the Debba (2010) (28 page)

Ignoring Ruthy's staccato shrieks, I walked away from her, toward the back of the stage, toward the dark.

Side by side we stood, behind the cardboard border, waiting for the call.

Snatches of a woman's wail came from backstage, and the sound of an Arab flute. A low wailing sound. Time stood still, like my enemy at my side. The enemy who had saved my life and had now chosen to take it back.

"One minute!"

A burst of applause came from the hall, where the woman had just finished singing of her love for the Debba.

"Five seconds!"

I turned to look at the man beside me. His greasepaint did not seem like a mask--it was more like a wooden part of his face in which his eyes were burning, burning. I wanted to touch him, to remove the mask from his face, to see what lay underneath; what he was really made of, this enemy of mine.

A hand thumped me on the shoulder. Ben-Shoshan.

"Go!
Yallah!
Go!"

The black tunnel loomed before me.

Where was I?

On all fours I searched for my hiding place, my secret lair.

There. There it was. Breathing fitfully I sat on the leather mound, safe at last, in the belly of my whale. Pale light shone from somewhere, from a small window high on the wall. The beam intensified. In a moment the submachine gun would open up with its song of death ...

Down! Down!

I threw myself upon the rough floor, breathing hard and shallowly, listening.

A sound of hissing came in my ears, like the voices of a thousand hyenas, yelping.

Who was after me? Who?

Srik-srak. Srik-srak
.

From where I crouched I glimpsed Ehud squatting at the foot of the stage, his head bent low.

Who was he? What was he doing?

Srik-srak
.

Yissachar was sharpening his sword, making ready for battle. No, not a sword. A blade. A long knife he had made, a knife to kill his enemy with; his enemy, the Debba.

I crouched low, my knuckles on the land. A humid smell came in my nose, the smell of my motherland; a musky, lemony smell. I rose into it, my nostrils flared.

A woman's face floated before me, her eyes staring into mine. She sang at length, thanking God and cursing him at the same time.

Who was she?

Srik-srak. Srik-srak
.

Two wiry monsters were crawling up the mound, hissing like khaki-clad lizards. Yissachar, my enemy, knife held between his blackened teeth, crawled before them, leading them to my lair.

Danger! Down! Down!

A wheel creaked somewhere; the light rose in intensity, and the woman's song turned into a shout of anguish and anger, mingling with the rhythmic whispering of the attackers.

"Now! Go!"

A single yellow Fresnel light had been turned on, and the three attackers rose to their feet. Knives in hand, hissing and shouting, they ran up the mound.

"Ta'al ho-o-n!"

Spreading my arms wide, I seized one attacker by the throat, prepared to fight for my lair, for my land, the cradle of my ancestors.

"Ta'al ho-o-o-on!"

Whose voice was it, yowling like that?

By the blinding light of the kliegs I saw the audience's faces frozen in terror, Gershonovitz, and Riva, and Gelber, and behind, improbably, Jenny, her eyes large and luminous, and behind them the entire lineup of old theater hacks and '48 fighters; and, as though from the top of a distant mountain, in a glutinous haze, I saw Ehud's face, distorted in a rage of fear and love, and his raised fist plunging, plunging, the knife sprouting from it like a flash of black silver.

And then the hand turned, and the balled fist slammed into my chest.

The world stopped. I tried to speak, to explain, but could not utter a sound. Only my sight remained.

And then, as I stood there, my sight began to expand. It blossomed and loomed, grew and widened, and suddenly it opened up to encompass the entire hall, the entire land, and at that very moment I saw it all; without the least effort on my part it all came together, and at long, long last, I finally understood.

I understood my father, and Ehud, and Gershonovitz; I understood Ruthy, and her infidelities; I understood myself, and my rage; and above all and beyond everything, I finally understood the Debba, his anguish, and his boundless wrath; why he did what he had done to my father; and how and why my father had died. And as the scales fell from my eyes, in that one bright instant I also understood, with an almost surreal lucidity, what my father had asked of me; and what, without any thought of refusal, I must finally do.

57

H
E WAS WAITING FOR
me, in the dressing room, slumped in his chair, Riva at his side. Even before he began to speak I knew what he was going to say.

"Yes," Gershonovitz said, "she was the one who sent me a note in forty-eight, your mother, warning me." The fan clicked and clucked and he gazed at it quickly, as if happy not to look at me. "About him, Paltiel."

I said, "That he was going to Yaffo, to warn the Arab?"

I could still breathe only with difficulty, after the horrible blow that Ehud had struck at my heart.

Gershonovitz gave a nod; I felt no surprise. Somehow I had expected it.

In the corner, Riva stirred. "But I wrote it ... Sonya phoned Isser from Cassit, just before the Castel battle, to finally tell him who--who Abu Jalood was, and that he was going to be there ..." Riva's eyes turned black and small. "This
shmendrik
Paltiel overheard her, so right away he ran off to Yaffo to warn this Arab boyfriend of his of the coming attack ... Sonya saw him go and she guessed why, so she came running to me ..."

I wanted to speak but could not.

Riva's voice was a rasp. "She was crying, Sonya ... she asked me what to do--if she should go warn our boys, someone, so they'd stop Paltiel before he warned the Arab--I was six months pregnant with Paltiel's child--and she asked
me--"

Gershonovitz let out a whistling sigh, a slow exhalation, as Riva's black eyes turned toward me. "So I told her, Sonya, 'We must finish with this Arab, before he ruins us all--nothing else matters--'" Riva was looking at me directly, her eyes ageless. "I told her, 'Write a note, so they'll send someone to stop Paltiel--'"

Gershonovitz whispered, "You did right--I told you a hundred times already ..."

Riva curved her mouth. "But Sonya, she couldn't write it ... her fingers couldn't hold the pencil--you understand? ... even after she'd already decided--she couldn't ..."

"Yes," I said; or I think I did.

Riva said, "This
Arabush
--she knew him from before your father--you understand?--"

I nodded. The world was crystallizing into discrete objects, small and round and hard. Riva was saying, "... so I took the pen from her ... and I wrote the note--and--then we--" Her chin vibrated. "We called someone we knew, who--he could get things to the Shay ..."

"Who?" I was amazed to hear my voice, so normal, so clear.

"What does it matter?" Gershonovitz said. "Someone."

"Zussman," said Riva, "from the Tnuva kiosk on Herzl Street. I knew his wife--he had a bicycle--" She shut her eyes so tight they disappeared.

I said nothing. I think that Gershonovitz said something about everyone making a sacrifice, or something equally idiotic.

"Sacrifice!" Riva said with harsh contempt. "What do
you
know about it? You think
you
men sacrificed? You have any idea what
we
went through, in the prehistory ... what we still ..." She fluttered her palm in one of her famous dramatic gestures, the one of Leah'le from
The Dybbuk
, to signify it was useless to explain, then turned to me. "I told you to leave but you didn't listen! Now look what you've done to her." She got up, steadied herself, and, holding the rim of her embroidered galabieh, swept out.

I could hardly breathe; then little by little, life resumed.

"Who did you send, after Paltiel?" I asked Gershonovitz, not looking at him.

He tried to shrug. "Someone."

"From the Shay?"

"Someone, what does it matter?"

A wave of nausea washed over me. "My father?"

"No no no," the fat man fairly hissed. "Someone else."

Another wave rolled.

Gershonovitz was saying, "We had to do it ... What do you think ... Other times we had to do worse--"

"Yes," I said.

"For unity," said Gershonovitz, "what do you think? Without unity there's nothing. Look at them, these
Arabushim
. Just look at them!"

"Yes," I said. "For sure."

"No, look at them!" The fat man was fairly hissing now. "You think I liked doing all this dreck? Doing all the necessary dirt so that one day we'll have all this--" He waved his hands about, then stopped. Ruthy and Ehud barged into the room. Ruthy was still glowing with the makeup and fulminating with the spirit of her role. Ehud held her hand, squeezing it.

"They want everyone on the stage," Ruthy said, her eyes, blindly glowing, looking through me.

Ehud rumbled, "This will go fifty performances for sure."

He looked at me. The flat stare had given place to another, harder still; like Gershonovitz's of the week before.

I said to Gershonovitz, "I have to go."

The clapping was turning rhythmic, insistent.

"They are waiting," Ehud said.

I got to my feet. Gershonovitz gave me one of his old looks, and then, for the briefest moment, I saw his eyes brighten with something akin to moisture.

"All right," I said, then added in Arabic,
"Illi fat matt."
The past is dead. Meaning we'll keep all this between us.

He tried to thump me on the back but his hand seemed to have lost its vigor. "It never is." He stroked my shoulder, almost gently. "Now go, go. They are all waiting for you."

"Bye, Shimmel," I said, and left. And this was the last I saw him.

There was a break in the line of actors on the stage; beyond it was a sea of hands clapping soundlessly under a white cloud of light. I moved into the break and gave one hand to Ehud, the other to Ruthy.

In the front row I saw the pinched face of Mr. Gelber (Jenny was no longer behind him), his eyes narrowed with an intense emotion I could not identify. And, beside him, Leibele, clapping with his soft hands; and Zussman and Amzaleg, side by side; and all the others, Arabs and Jews alike; my people, my two peoples; my father's folk for whom he had fought and killed, and for whom he had finally and helplessly died.

I left through the front door, openly and idiotically.

Ruthy's Beetle was parked at the end of the yard, its door unlocked. Or perhaps it was locked and I had kicked or wrenched it open. I no longer remember. My chest, the inside of my nose, the entire contents of my skull, were on fire. In the dark I rummaged under the steering wheel, for the ignition wires. I think I bared them with my teeth, before the engine caught.

As I sped along the dark empty streets, my clammy hands on the wheel, I kept glancing into the mirror overhead, half expecting the white Toyotas to converge on me; for the quiet men to alight, hands at the small of their backs, eyes hooded, ready for the kill. Yet like that far-off day, a thousand years back, in Toronto, when I had first heard of my father's death, I felt nothing inside; only tears, oily and fat, kept rolling down my cheeks, down the greasepaint, onto my
abbaya
, even as the inside of my nose ached with the remembered odor of the bills found beside my father's body, and with the knowledge of who had left them there, and why.

The driver-side mirror had been skewed when I had squeezed into the little car, and as I now drove, I could see my face in it, the face of an animal stricken with terror and grief and wrath, frozen in a death rictus under the blue-gray greasepaint. Once or twice I pulled out my handkerchief, to try to rub the paint off, but it resisted all my efforts. Finally I gave up.

On and on I drove, just as I was, a Debba in flight, now also pursuing.

The Hadassah Hospital yard was a yellowish gray desert in the wan moon. The building itself was dark, aside from three windows dimly lit at mid level, and the entrance where a lone bulb shone yellowly, surrounded by a halo of moths.

I parked the Beetle with a jerk, waited a second, then rolled out of the car, as I had been taught, and rose, my hands raised, spinning once, twice, to look around me.

There was nothing. No one behind me, nor in front. Aside from a police car and three curtained ambulances, the red Stars of David on their backdoors fuzzy and brown in the dim darkness, the hospital's yard was empty.

Forcing myself to move slowly, hands lowered, I walked into the dim light.

58

I
SAT DOWN ON
the edge of the bed. The thin corrugated face stared at me from the pillow.

"You killed him," I said. "After he had a heart attack."

Abdallah said nothing.

I said, "I saw the pill bottle, in the photograph. It was near his hand--"

Under the white bedsheet the narrow shoulders moved.

"Yes."

I said, "But--but you said, you gave your word to Amzaleg." I felt foolish, saying things like that.

The sleeping Amzaleg shifted slightly in his chair, near the window, his head thrown back. He had already been there when I arrived; somehow it did not surprise me.

Abdallah's mouth twisted in a crooked little smile. "Word of an Arab."

The lights outside dimmed, as if a switch had been pulled in the corridor. The room was utterly quiet. From the bed came a faint odor of disinfectant, mixed with the sour tang of tanning acid. Like the one I had smelled on the money taken from my father's store, a hundred years ago.

Abdallah said, "He is my friend, Amzaleg."

I didn't see what that had to do with my question, or with anything. I stuttered, "But why--why did you kill him now? After all these years."

Abdallah said, "I read in this book, that Sonya told Isrool about me, who I really was, before he left for the Castel--"

"What book?"

The skeletal outline under the sheet shifted. "About Baldiel's life--someone from the young
shabbab
gave it to me the week before ... he got it someplace ..."

"Paltiel's biography?" The scurrilous book that had to be withdrawn.

"Yes, about his life, Baldiel."

My ears began to buzz.

Abdallah said, "It said she knew who I was, all that time, but she never told Isrool--then when she did, Isrool sent someone to stop Baldiel, so Baldiel couldn't warn me--"

"No ..." I croaked.

"Yes," Abdallah said. "I didn't believe this at first ... then I realized it must be true ... so when I came to the store ... I told Isrool what I had just read ... 'You had him killed,' I said, 'You' ... 'No,' Isrool said, he had nothing to do with it, nothing ... it was--others who sent the killer, not he ... But I didn't believe him. 'No,' I said, 'it was you who sent them ... Do not deny it ...'"

"No," I croaked. "No. It wasn't like that ..."

"Yes, it was so," Abdallah went on. "I told him, this I always knew, that the Jews had killed Baldiel, not us ... They only cut his
zayin
, not his--not everything, like us ... I knew it was the Jews, I said. But I didn't realize it was you--" A peculiar expression crossed his thin, ancient face. "You were jealous, I told Isrool. Jealous ..."

The world turned upside down. "It wasn't him," I said.

"Jealous, I told him," Abdallah repeated, with soft malice, "because you couldn't write beautiful poetry like Baldiel."

I said helplessly, "It wasn't him."

I wanted to say that it was Gershonovitz who had sent the killer after Paltiel, and that Isser had nothing to do with it, that he had left my mother when he found it out, because he valued friendship even more than love ... But I could not say it to this man who had loved my mother, too; nor could I tell him it was Isser who had written all the beautiful poetry, not Paltiel. Isser ...

The invisible hand had once more wrapped itself around my throat with an unshakable grip; then it loosened. "And that's why you killed--"

"No, no," Abdallah said, "no ... because he said he was going to tell you everything, Isrool. That he wanted you to know ... so you'd come back ..."

"What everything?" I asked. "That you--that you and my mother--"

Again, I couldn't continue.

Abdallah shrugged under the bedsheet. "It wasn't my fault," he said softly. And suddenly his emaciated figure filled, under the sheet, as he half sat up, his eyes black and flat, like Gershonovitz's. "She was very beautiful, it was the month of Tamuz"--he looked at me--"she got her orders--"

I wanted to say that it wasn't orders, and that even if it was, at the end she loved him ... But the hand gripping my throat remained closed.

"The
mal'oona,"
Abdallah said. The accursed woman. Slowly his head fell back to the pillow, as if this were some absurd TV drama. He spoke toward the ceiling. "In thirty-three, she worked in the house of my brother Haffiz, in Yaffo, that's when--when I first met her."

"In sewing," I said. "She was sewing, for people in their homes--"

"Yes, she made a lace dress for Haffi's second wife, for the wedding ... Beautiful Jewish lace ... We talked ..." Abdallah raised his head and fixed me with a black stare. "Only talked ... You understand? ... Talked."

"Yes." I looked at him with mute inquiry.

He said, "I don't know what we talked about. The sun and the moon ... books ... newspapers ... theater, poetry ... She was also playing then in some play, I don't remember ... in Tel Aviv ..."

"
The Penny and the Moon
."

"Yes. So she took me, to see it."

I said foolishly, "She took you? To Tel Aviv?"

"Yes," Abdallah said. "This was before thirty-six." He paused. "When everything split."

"The Wrestling Club? When the--when they expelled the Arabs?"

"Yes, also with--in business, with Isrool. When I had to sell my share to him."

There was a pause.

I said. "Did she know then that--that you and Isser were ... friends?" I had wanted to say "my father," but it didn't come out.

"Yes, sure, I told her; also about--about me and Baldiel. But she never met Isrool. Only later."

"When?" I asked.

"Later, after it was finished between us, the first time--her father forced her; she then went to Isrool, to his store, the
mal'oona
. Her father sent her--" And suddenly he said, "I didn't--do anything to her, you understand? Nothing."

I stared at him with confusion.

He said, "We didn't, all that time. Not then. What do you want, she was a child."

I said, "Sixteen?"

"Yes, a child. Only later--"

I waited.

"Only later, in forty-six, when she said Isrool needed someone, an actor--"

"Yes," I said. "In Haifa. For the show."

"Yes, in Haifa. To play the Debba. She was already married, a woman ... I--" He stopped, staring in front of him, at the gray wall, his eyes unfocused.

I said, "Because Paltiel did not want to play it?"

He said nothing.

"No one wanted to play this role," I went on. For some reason I felt the need to display how much I had learned about those days. About the prehistory.

He kept staring at the wall, unseeing.

I went on, "It wasn't your brother Haffiz who played in the show. You were the 'Yemenite actor' Ovadiah Tzadok. You also played in Hebrew shows under that name, before." A strange volubility had seized me. "With Riva Yellin, too, and with Kagan, in my father's Purim
shpiels."

But he was not listening. "In Haifa," he said, "on the Carmel mountain, just before dawn--the moon, and the stars ... You understand?"

There was a long pause.

"Yes," I said.

"The
mal'oona."

And all of a sudden I wanted to ask him if he loved her, really loved her; in spite of her belonging to another man, in spite of her treachery, in spite of her inability to leave her people to follow him. In spite of everything. But somehow it did not seem possible to ask.

I looked at the man who was my father, and said, "But why did you--kill him?"

In his chair under the window, his head thrown back, Amzaleg gave a convulsive snore.

There was a cough, almost a cackle, from the bed. Abdallah said, "He was going to tell you. To make you come back."

I stared. "Because he wanted to tell me about you, and--and my mother?"

"Yes, to get you to come back here ... I had come to give him the money, like every month ..."

I interrupted, foolishly, "That you gave him--to help pay--" For me, for the son.

"Yes--he never made much, the
mal'oon
--" the accursed one. Abdallah's voice turned soft. "--always running around with actors, and theater people--was bankrupt once--if I hadn't given him--"

"Yes," I said through my parched throat.

Abdallah said, "After, he said to me, 'No more money, enough, he's gone ...' He said: 'What good is money to me now, with one child dead and the other gone?' But I said to him, 'And what good is the money to me either? Here is more, take it, give it to actors--at least let theater live--'"

Abdallah's face darkened, perhaps in shame, perhaps in anger at himself, as though it was a shameful act he had just admitted to--helping the enemy in the service of a common cause.

I said nothing; my voice seemed stuck.

Abdallah uttered a peculiar cough. "After what I read in this book, I ... I almost didn't come ... but then I thought, Why should others suffer, so ... I came to bring him the money ... and talk, about the last message, that we had to pass on ... to decide if it was sincere ... then he showed me the letter he wrote to you--" There was another cough, now, a long one. "I told him, 'Leave him be, leave him. He's away from all this ... You want him to come back to this? ... To the necessity of killing friends? ... To loss of honor?' ... and Isrool said, 'Maybe he can change things' ... and I said, 'No one can change anything here ... this place is rotten with books that fight each other through us ... what are we against His books? ... Let Daoud stay there,' I said ... 'You had Baldiel killed already, you want Daoud killed too? ... Leave him be.' But he kept saying he wanted you to come back ... 'What for?' I asked him. 'To do what? ...'"

Abdallah spit weakly, sideways.

I said, "And that's why you--you killed him?" I felt a weak tremor in my thighs.

Abdallah said, "I told him, leave him be."

I waited.

After a while he said, "When he fell down, he asked me to hand him the pills--but I--I took the knife from where he sat--the long sawblade knife, and--and later, I made it look, like--like one of us." He stared at me, blindly, and for an instant I could see him staring at my father lying on the floor. "But I couldn't finish--"

I said, "You locked the door with your own key--you had one from the time you were still partners. He never made another key, but you had one."

Abdallah gave a jerk of his head.

I went on, "Then you slept in the garbage-can shed. In the backyard." I don't know why I had to show him how much I knew. "On the ground."

"Yes, like then. I used to roam all over Tel Aviv, go anywhere. Before."

"And in the morning you took the bus to Yaffo." Simply the bus.

There was a short silence. I tried to imagine the depth of the hurt he had supressed all these years, but could not.

"Go back to Canada now," Abdallah said in High Arabic. "Or they'll kill you, too."

I said nothing.

"Like they killed him, Baldiel."

I stared at him through a red curtain. I knew what was coming.

"The Debba's son. You understand?" He stared at me with a peculiar intensity.

I tried to shrug, but my shoulder quivered.

His voice grew stronger, more resonant. "You raise your hand,
ya
sharif, they'll all come. Like they came last night, in the show, to help you. You understand? All the
shabbab
will help you. All the Arabs. They'll shed their blood for you. Their souls they will give for you. Anything. You understand?"

I said something indistinct. My throat was frozen.

Not only had the
shabbab
answered my call the night before; Yaro, who had tried to kill me before, also did; and Ehud, whose woman I had taken; and my friends from the Unit, whom I had deserted, to keep my precious conscience pure. And the actors. And the Arabs, too. They had all come. Shoulder to shoulder they had fought against the rioters, to let the play go on. My father's play. Jews and Arabs together.

Abdallah said in colloquial Arabic, "Go away quickly, then wait before you come back. The Jews, they can't take the chance. They'll kill you."

The hand over my throat opened.

"What chance?"

"That you'll come to us--"

"And do what?"

"Whatever you say, we'll do." He curved his mouth into a frightful grimace. "
Ya Jalood."
O Goliath.

Something hovered in the air, thick and watchful and dark.

I closed my eyes. "And then, what then? More blood?"

"Whatever you tell us,
ya
Mahdi."

I shook my head, my eyes closed.

"You'll see," he said. "You cannot escape. You'll come back. The land will call you, your people will call you, your blood. And you will come back to us. To
us."

What land? Which people? Which
Mein Kampf
?

I opened my eyes, but he was not looking at me. "In forty-four, not only in thirty-six ... we had another committee ... six months we talked ... we drew up a plan ..."

My jaw shook. "In forty-four--"

"... the Mufti said no ... the Jewish Agency said no ... everyone wanted everything ..." His eyes flashed.

"And you did not?"

The man on the bed sat up, slowly. His eyes had turned into live coals. "I only wanted her. You understand? Only her." Just as slowly he let himself fall back.

"Yes," I said.

There was a long silence. Then I said, "And what of the messages, now? The ones you passed? What--"

"No more messages," he hissed. "No more. All along, he had lied to me. He had lied to me."

"No," I said. "No no."

But he wasn't listening. "Now it's our turn,
ya 'ibni,"
he said, smiling tightly, almost amorously. "Ya
'ibni el Jalood, el Mahdi al Mu'amineem."

O my son, the Goliath, savior of the faithful.

Amzaleg blinked several times, and blew his lips out. "Goddammit, I slept."

"Like a corpse," I said to him.

He looked at me, then at Abdallah. Something passed between them, sharp and swift.

Abdallah looked at me but spoke to Amzaleg, "Gershonovitz, he'll never let it come out." He seemed to have regained some strength. His voice was firmer now, with its previous rasp coming back.