now and then, Daphna brought some victim to introduce to us. I tried my best to engage in small talk. Hani had more patience and talent for that, and so it turned out I was silent and he talked, generally about people and places he had known in his happy years in Tel Aviv. There were cultured people there, handsome women, the kind who liked to bad-mouth me and my companions, but that evening I was a literary novice, a lover of man, standing and slowly getting drunk enveloped in the free spirit circulating on that charming terrace above Neve Tzedek.

Hani turned into a kind of social highlight. Everyone was glad to meet an authentic Arab, and from Gaza to boot, as if a guest from the moon had landed among them. They were comfortable with Hani, who spoke good Hebrew and was pleasant and polite. When they brought up politics, he evaded the subject with a smile. Women touched him affectionately, he radiated happiness and plunged among them, glad of the attention. I stood on the side like an angry adolescent.

I saw that Hani was getting tired. I went to him and asked if he needed anything, maybe to go to the bathroom, or to take his medicine, and he said he was all right, he felt good here, there hadn't been such open air for a long time. “You're not angry at them?” I whispered to him.

“Why should I be angry?” he said. “They're good people. Are you angry at them?” he looked at me uncomprehending.

Fragments of conversation rose to me on the wind, the normal talk of people like them, who have no responsibility, who don't have to get their hands dirty. I saw one of my history professors. I tried to get close to him and hear what he was talking about, but he gave me an empty look; he had no idea who I was. I went back to the ledge, which had become my safe haven.

In the middle of the party on the roof, a newspaper photographer arrived with big lenses and a photographer's vest and started firing his flash in all directions. I turned back toward the sea so he wouldn't catch me, God forbid, and publish a picture of me with Hani; that could destroy the whole business. In general, I didn't want to be photographed, like Indian women who are afraid the camera will steal their soul. Daphna came and took me by the arm. “Come, let's walk around a little, meet people, you're so sullen.” She got into a conversation with a young writer whose last book she admired; I had read some decent reviews of his work. He had horn-rimmed glasses and abundant hair. “Meet a friend,” she said to him. “This is my mystery man,” and she held me close to her. I had to squeeze out a smile. Her touch was nice and cool, my bare arm clung to her thin shoulders. Afterward, her friend came to us, an older woman. Daphna whispered to me that she was also very rich—after her husband left her, she got a wad of money, and now she lived most of the time with a young man in India. We circulated like that until we came to my history professor, who was now willing to relate. “He studied with you,” Daphna revealed to him, and he smiled at me politely. Very slowly, I began feeling less strange, and the anger melted a little, the cocktails and the wine I drank helped, but above all it was thanks to the proximity of Daphna, who didn't move from my side. Now and then I'd have to push a camera lens away from my face so I wouldn't be photographed, until Daphna whispered, “Stop that.”

“Let's go see what's with poor Hani,” she said. We found him deep in conversation with the hostess, who recalled that she had met him once at a café on the Herbert Samuel Quay, many years ago. He had invited everybody at the table to come visit him in Gaza, promised he'd show them around and protect them from all harm. “Where did you disappear?” she asked Hani. “As if the earth had swallowed you.” Hani laughed lightly and muttered something. I brought him a bowl of fruit, watermelon cut in cubes and a bunch of grapes, and the writer's husband who seemed to be an open and genial man joined us, and suddenly we had a group. It had been a long time since I had sat with normal people like that.

We returned in a cab laughing cheerfully, all of us a little drunk. Daphna again sat between the two of us. Only the jerk of a cabdriver gave Hani a sour glance now and then in the rearview mirror. I could have throttled him.

Daphna's street was deserted now, the lights in the windows were out, bats flapped their wings among the dark branches of the ficus trees. I felt bad about leaving them. Daphna supported Hani up the long flight of stairs.

Tomorrow I could report to Haim that I had made progress.

 

It turned out that the relatives of the fat young man who died sued the state for damages. I was called to an urgent meeting with the lawyer handling the case. She had a small office, filled with files coming out of every hole, all the cabinets were bursting with paperwork. When I entered, she was finishing a stormy call, there was some problem with a nanny who didn't come. I waited patiently in the door and asked whether I should come back some other time. “No, come in. I've got to present the defense brief the day after tomorrow and I don't have any idea what to write.”

I sat down across from her—behind her was the high tower of the defense ministry, full of dishes and relays dripping radiation into the brains of those sitting in the offices—and waited for questions.

Very slowly and methodically, she went through that night with me step-by-step, didn't leave out a minute, insisted on not skipping over a moment. She wanted me to draw the room for her, where he was sitting and where I was. How he was tied. Did we beat him. “Show me exactly how he was tied up,” she asked. I didn't see any empathy in her eyes.

“I'd need a much lower chair,” I told her up close. “And handcuffs.”

She asked if the doctor had seen him before the interrogation. “I don't think so,” I said. “We don't check whether they're able-bodied.” The lawyer didn't laugh. She was a good-looking woman, with swarthy skin and big eyes and she didn't smile once. “Explain to me how he died,” she asked finally.

I really didn't want to go back to that, to the choking, the death rattles, the look of imminent disaster on his face when he knew he wasn't getting out of it. She insisted I tell her everything. I had a fit of pesky, dry coughing, and she got up to bring me a glass of water. She had long legs in tailored trousers.

When she came back I asked if she was for me or against me because, so far, I hadn't understood from her questions. “It's not a personal case,” she said. “I'm defending the state, so it won't have to pay too much money. From what I've heard so far, that won't be simple.”

“You really don't understand what happened there?” I tried to explain more forcefully. “Recall that a ticking bomb was walking around, we had to catch him.”

She insisted on continuing with a precise description of the details—what we did after he lost consciousness, how long until the medic arrived—until I was fed up, her small office and the papers were suffocating me, and so was the accusation in her eyes. I asked again, quietly, if it wouldn't be enough for her to write to the judge that it was all done to save lives, to prevent murder.

“What does that have to do with it?” she asked. She also seemed fed up. “Is that a reason to choke him?”

I banged on the table and said in a loud voice, almost shouting: “Nobody choked him, the man was sick, he choked by himself.”

“That's not what the interrogator with you said. He said you put your hands on his throat.”

By now I no longer remembered exactly what had happened there. The foam bubbling from the mouth, the desperate look, the picture of the children we found in his pocket. I sat silent, I didn't have the strength to defend myself anymore. What did he tell you, that young dog?

“I read your internal report,” she went on whipping. “That your emotional state was not optimal at that time. Can you detail that issue for me? What were you going through?”

“That's none of your business,” I said. “I was in excellent shape. I entered the interrogation room humming tunes from the army choirs. Twelve years I've worked in this, and no day is a holiday, believe me. I was friendly and warm and empathic. Calm and tranquil. Loving and hugging. Choking and abusing. You sent me there, madam, why are you complaining about me?”

“I sent you?” she laughed, perplexed. “I don't even know you.”

“What do you intend to do with what they told you? With the choking and the binding and the killing in that cell? Do you intend to take it outside, stop the horror? Come on, do something. You're a woman of the law. Take it into your own hands.”

That shut her up. She looked at me like I was a lunatic. I knew she'd give a full report on our meeting, but I didn't care anymore. I was finally fed up with all that stinking hypocrisy.

“You don't care,” I went on assailing her. Outside there was a gray sunset and the office was lit by a florescent lamp. “Because you'll never go there. And nobody you know will ever go there, not even to visit. You don't want to hear anything. Let them be locked up tight in cages, those human apes, so they can't escape, let their mouths be gagged with rags so they won't shout. All that . . . ”—A framed family picture at the edge of the desk caught my attention, a handsome Israeli man, perpetual student by the look of it, good! two children wearing ski clothes, someplace foreign—“All that so they won't come devour your great legs and your children and your sweet husband.”