Limassol (7 page)

 

“I'm done for,
ya
habibi
,” Hani said to her on the phone. “I can't sleep and can't eat. Save me.”

I came to her in the morning. Somebody was sitting in her house. A man with glasses, looked like a literary man, in corduroy pants and sandals.

“This is my livelihood,” she said. “Meet him.”

Today she was full of self-confidence, wearing gray pants that suited her, a little make-up, arrogant.

“Well then, I'll go,” said the man, disappointed. “We'll meet at the party on Thursday. The refreshments will certainly be good. They're always good at rich people's parties. She doesn't stint.”

She held out her cheek for a light kiss. “Good luck, Mr. Livelihood,” he said as he left. His face was familiar to me from somewhere, but not well-known enough for me to place it.

It won't work, I said to myself. She goes around with a thousand men. The whole plan is fucked. She won't be willing to sacrifice anything for that sick Arab.

“The
etrog
man has arrived,” she smiled at me. “Did you have a good week? Did you earn a lot of money in the stock market?”

“We've got to talk,” I said.

An expression of great disappointment rose onto her face. Her look was sharp and hostile.

“Where did you come from?” she asked angrily. “What do you want from me?”

Even though she hated me at that moment, I could have looked into her face forever. Not for nothing do they poison the faces of their women.

“You're not an
etrog
man,” she said.

“Not completely,” I answered.

“So what do you want from me?” she asked.

“I want to help,” I said.

“Another one who wants to help,” she laughed briefly. “The one here before you wanted to help, too. I'm surrounded by little helpers today.” She quickly regained her equilibrium, didn't let anger take over.

I couldn't cuff her hands behind her, or put the stinking bag on her head. No hands. You're a thug with bad Arabic, a coward, start reinventing yourself. Be a smart Jew.

“Tell me how I can help.” I suggested.

Daphna was assailed by a fit of laughter, as if she had smoked something before I came, and when she calmed down, she had tears in her eyes. “Why should I play your game?” Her eyes held me tight. “Maybe you're a maniac, who are you anyway?”

I was silent, and she went on. “You're not a maniac,” she said. “You've got the eyes of a poet, not a policeman. I don't care, I'll go on playing with you. Can you fill out any questionnaire I want?”

“Almost any,” I said and she laughed again.

“I once had a husband like that,” she said. “He was a miracle worker. He's not around anymore, poor guy. What kind of miracle worker are you?”

“What do you want me to do for you?” I insisted.

Somebody in the next building was playing Frank Sinatra. The windows were open. I could have sat in her kitchen forever and looked at her wonderful face.

“You know what I want,” she said. “You're gods, you know what a person wants before he says it. You're an angel sent to me.”

“Tell me. I can only guess.”

“There are two urgent things,” she said, and her face became troubled and mature, a hidden line deepened in her forehead now. “I've got a very sick friend,” she said. “He lives in Gaza. I want them to take care of him.”

“At the Erez Crossing, an ambulance and an entrance permit will be waiting for him on Wednesday. They'll take him from there straight to Ichilov Hospital. You can tell him.”

“What do I have to give you in exchange?” she asked in amazement. “Because I'm not willing to pay what I think you want.”

“Wait a minute, we haven't yet finished with your wishes. What else do you want?”

“For you to save my son,” she growled quickly. “Don't let them kill him, don't let them put him in jail. Resurrect him. You can do that?”

I took a deep breath. That was more than I intended to offer. Talk to her now. “Yes,” I said. The reservations were on the tip on my tongue, and I suppressed them. I'm not a crappy lawyer. She nodded slowly and gravely. Her hair was tied on her head.

“You want me to make you something to eat?” she asked calmly, as if we had now signed a successful deal. “I meant to make something anyway. Do you eat tomatoes and Bulgarian cheese?”

She stood erect at the stove, cooked spaghetti in a big pot, deep in thought. I looked at her like a puppy. Then she mixed diced tomatoes with Bulgarian cheese and onion and horseradish, and poured the cold sauce on the cooked spaghetti, and put half a bottle of red wine and a pitcher of cold water on the table. “Eat,” she said. “Even people like you deserve to eat.”

For six years I had been married to Sigi and never had we eaten so intimately. We drank the wine from little glasses, like people who have lived in an ancient village from time immemorial.

“What do I have to do?” she asked at last. The dishes sat empty before us and so did the bottle of wine.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just go on working with me on the
etrog
dealer. A few times a week. I'll call before I come, don't worry. You'll introduce me to your sick friend and say I'm a promising young writer. Or an idiot without any talent who's trying to write, Mr. Livelihood, whatever you choose. I don't care. Just don't hate me.”

“Why shouldn't I hate you?” she asked.

“Because my intentions are good.”

“I don't believe you.” A green spark of suspicion flickered in her eyes. “Do you intend to hurt my friend in some way?”

“No,” I answered. “I won't hurt him. I promise you.”

“So what do you really want from me?”

“I prefer not to get you involved in that,” I said honestly.

“You have to promise me you won't hurt him,” she said quietly, her head bent, with the lost pride of someone who has already sold herself.

“I promise.”

But she asked me to put that in writing for her. They always want that in writing. Daphna took a sheet of paper from the white pile on the table, and put a pen in my hand. “Write. You promise not to hurt my friend Hani.”

I wrote.

And it wasn't a lie, not completely.

Daphna stood up, with the folded note in her hand. I followed every step until she was swallowed up by the entrance to the inner rooms. As long as she didn't call somebody to consult now, that could destroy the whole deal. But she returned a moment later and stood close above my head.

“And I want you to find my son, take care of him. Use force, if you have to. Be a man. Don't cry with him.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Look in the A-frame huts at the Caesarea shore.”

We drank black coffee and she told me about her son. Then she brought me his childhood album, sat down close to me, and took out a few pictures of a teenage boy whose long hair covered his face, his eyes were extinguished. “I don't have any recent pictures,” she said. “That's not my fault. He doesn't let himself be photographed.”

I walked to the mall under city hall, my head spinning, and a heavy blossoming of bougainvillea in the courtyard stroked my head. I thought of her kitchen, her face that would never grow old. In my pocket I had two pictures of the son. I hurried to pick up my child from kindergarten.

 

Before I went to him, I went over the dossier again.

A picture in pregnancy and a checked dress, early eighties, from the newspaper
Davar
. The pregnant young writer, at a reception for the aged, well-known Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer on a visit to Israel. Hard to believe how beautiful she was. No man with her. She's holding a glass and a cigarette, laughing.

“Did your beauty help you publish your first book at such an early age, I ask her, and she laughs and bares white teeth,” wrote whoever interviewed her for the supplement in
Yediot Aharonot
. You can be the intelligence officer for the woman's paper, I said to myself, and left the room to look for signs of life. There, at the end of the corridor, where they're busy with real things, it's not comfortable for me to show my face now.

Right after the army, she went to New York, worked in an art gallery, and there she wrote her first book. From a distance, things look clearer, she said to the interviewer in
Yediot
. Two years later, she returned to Israel and started studying literature at the university. Then came the excellent reviews, Dan Meron wrote warmly about her, a strong new female voice in Hebrew literature. After the book was translated into French, she went to Paris for a book tour, and stayed there a few months. Somewhere there was a recording of an interview with her on the French cultural television program, from the early days of video. She had studied French in high school, and her mother had also brought remnants of culture from Europe.

In Paris, I read after lunch, she met Avital Ignats, grandson of the distinguished professor Martin Ignats, one of the founders of Hadassah Hospital and the medical union. At that time, Avital's premiere film was screened at the cinematèques in Paris and Lyon. The film was set in a workers' neighborhood in Haifa. In Israel, the film closed after two weeks, even though it was praised by the critics, who mocked the public that didn't live up to expectations, accusing the audience of provincialism. The film had a foreign flavor, they wrote, lower Haifa looked almost like Naples, Gila Almagor looked like Anna Magnani. They met at an event organized by the Israeli cultural attaché, and moved in together in a garret on a side street on the Left Bank, near the Pantheon. Our reporter in Paris met with them and wrote about two successful young creators who attracted wide attention even abroad.

Somebody passed by my office on the way to the bathroom and poked his nose in. Suddenly I had become the historian of old gossip columns. Vague childhood memories surfaced from reading, men who had disappeared, black and white television programs, Oprah Hazeh the singer from the Ha-Tikvah neighborhood, a new book by David Avidan. My mother, who was fond of culture, followed from our home what was going on in bohemian circles.

A picture of them in April 1980, shortly after they returned to Israel to film Ignats's new movie. The two of them wearing white, in the background the masts of the port of Jaffa. You could smell her fresh scent from the yellowing paper, tanned legs in a mini skirt, clear smile. Soon her second book will be published, Avital directs an Israeli and international cast of actors on a set, wearing sunglasses, like Antonioni . . .

“I see you're deep into that,” Haim stood in the door and smiled.

“Look what you've done to me,” I laughed. “You could have cut off my hand so I couldn't hit anymore instead.”

“There were ideas like that,” said Haim. “We got a letter from the association for citizen rights suggesting that, for you, we bring back the guillotine.”

Haim sat down across from me, his body filling the little room, and said the matter was starting to get urgent, unpleasant information was coming in from army intelligence. “When will the father from Gaza come?” he asked.

“Day after tomorrow,” I said. “Everything's arranged with the hospital. Everything's arranged with the lady.”

“Everything went smoothly with her?” asked Haim. “What did she want?”

“She wants me to save her son.”

Haim tried to relieve his gimpy leg. “What's with her son?”

“All the big problems,” I said. “Drugs mainly. He owes a lot of money to criminals.”

“How will you save him?” asked Haim.

“No idea,” I said. “I've never seen a junkie who really managed to kick the habit.”

“So why did you promise her?” the chair creaked beneath him.

“When did we start making only those promises we can keep?” I asked him in amazement. “That was her condition. Otherwise she wouldn't have agreed.”

Haim looked at the pictures spread out on the desk. “Be careful not to get too close,” he said suddenly. His voice sounded as if it came from underground. “Keep your soul, your lust, out of it.”

“You always say to work with the soul,” I told him. “That it's impossible to carry out a mission when we're remote. That the separation between body and soul is artificial, the invention of freethinkers.”

“With the Arabs we don't have a problem,” Haim stretched the bum leg out in front of him. “We're so angry at them we don't have any trouble being brutal. Look what happened to you. You'll never forgive them for fucking up your illusion of peace. When you came to work here, you had a bumper sticker with white clouds in the blue sky and angels hovering among them. Every morning, I'd check in the parking lot to see if you had taken it off. Believe me, the morning I saw the bumper sticker had been peeled off I was awfully sorry for you. Look at her,” he pointed to the big black and white picture printed with the forgotten interview, “is she still so beautiful?”

“Yes,” I nodded.

Haim hesitated, and said he felt uneasy, that he had a bad feeling. “But I can't replace you now,” he muttered to himself. “You're the only one suited to this assignment. Did you call the advisor?” He meant the psychologist the service recommended to workers who went nuts.

“I'll call,” I promised.

“You've got to meet him,” said Haim. “That's what I promised them for not suspending you.” Haim stood up slowly and went back to tend to his important matters.

After the gorgeous picture of the pregnancy, Daphna appeared only at the edges of photos of others. The baby was born at the end of the glory years, when the media traces she left began to fade. To remain famous, you've got to work at it every single day, and to the credit of Daphna and Ignats, let it be said that they apparently stopped trying. I Googled them and found a few items about Avital Ignats, his return to religion; then he vanished. The two films he made could be gotten at any video store.