The Zigzag Kid

by David Grossman

  “Aren’t you the hero!” said Lola, wiping her nose. “I know why you’re wearing that helmet, but I can see your eyes all the same!”

  “He’s my grandfather, I know that too now,” I said to Lola, a little surprised at myself for running to her the way I had.

  “If you dare call me Grandfather in public, I turn you over to police,” grumbled Felix. “I am too young to be called Grandfather.”

  “Poor child.” Lola wrung her hands. “To have Felix Glick for a grandfather.”

  “Why poor child?” protested Felix. “You know any other grandfathers who take grandchildren to hijack trains?”

  He was right.

  “I would be happy for you to call me Grandmother,” said Lola, “and Felix will get used to it, too, eventually.” Again I was enveloped in a cloud of her perfume. At last I have a real grandmother, I thought, a grandmother who hugs me, not a knitting-needle grandmother.

  “So did you get married, then?” I blurted out, seeing that she was a woman of principles.

  “Did I get married, he asks.” She smiled. “What kind of question is that for a grandson to ask his grandmother?”

  “No, because once you said that—”

  She laughed. “Yes, Nonny, it’s true, I like to be alone, to do whatever I please, that’s the kind of woman I am, I’ve always been as free as a Gypsy, and if I love someone, I don’t wait for him to come around, I walk right up and tell him so! And I did fall in love with this old man here.” She patted him fondly on the helmet. “And I wanted his baby, but I refused to give him the keys to my life.”

  “For me, screwdriver is good as key.” Felix laughed, and I was proud of Lola, my new grandmother, because I knew she would always be true to herself.

  “Where did you find this motorcycle?” I asked Felix, and he smiled mysteriously, shrugged his shoulders, and muttered something about Felix the wizard, Felix the mastermind, and other little boasts and brags, intended mainly to annoy Lola. But Lola merely laughed as she massaged the back of his neck, and said, “Seventy years old and still behaving like a child!”

  “Hi-deh.” Felix stirred himself, and we were on our way.

  I had so many questions to ask her. And him. Why hadn’t she tried to contact me all these years? Did she know about me? Did she recognize me when Gabi and I met her in front of her house …

  Gabi. Gabi Gabi Gabi.

  How had she managed to conceal the most important things about Lola Ciperola from me? That she had been in love with Felix Glick. That they had a daughter, now dead, who had been, well, a criminal, and who also happened to be my mother. All these years Gabi had been throwing out subtle hints, insinuating that Lola Ciperola, and Felix, too, were important figures in my life and destiny, and planting little seeds of curiosity—with her talk of the purple scarf, and Felix and the golden ears of wheat, and her impersonations of Lola singing—all of which had sprouted in due course, a few days before my bar mitzvah.

  How cunningly they had worked behind the scenes, Gabi and Felix, though neither was aware of what the other was doing.

  And they had trapped me. But I wanted to be trapped, I wanted it badly.

  I couldn’t stop glancing at Lola and Felix, trying to get used to their being my grandparents. It still felt strange, because before I knew Lola, she had seemed so remote, and now all of a sudden she had entered my life, which made a huge difference, as big as the difference between someone called Lola Ciperola and a woman named Lola Katz, and I still didn’t quite know how it would turn out for us, how close we would become, what it’s like to have a real grandmother … And then suddenly our eyes met.

  “Looking at you, Nonny,” she said, leaning out of the sidecar, “I realize how silly of me it was not to defy your father. I never once attempted to meet with you.”

  “He wouldn’t let you? Why not?” I shouted, not only because of the wind.

  “After Zohara died, you see, he didn’t want any contact with her past—God forbid anything of her character should rub off on her son, which is why he decided to put me out of the picture, too. Oh yes!” She tied her hair up so I’d be able to hear her better. “But enough of that! I have an agreement with you now, not with him. I would very much like to be your full-time grandmother. Am I hired?”

  I laughed. All these women wanting to be my full-time mother and grandmother. I reached over to the sidecar and shook her hand. Of course she was hired.

  “Here is diamond center,” shouted Felix through his helmet, turning off at the intersection and zooming down a dirt path into a field behind the building.

  And there he stopped.

  The wind died down. Lola and I breathed a sigh of relief. Felix hopped around us, trying to pull off the leather hat with the ear flaps, which resembled a World War II aviator’s helmet. The air was redolent of chocolate, and I knew where we were at once—at the fountain of the sweet secret Gabi and I shared, the wonderful chocolate factory, which, owing to our patronage, had greatly expanded over the past five years.

  “How did you know I love to come here?” I smiled. “I never told you that.”

  “Told us what?” asked Lola, and then chided, “Come on, Felix. Get that silly thing off your head.”

  “That Gabi and I come here once a month, to the factory, to watch them make chocolate.”

  “Once a month?” Lola was astounded.

  “We’ve been doing it for years. And then we go to your house and wait for you.”

  Lola looked from me to Felix and shook her head. “I want to meet this Gabi woman. She’s simply marvelous!”

  I didn’t quite understand her enthusiasm. Aren’t grandmothers supposed to worry about your teeth and disapprove of frequent visits to chocolate factories?

  “Forget chocolate now!” exclaimed Felix, having finally managed to pull off the peculiar helmet; he added meekly, with an apologetic look at Lola, “Is my nose, you see, too hard to push through!”

  Lola made a cruel snipping sign with her fingers, and Felix shrank in defense of his mighty schnozz. I got the feeling he’d always been a little scared of her.

  “Forget chocolate now!” he repeated. “Look here, diamond center! This is where your story begins.”

  “My story?”

  “Yessir! Here, many years ago, was diamond center of Israel! The building was full of diamonds, also guards, and cameras that can see a mouse move, and most up-to-date alarm system anywhere. To cut long story short, one day Zohara and I drive along this road, and Zohara sees it and laughs and says, ‘What you think, Papineu,’ that’s what she used to call me, ‘can I break in some night and climb up to the roof, and sneak out again without being caught?’ ”

  Wait, slow down a minute. I felt like covering my ears. I couldn’t get used to my own mother saying such things, the kinds of things you hear people in movies say. People without children.

  Felix continued: “So I say to her, ‘Zohara, darling, what for? If it’s money you want, I give you as much as you need, and if you want big money and fun, like before, we go abroad, where no one knows us, and find some action there!’ ”

  Lola put her arm around my shoulder. “Is this too much for you?” she whispered. “Félix likes to tell a good story, but sometimes he gets carried away.”

  “Carried away?” Felix protested. “I tell him story like it is, take him where it happens, show him how it was, what it was. This is his life! Is this wrong?”

  I was beginning to understand why those two couldn’t live together.

  “Go on,” I said. “I want to know.”

  “Aha—you see?” said Felix, puffing himself up. “Your grandson wants to know! So, to cut long story short, Zohara says to me, ‘Papineu,’ she says, ‘I don’t want more filthy lucre, and I don’t want to swindle fools anymore. I just want to have some fun, to feel my heart beat, because life is so boring now that we’re home, I could die of boredom here. What do you say I climb up to the roof and play my recorder there, just one song, and then come down again without
being caught—what do you say, Papineu?’ ”

  I looked up, tilting my head back to see the roof, which wasn’t easy to do while I was smiling. “Just to play her recorder?” A little tune was trilling inside me.

  “It was very stupid to break into this building,” Felix continued. “If there was big loot there, at least that is business, that I understand, but just for showing off? Ah, Zohara. What I tell her not to do she does on purpose. When I say, Zohara, darling, be careful!, she says, Oi, Papineu, you won’t let me do anything.”

  I watched him, thinking, Yes, that must be how they argued.

  “Is better to talk to trees and stones.” Felix sighed. “I say no, she says yes, and in end we stop talking to each other. I was sure she forgot all about it, thank God and good riddance; so I go abroad to work and she stays here. But what happens? About two weeks later I get phone call from your grandmother, telling me Zohara did it, what she said!”

  “You mean she managed to climb up to the roof?”

  “Of course, but don’t ask me how, I don’t know! Guards everywhere, and she goes right by them! But the camera catches her, and then there is big hoo-ha, everyone jumps, alarm bells, guards, policemen, dogs … and Zohara is running! Running and laughing! But instead of running away, she runs up to roof! Because she wants to play her recorder there, yes? Because for her is one big game, yes?”

  He shook his head. “But what happens after that, I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe you can tell me.”

  “Me? But how …”

  “Is your story, no?”

  How was I supposed to know? I wasn’t even born yet! He pouted at me, and his bushy brows inclined at a sharper angle than ever. Where did she go? She climbed up to the roof just as she planned, but she’d planned something else, too. I smiled. No, impossible, she wouldn’t dare play in front of all the police …? But Felix closed his eyes and nodded vigorously. You mean she actually did it, she took the recorder out of her pocket and played?

  “Nu, certainly, what you think?”

  The moon shone over the tall building. I imagined Zohara standing on the rooftop, or even sitting on the ledge, dipping her feet in the sky, with the moonlight streaming on her hair and the police and their cars in the lot where we were standing now. As she calmly wiped the mouthpiece, I guessed what she was going to play, and I remembered the dreamy river nymphs and felt the throbbing in her neck.

  Hush! The clear, delicate sound of the recorder. I could hear it floating down from the roof to where the policemen stood motionless, some of them shyly removing their caps as the tenuous little tune skipped like a goat-kid in the starry meadow around the flutist.

  And they still didn’t know it was a woman up there.

  She played every note of the children’s song. The policemen stood transfixed, as though hearing a hymn, a hymn to daring, a hymn to myth and madness. When she was done, she carefully wiped the mouthpiece and put the recorder back in its velvet sheath. What would she do now?

  Because the spell had been broken and the commotion began, with detectives running everywhere, dogs barking, orders shouted over walkie-talkies, and she? What was she doing just then?

  “You tell us,” whispered Felix. “You know.”

  Me? How am I supposed to …?

  True, I knew her pretty well by then. When I shut my eyes tight, I could feel her buzzing between them, and I knew right away that she hadn’t waited around for the police. “She escaped, didn’t she?”

  Yes, said Felix’s eyes.

  But where? There was no way down, and above her, only sky. So what did she do? What could she do? Jump up and grab hold of a passing airplane? Slide down a telephone pole? Felix smiled and said nothing. Lola observed me, tilting her head, as though following the progression of Zohara’s thoughts in my face. I shut my eyes in concentration. I felt the point between them heating up. Zohara on the roof. My mother. Felix’s daughter. I did come from a long line of clever crooks. Suddenly I was a member of a dynasty … so what would I have done in her place? Why couldn’t I think of some really smart maneuver to get her out of there? Why couldn’t I concentrate? Maybe it was the heavy smell of chocolate that muddled my thoughts … the fountain of the sweet secret we shared, Gabi and I … Once a month we came here … to the fountain came a little goat-kid … The smell drew me closer, whispering magic spells—

  “There.” I veered around, pointing at the chocolate factory. “That’s where my mother fled to,” and added earnestly, “She was crazy about chocolate, you know.”

  “At last.” Felix sighed with relief, as if I had just made it through a tribal initiation.

  Lola and Felix exchanged a smile, perhaps because I had called her “my mother.”

  She escaped to the chocolate factory.

  Which is why Gabi—

  Once a month for five years—

  So many times, with unwavering devotion.

  “But how does she get from diamond center to chocolate factory?” whispered Felix.

  “How?” How indeed. The two buildings were wide apart, so a leap was out of the question, and climbing down—impossible, because of the policemen waiting below. But wait: “Were there any cranes around here back then?” I asked.

  “There are always cranes around here,” said Lola. “I think they use the buildings to erect the cranes, not the other way around.”

  So I knew.

  Zohara leaped onto a giant crane that was standing right here, let’s say. The arm of the crane was suspended over the roof of the diamond center. She extended her leg to check the distance: one little jump, about a meter, would take her there. Not very far, but there was a drop of many meters down. Felix was studying my face. I didn’t say anything. The craziest thoughts were going through my head: Zohara braided her hair and stuffed the pigtail into her collar. She put the recorder in her pocket. It was life or death! And since death had never frightened her, she took a leap over the abyss and landed on the steel arm of the crane … I didn’t even pause to let Felix confirm my guesses, my fantasies. I was as certain of them as if I had been with her at the time: I felt the thud of her fall, and her teeth snapping shut. She lay there a moment, stunned with pain, and maybe fear, and then began to crawl away …

  Wrong Sorry. If I had been there, I would have crawled away. But it was Zohara on the crane, and Zohara didn’t crawl. Not ever. Slowly, tremblingly, she stretched herself and rose to her knees. Then stood up straight and started walking.

  I gazed at the night sky. A long steel arm cleaved the moon in two. I imagined my mother walking across it. Traversing the moon, trying not to look down at the abyss below her, though perhaps she actually wanted to see it. And Felix, watching me, suddenly shivered.

  And the police? What did they do? Did they aim their guns? Did they blow their whistles? I knew exactly how they felt, how bewildered they must have been to witness the tiny figure up there, the little reprobate who had broken into the fortress sitting on a ledge playing a children’s song, and then setting forth to cross the moon, holding herself erect, like a tightrope walker, challenging something far bigger and grander than they were, with their guns and handcuffs and whistles, which may be why they barely moved but only raised a racket trying to decide what to do.

  “But not all police!” Felix corrected my thinking. “There is one who understands where she is going. Only he, this one policeman. A detective.”

  Lola and Felix were gazing at me intently. It was my turn to take up the story again. To describe the detective. The only one who understood what Zohara was planning. I tried to envision a detective out of an American movie, good-looking with wavy hair and steely blue eyes. But it didn’t feel right.

  What could I do? I resorted to the model I had at home.

  “This guy, the detective, isn’t tall, but he’s tough. He has a big head, hardly any neck. Real solid.” Kind of shlumpy, too, I thought with affection, and a bit of a grouch, always looks as if his mind is elsewhere, a regular SOS, short for Sweaty O
rnery Slob.

  “That is so.” Felix smiled. “That is just what he is like.”

  Go on, said Lola’s eyes.

  “He was the only one who knew what to do. He ran quickly and quietly over to the crane, and climbed up the rungs as though it were an extension ladder—”

  This is good, I thought, feeling warm inside: he had plenty of experience with heights, climbing flagpoles … because on a certain night, four or five years earlier, he had scaled the roofs of five embassies and consulates in Jerusalem, and stealthily cut the ropes and tied others in their place, so that in the morning the Italian ambassador woke up under the flag of hostile Ethiopia, while the French consul, looking up from his croissant, nearly choked with horror to see his own domain flying the Union Jack! A moment later, nine frantic consuls and ambassadors were on the phone to each other, and the air was filled with angry words in a babel of tongues spitting diplomatic venom, while the rest of Jerusalem was in stitches, especially Dad, who had won his bet, and who now reenacted the vertical ascent and reached the arm of the crane only a few meters behind the mysterious tightrope walker, and, crouching a moment, glanced down and nearly fainted, then faced the intrepid thief herself, and knew that at long last he had met his match.

  A match made in heaven, I thought, or at least pretty high off the ground.

  One step at a time. The tightrope walker has nearly reached the edge of the steel arm that overhangs the roof of the chocolate factory. Dad tries to crawl forward, but fear and dizziness press him down against the arm of the crane. He decides to swallow his pride. And crawl. He can feel the vibrations of the fugitive’s steps in his belly. They spread through his body with an inexplicable thrill. The tightrope walker turns around and sees the panting pursuer. Zohara smiles to herself, approving his courage and berating him for having to crawl. But did it really happen like this, or did I make it up? I didn’t care. I wish it had, though. To this day, whenever I drive past the chocolate factory, I envision the two of them there, advancing silently across the arm of the colossal crane. High above the city lights, above the police, the first delicate strands of intimacy were woven between them, and maybe it was due to these that Zohara made haste, nearly bolted, in fact, while Dad crawled faster in pursuit; only, Zohara reached the edge of the arm before he did, and looked down over the roof of the chocolate factory.