Martyrs’ Crossing (31 page)

At lunchtime, he went over to Chezy. It was a dive, a linoleum and Formica room on the ground floor on Jaffa Road with a plate-glass window that looked out onto an intersection where one of the really spectacular bus bombings had gone off. When the door opened, tobacco smoke poured out. Chezy was the lunch haunt of Likud lifers from City Hall. They looked bad, these middle-aged functionaries. Yizhar sucked in his stomach when he went in to ensure that he wasn't confused with the regulars. They were to the man sickly, spotty, hairy, greasy, fat and stooped, pale and damp. An unhealthy crew who only took the cigarette out long enough to put in the food. They tucked their belts under their stomachs, where belts and buckles disappeared. The only hint that the belts existed was that the pants stayed up despite the pull of a certain principle of physics. They ate well. Plates of falafel and humus and pita, pickles and olives, hot sauce, rice and beans, and the inexplicably popular fried chicken schnitzel. To drink: Coke and Diet Coke, the Israeli national beverages.

Yizhar kept to himself. He sat behind his
Yediot
at a small table under the spiral staircase that led to an upstairs bathroom the size of a single stall. When the toilet flushed, everyone in the restaurant could hear. The skinny man with the collection of warts on his chin was serving today. He brought Yizhar a pile of pita bread and a bowl of vegetable soup with a big yellow potato sitting in the middle like an island. The functionaries' tables buzzed with gossip, and cries issued forth every few minutes for more pita, Coke, pickles. They talk only about each other, Yizhar thought. He could hear Aryeh going on about Zvi, who tried to fuck him over last year, the prick, and now, Aryeh was going to get even, oh yes he was, and with Nitzan too, and Yoel, oh yes. Yizhar returned to
Yediot.
These were the people running Jerusalem, Lord save us, thought Yizhar.

“Nitzan says someone told the soldier to stop the baby and his mother.”

Yizhar's ears perked up behind his paper.

“What?”

“The dead Arab baby. The fucking soldier supposedly says someone at Defense told him not to let them in. Can you believe it?”

“How do you know? Nitzan's a committed liar.”

“Yes, but everyone says the same thing. Story came out of The Building.”

Yizhar peered out from behind
Yediot.
It was a table of four regulars. They were hunched over their Nescafés. As they talked, little silver waves of cigarette smoke curled up from the center of the table and flashed like a school of sardines ascending in the sunlight. Yizhar couldn't see who was saying what.

“I say it's Palestinian disinformation.”

“Nah, nah, someone in Defense says the soldier himself says it.”

“Hah . . . he tell you himself?”

“The guy's just trying to shift the blame.”

“Nope. Straight shooter, they say.”

“He could get The Building in big trouble.”

“No. It'll never come out. Still, the question is, why is Nitzan spreading the story? He's such a schmuck. He's probably trying to fuck someone—the question is who. What do you think? Is it possible? What he says?”

The half of the yellow potato left in Yizhar's bowl took on a sickening tinge. He put down his spoon and waited for the table of gossips to leave. Who knew who might recognize him? The minute they were out, he stood. He had to get back to The Building, make a plan. The story was spinning away from him. Zvili and his big mouth? Or one of the other soldiers? Or just guys at The Building who hoped it was true, who wanted to get someone in trouble, stir things up, and move people around, free up some jobs. . . . He paid, said goodbye to the man with warts, and made his way to the door, pushing through a group that was about to be seated. He walked quickly past the travel agency and the bookstore whose windows had been blown out by the bus bomb.
NEW AND USED,
said the bookstore's sign. It was all clean and put back together now, but he remembered the blood on the jagged shards of glass. Little flaps of flesh had hung down from the sign. He needed Doron, now. Yizhar felt his stomach churn and cramp. He was sweating: himself the human beast. The cold afternoon breeze swept over Jaffa Road and pricked the wet skin of his neck.

•  •  •

Y
IZHAR FAST-FORWARDED
the tape of the news through what must have been long, painful minutes of dull political back-patting speeches by boring Arabs. In a corner of the crowd, he caught something wrong or awkward, something artificial. There he is. It's his scarf that looks wrong, and those ill-advised pants with a sharp shiny crease and no cuffs. He's moving at the front of the crowd. And the woman. This is the problem, Yizhar thought, studying Marina Raad. This is the whole damn problem. The beauty of very few women showed beneath the severe contours of the
hijab.
Hers did. She had a kind of radiance, and good bones. Until now, Yizhar had only seen still photos of the bereaved mother, but this person was someone utterly else. Her stare was commanding and she held herself with what must have been innate authority, since this was not a situation she was in charge of. Standing there just apart from her father, she looked like the future prime minister of a third-world country, the one who would inevitably inherit the mantle. Yizhar clicked the remote.

Not permitted, he kept thinking. You are not permitted to go near these people. And Doron looked pathetic in his Palestinian getup. My God. Imagine stooping low enough to put on those
schmattes.
No self-respecting Israeli would ever think of it. Answer: Doron was no longer self-respecting. Couldn't all those people in the crowd detect the impostor in their midst? But they weren't interested. They wanted to see the tragic Raad family, they wanted to see the wife of Hassan Hajimi, and most of all, they wanted to watch the legendary Ahmed Amr, favorite son of Ramallah, Amr's father's ancestral home. Marina Raad was the only one who happened to be paying attention. Yizhar was angry at Doron for being there, but he was fascinated. In all his years upholding, enforcing, and controlling, Yizhar had never seen quite the likes of this one. The new generation has lost its mind, was one of his conclusions. He turns away from me, thought Yizhar, and walks among Them.

Raad was speaking now. Yizhar listened without concentrating hard enough to understand. Content did not matter. Yizhar's Arabic was decent, but Channel Two had voiced over a Hebrew analysis, so that it was almost impossible to hear Raad's voice. Whatever the man was saying was not complimentary to Amr and the Authority. Good, thought Yizhar, create a schism, widen the breach, get 'em fighting. Nothing better than a dogfight. But Yizhar's mind was only half on the tape now that Doron was no longer on camera. The boy must be reined in, Yizhar was thinking. Sequestration, like Gertler? It was his favorite daydream. Idle fantasy. But still, maybe you can spin him again. Take him for one more turn around the room. Then dump him, if you have to. Let them finish him off. Yizhar was glad he had helped with the Hajimi release.

The message light on Yizhar's telephone was blinking red. He pressed in his code and listened. Oh, how rumors travel inside an army—it was almost as if the senior staff were bivouacked along a ridge somewhere, playing a game, repeating things down the line. There were just a few messages, only from men who knew about the secure Jerusalem line. Almost every message asked the same question: Was the story true?

It was getting late; without looking at his watch, he could tell the approximate time because from far down his hall, he could hear the ominous approach of the Russian woman with her vacuum cleaner. Her shift began at ten. The sucking roar—he closed his eyes, put his head back over the edge of his chair, and breathed, and thought about Gertler: failed general, happy if brief prime minister, advising now at Defense. Fate was something Yizhar enjoyed mulling over, but his mind was fuzzy. Historical detail wouldn't come. Yizhar felt as if his tired brain were clogged with dust and lint that the Russian's vacuum could suck up into a disposable dust-filled bag. He did not like to hear gossip about himself, his work. What he did was supposed to be leakproof, yet there were men at Chezy sitting there like stuffed derma and talking about the details of his case. Fabled Israeli intelligence: full of double agents, incompetents, frauds, and blabbermouths. It must be Zvili who was talking; Doron would never talk—not idly, anyway. The vacuum was coming closer, homing in on its target: him.

Yizhar had wanted Gertler's life, but Gertler got it. Gertler got it in spite of himself. After the breakdown, Gertler's brilliance dissipated and his energy vanished, but it never seemed to matter. Instead of falling into a pit of oblivion, he went on to become chief of staff, head of the Labor party, prime minister for a few months, now back to running Labor from behind the scenes, dispensing useless, unheeded pointers to the Defense Minister. He seemed to have led an enviable life, and if Yizhar could have, he would have simply jumped inside the man's skin and assumed his identity.

But instead, Yizhar was left to pace the West Bank, hunting for prey among the sad tin and cinder-block houses, stuck till the light turned blue in the refugee camps, wasting his time on layabout terrorists and two-bit fanatics, reduced further, now, he felt, to a slightly sordid attempt to quash truth and save the country's not unspotted honor, when he should have been running the country. At least the West Bank had been action, but what action was this, now? Second in charge of security during the “peace” turned out to mean public relations, chatting up Avram Shell, controlling the incidents.

•  •  •

Y
IZHAR WAS TRAPPED
, hiding up here in his black den with the lights off, listening to the sucking roar of the vacuum cleaner down the hall. He did his best thinking in the dark—the darker the better in this mood. It freed his mind from extraneous details like the latest scratch on the new desk, the dying philodendron. He could examine the most obscure things—for example, he acknowledged to himself, his own emotions, his own intentions—more clearly in this gloom. He leaned back in his chair and put his hands over his open eyes to conjure an even greater dark. On the screen made by his palms, he saw Doron's face. His cupped hands magnified the sound of his own breathing.

If he looked at the situation closely, too closely, it turned out that he was afraid. He was afraid Doron would fly away, out of his hands. Losing control was something Yizhar did not do gracefully, and he would go to great lengths to ensure that he did it very rarely. He stood to open his window. He wanted to let something in—the night air, the dark sky, something besides himself. He clutched at the narrow sill. The rain that had started up after lunch had ended, the clouds had parted, and the moon hung above the winged lion on top of the Generali building. Below, life was a party. The traffic was stopped and honking. Then the light across from his window changed and people crossed the street in a rush. He heard laughter. An angry voice rose up, what was it saying? But Yizhar couldn't make it out: angry gibberish moving away down Jaffa. People were walking up the street and down, off to have a drink, a dance.

Yizhar's cell phone rang. He turned from the window and his heart raced like a lover's. Let it be him. But quickly he convinced himself: It will be Zvili, or Reuven. It will be the dentist canceling an appointment. He opened the phone and put it gingerly to his ear.

“Yes?” he said.

First there was silence. A breath, a sigh. Hesitation and doubt, Yizhar thought.

“Yes?” he said again.

“I've been thinking about you,” came the voice.

Yizhar exhaled. It was his man. Doron's voice was low, tense. Yizhar heard cars and pedestrian traffic like an echo in the background. The noises sounded peculiarly familiar.

“Where are you?” asked Yizhar. A mistake—never ask what you want to know.

“Here and there,” said Doron.

“Don't be stupid,” Yizhar answered. “You are in big trouble.”

“Oh?” said Doron.

“Yes,” answered Yizhar. “You've been out touring the countryside. Not good.”

“Maybe,” said Doron, but there was a nuance of superiority in his voice. “Are you at your office?”

“Yes, I'm here,” Yizhar said.

“I thought you would be,” said Doron. “So am I. Come let me in.”

•  •  •

T
OO IMPATIENT TO WAIT
for the elevator, Yizhar took the narrow dark stairway down to open the door for Doron.

Through a grille on the front entryway, he pointed Doron to the side entrance, a low steel door with multiple locks and a computer code that would only open after a personal identification number from a Building staffer was entered. A grown man had to duck his head to come in The Building's side door. As he entered, Doron ducked, and it looked like a gesture of submission and subordination, almost like an unacknowledged salute. But Yizhar was not fooled by appearances. He did not put out his hand for a handshake. The two men looked at each other.

“Come up,” Yizhar said, turning his back. He felt just a small nip of fear as he turned away—who knew: the boy might be unhinged—but he turned away.

Doron followed him. They went up flight after flight—Doron lost count trying to keep pace with Yizhar. When they got to Yizhar's floor, Doron heard the roar of something behind them, down the hallway. The linoleum tapped beneath his shoes. This floor of The Building was empty at night. It felt like a cave to Doron, dark, empty, echoing.

Yizhar didn't bother to flick on the lights in his office.

“Come in,” he said.

Doron looked around the unlit room.

“Do you always work in the dark?” he asked.

“I think better in the dark,” Yizhar said. “It helps when I'm working on something important. And difficult.”

“I hope my case is not so difficult.”