The Zigzag Kid (20 page)

We joggled up the coastal road. The air was sultry, summery. Cars whizzed by us on their way to Tel Aviv. Jerusalem was fast asleep at this hour, but here, life was just beginning. Felix stopped humming and
listened to me, but I was so quiet, he turned on the radio. Soft, breathy jazz poured into the Beetle, the kind of music Gabi loves. I closed my eyes and thought about home and her and Dad, and about not having called all day to tell them how I was and to thank them for coming up with this crazy idea. And I wondered how Dad had found it in himself to let me go through such an experience, in the midst of his life-and-death war against crime?

And then, half-dreaming, I started to talk.

Not right away, though. My tongue was too thick and my brain too slow. I wasn't quite ready to tell him the whole Chaim Stauber story. I began with my Israeli bullfighter idea, described then how me and Chaim and the other guys rigged up banderillas out of broken rakes decorated with crepe paper from the sukkah, and used broomsticks for the horses with heads made of old army socks stuffed with rags, and how we roamed the neighborhood, stealing anything red we could find on the clotheslines—skirts, shirts, dresses, towels—I mean, how else are you supposed to rouse a bull?

And these are the children of Israel who did the work:

Banderilleros: Simon Margolies and Avi Cabeza.

Picadors: Chaim Stauber and Micah Dubovsky.

Matador: me, Nonny.

“How nice that you were matador,” Felix remarked.

“Why nice?”

“I like for you to play leading role. I like for you to be like me.”

Then, at five o'clock sharp, Lorca time, we all sneaked through the hole in the fence into Mautner's yard, where Pessia was quietly grazing. She looked up at us with unsuspecting black eyes and went on chewing. She was a big old cow, covered with black and white patches. Mautner took good care of her. He had her artificially inseminated every year and sold her cute little calves without compunction. Having no wife or children of his own, he was probably closer to Pessia than any other living creature. I would say she was his soulmate, if I believed he had a soul.

Mautner was a big man with bristly, ginger-colored hair. His face was always red, as though he were about to explode or something, and he had a little mustache, from under which he emitted short phrases in an angry staccato. Every Thursday at four-thirty on the dot he would get into his Ford Cortina, wearing a khaki shirt covered with army decorations and khaki shorts, and drive away to the weekly meeting of the veterans of the Haganah. And every time Dad and I polished the Pearl, Mautner would march up, slap himself stiffly on the thigh, and ask Dad why he didn't have the nerve to take the Pearl out on the road like a real car. It was their weekly ritual: Dad, still crouching, would only say, “This is no ordinary automobile, Mautner, and if I take her out, she might get a whiff of freedom and go haywire. A car like this needs a lot of space. She's not made for the kind of roads we have in Israel!” And Mautner would sneer and say that if Dad would sell her to him, he was sure he could train her to wheel like a real sweetheart. At which point, with the same gesture every time, Dad would point to the grease-stained palm of his hand and say, “Sure, I'll let you drive her—when hair grows here.”

And it did.

At five in the afternoon I stood before Mautner's cow. I was wearing a red poncho made from a towel with four red socks hanging from the corners like the rays of a big red sun. This was my
muleta
to wave at the bull. Simon Margolies and Avi Cabeza wore their best clothes for the occasion, Terylene trousers and white shirts. Avi, who was past his bar mitzvah already, put on a black bow tie as well.

But Chaim Stauber was really spiffed up: he wore a black suit (he was the only kid I'd ever met who owned one) with shiny trousers, a white shirt, and a jacket with pointy tails.

“It's for concerts,” he explained. “Dad bought it for me when we were abroad. I'm not allowed to get it dirty.”

We all shook hands, looking earnestly into each other's eyes, mounted our wooden horses, and began a slow, solemn lope around Pessia.

“A murmur of excitement runs through the crowd,” I broadcast, and added with a shout, “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the toro has a murderous
glint in his eyes, and now he stamps into the bullring!” Pessia Mautner, that gentle soul, nodded her head as she chomped on a blade of grass.

“And now, the banderilleros,” I announced with a flourish of my hand, stepping back ceremoniously.

Simon Margolies and Avi Cabeza rode quickly into the ring. According to the rules of the corrida, they should have been afoot, but as they both considered this an affront to their dignity, and threatened to form an Israeli guild of banderilleros to protect their rights, or worse, to quit the fight, I was forced to submit.

With shouts of
“Olé!
” they urged each other on, wildly waving their truncated lances. Avi, the more daring of the two, galloped all the way up to Pessia, whereupon, with a will of iron, he reined in his steed right in front of her nose. The noble steed reared up and whinnied, and Avi struck Pessia lightly on the back with the lance made out of the handle of a hoe.

A nervous giggle was heard. Chaim Stauber stood beside me, pressing his legs together.

“You touched her,” said Micah in a slow bass voice. “Mautner's going to slaughter us.”

But Avi Cabeza, who was drunk with pride by now, galloped around the ring, loudly cheering the Jerusalem soccer team, and once again struck Pessia, this time on the rump.

The big cow stumbled back a step. She raised her head and gazed at us in astonishment. Sunlight refracted against the tips of her horns in sudden anticipation of her terrible fury.

But her fury had not been roused yet. It was still dormant, inside her horns.

And to this task, the picadors, Micah and Chaim, charged swiftly with their yellow screwdriver lances, and did their bee dance around the cow. Micah was no great picador. He lacked (to put it mildly) a certain deftness and eccentricity. It was only out of friendship that I let him have the job. Chaim Stauber, on the other hand, was truly magnificent. He rode in full tilt on his stallion Death and circled the cow like a fearsome falcon, lurching at her unexpectedly and screaming in
her ear, with his coattails flying out behind him. One time he even ran his screwdriver down her back.

Pessia started and gave a good strong kick with her hind leg.

In a flash the fight was over. Picadors and banderilleros huddled together, their faces pale, their fighting spirit gone.

“Are you going to let one lousy kick scare you to death?” I asked as I stepped forward, waving my red poncho around my face. It was a bath towel someone had swiped from a hotel in Tiberias.

Chaim Stauber stepped forward, too, panting and puffing. He eyed me quizzically. He had the most remarkable eyes I've ever seen, eyes that seemed to breathe, dilating and contracting in moments of excitement.

“You have the guts?” breathed his eyes.

“Do I have a choice?” answered mine.

I went down on my knees and prayed for the help of God. And being the first and only Jewish matador in history, I made the sign of the Star of David instead of the cross, and froze in this pose, like Paco Camino, Rafael Gómez, and Juan Belmonte. Maybe I could sense what was about to happen and wanted to savor the last few moments. And then slowly, momentously, I approached my good horse.

I began by slowly circling the cow. She was nervous by then and followed my movements with her oblong head. She looked pretty scary from close up, really big, too, a whole head taller than me and about as broad as a four-door closet. Then I galloped right in front of her wet black nose and saw her nostrils flare, and just as I was passing her, I smacked her near the tail with my open hand.

It sounded like a whip cracking. My whole hand ached, and Pessia looked back at me with a plaintive moo.

I was stunned by her mooing, but also stirred somehow. It was so real, just like she mooed when Mautner took her calf away each year. For a few days she would moan and cry, exactly the same way she'd mooed at me a moment before. And suddenly I was overwhelmed. I turned around. Pessia, too, turned around, with surprising grace, and stared right at me. Her milk-swollen udders sagged heavily. I stamped on the ground. So did Pessia. I lowered my head. So did she. I waited
for her to moo. I was dying to hear that terrible sound again. But she played dumb. She refused to cooperate! And then, with a loud whoop, I galloped straight at her, swerving off in the nick of time and smacking her again with my open hand. And again she kicked at me and mooed, but I sheered away from her.

This was getting serious. The others were huddled by the hole in the fence. They were about make a run for it. I couldn't see their faces, but from time to time I would catch sight of Chaim's brightly burning eyes, and I knew that he was mine forever. That this bullfight was our covenant, because there was nothing more he could ask of me, nothing I could give him, beyond the madness I had whipped up for his sake.

Torrents of blood flowed through my brain, and then came that feverish buzzing between my eyes, with the tall tales, and the lies, and the need to impress people with how special I am … On one of my next forays I took a tumble at Pessia's feet, and it was a real miracle that I managed to roll away in time, as she lunged forward, stepped on my horse, and snapped its spine as though it were a matchstick.

Without my horse I felt small and vulnerable. I ran out in front of her, waving my arms around like propellers and screaming at the top of my lungs, and I knew the time was fast drawing near when I would have to fight her to the death.

She, too, must have sensed it, the way she stamped her hind legs, raised her tail, and let out a steamy jet of piss. She stank of urine, sweat, and fear, as she nervously trampled the fresh mud. Like a speeding bullet I flew toward her. I saw her head go down and the black of her horns, and her startling agility as she butted me.

I'd never caught it so bad before. Pessia's massive head, which was solid as a rock, bashed into my shoulder and down my arm, knocking the wind out of me. I flew up and landed in the thick of Mautner's grapevine. The others rushed over to me. I could barely see, with my left eye swollen shut and all bloody, and there was blood spurting out of a gash on my right shoulder, where I would have a scar for the rest of my life, and still I got up. I tottered but I was standing.

Now I was drawn into the fiery ring of battle. Slowly I pulled out Dad's screwdriver. I couldn't speak, my jaws weighed a ton, so I signaled
Micah to lend me his horse and began to shamble around the cow.

The sun had almost set. Pessia turned full face toward me. She followed my every movement. Now and then she lunged and tried to gore me again. Her eyes were red with rage, and her lips foamy white. Three times I waved the red poncho in front of her nose, wondering whether the massive head with the horns would come at me from the other side.

My wounds were bleeding. My shoulder was a bundle of pain, but still I went on fighting, beyond pain and fear, beyond all reason.

My poncho flapped in the air, and the glare of the sun was like the reflection of a thousand pairs of binoculars trained on me; but more than that, the buzzing between my eyes bored deep into my forehead like a giant drill and, with it, a sense that what I was doing no kid before me had ever done nor should have done, and that I was both the greatest and the most despicable kid in the whole world.

And as the sun spewed forth its dying rays, I charged one last time.

I galloped full speed, rolling my eyes with terror and brandishing the screwdriver at Pessia from afar. She lowered her enormous horns. I flew at her. I jumped higher than I'd ever jumped before, up over her shoulders, and I stabbed her flank with my screwdriver and rolled over in the mud.

“With your screwdriver?” asked Felix, accidentally stepping on the brake and jolting us both. “You mean, just like that?”

Just like that. Her right flank, all the way down.

Blood spurted out of her, blackish red and very hot.

Pessia was suddenly still, and then she turned her head toward me in bewilderment, or sorrow. We stood there staring at each other in disbelief.

And then she mooed.

And her eyes filled with madness. They shone blacker than ever. She mooed again, and raised her tail, and started to run around in circles.

It was an awful sight. She went crazy. She charged at Mautner's house and gored down the door. She threw her hulking body against the brick wall and crashed through. Into the house. It was astounding. I lost sight of her. All I could see was the doorway and part of Mautner's living
room; a mad cow was on the rampage in there. I could hear furniture crashing and glass shattering, and deafening booms; maybe she was only looking for the way out, maybe she didn't mean to wreak havoc, but in a very short while she managed to tear down Mautner's house, smash the furniture, and dent the refrigerator …

Then the noise stopped. I glanced right and left. My friends weren't around anymore. I was standing alone in the middle of Mautner's yard. From the house I heard a long moo, and Pessia trampling in a daze through the ruins, bumping her shanks and horns into the chairs and tables. You might have thought she was rearranging the furniture. After a while she appeared in the doorway. Her imposing head, her monumental shoulders. Then she lumbered back out to the yard. She stared at me blindly, as if I didn't exist anymore, and started to graze again. There was clotted blood on her hide where I'd stabbed her.

She munched with zeal, with rapt attention, as though trying to remind both me and herself what a cow looks like and what she does.

A heavy silence filled the car. Felix glanced at me out of the corner of his eye with a new expression.

Silence. I was sorry I'd told him the story.

“And then?” he said, both hands on the steering wheel.