The Zigzag Kid

by David Grossman

  But then … why did he marry her? How could my father have married a criminal?

  I was the son of a policeman and a criminal.

  I felt as if I would burst. As if I would split in two.

  “Almost two years we were partners,” said Felix. “Two years abroad, and everything was like dream. And then she was bored again. Always she was bored. But I never met anyone who enjoyed this work more than your mother. For her it was game, and always she was laughing.”

  I looked down at the checkered tablecloth. Square upon square, red and white. What more is there to say about squares? How I wished Gabi and Dad would turn up and hug me between them, with no one else around to see.

  “I tell you now?” asked Felix cautiously.

  23

  Just Like the Cinema

  … And at night, sailing down black waterways to the music of crickets and cicadas, under Madagascan stars, or a Zanzibari moon, the former monarch would reminisce about his beloved country, its lakes and mountains and the benevolence of his enlightened reign, cut short by the treachery of rebels who surprised him one day, though he had never harmed them, stormed his seventy-seven palaces, robbed him of his seven golden carriages, and even his prized collection of seven hundred pairs of shoes.

  And the father-and-daughter impersonators would nod sympathetically and click their tongues over the treachery of the king’s unworthy subjects who took revenge on his poor shoes; they were happy to hear, however, that the king had managed to escape from the thankless rabble with several pairs of gilded sandals, velvet pantofles inlaid with rubies, and also—he smiled with embarrassment, glancing around—some of the most exquisite treasures of the realm. But mum’s the word.

  And after many heartfelt sighs and heavy silences in tribute to the sorrows of the former monarch, the doting father with the streaks of greasepaint silver in his hair would tell about his peregrinations with his daughter and their escape from narrow-minded revenue agents, alluding casually to a certain collection of priceless paintings he kept in a Swiss bank vault, whereupon the roses returned to the faded royal cheek, and the father knew that the fish had smelled the bait and was even now circling around it.

  And then, glibly changing the subject, the father would speak about his demure young daughter, the heiress to millions, as she fluttered her lashes behind an Oriental fan and inflamed the king with every blink of her eye.

  And as the old man spoke, he had a fit of coughing so frightful that his devoted daughter spread the angora shawl over his knees; still, it persisted, an ugly, hacking cough he tried to bury in his handkerchief, and the king, who had already demonstrated his visual acuity when it came to handkerchiefs, glanced down at the spreading stain.

  At this point the invalid father would ask permission to retire to his cabin and leave the fair lady and the fallen king alone together on the deck; and as he shuffled off, his wheezing cough would swell the sails, and the heart of the avaricious king as well.

  Then the couple would continue the conversation, the king returning to his reminiscences about his youth and manhood and the spellbound girl hanging on his every word.

  “But was she really spellbound or was she just pretending?” I asked Felix over the red-and-white-checkered tablecloth in the kitchen, because I was kind of spellbound myself.

  “Yes and no” was his answer.

  She was spellbound because everything there was like a dream—the river lapping by, the stars, the crickets, the bubbly champagne, and the melancholy king. And then again, she was not spellbound but, rather, lying in wait, like a hunter, or a panther, to shift the conversation to the desired tack.

  And spellbound nonetheless, because more than any thought of wealth, she enjoyed the soft breeze blowing around her like a fabulous scarf as she performed her part in this play. For a moment she believed with all her heart that she was the sole heiress to the fortunes of a moribund millionaire, and her eyes would grow moist as she listened to the story of the king’s travails, thinking, This is just like the cinema.

  And the strange thing about it was that her tears—although engendered in fantasy—were wet and salty and real, and made the old king’s heart flutter once, and then again.

  After a sumptuous dinner on board his yacht, the king would ask the fair lady to play him a song on her recorder. Declining at first, she would eventually take the recorder out of its velvet sheath, lean back against the rail, and play popular Hebrew tunes like “Lovely Nights in Canaan” and “To the Fountain Came a Lamb”; and sometimes, taken in by her own magic, she would curl up with the recorder in her mouth, dreamily fingering the holes without a sound, yet drawing forth hidden overtones that would drip over the deck to the water below, where diaphanous river nymphs awoke from their slumbers and rose out of the dark waves, with their long seaweed tresses spread around them and the tide sparkling with the white, yellow, and purple of their eyes; and they would listen raptly, sighing.

  And the king would clear his throat to rouse his sleeping flute girl (or so he imagined her), and eventually lost patience and shook her by the shoulders, and when she woke up in alarm, the king would peer into the dark abyss of her eyes and recoil, but very soon the lids would drop like a curtain and rise again over the shy and sultry eyes that he adored. And he would glance left and right to make sure they were alone, and whisper a secret in her ear.

  Perhaps she has forgotten, says the dethroned king in a voice quivering with emotion, perhaps her heart does not incline to such earthly things, but he, the king, was fortunate enough to smuggle a number of treasures out of his country, including the pride of its famous mines, as well as several cases of diamond tiaras and crates full of gold ingots and golden scarabs and other provisions kings sometimes grab on the run, especially when they have just been dethroned.

  All of this would be hers if she consented to marry him.

  Marry him?

  The fair lady batted her eyes and waved her fan, the fabulous scarf wafted around her, and the king’s heart was already aflame. Maybe he was in love with her, or perhaps he realized the value of the paintings she would inherit after the lamentable death of her father. And he had a little plan to return to his kingdom, to buy off a few generals there and regain the throne, only for that he would need much money, generals cost dearly, and as he knew so well, a Picasso is sometimes worth more than ten diamonds.

  “But I must consult dear Papa.” She would flutter her lashes (it was fun to look at the world this way, through fluttering lashes that made the scenes flicker by as on the silver screen …) and the king said, “Just a minute,” or whatever kings say, and ran back to his stateroom, which was next door to the captain’s quarters, and there, with a trembling hand, he unlocked the safe hidden behind the portrait of his father, his grandfather, and his grandmother’s father, and returned to her, flushed as a drunken moon, bearing one of the treasures, a ruby-red pomegranate plucked out of the black earth, and vivid flashes of the ripened fruit spurted out, red and purple, and cascaded into the black river below, and she stared at it openmouthed, for she had never before seen anything so beautiful, and as he fastened the pendant on a silver chain around her slender neck, his royal hand moist with perspiration and greed, though mostly greed, the girl was thinking of the glaring lights of distant Tel Aviv, where it was never quite dark enough for a moment like this, to see vivid flashes spurting into a river; in Tel Aviv there is no great river to reflect you with a former king helping you on with a ruby necklace. And a scrawny little girl of nine or ten looked out from deep inside her, an unhappy child with black eyes who couldn’t lie, not to herself and not to others, and the adult Zohara pleaded with her to accept the glittering fruit, as a gift, or a bribe, or a potion to allay her fears, but the child shook her head with a decisive No!

  Days passed. The journey was extended. Still, she was unable to make up her mind. The king had visited the sickly father in his cabin at least fifteen times, and couldn’t help noticing, much to his sorrow, the fresh bloodstains on
the embroidered pillowcase. And in the evenings His Highness would stroll around the deck with the girl, and then dine with her in his stateroom, regaling her with his anecdotes and fascinating reminiscences, and with gems and diamonds the size of wild berries, caressing her hand from time to time, in lieu of the kisses he longed to give her, but still she refused.

  Then one day the girl’s father took a turn for the worse, and he called her and the king into his cabin and asked his daughter to plight her troth to the eminent exile, and he made the king swear to care for his daughter like the apple of his eye, and in his last lucid moments he witnessed their vows of eternal love and loyalty, nor did he forget to whisper the secret number of his Swiss bank account into the king’s ear, and the king was so excited he hurried back to his stateroom to note the coveted number down in a little book, as well as on his stateroom door, and on the hand and forehead of the cabin boy who happened to pass just then, and he unpacked the ripest fruit and brought it to the father’s cabin, which filled to bursting with the vivid flashes of broken light he now hung around the daughter’s alabaster neck as a token of their vows, what was his was hers, and what was hers was his, forevermore.

  Soon after, the girl’s father was officially in the throes of death. His daughter ran weeping through the corridors, and the captain radioed the nearest city, whereupon an elderly doctor arrived on board accompanied by a stern-looking nun; they sat at his deathbed for a while and then quickly left the yacht, wearing masks on their faces, protection, as it were, against his contagious disease.

  Only much later, when muffled shouts were heard from inside the cabin, did the captain break down the door, only to find the elderly doctor and the nun tied back to back, to their evident dismay, wearing the clothes of the father and daughter, who had sneaked off the yacht, disguised as the doctor and the nun, and were probably even now on their way to the nearest airport, or already flying over the golden river-boat, waving down at the old king, whose diamonds, pearls, scarabs, and other beautiful berries were safe inside a secret pocket sewn into the girl’s suit, and she snuggled up to her invalid father, who looked rather healthy as he roared with laughter. And this was one of his many stories.

  Felix was silent again. So was I. What could I say? It was very dark out already, and there was still so much to hear. But I was frightened. I suddenly felt her heartbeat in mine. That’s what his story had done to me: the boat, the black river, the king, the jewels, what they said … her vitality coursed through me. The golden locket was open. Zohara’s eyes flashed vividly. “Look at me,” they called. “Don’t be afraid, not of me or of yourself. You, too, are made of me.”

  “Ah, she was something to see,” said Felix, with the wistful smile I knew by now. “Like princess in fairy tale … with clothes like nobody else … her dresses, her hats … like Purim all year long … and all the money, she gave it away … Money did not stick to her hand … Filthy lucre, she called it, money stolen from thieves, and I say to her, ‘Zohara, my darling, there is no such thing as clean lucre and filthy lucre. Money is money, and what matters is what you do with it.’ But for her—never! What she loved is acting. It hurt me to see how she threw it away! In the street, in darkened cinema, she would suddenly toss ten little diamonds up in the air, or from high in hot-air balloon, suddenly money would rain down …”

  I shivered, enthralled. How well I understood that urge to wave my hand and throw down …

  Felix and I jumped up in alarm. The loud ringing of the telephone tore us apart.

  I was listening so closely to his story I forgot everything else—the kidnapping, the world outside, the newspaper headlines. Felix picked up the receiver and listened. Suddenly he beamed. “We will be right there,” he said, and hung up.

  “Come on, Amnon, we must to go.”

  “Where to? Who was that?” Because I had to be constantly alert.

  “It is Lola calling from theater. I left our Rolls there. Lola is waiting for us.”

  “Our Rolls-Royce?”

  “That is what I call it. Private joke. Come. Quickly put on Tammy’s clothes and we go out. Lola said we are in all newspapers and maybe police are near. We must to run away. Till morning. Till we go to bank, for your present.”

  I didn’t argue with him. I put on Tammy’s clothes. But as I was getting dressed, I began to understand whose clothes they were and chills went up my spine.

  Yes, at last I was beginning to understand, lousy detective that I was, not by thinking about it logically, but with my heart—because I had walked the paths my mother, Zohara, once walked when she wasn’t much older than I was.

  Because those were the rules of the story, the rules Felix had decided on so many months ago while he was planning this operation. And only now did I begin to understand the intention behind our journey: from the moment I met Felix and departed from the merry course Dad and Gabi had set for me, every step I had taken was predetermined, even when I chose it myself. Predetermined by Felix, who had led me here unwittingly. But even more, it was Zohara who had led the way, the Zohara within me, revealing herself.

  I rejoined Felix wearing the old clothes, the red skirt and the green blouse. Their colors had faded over the years, the fabric no longer felt strange to me. The clothes caressed my skin, clung to it softly.

  “These were her clothes, weren’t they?” I asked.

  Felix nodded.

  “The clothes she wore when she was a little girl.”

  “Nu, yes, of course.”

  I remembered how he had looked when he first saw me on the train. And how his eyes had misted over when I put on her clothes in the Beetle.

  “Do I resemble her a little this way?” I asked cautiously.

  “Like two peas in pod.”

  24

  The Detective’s Son

  We divided ourselves into two squads, one squad consisting of me and the other of Felix. First he explained how to get from Lola’s house to the Habimah National Theater, and then warned me that detectives were moving in. His instincts told him that the place was crawling with cops. I asked how he knew that. “If I feel tickle like ants up and down my back, that is sign for me that police are near,” he said. I, too, thought I felt a little tickle between my shoulders, as though someone were staring at my back. Maybe I was starting to develop anti-police tendencies myself.

  Squad A went to the window to see if the coast was clear. Squad B was still working on his beggar’s disguise. Squad A looked through the front-door peephole and reported all clear. Squad B reported that he would set off five minutes later than Squad A.

  Squad A and Squad B stood facing each other.

  “Goodbye, Amnon. Don’t let them catch you. Be smart. You must still to hear story of how Zohara met your father, and also, there is present she gives to you!”

  “You be careful, too.”

  “Shake my hand, partner.”

  Partner! I hadn’t felt so proud since the day Dad promoted me to sergeant second-class. I reached out, we shook hands, and on a sudden impulse, the two squads hugged each other.

  “See you,” I whispered, thinking, Once this criminal was her partner, and now, years later, he is her son’s. We’ve come full circle again.

  “Nu, get out of here already,” Felix grumbled, turning away for some reason.

  Okay. My last night with Felix, the final chapter of our story begins.

  Felix was right: the place was crawling with cops. I noticed this as soon as I left Lola’s. Someone had made sure all the streetlamps in the area were turned off, and there were cruisers driving up and down with their dimmers on. Small groups of policemen stood on every corner, holding maps, examining the site of the operation. I could hear the whir of walkie-talkies in the dark, and I thought I saw a plainclothesman retreating behind a water tank on one of the rooftops. Or maybe not. It’s hard to spot a lookout on a roof when it’s so dark. I still couldn’t understand how the police had guessed Felix and I were in the vicinity. Unless they’d found the ear of wheat I
threw into the sea the day before, they had no reason to connect the bulldozer with the train hijacking! But the fact of it was that they had guessed something and were gradually closing in on the neighborhood. And maybe, I reasoned, they know something else, something Felix hasn’t told me yet.

  A young man walked by and plopped down on a bench. He looked too young to be so tired.

  I glanced quickly at his feet. Shoes are the last item of a disguise a person will bother with. He was wearing the Palladium shoes issued by the Department of Criminal Investigation.

  A little girl sauntered gaily by, her pigtail bouncing off her back. She stared pertly at the man through Zohara’s eyes.

  “Go away, little girl. Don’t bother me,” he snarled.

  And she was such an obedient little girl.

  I turned right, following Felix’s directions. I could just imagine Dad organizing a search party now, hunched over a big street map of Tel Aviv, sending various teams out to wait in ambush. He had a real flair for ambushes. He always seemed to guess the criminal’s escape route and where he would try to hide when pursued. Once he hid a detective inside a huge garbage bin, a kilometer and a half away from where an ambush was in progress outside a jewelry shop. The thief, who managed to slip by the detectives near the shop, streaked past three other detectives waiting along the route—the exact route Dad had anticipated when he plotted the chase—and dived into the stinking garbage bin, wearing a self-satisfied grin, when, much to his alarm, he heard the cuffs click shut on his wrists.

  “A good detective thinks like a criminal.”

  But I was no longer certain which of the above pertained to me.