Limassol (18 page)

“I'm going up to him,” I said.

 

Now I was alone with Hani in Daphna's apartment. I watched replays of basketball games. He was out of it and now and then he sank into sleep, woke up, asked a few things and dropped off again. I had once thought of going to one of those big games. But where would I go after the game? To a cheap hotel near the railroad station? The street lights would come into the room through the window, drunks would yell from downstairs on their way to the night train, I wouldn't be able to sleep.

I helped him go to the bathroom, we walked very slowly, he smelled of the end now. I supported him under his arms, and I felt all the bones in his ribcage.

“Where are they?” he asked in Arabic. “Where are Daphna and the boy?”

I told him about the stabbing in the ass, a little jokingly, but he didn't laugh. “Oh!” he said, hit his forehead, and went back to Arabic: “The poor boy.” It tickled me to talk with him in Arabic, to go over to his field, so he wouldn't have to make an effort for me. “He was the most beautiful boy you ever saw,” said Hani. “And smart. He could talk when he was a year old. The kind of boy you say will save the world when he grows up. That he'd do everything we couldn't. And look what he became. Ay, really that's enough already . . . ” He shut his eyes, went back to the sofa, his face was full of bristles.

“He didn't say a word to me, the boy, ever since I came here,” he went on muttering with his eyes shut, in his pleasant Palestinian dialect. How does he know I understand him? Maybe he intended to talk to himself. “All the time in his room or yelling at his mother to give him money, complaining to her, once we came together near the kitchen and he raised his hand to hit me. I carried that boy on my shoulders when he was a baby, I made him crushed tomatoes, as we do, and fed him very slowly with a spoon. I read him stories so he'd learn a little of our language, get used to the music of Arabic. Now he hates everybody. Even me. Hatred has taken over all our children and I'll leave here and won't be able to get it out of their heart.”

When his breathing became heavy, and he started muttering visions in his sleep, I made a tour of the apartment. I went into her room, where her bed was covered with a colorful cloth. I sat on it a moment, lay down, felt the cotton weave of the sheet underneath. On the cabinet in the corner of the room were a few pictures: Yotam sliding in the park in the faded colors of a Polaroid print, cracked picture of a serious beautiful woman, apparently her mother, a couple hugging at a table on the seashore, maybe in the port of Jaffa, a sailboat in back, Daphna with long hair and big sunglasses, the very thin dark man. That's Hani, I told myself happily, he's that bastard in the picture, having a fine time with her.

Afterward, I sat in the breakfast nook, read the pages she had left on the table, her new stories, delicate and slow descriptions, things that happened a long time ago, or that would happen in the distant future. Nothing came together for a plot but a shadow of magic and mystery rested on every sentence. I was scared when I heard him suddenly call my name over and over, feverishly.

I went to him and stood at his head. “I want to see my son,” he called out in a loud and clear voice, as if he were dictating a fateful decision. “I've got to see him before I die.”

I held his hand, promised to help him.

“I'll talk to him now on the phone, bring me the phone,” he said with a ravenous hunger, with gleaming eyes.

“Help you dial?” I asked.

“No, give me,” he said, he sat up on one elbow, dialed a long string of numbers he knew by heart. The conversation revolved in space and descended to the depths of the oceans, long beeps of waiting, until a happy smile I hadn't seen before spread across Hani's face. “Hello,
ya
ibni
,” he said and then a charming conversation developed between a father and son that made me envy every word. He didn't pay attention to my presence, he was completely absorbed in talking. Through the receiver, I also heard the ring of the son's voice, firm and virile and warm. He asked Hani soft questions, what he did today, what he ate, and how he felt. He knew his father was in Tel Aviv, among the sons of apes destined to become mincemeat, but he didn't ask a word about us. He'll be a distinguished prey. “I want to meet with you,” said Hani, I held my breath, the whole project now stood on the point of a word. The son laughed on the other end of the line. I went to the kitchen, as if to get something, not to rouse suspicion.

“No, I'm serious. Why don't we meet outside, so I can see you one more time,” said Hani in the distance. Then he fell silent. The son talked a long time, things I didn't hear. “Just for a few hours,” Hani pleaded. “You won't even have to stay overnight. We'll sit in a café, we'll talk. You don't know how much I want that. Afterward I'll be able to sleep in peace. Why not, my love?”

Now it will fail, I thought. The guy will understand immediately.

“Tomorrow,” said Hani with a smile. “But not too late. My time is short.”

I came back from the kitchen with a bunch of grapes. “So, what did he say?” I asked innocently, as if I didn't understand a word, and Hani answered: “It will be fine. You can buy tickets. I think he'll agree.”

“Will your daughter come, too?” I asked.

“No, she can't leave her children,” explained Hani, and sat down, steadier now, to take grapes from the bowl. “But you,
habibi
, you'll come with me. I want you to meet my son. I love you like a member of my family, as I love Daphna, and I want him to know a Jew like you. Maybe that will get a little hatred out of his heart. I can't go alone. I need someone to go with me.”

Suddenly a feeling I didn't know came to me. An enormous wave lifted me, high and very strong, I was afraid to fall, I couldn't keep my balance, I gave into it, galloped on, and said with a broad smile I couldn't repress: “I'll gladly come with you, Hani. Tomorrow I'll buy tickets for us.”

I made him a cup of tea, I picked a little mint from the plant in the kitchen window, poured a lot of sugar in it. He gulped it thirstily. “Ah, that's good,” he sighed. I covered him well with a blanket because the frost had once again seemed to penetrate his bones.

“Tomorrow morning I'll buy tickets for us,” I said again.

Hani held my hand and fell asleep. I saw a smile on his lips.

Daphna called as I was gazing at something on the screen. “How is he?” I asked.

“Like a person with an X carved on his ass,” she sobbed again. “Maybe tomorrow they'll let him out. The wounds are superficial, there'll be a scar. But where will he go from here, it's so awful . . . ”

I was holding Hani's emaciated hand but my fingers groped for her heavy rings, sought the softness in her. I didn't try to say a word of comfort, I knew there was no point. I felt her grief clamp my chest with pliers. Never had I felt another person's pain like that.

 

Preparations for the trip began. In the meeting room of the partners they built a detailed model of Limassol of plastic and cardboard, and a big group, mainly men, gathered around it like a playing field. Now they talked of operational details. Where would we come from, where would we stay, where would the meeting take place. They treated me with kid gloves, like a bridegroom, like a
shaheed
before going out to an operation. The whole thing was built on me, but there were details they didn't tell me to keep things compartmentalized. For instance, which one of the people around me will shoot the guy in the head. And with what weapon. And what direction will he come from.

Haim was supposed to sit in the forward command post in Limassol. It calmed me that I wouldn't be only in the hands of those fops. They wanted me to hold a plastic soldier and move with it from place to place on the simulation table, from the airport to the hotel, in a toy car. Afterward, they pushed the curtains aside and showed a computer simulation, they asked me over and over if I understood. “Do I look retarded?” I whispered to Haim. They suspected me as I suspected everybody I ever mobilized. Now I was the one being mobilized. If I'm good, I'll get a sugar cube in my mouth at the end of the route. Their assumption was that he'd come there without bodyguards. He's walking around alone in the world, keeping a low profile, clean-shaven, dressed solidly, looking like a clerk, like all the real professionals of death.

In the middle of the meeting, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. Daphna. I quickly left the room, so she wouldn't hear the tumult in the background. She sounded steadier, as if she were back to herself.

“I heard that you and Hani are going to Cyprus,” she said forcefully. “Tell me, is that true?”

“Of course it is,” I said. For a minute all the contexts were confused.

“Is that still in the framework of the game?” she asked.

“What game?”

“The game you started,” she said. “Or have you already left it?”

“I'm a little busy, can we talk later?” I answered urgently. Somebody had been sent out of the room to watch me as I stood in the corridor.

“Well I'm coming with you,” she said jubilantly. “I feel like going to Cyprus. I need some rest. You'll have your little meeting and then we'll go to the mountains, I was there last time a thousand years ago. There's excellent air there. Buy a ticket for me too. I'll take care of Hani and guard him too. You promised nothing bad would happen to anybody, right?”

“What about Yotam?” I burrowed into a wall in the corridor.

“He's improving,” said Daphna. “The sweet doctor said the cuts aren't deep, he can be released in two or three days. There'll barely be a mark, because it's easiest to erase scars on the behind.” Somebody had told Daphna about an excellent drug treatment clinic that had opened in Givatayim, run by a psychiatrist who trained at the Betty Ford Center in California.

It wasn't part of the plan for Daphna to come with us. I hadn't yet thought what would be after the action, how I could see her again. And now she's stuck right in the middle of the thing. “Tell me, Yotam doesn't need you now? You think it's a good idea for you to travel?” I asked.

“I'm going because of Yotam,” she answered and suddenly there was total silence behind her and around me, too. “After this trip we can start taking care of him.”

I went back to the briefing. I disturbed their game. I said we'd have a traveling companion on the trip. Naturally I couldn't hide that. They weren't happy, to put it mildly. That put in another and unknown element, another plastic doll, not an obedient one, not on a string. They wanted me to get her out of it. I answered that it couldn't be done, she was a stubborn woman, if I refused that was liable to screw up the whole trip. There were whispers on the side, they glanced at me obliquely, somebody was sent to persuade me, I told them again it was out of my hands. If somebody else wanted to try, they could be my guest. I gave them all of our names, ID numbers, I asked them to instruct the security people at the airport not to make Hani go through the normal humiliating route of the Arabs, if they want him to get to the plane alive.

“This afternoon, you'll have the tickets,” an energetic girl with narrow glasses promised me.

“How do you feel?” Haim asked me afterward. “It's a one-way trip, you know. They'll shoot him right before your eyes. It won't be pleasant.”

“That's my profession, Haim,” I said. “You don't have to remind me of that.”

“He deserves to die,” said Haim. “Don't kid yourself. He murders children.”

“I know, Haim, I have no doubt about that. You don't have to persuade me. I'm the one who kills them with my own hands, remember.”

“If everything works,” said Haim as we merged onto the freeway, “everything that happened will be forgotten. There will soon be a round of promotions and you're on the list. I got a commitment from upstairs. This operation is very important to everyone.”

“I can choke somebody every day for them. No point wasting all the money on trips,” I said and Haim choked on a nervous laugh.

“It's not the same thing.” He coughed. “With them, it comes with satellites and disguises and European scenery. You can liquidate a hundred terrorists in the Kasbah, nobody will notice that. But see what enormous headlines their liquidation will make. People pay money to see a matador finish off a dangerous bull, books are written about it, they decorate him with flowers, but nobody wants to buy tickets for a simple slaughterhouse.”

What could one do with a comparison like that. Haim got out of the car and I turned up the radio. Freddie Mercury sang “Love of my Life” as a show tune. The thought of the trip excited me. I breathed easier, as if we were already in the good air of the mountains of Cyprus. I went to the hospital to meet Hani's doctor. I knew Daphna would come to him before the trip, and I didn't want him to dissuade her from it. I stopped on Ibn Gabirol Street to eat a shwarma; I had some free time now, all I had to do was get on a plane and be natural. The rest would be done by others.

I waited outside the office of the department head. Through the door, I heard weeping, then a patient came out wailing into a handkerchief, a stunned and pale man was barely supporting her.

“Oh, it's you, the security forces have arrived.” The doctor took off his lab coat. “If you want to talk, walk with me,” he requested. “I'm late for a lecture at the university. Tragedies all the time. Once we wouldn't have told them until the end, now it's all a matter of lawyers and insurance, no place for sympathy.”

I told him about the trip.

“He may not hold out,” said the doctor. “He's really at the very end. There's not one healthy cell in his body. Is there someone who can pay to fly the body from Cyprus?”

We entered the colorful shopping center next to the hospital, which was decorated for the holidays, you didn't know where you were with that whole colorful carnival of merchandise and disease.