the Debba (2010) (17 page)

32

I
BREATHED THE BOOTH'S
fetid air, slowly, then called Uncle Mordechai in Tveriah.

"No," Uncle Mordechai said. "There's nothing to tell."

I said he had promised to tell me about the prehistory. About my father, and Paltiel, and the play.

"I said I'll tell you only before the Angel of Death comes for me, maybe. Until then, don't you mix me up in this! Understand?"

I wiped my face. Professor Tzifroni had hung up before I finished. And Uncle Mordechai did, too, after repeating what in one way or another every merchant on Herzl Street had said to me, what Mr. Gelber had told me the day I arrived, and what Gershonovitz had warned me against: getting mixed up in this.

But mixed up in what?

There was no other way. Swallowing my bile, I took bus number 1 to Abdallah's store in Yaffo.

It was twelve years since I'd been there last, when my father had taken me to buy the leather for my first combat boots.

Abdallah was sitting in the same old chair in his low-ceilinged basement, waving his arms and talking into a black telephone in rapid French. "But no, no!" he shouted, his silvery mustache quivering. "I told you, never on Friday! Never!"

I stood there, my heart pounding. The same faded theater photographs hung on the walls that his dead brother, the cinema owner and poet, had hung there many years before, the same stacks of yellowing Arab poetry magazines, the same smell of raw leather. I felt like a small boy all over again.

Abdallah slammed the receiver down. "Yes?" he snapped; then as he turned he saw me and grabbed at his aluminum canes. "Ach, ach, ach ..." With the canes he herded me onto a hard grimy sofa near the wall, then clapped his palms over his head. "Mas'ouda!
Ya
Mas'ouda-a-a!"

A small crone appeared in a dark doorway.

"Coffee!" Abdallah shouted. "With hel!" Cardamom seeds.

He unfolded his thin legs sideways and sat beside me. "Ach, ach, ach."

I saw that he had tied a
sharit alhidad
on his thin right arm--the black armband of mourning; my nose tingled. From the wall, the large photograph of Abdallah's dead brother glared down at me.

The crone shuffled in with a copper tray carrying two tiny porcelain cups and a steaming copper
finjan
. She peered into my face as she poured.

"Shukran,"
I said stiffly. Thank you.

Abdallah raised the cup toward the photo of his dead brother. "In the bosom of Allah shall he reside," he said in a ringing voice in literary Arabic, not making clear whether he meant this for his brother or my father, "with wings of angels above his head--"

We drank up in silence. Outside on the sidewalk, legs kept passing in the high narrow window. Legs in
abbayas
, legs in galabiehs, legs in blue pants.

I felt the same urge to flee that I had felt in Gelber's office, but suppressed it. I said bluntly to Abdallah, "I came to ask you, did my father write it? This play?"

Abdallah put his cup down. "Which play?"

"The
Debba."
I explained my father's stipulation in the will, and what the newspapers were writing, hinting my father had stolen it, and how it prevented us from getting any hall. "I want to show it was he who wrote it, and not his friend, the poet."

"Baldiel," Abdallah said. Not as a question.

"Yes. You knew him?"

An undefinable expression crossed the narrow face. "His salesman, the liar, the skirt-chaser--" Two spots of dark had appeared in Abdallah's gray cheeks.

"Yes." But just to make sure, I added, "He who wrote
Golyatt, Ben HaTan
--" I stopped. To whom was I speaking of Hebrew poetry? An Arab?

But to my surprise Abdallah nodded. "And
Zonah Tamah,"
he said, "and
Shimshon
, and
Flowers of Blood--
"

"Yes! You read this?"

An Arab, reading Hebrew poetry.

"Yes, of course. We published it in this--" He extended his curved fingers at the dusty heap of magazines, piled behind the mounds of leather. "I translated, and Haffi published--"

"Translated into Arabic?"

"Yes, yes." He stared at me, eyebrows raised. "Of course."

I tried to keep the incredulity out of my voice. "You published translated Hebrew poetry in an Arab magazine in forty-eight?"

My father had helped actors in the thirties; had staged an incendiary play in '46; his Arab ex-partner in the shoe business and his brother produced a poetry magazine with translated Hebrew poetry. How much more did I not know?

"No, not in forty-eight. In thirty-six." His voice changing, Abdallah began to recite an Arabic verse with an oddly familiar rhythm. I recognized the double-metered Syrian verse, and the floating stresses.

"And you did this translation?" I felt a tremor in my belly.
Golyatt
in Arabic.

Abdallah sipped the dregs of his coffee. "No, no. Haffi did, together with--with him, with Isrool."

"My father? He helped your brother translate?" I felt dazed. "Yes, yes."

I made an effort to regroup my thoughts, to return to my first question. I said, "But did he also write other things, my father? Besides the Purim
shpiels?"
I had a hallucinatory odd feeling: talking with an Arab about Purim
shpiels
.

"Yes, yes. This play, that you said." His mouth pursed as if he shied away from mentioning the play's name.

"How do you know?"

"Because he showed it to me, to ask if he should translate it, so maybe we could publish it also, in the magazine."

Again I looked up at the wall, at the fiery black eyes of the man who had nearly published my father's play in Arabic after my father had failed to stage it for the Jews.

What else didn't I know?

Abdallah knocked on his canes with a yellow knuckle. "But Haffi died before we could do it." He paused. "In forty-eight."

"Yes" I said with an effort. "Could you--could you perhaps write all this down for me, as a testimony?" I didn't know why I needed this, or to whom I wanted to show it.

"Yes, of course." Without hesitation he hobbled up to his table, cleared a space amid a heap of bills, and scrawled for a minute, then handed me the note. It was written in flawless Hebrew. But the signature was in Arabic.

"Shukran,"
I said. Thank you.

I searched for something else to say but could find nothing. I got up to leave, and as I climbed the grimy stairs, I could see him looking at me from the bottom of the steps, framed in darkness, his face inscrutable.

I stopped. "Who did it?" I blurted. "D'you know? I mean, who could do such a thing?" And without letting him answer I went on, "Some young
shabbab
perhaps, someone strong--because he was strong--"

Abdallah's face closed like a fist. "Very strong."

I felt my eyes sting.

The old Arab stared up at me. "You want me to help you also, in this?"

I tried to speak, and couldn't. I nodded wordlessly.

Abdallah knocked on the stairs with a cane. "It's for you, or for the policeman?"

"For--for me."

"All right," Abdallah said at last, placidly. "I'll see."

He waited, unmoving, while I wrote down with trembling fingers the phone numbers at the apartment and the chocolate factory, then he turned and went back into the dark, his canes rattling on the floor, as I climbed back into the light.

I stood a moment in the fierce sunshine; but when I turned to go, I found my way blocked. On the cracked sidewalk stood a young Arab, arms folded, barring my way with his foot. His thin face was flushed.

"Yallah,"
I said. "Move."

He barely reached my chin, and although his arms were finely muscled, he seemed more like a clerk than a street thug, in his faded white shirt with the buttoned low collar.

He tightened the fold of his arms and raised his leg higher against the wall. On his feet, I saw, were sandals just like mine, with biblical clasps.

"Yallah! Imshi!"
I said in colloquial Arabic. Be quick about it!

The young man detached himself from the wall. "Stealing our land," he whispered, his voice quivering, "and our stories, too. You have no right." He tried to spit in my face, but no spit came.

I stared at him, waiting for him to back off. But he stood his ground. His large eyes, black with hatred and fear, held mine. I could see moistness welling up in their corners.

"Fauzi!" A raspy voice called from the basement. "Ya Fa'uz!"

The young Arab's eyes shut tight. "Soon," he hissed into my face. "Soon he'll come again, then he'll cut off all your
zayins
, and us he'll set free! Free from all--"

I pushed at him, blindly.

A voice came from downstairs.

"Fauzi! Where are you, you lazy cur?"

I could hear the canes knocking up the stairs.

"Coming, uncle," the young man whispered.

He picked himself up and disappeared down the stairs.

33

T
HIS WAS, FOR ME,
the first sign that we would also encounter Arab opposition to our play. That we would encounter Jewish enmity was clear from the very start. Aside from my tailers, and Gershonovitz's warnings, and the attempt to frame me in a mock-brawl, we could not obtain a hall anywhere. The newspapers continued to write almost daily about our play in the most poisonous terms. And after the rehearsals' second week, the demonstrations before the chocolate factory grew larger every day.

The two crowds still just stared at each other, but a more violent confrontation seemed imminent. And then midway into the rehearsal period, someone broke into the factory and trashed our rehearsal room thoroughly, spraying on the walls slogans about doing unto traitors as they deserved, and nastier things still about my father.

I was enraged; but Amzaleg, whom I phoned, was coolly unsympathetic. "So put up more sentinels. We haven't got time for this small shit. You know what's going on outside?"

With the elections so near, in the last few days violent demonstrations were a daily routine in Tel Aviv, with the violence increasing as the prospects grew that Labor, the ruling party since the state was born, could be toppled for the first time ever.

"What sentinels?" I shouted. "It's a chocolate factory! Not an army camp--"

Amzaleg had hung up.

And I had thought he was for us; obviously I was wrong.

I told Ehud what Amzaleg had told me. Ehud nodded wordlessly and went to talk to the crew. That night, more of them--our gaffer, and the accountant's office crew--stayed behind after work and, armed with sticks, patrolled the plant's perimeter. Next morning, Ehud walked up to the crowd of supporters and spoke to a few, and that night some high school students joined in the plant's guard duty, as well as two older men, perhaps bereaved fathers; I didn't ask.

There were no more break-ins.

34

I
T WAS ODD
. T
HE
more the rehearsals progressed, the less Ruthy, Ehud, and I talked. Ruthy was mostly away, either at a poetry reading given by some rising poet, or at a drama class in which she had registered, to Kagan's irritation and to Ehud's, who had asked the actors, as a precaution, not go anywhere by themselves. Only late at night the three of us would sometimes meet in the kitchen and over glasses of tepid Nescafe spiked with 777, talk haltingly of things that did not matter at all. And later, after midnight, while Ehud snored fitfully in their bedroom, Ruthy would sneak out and wait for me in the bathroom, fulminating with angry silence, forcing me upon her the moment I came in; and both of us would ram against each other, breathing fast and shallowly like two hyenas in heat.

Every morning I vowed to myself to put a stop to it; every night I found myself at it anew. I didn't know how much longer I could stand it.

35

A
FTER TWO MORE ACTORS
were beaten up, our Yissachar quit.

"It isn't worth it," he shouted at Kagan, as the actors playing 'Ittay and Yochanan showed their bruises all around proudly, telling how they fought back. "It's just a play. I don't want to get killed over a fucking old story!"

Other actors also seemed to lose heart--our Yissachar was popular with them--so that same morning Kagan had Ehud convene all actors, stagehands, and the handful of high school students who had now become part of the crew, and Kagan gave yet another long emotional speech, speaking of duty and sacrifice, strangely resembling the speech I had gotten from the Israeli consul in Toronto. Later Ehud phoned around for a replacement; that afternoon we had him, and by evening our new Yissachar had learned most of his role by heart. He was not as good as the one who had left, but he would have to do.

The morning following the first technical rehearsal, the phone rang in Ehud's office at the chocolate factory.

"You want to come?" said Abdallah's voice. "Remember what you asked me to do, to check something for you? Last week?"

At first I couldn't remember, and then it hit me. "I'll be there in half an hour."

I splashed cold water on my face and ran out through the two opposing crowds to catch a taxi.

* * *

Abdallah was sitting as before in the middle of his dark basement, surrounded by rolls of brown suede. Behind him sat the dark-eyed young man who had tried to bar my way last time. Abdallah salaamed me and clapped his hands for coffee.

"From Lebanon," he said, pointing to the suede. "Came today." He began to explain how the merchandise arrived in unmarked cars from the tanneries in Lattakiya, how the police knew about this. "Also the border guard. But what do they care? It's not guns. Everyone needs shoes."

The swarthy crone came in with the coffee. Fauzi shook his head when she put a cup before him, but Abdallah barked an order in Arabic, and Fauzi picked up the cup.

"Health." Abdallah raised his cup to the large photograph behind him.

Fauzi performed the same salute, stiffly.

From the wall, Haffiz Seddiqi glowered down upon me, and upon the dozens of theater actors all around him, in their faded signed photographs.

"It wasn't Arabs who killed him, Isrool," Abdallah said abruptly. "I already told Amzaleg that the old guys, they were not involved."

"Yes," I said. "He told me."

"So I asked Fauzi to check with the young guys, too," Abdallah went on. "And he just got the word from someone, that it was not any of--them."

I made an effort to keep my eyes on the wall. What was I doing, talking so chummily with Arabs who could get such answers?

"... not PLO, not PFLP, not the Brotherhood ..." Abdallah rattled off names of organizations, of splinter groups.

I said, "Then maybe just young
shabbab
, some local hotheads--"

"No. Young ones would have boasted, told friends, put up placards, something."

Fauzi thumped on the table. "No. It wasn't Arabs who did this. It was a Jew."

"Yes," Abdallah said. "It wasn't us."

And then, without any transition, Fauzi began to talk about his own family, and the '48
Naqba
. The Catastrophe of '48. "They took our land, our brickyard, the fishing boats, the orchards, everything--" Breathing hard, he enumerated all that his family had lost. "And my father--" He jerked his chin towards the wall. "Him they killed like a dog--and now my uncle asks me to help you--"

Abdallah put a hand on Fauzi's knee. "Not as a Jew, to help him," he said in Arabic. "He is the son--he came as a guest--" He used the Bedouin word connoting an asylum seeker in the desert, one who may not be refused.

I felt my face burn.

"Guest?
Guest?"
Fauzi shouted. "They took our land, our honor, and killed your brother--and you want me to help--"

Abdallah motioned with his chin toward the wall. "Yes, they took our land, and the orchards--and they killed him--but I had always remained a merchant--you understand? And he, Isrool, was my partner--you understand?"

He had not spoken to me, but I nodded, my face flaming.

"Partner," Abdallah repeated.

Fauzi got up, kicked at the rolls of suede. "And our honor they took--the honor of the sons of Salach-ad-Din--"

Abdallah snapped, "Shit to all that ... Making money, and poetry, is the only answer to ... all this." He made a sweeping motion. "You understand?" I sat frozen.

"Poems!" Fauzi shouted. "Fucking poems! Look at this!" He kicked at the small rusty handpress at the corner. Several bound volumes fell off. "Money! Poems! What's the use of money or poems when honor is gone? Gone!"

I did not know what to say, how to escape.

Abdallah touched Fauzi's knee. "Politics, honor,
ya
Fa'uz, love, all melt away. Only money and poems last--"

"Fucking poems on your head,
ya
Seddiqi," Fauzi yelled. "This fucking poetry, it--it's become for us Arabs a refuge from action. Can't you see? Let us burn all our poetry books, then--then maybe we could act."

"Act how?"

"Act. Just act."

Abdallah said, "And then, once you burned all poetry books, how will you know what action to take, without them, if the time for action did come?"

"My heart will tell me. My heart."

"And until then? Will you leave all the poetry to the Jews?"

"Gladly! If it would make them choose dreams over action, as it did to us."

Abdallah said, "That it has, that it already has."

There was a long, congealed silence.

At last I said, "But why would the Jews kill him?"

This time it was Fauzi who spoke. "Because he did not hate us like they told him; because he did not hate us. That's why."

Their certainty felt like hot coal in my stomach; I needed some solitude, to think clearly. I took the bus back to Tel Aviv and headed toward the Yarkon River. When I reached the end of Ibn Gvirol Street I could smell the water. Half sliding down the grassy knoll, I descended to the tree-lined embankment and turned left, toward the sea. Walking in a dense thicket of wild mustards and reeds, Abdallah's words came to me.

"It wasn't us," he had said. "It wasn't Arabs."

And Fauzi had said, "It was a Jew."

But why would a Jew kill my father?

I stumbled among the gravelly pebbles. The heat, if anything, had turned more intense, more personal. I could feel it on my skin, inside my lungs. To my right flowed the river, half hidden by clumps of reeds. On my left were upturned rotting rowboats, perched on wooden sawhorses, with pots of dry paint lying about underneath, half buried in the earth, like the secrets I tried to uncover.

I heard a rustle behind me and looked back. But there was nothing. The trail had narrowed to one foot in width, hemmed in by
hadass
bushes, and I was as alone as if I were in the middle of the Amazon.

I cursed myself for having left the crowded streets, and quickened my pace. Without breaking stride I plucked a dry reed and slapped it rhythmically on the greenery right and left and walked on. I emerged into a narrow sunlit clearing, dropped into a crouch behind a
hadass
bush, and waited, still beating the reeds with my stick. The dusty, minty smell of the
hadass
wafted all around me.

Half a minute passed. A large man walked by, stepping silently on the outer edges of his Pataugas canvas shoes.

I let him pass, then rose and said to his back, "Why are you following me?"

He turned smoothly. He was the same height as my ephemeral attacker in Tveriah, but was ridiculously more muscle-bound. His torso was like layered slabs of concrete under his white nylon shirt, and his legs inside the tight blue sweatpants bulged with muscles like pythons wrapped around poles. More pythons writhed under the skin of his thick arms and neck, which carried a round head that was all jaw and cheekbones--and, to my surprise, also a small knitted skullcap of the National Religious Party followers, or Kach adherents.

I adopted a neutral stance and surveyed him further. He was perhaps three years younger than me, about thirty, and five centimeters shorter--just shy of two meters. But he must have weighed thirty kilograms more than me, none of them fat. On both wrists, I saw, he had knitted bracelets of dark braided rope.

No, they were not knitted out of rope but hair. Braids of human hair ... I felt my testicles constrict.

"Who sent you?" I rasped.

The knitted hair bracelets identified him as a Samson, an ex-bomb-loader. The air force had a small battalion of them, to lift quarter-ton bombs onto jet racks in times of war, instead of forklifts. The strongest, it was rumored, were assigned to the nuclear wing. When they finished their military service, many joined the Internal Security Service as professional bruisers. Now someone had sent one after me.

The muscleman did not answer, just turned sideways, his thick arms hanging in a neutral stance like mine, presenting a narrower target.

Not foolish, this one. I, on the other hand, had been stupid not to have accepted Ehud's knife. Stupid, stupid and conceited ...

"What do you want?" I asked, to deflect his attention.

But he advanced carefully, his eyes on mine, saying nothing. I recalled Amzaleg's advice to avoid a fight, and so I glanced about me. The reeds hemmed me in the clearing; but the trail, I knew, led to the old exhibition grounds, and beyond, to the old Tel Aviv harbor and the sea.

I could still make a run for it ...

But then the dark Other rose in me and spoke. "
Get out of my way you son-of-a-whore or I'll cut your dick off--if I can find it."

The giant hissed, "Enough to stick it up your ass." His voice was high, almost feminine.

"An olive, I bet, is what you--"

All at once he kicked at my knee, swiftly and expertly. Yet somehow my right sandal lifted and blocked the kick with its sole. The impact sent a shockwave up my thigh but I ignored it, and before the giant's foot came down I slid forward and rammed my interlocked fists into his jaw, right and left, then brought the fists down on his nose, woodchopper style, using as many large muscles as possible--as I'd been taught. But when my fists mashed his nose they met soft cartilage only--his nose bone had been surgically removed.

The giant stumbled back, shook his head, then straightened and drove his fist into my forehead like a piston. I found myself lying among the reeds, blood in my mouth, my eyes unfocused, staring at the sky through a sheet of red pain. Half conscious, I stumbled on all fours and saw him advancing on me. I tried to tumble sideways but before I could move he kicked at my tailbone--there seemed to be steel at the tip of his Pataugas boot. An electric shock went though my spine and, head forward, I was sent flying through the reeds, my head splashing into the oily water.

I rolled about, spitting and retching. Rotting fronds seemed to be stuck in my throat, and some evil-smelling muck. I saw him standing not far off, arms hanging loosely, watching me. I thought of plunging into the river to swim to the other bank, but the dark Other would not let me, now. And so I kept rolling and retching even after my breath had returned.

The Samson waited, his knees bent judo-style--and then I knew. Without pausing I staggered up the slippery bank and before I could think, I threw an idiotic long right jab. I could almost hear the sergeant major shout, "Mistake!" as the Samson grinned and grabbed my wrist, pulled, twisted, and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of flour.

Although I knew it was coming, the power of the throw was a shock. I tried to twist in the air but my eyes seemed to point every which way. I landed hard and for a second lost my sight--yet somehow I was on my feet and facing the Samson's back just when he began to turn.

Now!

With my last reservoir of strength I slammed my cupped palms on the giant's ears--then again. There was a popping sound as he sat down with a thud, eyes bulging, shaking his head and flailing at me. I slapped his braided wrists away and slammed my cupped hands on his ears again and again, and he bent over. Before he could rise I clawed with my nails at a dried paint can and pried it out of the ground, and with both hands slammed it on the knitted skullcap.

He slumped sideways, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he lay still.

I stood for a long while, water oozing from my nose and blood dripping down my forehead. At last I bent over the prostrate giant and searched his sweatpants, my broken nails snagging on the cloth.

He had only a thin leather wallet with three hundred-shekel bills and a few fives, no driver's license, no ID card, no wage stub.

If I had doubts before, now I had none.

The Samson's eyes fluttered open as he tried to wriggle up, but he fell back, swaying. I knew his ears must be ringing fiercely and his balance gone. Ear thumps were far better than beatings, and they left no marks. The Intels did it to Arab infiltrators, to make them talk, and the Shin Bet did it, too. No matter how big and strong the man, when the ear's center of balance was destroyed, he became helpless.

"Who?" I hollered into his contorted face. "Who sent you?"

I cupped his ears again for good measure, then whacked him with the paint can on the temple. "Did they tell you why they wanted me out?
Did they?"
I could hear my own voice rising. Not only an F in interrogations, but in self-control, too. "What the hell do they want from my life?" I cupped his ears again, furiously.

He tried to roll away, but his balance was still all wrong. He lay on the ground, writhing, looking like the leather horse in our play.

A flicker of an idea went through my mind. I stuck my hand behind his back under the waistband.

Nothing.

I grabbed his left foot. He tried to kick at me but I hoisted the ankle high and peeled the pant leg toward the knee. Above the instep, inside a black plastic holster, was a slim black Beretta, the magazine clip fastened to the grip with adhesive tape.

No, not a Beretta. A Batya--the Israeli copy. It was flatter and lighter, its magazine containing fifteen rounds. The Shin Bet operative's weapon.