The Wanting (34 page)

Here is the route I will take today. I want to write it down so as not to forget it because it’s important I go exactly this way, though I
don’t know why, and, second, if anything bad happens, though I don’t think it will, I want everyone to know where I was.

OK. We will leave Geula by car with Mutti. He will drive us up to the Ambassador Hotel on Mount Scopus. I’ve never been inside it, but I am sure it’s horrible. Every time you go by it, it cries, “Demolish me! Demolish me!” (only in Arabic). But in my opinion, it should cheer itself up. It doesn’t need to die. It just needs plastic surgery. Anyway, Mutti drops us near the Ambassador, and then we begin our walk down the hill. I have done this now two times in my life, and I remember it very, very well. You start down the Nablus Road, which the Israelis call Derech Shechem (I’ll tell you why later). It’s a winding thing so you have to be careful at the light at Derech Har HaZeitim, and then especially where it runs into St. George you have to be sure not to turn the wrong way, because it’s not a straight line and you can get messed up, but anyway, we will go down the Nablus Road. We will pass the Al Ma’amunia School for Girls, and not long after that, the Good Luck Car Rental. We will continue down the hill, past the American Colony Hotel, which is actually Swedish, and also past the back of the Addar Hotel opposite it, which I think is Arab. It is quite ugly, but not because it’s owned by Arabs. It’s just a terrible building, that’s all. We could take the number 18 at this point if we wanted to, but we’re not going to because (a) it’s a very short walk, and (b)—well, no b. Soon we will pass the Basilica of St. Étienne. It looks ancient, but I think it’s only a hundred years old or so, though the inscription on the stone is in French. It used to be ancient, my father says, but the original was destroyed by the Persians, then rebuilt by the Crusaders, then destroyed by Saladin, and then I don’t know who built it again. You can’t tell how beautiful it is one way or another because from the outside all you can see is a wall. Soon after that, on the right, on the square, is the new police station, which we shall not avoid at all. In fact, we shall say shalom to any police officer we see. I always do that anyway. Next, the Nablus Road narrows. All the tour buses park here, and the street becomes one way going the wrong way, at least for us. Here
the little market begins. It’s a pretty sad market, if you ask me, only a few cruddy stalls selling rotten fruit and cheap sandals. It’s not very busy. A few seconds later, we’ll be in front of the Damascus Gate. We will stand on the sidewalk looking down upon the plaza. I will tell Yohanan to turn around and notice, across Sultan Suleiman Street, to our right, Schmidt’s Girls College and, to our left, some other school, but it’s in Arabic and I can’t read it, so I don’t really know what it is, and a dentist’s office, Dr. Cozzen Aziz, Orthodontist. I will explain to Yohanan what a fine Ottoman structure it is, and I will point out the Palestinian restaurant on the ground floor. I will want us to take it all in, Yohanan and me. I will want us to see where we are, take notice of our location in the universe at that precise moment in time. I will want us to look up and see the sky, how it is framed by the buildings and the trees. I will want us to listen for the rumble of engines at the old bus station around the corner. I will want us to open our noses to the scent of chalk and saffron coming off the city walls. When we’re done with this looking and smelling (because Yohanan will have had enough almost immediately) we will turn around and walk down the thirteen stairs, and then the eleven stairs, and then the ten stairs down to the plaza, and then we will cross the bridge over the dried-up moat that leads us into the mouth of the enormous and scary Damascus Gate, which we Israelis call Sha’ar Shechem because it leads to Shechem (real name), which the Palestinians call Nablus (fake name). This is our first moment of truth. Three soldiers will be standing in the enclosure of the gate amid all the tummle of shopkeepers and pedestrians, and they will be watching everything even though it seems they are not. I’m guessing they will be sitting on some empty crates cracking jokes or telling stories to the guy selling orange juice. They like to sit there because that’s where the gate is darkest and the heat can’t reach them, and the stone floor remains damp all year long. But the soldiers will not pay any attention to us anyway, and we in turn will ignore the beggars and the Arabs hawking crucifixes and postcards of the Virgin Mary and also the Arab kids pushing their heavy carts up the steep slope of El Wad Road. It is exactly nineteen of my
steps from the time we enter the gate to the time the Old City jumps out at you with its hundred thousand aromas and the crush of so many human bodies. The shopkeepers bark at you as you pass, and wherever you go you hear the chatter of every language God has ever created to help people get along with each other or slice each other’s throats, whichever they feel like doing. From that point, we’ll walk along El Wad all the way to Suq el-Qattanin and squeeze our way through the suq (though usually it’s not busy) till we reach the gate leading to the Temple Mount, the one that they call Bab al-Qattanin and where Jews used to go to pray but are not allowed to anymore. There I will say good-bye to Yohanan and make my way alone till I arrive at the Western Wall, about ten minutes later. I’ll go through security, then cross the plaza and go up the ramp to the Morocco Gate and enter the mount near the garden of cypress trees, where I shall stand and admire al-Aqsa and then, when I’m ready, turn my attention to the Dome of the Rock.

The date today is August 14, 1996. I never put dates down because I don’t believe in years. But today I will, because this is the most important day in the history of my world.

I
COULD HEAR THE COMMOTION OUTSIDE THE
house, but I still did not move. I lay there wondering if this was where my path would end, in the house of the father of the young man who already once tried to kill me—and for what? For some dream of a nation that never really existed? For a land that has since time immemorial been truly boundaryless?

Suddenly I deeply, deeply regretted that I had never taken Daphne to the movies or to a decent restaurant. Lonya would have taken her to the best places. I know he wanted to. Why did I stop him? Every time he saw me he asked about her.

“That girl, what’s her name?”

“Daphne,” I’d repeat for the hundredth time.

“You’re lucky with that one! Good for you!”

Right now she was no doubt taking care of Anyusha, consoling her with well-intentioned fabrications: Be patient, don’t worry; your father will be home soon, he just has a lot to think about, that’s all. He’s the victim of a terrorist attack, don’t forget that. Was it simply Daphne’s belief in goodness that repelled me?

She quoted the Noble Eightfold Path for me and tried to teach me yoga, but I found each position painful and laughable at the same time.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said to me.

“You don’t care if I find this stupid?”

“No, why should I? You have another path.”

One time I told her I didn’t think I was really in love with
her. She merely placed her fingers on my lips and said, “Love is everywhere.”

The sounds outside grew louder, more restive.

I thought perhaps the head had made another appearance, because I had the sense that something was lurking in the corners of my vision. I wanted to tell him my story. I wanted him to know how terribly, terribly wrong he was.

And if I had wanted to, I bet I could have broken down that door with one blow.

After Lonya brought us the news of Collette’s arrest, we piled in the truck and raced back to Moscow, leaving the foundation of my new dacha unpoured. I wanted to take a few minutes to cover the frame with a tarp, but Lonya threw me in the truck, and off we drove. All our lumber would be stolen by nightfall. Back in Moscow, we tried to unearth what happened to Collette. No one had anything new to tell us. The only official report was a small item in Moscow
Pravda:

In my panic, I decided to head over to Lefortovo. Perhaps I could bring her some decent food, some fresh clothes, paper, a pencil. What was I thinking? Paper? Pencil?

“We don’t even know where she is,” Fima argued. “We should try the police or the Ministry of Justice. They have to notify someone, it might as well be you.”

But of course no one would receive us there either.

Lonya was the only one who could find even a scrap of information.

“She was arrested waiting for the trolley,” he said.

“But I thought she was on a train?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I was told. Vera Lifkin was actually with her. They were waiting for the number twenty-two. These three cocksuckers came up and grabbed her. One of them was in uniform. She said they were very polite. ‘I’m sorry to inconvenience you, Collette Petrovna …,’ and that was that.”

“My God,” I said.

“God should go take a piss in his own mouth,” Lonya replied.

What we learned we learned mostly from the air around us, from rumors and “known facts,” and from the
Chronicle of Current Events
. Our ears were glued to the Voice of America and the BBC. We mingled at the Choral Synagogue and milled around the compounds where the foreign reporters lived, hoping for scripture to float off their lips and make sense of all the contradictions in our lives.

Eventually the trial was announced. Collette alone was accused. No vast conspiracy, no Zionist plotters. We did not know if that was hopeful or ominous. Everyone had a theory. It was because Andropov was sick. It was because too many people were applying to leave. It was because George Shultz insulted Gromyko in a secret meeting in Brussels. It had everything to do with American troops in Lebanon. Fima said, “It’s obviously because Andropov is actually a Jew. He has to cover it up or his enemies will destroy him.”

The trial itself was short, and what actually happened will always remain shrouded under the cloak of state secrets. No friends of Collette’s were allowed in. No reporters, other than those from Tass and
Pravda, Izvestia
, and
Novosti
. Citizens were bused in to fill the galleries. They were treated to lush buffets of caviar and sturgeon, white bread, and smoked meats. Not even family was allowed in, except for one unexpected and unexplainable exception. Collette’s cousin, my best friend, the foulmouthed, one-eyed
Lonya Bruskin, was invited into the courtroom. They did not even object when he took notes, which I read years later—in fact, not until after the bombing. As for me, even though I was the closest person to Collette in all of Moscow, I was not permitted to enter. This, they explained, was because I was being called as a witness.