The Zigzag Kid

by David Grossman

  Neither do young people like me, I thought, and hiding behind an armchair, I took off the blouse and skirt and changed back into my normal clothes.

  Felix threw me a look of astonishment. “What if someone sees you like this?”

  “It’ll be easier for me to run wearing pants and my own sandals.”

  He thought a moment and shrugged his shoulders. It was okay. Then he turned to Lola. “At six o’clock tomorrow morning Amnon and Felix will bring your sea back. Now turn off lights and go to sleep.”

  “Don’t you order me around!” she retorted in her queenly voice. “I happen to have big plans for tonight while you two are off on your escapade.”

  She walked us to the door and blew us kisses.

  We emerged on a cold, dark street. The trees rustled softly. The moon was pearly white and almost full. I thought of all the people I knew who were sleeping just then. The ordinary people, the amateurs, were dreaming peacefully in their beds while I walked down a darkened street with Felix Glick, the fabled criminal.

  “Here’s what we do.” Felix stopped me. “I walk first. You walk fifty paces behind me. If there is hitch, policemen come or something, then whoosh, you run and hide. Then go back to Lola’s house. Don’t wait for me in street!”

  “But where are we going?”

  “We go to sea. There is problem there. We look on beach for bulldozer. It’s easy. You come, you do it, good day, thank you very much, and shalom.”

  “But wait a minute, I don’t understand: what’s the problem?”

  “Later. I explain to you later! Now we must to go!”

  And he vanished—even before his “hi-deh”—into the darkness.

  But only to reappear farther down the street, I don’t quite know how. Did he run there? Or fly? Suddenly he was on the corner, limping slowly along, dragging his leg.

  I followed cautiously, staying a fixed distance behind him. I glanced furtively around to make sure no one was tailing me. It was kind of strange, following someone who wanted me to follow him, while at the same time keeping a lookout in case someone was following me.

  I walked as quietly as I could, feeling nervous. Maybe the police were already on my tail. I tried to think like them: they were searching for an old man and a boy who had jumped off a train. I wondered if they’d figured out yet that the hijacker was Felix Glick. It would be typical of them to take an interminable amount of time putting a composite to gether and comparing it with the mug shots of known criminals, and only later to recover the distinguishing ear of wheat Felix had deliberately left on board the locomotive.

  But he had shown his real driver’s license to the pimply-faced policeman.

  And had stolen his watch.

  Only to amuse me?

  No, it wasn’t only that. With Felix, nothing was “only” anything. There was another, deeper motive.

  But what was it? Why had he let the policeman see his real name?

  So he would suspect something and try to remember the old man’s name.

  I could just imagine the guy scratching his pimply forehead. The name Felix Glick sounds vaguely familiar, but he can’t quite place it. After all, he was only a kid playing cops and robbers when Felix went to prison. So he waits an hour, finishes his shift, goes home to his pregnant wife and tells her what the old man said about children changing your life. Then he asks her if she’s seen his watch around by any chance. He’s almost sure he had it on before the meeting with the old guy and his pigtailed granddaughter. Again he tries to recollect where he might have come across the name Felix Glick. Could he have seen it written somewhere, perhaps in print? He becomes irritable and impatient, tells his wife he’ll be home soon, and drives to the precinct. Maybe he left the watch in his locker. But the watch isn’t there. He steps into the office of a certain captain, who’s been on the force so long he can remember things that happened twenty years before. Someone from Dad’s generation. “Uhm, tell me something,” he asks the older policeman, “does the name Felix Glick ring a bell?”

  And the case explodes in a huge display of fireworks and a great machine is set in motion.

  Felix wanted the police to know he was the one. He always enjoyed an escape more with somebody in pursuit. He needed a little danger to spice things up. I watched him admiringly as he limped up the street, looking quite pathetic. What an actor. Dad had certainly known what he was doing. There were things only a criminal like Felix could teach me, and tests I could undergo only in a situation involving real-life danger. Maybe the only way for me to become the best detective in the world was to learn such things, like how it feels to be alone in the dead of night on your way to commit a crime with the police after you and nothing to rely on but your instincts, your cunning, and your courage.

  Dad could count on me, I knew. My whole life he’d been priming me for a night like this, I suddenly realized. It was all part of the training, preparation for the work of a detective and the struggle to survive. For example, we’d be walking to the grocery store together, talking about this or that, when suddenly he’d say, “You see this street,” and right away I recognized that special tone of voice. “For eight people out of ten it’s just a place where they shop, meet friends, and catch the bus, but the remaining two have an altogether different agenda. One of them is the criminal; the other is you, the detective.” (Meekly I stood up a little straighter.) “The criminal sees hiding places, pockets to pick, open handbags, loose locks, and, above all, you, Nonny, the plainclothesman; you, on the other hand, survey the street and ignore the innocent citizens, who interest you about as much as your grandmother’s shopping list.” (Here a vision of Grandma Tsitka mounted on a broomstick, ignoring the innocent citizens, flitted past my eyes.) “What you see is a kid with darting eyes or a couple of dubious-looking characters pressing up against an old lady in the bus line, or someone hurrying by with a suspicious package in his hand. No one else exists for you! The war you’re waging is with them!”

  I loved to walk down the street with Dad. It filled me with a sense of responsibility to nod at passing classmates and continue on my way, afraid of being distracted from my duty. Sometimes my heart went out to those ordinary people, the eight out of ten innocent ones going about their business without any inkling of the dangers lurking around them, or of the duel of wits taking place over their heads. They may have been older than me chronologically, but when I walked down the street with Dad, I felt like their father.

  I’m running too fast, getting too close to Felix. Uh-oh. See how tense I am. Can’t let anybody notice that. Can’t let anybody see I’m on duty. Me, I’m just some kid hurrying home late. It’s a good thing I’m wearing my own clothes. A girl alone at such an hour would draw a lot more attention. Besides, it feels good to be a real boy again.

  Not that it was so terrible being that girl. I was beginning to get used to her.

  Where’s Felix? I’ve lost him. There he is.

  A dog is barking at him, a scraggly pooch in somebody’s yard. Not good. He’ll attract too much notice. Felix limps quickly away. But other dogs start barking, too, indoors and out. A curtain flutters on the second floor. Maybe someone is peeking out to see what’s going on. Felix says dogs always pick on him. I myself have been bitten at least ten times. Even the most well-behaved dogs start going crazy when I walk by. I’ve even been attacked by a Seeing Eye dog!

  Okay, let’s go. Never mind. The whole city’s barking at us. My feet start running of their own accord. As if someone’s calling, beckoning: Come to me … maybe because I feel so lonely now, away from Felix, away from Dad, and overhead the big white face in the moon has changed expression, and I go forward. But where? To whom?

  Zohara surges up within me. She was very beautiful. A tough cookie. How old would she be if she were alive today? Thirty-eight. Like the mothers of most of the kids in my class. What would my life have been like with her? We wouldn’t have had Gabi, but I would have had a mother. Not that I feel I missed anything. I’ve done just fine throu
gh the years. There are only a few small details I’d like to find out, so I can wind up the investigation I began today.

  The dogs calmed down. A hush fell over the slumbering city. I was a panther, fierce and silent. A creature of the night. Children fast asleep in their houses never dreamed what a boy their age could do.

  A little outlaw. A little law unto himself.

  Just thinking of it gives me the chills.

  At the end of the week was my bar mitzvah. The entire police force would be on hand. And Dad promised to give me my promotion then. We had this deal. Over the years I’d made sergeant second-class, and this Sabbath I’d be promoted to first sergeant! We would go through the usual ceremony, with me drinking a whole glass of beer like a man, and him pinning on my insignia. About time, too. A year and a half had gone by since my last promotion, because of that cow business.

  Suddenly I stopped in my tracks. There was a police cruiser parked on the sidewalk ahead. Like a flash I dropped down and disappeared into a nearby garden. Seconds later I peeked out. There were two policemen in the cruiser, leaning back in their seats and talking together. A bored blue light revolved on the car roof. The radio was tuned to the music station. Two overgrown patrolmen, shooting the breeze. Bad cops. But there was no way I could get by without their noticing me. I glanced right and left. The streets were bare. I looked up. In case there was a sentry on a roof somewhere. The coast was clear. I emerged from the garden, edging close to the fence. I ducked past them, a fugitive from justice. So easily. Like a dark shadow I whisked by them—lazy shlubs.

  Idiots, I chuckled inwardly.

  At the corner I stood and walked normally, with my hands in my pockets. Felix, too, appeared out of the darkness. We’d both used the same method of slipping past the policemen. I whistled quietly to myself, feeling great all of a sudden. “Exhilaration,” our Gabi calls it.

  It was almost as if Felix and I were the only two real people in the world now and everyone else was an actor in our play. We ordered them to sleep and they obeyed. Even the ones who weren’t asleep weren’t actually awake, either, maybe just hallucinating. Or dreaming they were awake. Whereas Felix and I were sharply watchful as we skulked through the streets like shades of night. To them we were strangers, a different breed, with only a fine line separating us from each other. A child waking up just then, in his pajamas, looking out the window at me, might have thought he was dreaming, or that I was Batman. Or a navy frogman. I stepped lightly. I kicked the tire of a parked car. For no particular reason, my leg just kicked out at it. So what. Now everything was mine, the streets, the city. I lurk in the darkness while you sleep, dangerous and unpredictable. If I get a mind to, I’ll destroy half your city, burn it right to the ground, and who will know? You poor innocent babes. Good night. Don’t worry. I’ll do you no harm. I’m good and kind.

  But say I took a nail and scratched my name on a whole row of cars—“Nonny was here last night”—you’d be absolutely horrified.

  Maybe I ought to have a special signature. Like Felix’s golden ear of wheat.

  Sleep, sleep in peace, little families with a daddy and a mommy and two children. What do you know about real life, and how easy it would be to crumble your world? What do you understand about the struggle for survival, and the everlasting war between law and crime? Hush, go to sleep now, pull the covers over your ears.

  I stole along like a spy behind enemy lines. Whenever I heard approaching footsteps, I would duck into a yard or building entrance and wait there patiently. People brushed by me unawares. Once, in a darkened stairwell, a woman stood only a few centimeters away, groping in her purse for her keys. She looked right through me at a couple of bicycles and didn’t see me there.

  Slow down. You’re always running.

  About a year ago I happened to be present one time when a kid like me got arrested. Dad and I were on our way home from a special dinner at Gabi’s, I don’t remember what the occasion was, maybe she’d succeeded in one of her diets. As we were driving home that night, we heard over the police radio that two boys were attempting to break into a car parked near the Ron Cinema. Dad swerved around and headed there directly. He shouldn’t have taken me with him, but he was afraid that if he dropped me off at home first he’d miss the collar, and God forbid Dad should ever miss a collar.

  We zoomed away so fast I was glued to my seat. Then we were held up behind a long line of cars, and Dad huffed angrily and pounded on the steering wheel. We didn’t have a siren or a revolving beacon, so we just had to sit there, stuck in the traffic. I was keeping my mouth shut because I could see the veins about to pop on his neck and forehead, when suddenly he took off from behind the line of cars.

  The tires screeched, the motor groaned, and Dad wheeled around and charged head-on against the traffic! He cut between lanes, drove up a safety island, and just about crashed into an oncoming car … All I could do was sit there, mute and frozen with fear. I was sure we’d both be killed on the spot, but what frightened me most was the look on his face, and the power he had to break all laws at once, even his own sacred laws, and though I knew his motto, “A bodyguard doesn’t apologize to the Prime Minister for knocking him down when an assassin is pointing a gun at him,” it was scary nonetheless to see him change so abruptly, like some huge steel spring coiled up so long that the second it’s released, it goes berserk.

  And in the midst of this joyride he explained to me curtly, in an official-sounding tone of voice, what I wasn’t allowed to do, like make noise, or leave the car, or act conspicuous in any way. As if I didn’t know. Glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, I thought he was a stranger, somebody new who had suddenly popped out. He faced tensely ahead and licked his lips. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes: as though he was enjoying this crazy game of defying death and continuing the wild games of his youth, now, albeit, within the confines of the law. Over the radio we heard details from the detectives lying in wait near the movie theater. They said the smaller boy, the lookout, was casually standing in the middle of the street, making sure no one spotted his friend, who was about to break into a car. Little did he suspect there was a detective posted on the roof, reporting his every move over a walkie-talkie.

  Sounds like I had a pretty wild childhood, right?

  Actually I didn’t. But I don’t feel like interrupting the current case in order to describe how my childhood really was, police operations and guns aside.

  Some other time, when I get around to it.

  We pulled up at the corner, where a lot of other cars were parked. All at once the dangerous stranger with the glint in his eyes disappeared. I could feel the spring coiling up again inside him. He threw a civilian sweater on, took out a small pair of binoculars, and peered through them at what was happening. I knew that look on his face. He turned to me as though suddenly remembering that I was there with him and that I wasn’t a fellow policeman but only his son, and he gave me a sad little smile, a smile from the heart, and touched my cheek.

  “I’m glad you’re with me, son,” he said, and I was completely dumbfounded to hear something like that from him, in the middle of an operation. What on earth made him say it? My cheek burned at his touch, and wanted more.

  The detective on the roof reported that the car thief had just walked by the yellow Fiat for the third time and peeked inside. Whenever a pedestrian passed, the thief would hide behind the car, while the lookout studied the movie posters.

  “Seventy-two to seventy-five, over,” Dad whispered into the radio, the consummate pro once more.

  “I read you, seventy-two,” answered the voice on the radio.

  “Nobody make any unnecessary moves until he’s actually inside the car. So he won’t try to run for it, and so we’ll get plenty of FP’s, is that clear?”

  “Roger,” answered the voice. FP’s was short for fingerprints.

  Several moments of suspense followed. A couple walking down the street stopped to embrace next to the Fiat. They must have wanted to be alon
e, never guessing how many pairs of eyes were upon them. The whole world was abuzz with binoculars and walkie-talkies, and those poor innocents didn’t even know it.

  “Okay, they’ve finished,” reported the detective on the rooftop.

  “Like an outdoor movie, eh?” a detective hiding in the bushes jested over the walkie-talkie.

  “Shhh!” scolded Dad. “No joking on the job!”

  Another minute went by. Dad tapped nervously on the steering wheel. His eyes squinted narrowly. He was ready to pounce.

  “He’s taking out a screwdriver,” reported the detective on the roof. “He’s opening the lock.” And a few seconds later: “He’s in.”

  “On the count of ten go after him,” Dad whispered into the radio. “I’ll grab the lookout. Seventy-five, you go after the thief. Seventy-three, block the escape route. Let’s move!”

  He said it so perfectly, just like a movie cop.

  Then he quickly slid out of the car, forgetting all about me, he was so involved in the operation. I watched him, studied him. The way he casually walked down the street with his hands in his pockets. The lookout also studied him out of the corner of his eye and decided he was okay. He appeared to be an ordinary passerby on his way home after a tiring day at work. His shoulders slumped as he trudged along, just as Dad’s did when he left the precinct building every evening. Maybe he didn’t look forward to going home. I was there—but the house must have seemed pretty empty to him. And the person he wanted to see was gone.

  Thirty more steps, twenty more steps; my mouth went dry. There were just fifteen meters between them now, and still the boy suspected nothing.

  And then suddenly Dad rushed at them. Like a raging bull he bellowed, “You dirty bastards!,” wildly flinging his arms. Even I knew he had made a big mistake, that he should have waited till he closed in on the boy and only then pounced on him!

  But he just couldn’t wait; he hated criminals so much he would have torn them to pieces with his bare hands.