Dinner at the Centre of the Earth

by Nathan Englander

  “Then let them stop killing the one. Let them stay on their sides of the borders and I will stay home and sit on my hands.”

  Ben-Gurion talks to the General as an uncle might. He has always kept the General under his wing. “Do you understand what you start? You shame them in front of their people, and in the eyes of the world. They shoot a farmer off his plow, and then it’s you running riot, invading. Then come the reports with my breakfast. ‘He’s burned down a police station.’ ‘He’s slaughtered a whole unit on patrol.’ It’s too much!” The old man pulls with hopelessness at his crazy tufts of hair. “You cannot level a village with the people still inside.”

  Dayan finally speaks, to warn him. “Continue on, and the region will spin out of control.”

  “Perfect,” the General says. “Spread the word. Tell the Arabs, if they lose control so will your general. Tell them, I can’t be contained. No one, surely, wants that.”

  Peres clears his throat. He says what the General imagines he must already have been contemplating. “It’s not only our enemies. It could come from an ally. From the Americans or the British. There is a lot at stake, and any of them may find a way to put you out of commission for good.”

  The General laughs at this, a deep, satisfied laugh.

  “Tell them I can’t be killed. Not ever. Tell them all, ‘He is more golem than man. The General cannot be stopped when he is out avenging Jews.’”

  Peres, in his fancy French suit, twists uncomfortably in his chair.

  The General leans his elbows on the table and points at Dayan.

  “You, more than anyone, know it’s true. You’ve witnessed too much to say different. How many times on the battlefield has that one good eye of yours seen me not die? You tell them,” he says. When Dayan doesn’t, the General says it himself. “I sit here, still breathing, only because Death cannot get a good hold.”

  The General straightens up in his seat, letting the challenge stand. He waits for an answer, sitting there in his white civilian shirt, open too far at the chest, his sleeves rolled up on his powerful arms.

  They can see for themselves the scars and lesions and burns. They know from that first war alone, the cicatrix beneath his clothes cut wider and worse.

  It was more than a miracle that he survived Latrun.

  They consider him, because the General makes them. And they understand that maybe what the General says is true.

  2002, Berlin

  The spread Joshua is renting is more impressive than Farid imagined. He’d have been proud to live in the gatehouse, let alone in the giant edifice that sat across a statuary-strewn football pitch of a lawn. Weathered green bronzes have been placed all along the way to the front door, and through that massive door is a marble entryway with sculptures of its own.

  It’s a shockingly fancy abode. But Farid absorbs almost none of it as Joshua leads him right on through to a giant sunroom that juts out the back of the house, sticking deep into the yard like a thumb.

  The room is all white, and what isn’t white is window looking out onto the water. There are white couches and a white ottoman. There’s a white table and chairs, carved with curling leaves and vines.

  A telescope mounted on a tripod stands by the wall of windows, and Joshua motions for Farid to look through it, which he does, focusing on the yacht club on the far shore.

  Farid straightens up, and the two men stare out the windows with nothing but lake unfurled before them.

  “Sit,” Joshua says, insisting his guest face the water and continue enjoying the view. The instant they settle at the table, a tall German appears, offering Farid a deferent smile. He wears a starched and stiff-looking shirt beneath a red silk vest. He waits patiently to be nodded into the conversation.

  “Can I get you anything?” he says, in careful English. “Coffee? Pastries?”

  “A coffee and zwei Eier im Glas,” Joshua says, ordering first. He makes an apologetic face for Farid, not because of his manners but because of his ordering. “That’s about all the German I’ve got.”

  Farid asks for the same, and, as the man in the vest recedes, Joshua calls after him, telling him just to bring it all, the pastries and cheeses and mueslis and brown breads. “On second thought, put on a show!” he says. He does not make his apologetic face a second time. He says to Farid, “If we’re eating, let’s eat.”

  “Why not,” Farid says. And, feeling it must be acknowledged, he adds, “This is very grand.”

  “It’s too much house for me. But it’s good for business. It looks like success.”

  “Isn’t it success?”

  “The accountant is the only one who can tell you that. Everything else is nonsense. Personally, I’ve never quite understood why a van Gogh in the boardroom of some Japanese automaker impresses anyone. It has nothing to do with how many cars they put on the road.”

  “I think you probably do understand,” Farid says, raising a grandeur-indicating eyebrow. “I think you know just what message this house sends, or you’d save yourself a lot of money and stay at a hotel with clean sheets and Eurosport on the TV.”

  “I don’t pick. I have a full-time fixer. She has a budget for such things, which she spends down to the last penny, because she knows if she doesn’t I’ll just give her less of a budget to work with the next place we set up shop.”

  “You need fish to catch fish. And money to draw money.”

  “Do you think?”

  “My whole life here is built on the idea that looking a part will often see that you get it.”

  “What if this were a business meeting?” Joshua says. “Wouldn’t you assume that the cost of heating this place in the winter and keeping it cool in the summer, that the number of people who must break their backs to keep the lawn green and the marble slippery, means I must lack some sense of scale?”

  “Do you want me to agree, or to tell you, again, that I think success breeds success? To me, this house makes you seem smart for finding your way into it.”

  “I just think the hunger for this kind of excess is what makes the bubbles grow and then pop.”

  “I wish I’d met you earlier,” Farid says. “I could have used that advice before the tech stocks crashed.”

  “You took a big hit?”

  “Growing up poor, I promised never to complain when blessed with so much privilege, even when times are tight.”

  “I’m sure you’ll make it back. Once you know how to make a fortune, it’s much easier to do it the second, the third, the fourth time,” Joshua says, and laughs with something like glee. “At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself. Because it’s about fifty-fifty that I’ll be rebuilding from nothing by this quarter’s end. I’m at that giddy spot,” he says, “where I’m kind of relishing watching the whole empire burn down. I’ve got so much tied up in so many ventures, it’s almost thrilling to wait and see which failure will drag me past the point of no return.”

  Farid takes another look around at the absurdity of the room in which they sit, as much to point it out to his host as to see for himself. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “Just in time,” Joshua says, waving over Farid’s shoulder. “Sander rescuing me from the ugly truth.”

  The butler returns, carrying a tray with coffees, and toast, and a pastry basket to rival Café Einstein’s. A ruddy-cheeked boy follows with a second tray, balancing a pair of champagne glasses with their soft-boiled eggs sitting inside, and a spray of bean sprouts with the most delicate follicle-like carrot shavings woven in among them, so that they look like a pair of narrow, fluted fishbowls.

  When the food is served, Joshua, looking upset, first reaches into his glass and then, without apology, into Farid’s. He pulls out the fancy bit of greenery and the microscopic strips of carrot and drops it all on Sander’s tray.

  “Tell that horrible little troll in the kitchen that I’ll knock him off the box he stands on to cook if he doesn’t stop making art out of my food.”

  The boat moves at a good
clip with Joshua sitting stiffly by the tiller and Farid close by—not even daring to put a hand in his pocket lest Joshua sink them in an instant.

  When all seems stable, Farid asks, “What do you want to see?”

  “Besides water?”

  “From the water?” Farid says. “We can go to Cecilienhof. That’s always interesting.” Joshua puts on his hapless expression, which Farid is already very familiar with, having had to walk his student through every step of every action from the instant they got on board. “It’s where the Potsdam Conference took place after World War Two,” Farid says. Then, in response to Joshua’s unchanged expression, “You don’t know it?”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “What about Glienicke Bridge?”

  “Did Napoleon cross it? Does it connect Europe and Asia?”

  Farid shakes his head and gives Joshua very simple coordinates, leaving him at the helm. Sometimes he corrects Joshua’s steering with a word, and occasionally he reaches over and takes the tiller, turning them where they need to go.

  When they reach the bridge, they lower the sails and drop anchor.

  “So what is it?” Joshua says.

  “This is where they exchanged the American pilot Powers for the KGB’s Rudolf Abel. It was a very important moment in the Cold War. An instance of capitulation between two bitter enemies.”

  Joshua stays silent.

  “You really haven’t heard of it?” Farid says. “Never?”

  “Did they trade anyone from Manitoba? Test me on something Canadian. Show me the bridge where Wayne Gretzky and Celine Dion crossed arm in arm and we’ll see how I do.”

  2014, Limbo

  There’s not a soul about but for his soldiers. With the dark, and the silence, and a picture-perfect village, absent its villagers, it feels to the General as if he’s moving through a dream.

  As for the soulless, the bodies of those who fought back lie dead at their doors. A corpse is splayed before him as the General steps down from his jeep. The face already covered in a layer of dust from the transports kicking up clouds racing in.

  It’s from this place that the terrorists came, the pair who crossed the border into Israel for the prize of murdering a Jewish family in their sleep. Now the General has followed them into Jordanian territory, to extract a sort of debit on their purse.

  The world had tried to head this moment off. There had been telegrams and calls and ambassadorial visits from every government that thought they had Israel’s ear. The Hashemite Kingdom itself, host to these killers, was even ready to acknowledge the terribleness of such an act.

  Satisfactory retributive justice was promised from the highest levels. Glubb Pasha, the legendary leader of the feared Jordanian Legion, had personally offered to track down the attackers on home turf.

  The Legion must have figured it was better to turn over their own to Israel than have the General come sniffing around off leash.

  Unfortunately, the Jordanian offer did not appease. Ben-Gurion had a different sense of what was right. And so they called the General.

  Always, it is to him that they turn.

  His blood was already at a rolling boil as he was briefed by Ben-Gurion and Dayan and the defense minister, Lavon.

  The pair of infiltrators had made their way ten kilometers into Israel. They’d sneaked into the Jewish village of Yehud, and one of the killers had pulled the pin and tossed a grenade into the house of a sleeping woman, and her sleeping children, cutting them to ribbons while they lay in their beds.

  Of the woman’s three children, it was the oldest boy who survived to tell the tale.

  The General’s first question was personal, not practical.

  Where was the father? he’d wanted to know. Where was the one who should have been there, safeguarding his family?

  Lavon passed a file to the General and said, “The woman’s husband—the children’s father—was off defending the country. He was doing his reserve duty at the time of the attack.”

  How this exacerbated everything for the General. A father sent off to protect the children of Israel, returning to find the country had failed to protect his own.

  A sloppy army, a ragtag bunch. The General has decided to clean it up, to make things nice. It is a good Russian sabra that his mother has raised.

  He has formed a secret unit and trained its men. He takes a detachment of two dozen of his commandos and then borrows an even hundred from the infantry to join them on the raid. On their approach to Qibya, they fire off the mortars and light up the night.

  While the shells are dropping and his troops are circling, the villagers flee Qibya through the eastern edge of town. The General has left this exit open. Let them run away so that, when the General is done, they may—like that father—return to see what he has wrought.

  The General stands in the silent heart of the village, where he points at a solid stone house and says to his radioman, “This is where we set up command.”

  A team races through the structure, before letting the General enter alone, a lantern in one hand, a pistol hanging from the other.

  The front room is set with two elaborate divans. Through a curtained archway, he finds a kitchen, and in that kitchen is a brass finjan, its spout curving downward like a bird’s sickled beak.

  It sits atop a gas burner, lit with the tiniest blue flame, as if the knob, turned off in haste, had not made its full revolution. Someone had failed to extinguish what the General, holstering his pistol, puts out with a twist.

  So sure is the General of his control of the village, he takes his time stepping back through the curtain at the sound of what turns out to be a pair of his borrowed soldiers making their way into the house.

  “We have mined all the roads coming in,” they tell him.

  “Good, good,” the General says. “And the charges?”

  “They are being laid.”

  The General sets down his lantern and pulls the leather cover off the face of his watch. He is already unhappy with the time.

  “Tell those skinny boys to work as fast as they fuck,” he says. “I want fifty houses leveled. The school. The mosque. We are here to avenge, after all.”

  One of the two has something to say. He is smaller and fairer and jumpier than the other, who is quite dark and quite large. This fidgety one, the General dubs “the second soldier.” To him, it’s always evident at a glance who is the leader and who the follower in any pair. It is about spirit, not size and not even rank. It is about which, in a critical moment, would act.

  It is therefore surprising to the General when it’s the second who speaks up first.

  “What about the villagers?” the boy says.

  “What about what?” the General asks, a question for a question. He can see, even before number two answers, that his voice will be aquiver.

  “To clear all those structures, sir. It will take time.”

  The General points out into the night. “Go fetch a jeep and make some circles. Grab yourself another useless, matchstick foot soldier to drive you around.”

  When the second, as is apparently his nature, looks hesitant, the General frames his mouth with both hands and tilts his head back. He is going to show them what to do. “Come out, come out wherever you are,” the General calls. “This is the time for surrender!”

  His head still back, his hands in place, he raises an eyebrow and catches the soldiers’ gazes.

  “Good then,” he says. “Like that. Nothing fancy. Any who remain already know we are here.”

  This is the moment when they should excuse themselves and go. The first is already twisting a heel. But the second, wasting valuable time, cannot let it go. His voice turns shakier and bolder in equal measure.

  “Is that enough?” the soldier says. “One circle with a jeep?”

  The General studies this boy, who seems to be shrinking right in front of him. With fear in his voice—and it is not the fear of battle, it is not cowardice, but fear of the General himself—he seems
suddenly so much smaller than he’d been.

  “We have invaded a sovereign state for the purpose of mayhem,” the General tells him. “By now, not only is Jordan mustering her troops, but battalions as far away as Iraq must be readying themselves to see how big we plan on taking this fight.” The General pulls down the corners of his mouth, considering, and then his expression shifts to one of certitude as he agrees with his own assessment. “Yes, I would say if we aren’t eating breakfast at home by daybreak, it means all hundred and twenty-five of us are killed.”

  The soldier listens, and the soldier blinks.

  “Fifty houses,” the General says, to this bold second. “It’s you who’ll decide when the job is done and when your brothers are cleared to go.”

  “But—” the soldier says.

  The General silences him with a look. He reaches over to the first and, with a quick tug, yanks free the fresh stripes of promotion, stitched expertly to the boy’s sleeve. It’s nice needlework, so that the pulling leaves a giant tear.

  The General can imagine this soldier eating kubbeh soup on the weekend in his pajamas, while his grandmother lovingly sews the patch onto her baby warrior’s uniform shirt. All of these fighters, barely grown.

  The General hands the insignia to the number two. “Now you’ve got a new rank, like your friend here. The others will better listen when you wave this around. You can go search for hidden villagers until your heart sits right.”

  “Yes, sir,” the soldier says.

  To the first, he says, “Set this house as well. When we leave, I want it to be nothing but dust.”

  The General yells for his radioman, standing right outside, pacing at the threshold. Then the General heads back to the kitchen with his lantern, lazily pulling the curtain aside just as if he were in his own home. He takes a little glass thimble from where it sits on a shelf. He pours himself the coffee, thick as oil. Even before the cup fills, the smell of sweet cardamom reaches his nose.