The Fury of Rachel Monette (32 page)

“Now you will be sore,” Calvi said. “It's your own fault.” Cohn's blue eyes glared at him, and a blue vein throbbed in his temple. Calvi sat on the edge of the bed. The two men watched each other. Outside they heard a mother calling her children. At first her voice was pleasant. When they didn't come it became angry. After a while she gave up. A door slammed.

“In a way, Moses, you brought this on yourself,” Calvi began in a thoughtful tone. “I don't mean being tied up on the bed. I'm talking about this whole situation. If you hadn't got me interested in politics none of this would have happened.” Calvi sighed. “But I suppose you couldn't stop yourself, could you? You were an idealist. You still are. And I was the perfect vehicle for your ideals. In that way you used me, Moses. I don't blame you: I was well suited. I was good at it. I enjoyed it, loved it at times. You weren't the only one using me, that's all.” Cohn stared at the ceiling. Almost to himself Calvi added, “I wish to God you had been the only one, Moses, I really do. At least with you I was willing.” Cohn kept his eyes on the ceiling. “I'm a Jew, Moses, after all.” But the blue gaze stayed where it was. Suddenly Calvi sprang up, grabbed Cohn by the front of his shirt and shouted:

“I had no choice, God damn you. Can't you see that?” Their faces were as close as lovers' faces before a kiss. Cohn closed his eyes. “Listen to me, you bastard.” His voice began to rise out of control. The telephone rang in his bedroom. Now the blue eyes moved to meet his. They seemed to reflect the fear they saw, but it might have been a fear of their own. Calvi ran down the hall and answered it.

“Hello, Simon,” Sarah said to him coldly. “Would you put Moses on, please.”

Calvi was on the point of saying that Cohn had gone out for food, for anything, but he remembered that Grunberg almost surely had a tap on the phone and could check anything he said with Sergeant Levy across the street.

“Simon. Did you hear me?”

“Of course,” Calvi said. “I was just listening for him. I think he's in the shower.”

“Could you check, please?”

“Very well.” Calvi put down the receiver and walked along the hall. He looked into the guest bedroom. Cohn lay bound on the bed. His eyes searched Calvi's face. Calvi returned to his bedroom and picked up the telephone.

“Still in the shower.”

After a short pause Sarah said, “Have him call me. I'm at home.”

“Is there a message I can give him?”

“That is the message,” she said. “Call me at home.”

“I'll try.”

“What do you mean?” He felt the anger she was barely holding back, and something else, too. Suspicion, he thought.

“Nothing. We're working very hard, that's all. And we still have to go out to the university and see that they haven't messed up the preparations.”

“If he has time to shower he has time to call his wife.”

“I'll give him the message, Sarah. What more can I do? But I'm very surprised by your attitude. Surely you realize how important this speech is?” She was silent. “Don't you?”

“Yes,” she answered finally in a flat, sullen voice. He paid her wages.

“Good. He'll call you as soon as he can.” She hung up without saying goodbye.

Calvi went into the guest bedroom. He picked up the eggs and toast and the broken dishes and put them on the tray. With a paper napkin he wiped up the spilled coffee as well as he could. Lifting the tray he turned to leave the room. Cohn's eyes were again fixed on the ceiling.

“Moses. I know you are hungry. I'll bring you more food if you promise me you won't shout when I remove the tape.” Cohn lay very still on the bed. “Nod your head if you promise.” Cohn did not move a muscle. “Have it your way,” Calvi said. He left the room.

Although he knew Cohn was securely bound, Calvi was afraid to leave the villa. Yet he had agreed to meet the American journalist by the Wailing Wall. He thought simply of not going, but journalists were persistent, and this one, he thought, particularly so: she might even come to the villa to look for him if he didn't appear.

Calvi went into the bathroom and broke open four strong sleeping capsules. He poured the white grains into an empty glass in the kitchen and filled the glass with milk. Then he climbed the stairs to the guest bedroom. Cohn's eyes followed him as he entered the room.

“Stop looking at me as if I had fangs.” Calvi sat on the bed. He felt Cohn trying to shrink away. He sighed. “You've got to have something nourishing, Moses,” he said gently. “I'm going to take off the tape and let you drink this milk. You can scream all you want, but Levy won't hear you. He's got the windows of the car rolled up and he's singing his head off.”

Calvi unwrapped the tape and helped Cohn lift his head. He put the glass to his lips. Slowly he drank, his thyroid cartilage bobbing in the thin neck. Calvi lowered Cohn's head to the mattress; it looked like a child's in his big hand. Cohn opened his mouth and spoke in a strained and weary voice.

“How did the Arabs get to you?”

Calvi stood up. “The Arabs didn't get to me,” he said coldly. He rewound the adhesive tape over Cohn's mouth, but it didn't stop Cohn from calling him a liar. He did it with his blue eyes.

Calvi dressed and went outside. He crossed the street to the green Fiat and opened the door on the passenger side.

“Why waste gasoline?” he said.

Sergeant Levy laughed. “You're right. Get in.” And he drove Calvi to the Old City.

Sergeant Levy parked the car near the Dung Gate. Side by side they walked along the narrow street which led to the square of the Wailing Wall. Sergeant Levy made Calvi feel small, a feeling he had seldom had in his adult life.

In a doorway lurked a young Arab with a cigarette dangling from his lips, ready to prey on tourists. He had a dozen gaudy watches on his skinny arm. When he saw Sergeant Levy approaching he rolled down his sleeve.

From the cramped and fetid alley they stepped into the broad square which faced the Wailing Wall. The midday sun gilded the worn stones under their feet, and the old venerated stones of the wall. It warmed the scrawny necks of the Orthodox Jews who rocked back and forth within touching distance of the wall, mumbling their prayers.

“I was here that night,” Sergeant Levy said quietly. Calvi knew he was talking about the night of June seventh 1967 when Israeli troops took the Old City and afterwards gathered by the Wall. “That's something to tell my grandchildren.”

“Yes,” Calvi agreed. He looked around for the woman.

“If there is still an Israel by the time I have grandchildren,” Sergeant Levy added.

Calvi did not reply. On the far side of the square he saw a tall big-boned woman with a large tape recorder over one shoulder. He started walking toward her, Sergeant Levy following. The woman was gazing at the Wall and didn't become aware of them until they were very close. Calvi had seen many American Jews mesmerized that way by the Wall.

The Wailing Wall, Rachel noticed, was divided by a screen into two unequal sections. The bigger part, about two thirds of the whole, was reserved for men; the rest was for women. Since the destruction of the Second Temple it had helped keep Jewish hopes alive; now Jewish men and women were united with their ancestors, but not with each other. In the guidebook she had read that the divine presence is said to rest eternally on the Wall: she wondered which section the presence chose.

A group of Americans went by, the men in prayer shawls and skull caps, the women in Saks Fifth Avenue. They walked purposefully toward the Wall, all except a boy at the rear who dragged his feet. He had blackheads, pimples, and a voice which kept breaking; he whined in both man and boy registers. “I don't care where it is,” he was saying. “I don't want a Bar Mitzvah.”

“Sh,” a plump woman said to him. “What if Uncle Hy hears you?”

“So what?”

“So maybe he won't give you the stereo you asked him for,” a short man told him through gritted teeth. “Don't you want the stereo?”

“Yes.”

“Then stop bitching. It will be over in ten minutes. Jewish boys have Bar Mitzvahs and that's that.”

“But, Dad, I'm not religious.”

“Don't be silly,” the plump woman said. “How can you know you're not religious when you're thirteen years old?”

“Then how can I know I am religious either?”

“And don't be a smart ass,” the short man hissed.

A tall man at the head of the group turned and said: “Imagine. A Bar Mitzvah at the Wailing Wall. What a lucky young fellow.”

“He sure is, Hy,” the short man nodded vigorously.

The lucky young fellow and his family made their way to the Wall. The man named Hy gave it a chaste little peck with his lips. It was a signal for the others to do the same. All did, except the boy. Finally the short man took his hand and led him to the Wall. He wasn't far from kicking and screaming. Rachel watched as the short man and his son stood before the Wall. The short man began to wave his hands in the air. The boy kept shaking his head. The short man put a hand on the boy's back and pressed him without much force toward the Wall. With the whole group watching the boy gave in and quickly brushed his lips to the old stones. Then he stepped back and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as if he had just been made to kiss a relative he didn't like. The family began to applaud. One of the Orthodox Jews at the Wall interrupted his prayers to shout something angrily at them. Rachel could not suppress a laugh.

“It is a happy sight, isn't it?” said a deep voice right behind her.

She whirled and faced a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark gray eyes that looked right into hers. And behind him a giant. The surprise, their dimensions, sent a sharp tremor of fear through her body.

“You scared me,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” the man replied with a smile. “I was just talking about the Wall. It means the end of wandering for the wandering Jew.” The giant nodded. “You are Miss Bernstein?”

“Yes.”

“I am Simon Calvi.” He held out his hand. Rachel took it in her own. It was a big strong hand, very slightly damp, which knew how to execute perfect handshakes. Not too strong or weak, long or short, warm or cold. “And this is a gentleman the state has kindly sent to protect me from all evil: Sergeant Levy.” She heard ironies in his voice that must have meant something to somebody, perhaps the Sergeant, perhaps only himself.

“Hello,” Rachel said. The giant smiled a big warm smile.

“Now, Miss Bernstein,” Calvi said, “shall we get down to business? I believe you asked for ten minutes. Since you turn out to be such an attractive woman I think we can stretch it to fifteen.”

“And had I been a hag what would you have done? Cut it to five?”

Calvi laughed, a deep rich laugh which promised to last for a long time, but didn't. “Zero, Miss Bernstein. Zero.”

Rachel led him to a small stone bench on the edge of the square. An Arab boy carrying a large straw basket intercepted them. Blocking their path he plunked the basket at their feet and fished out a silver star of David. He put it in Rachel's hand.

“You like, madame?” he asked. “Five hundred years old silver. I make you good price.” Rachel tried to hand it back but the boy wouldn't take it. He was smaller than the Bar Mitzvah boy, and younger too, in everything but the look in his eyes: a look Rachel associated with men who had spent their lives selling door to door. She dropped the trinket into the basket.

“Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry,” the boy said, and reached into the basket for an olivewood crucifix. “You no Jew? You like this cross? Olivewood. From a tree that Jesus sat by on the olive mountain.”

“No, thank you.”

“Wait, madame.” The boy placed a restraining hand on her arm and felt again in the basket. “This you like.” He brandished an olivewood plaque which said God Bless This House. Rachel pulled her arm free. Calvi spoke sharply to the boy in a language Rachel didn't know. His face impassive he picked up the basket and walked away to try someone else. Scratching a living out of tourist attractions was the same at the Wailing Wall as at Niagara Falls.

They sat on the bench, Calvi on one end and Rachel in the center, with the tape recorder between them. Rachel laid her guidebook to Jerusalem beside the tape recorder. Calvi picked it up and read the cover. “I don't know this one. Is it good?”

“Mediocre.” Calvi put it back on the bench. As Rachel was about to press the recording button, Sergeant Levy sat down beside her. She turned to him.

“Please don't think I'm being rude, Sergeant, but I've found that the presence of another person often makes the interview subject self-conscious.”

Sergeant Levy smiled his big smile, but he didn't move. “I don't think Mr. Calvi minds.”

“Not at all. I'm used to interviews.”

“I'd still prefer it, Mr. Calvi,” Rachel said.

“Very well.” Calvi looked at Sergeant Levy and shrugged. Sergeant Levy lifted his bulk off the bench and walked to the middle of the square. He moved very lightly for such a big man.

“Thank you,” Rachel said. She turned on the tape recorder. The reels began rotating soundlessly, passing the shiny brown tape between them. Calvi took a fat cigar from his pocket and lit it with a match he struck on the stone arm of the bench. He expelled a mouthful of smoke, and a little sigh.

“Testing, testing,” Rachel said into the microphone. “One two three four.” She looked up and saw the amused expression in Calvi's eyes. “What's so funny?”

“Don't you think testing testing one two three four sounds funny?” he asked.

“I suppose.” Rachel pressed the stop button, rewound the tape and played it back. They listened to her say it again. She stopped the tape and touched the record button.

“All ready?” Calvi asked.