Cut Throat Dog

by Joshua Sobol

  Close that case, Shakespeare! You finished Adonas off with your own legs four hundred years ago!

  I didn’t finish him off, Shakespeare insists. I lost sight of him in the dark. I’m telling you this character has a lyrical tenor that’s unmistakable.

  Intelligence reports said explicitly that his body was found in the Libyan desert, exactly where you lost sight of him, Yadanuga tries to remind him.

  Forget our intelligence, Shakespeare snaps in an angry voice. We’ve already seen what they know.

  In this case the information is accurate, protests Yadanuga. The Belgian pathologist confirmed that the guy died of dehydration and a torn liver.

  I saw the Belgian pathologist’s report too, says Shakespeare, but how do you know that the body he examined was Adonas’s?

  Get it into your head, Yadanuga pleads, Adonas is dead!

  Not for me, says Shakespeare in a voice that reaches the pricked-up ears of the barman, who is amazed to hear Hebrew coming from behind the toilet door.

  You killed him before the flood, says Yadanuga. Leave that ghost alone, Shakespeare!

  Thanks, Yadanuga, says Shakespeare, you’ve never been so unhelpful as in this case. I’ll leave him alone when I’ve turned him into a ghost.

  The barman takes a little notebook labeled ‘Ideas for scripts’ out of his pocket, and while the blind man lingers in the toilet he writes: ‘The cashmere man, the blind man, Winnie’ and adds in brackets: ‘The cashmere man called Adonas—a neo-Nazi anti-Semite. The blind man—an Israeli impersonating an Italian. Apparently a Mossad agent. Winnie—apparently works as a sales assistant in a men’s fashion store round the corner. Investigate.’

  When Shakespeare comes out of the toilet he is not surprised to find that the man in the black suit is gone. His hasty disappearance from the scene reinforces his suspicion that this is the man he has been searching for for eighteen years.

  The man who was here, is he a regular customer? He asks the barman in Italian English.

  I don’t know, replies the barman in Hebrew. I’ve only been here a week. This is the first time I’ve seen him.

  How did he know where you’re from? Shakespeare asks in Hebrew.

  From the accent I suppose, says the barman.

  Now it is clear to Shakespeare that he has to meet Winnie, but he decides to make it hard for her to identify him.

  If you see that man, he says to the barman, who interrupts him:

  I have the feeling that the anti-Semitic dog won’t show his face here again.

  What makes you think so?

  He got out of here like a crook running from the scene of the crime, pronounces the barman.

  If you run into him anywhere by chance, here’s the number of my cell phone. If you get voice mail, leave a message that Adonis is alive, and he was seen at such and such a place.

  Adonis or Adonas? inquires the scriptwriter.

  To you—Adonis, says Shakespeare.

  No problem, says the excited scriptwriter and holds out his hand and introduces himself: Turel Shlush.

  From the famous Shlush family?

  A branch of the family, says Turel modestly. I’ll help you get your hands on this Adonis.

  That’s music to my ears, Shakespeare shakes Turel Shlush’s cold hand. If you leave a message, say it’s from Tyrell.

  And what should I call you? asks Tyrell of the icy hands.

  Invent a name, Shakespeare challenges him.

  Not Fellini, says Tyrell, not Zeffirelli, not Antonioni—you know what? I can’t find a name to fit you.

  Why not?

  Because you give off something terribly confusing, confesses Tyrell with a kind of naive embarrassment that touches Shakespeare’s heart.

  I’ll tell you my real name, says Shakespeare, but don’t pass it on.

  It won’t cross my lips, Tyrell swears without saying ‘I swear’. I was in an undercover unit in the army. I know what a double identity is.

  Call me Hanina, says Shakespeare.

  Hanina! repeats the astonished Tyrell. The last name in the world I would have given you.

  Why? Hanina pretends innocence.

  Because you’re not a Hanina! You’re a Maoz, a Giora, a Tavor, says Tyrell, never a Hanina! I can’t call you Hanina!

  Then call me ‘S.N.F.’

  Which stands for what?

  Secret nameless friend, says Shakespeare and leaves the pub.

  The barman is happy to be left alone in the deserted pub, in this damp, solitary hour of a winter afternoon. He hurries to take out his notebook. He turns to a new page, writes the heading ‘Secret Nameless Friend’, and begins to write feverishly.

  3

  Nobody loved Hanina. Hanina was once in love with a woman, but even when he loved he wasn’t beloved. There was nothing about him that people love to love. Hanina himself, a sturdily built man, didn’t love any of the two hundred and forty eight body parts he had received from nature, and he refused to accept his body until he had laboriously reshaped every single part of it. Be it his jaws or his chin, his fingers or his toes. Already as a youngster his legs seemed to him too short and thick. Exhausting exercise, cruel self-discipline, endurance developed to the limits of the ability of the nervous system to bear pain—and even beyond, to the point where the pain is so intense that it numbs pain—finally resulted in the ability of his short legs to carry him distances that Olympic long-distance runners could only dream of, and his terrifying kicks sent more than a few believers, who had joyfully joined the holy war in the knowledge that the pleasures of this world are very small compared to those of the next as promised in the Repentance Sura of the Koran, to Paradise.

  The shortness of his legs had stopped bothering him long ago, and their remarkable power, of which we will hear more later, had turned into a source of private amusement and practical jokes, such as the limp he just adopted, and which he now abandoned as he entered the elegant store. He made for the men’s department and proceeded to the suits section with a springy, almost dancing, step, his darting eyes boldly appraising the shapely sales assistants and challenging them: let’s see you recognizing me now, Winnie. If you’ve got any sense, we’ll have a secret that Mister Adonis, who sent me to you, doesn’t know. Who are you, Winnie? Are you the slender black sales assistant with the ample breasts and the shaved head? Or are you the other one, the one with the childish face and the boyish haircut, wasp-waisted and stringy limbed, like the long-legged Segestria Perfida spider?

  While his eyes are darting from one to the other the black sales assistant approaches him and asks how she can help him.

  I’m looking for a black cashmere suit, he says in a French accent.

  She asks for his size and as he answers her the long-legged spidery wasp intervenes and points out to her colleague that this dangerous man belongs to the impudent race of the short-legged. She conveys this strange diagnosis in a whisper, but she makes sure that it will reach his ears. The provocation is like a surprising opening move in a game of chess.

  Wait until you see how thick they are, he winks at the treacherous spider with his non-aiming left eye, while his aiming eye, which has seen the whites of the eyes of quite a few men in the last second of their lives, penetrates her with the sharpness of a laser beam.

  I can’t wait to see! The long-legged spider laughs suggestively and adds a question:

  Hey, who are you spending the holiday with?

  With a secret nameless friend, says Shakespeare.

  Wow, the spider exclaims enthusiastically, a secret nameless friend! I’m dying to meet him!

  He’s standing in front of you on two short legs, which are just long enough to reach from his ass to the floor.

  I’m spending the holiday alone with a secret nameless friend too, says the Segestria spider.

  The question is whether we’ll be alone together or apart, says Shakespeare.

  Being alone on Christmas is like being a parrot in a cage in a deserted pub, whistling ‘Strangers in the Ni
ght’ to itself, says the spider with the stringy limbs.

  They exchange cell phone numbers, and after abandoning the idea of the suit, he sets out for his meeting with the director of public relations in the pharmaceutical firm.

  4

  The meeting in Sol Lewis’s office goes on for hours. Sol doesn’t talk. He has a DVD presentation that does the work for him. He clears his throat like an opera singer about to break into an aria, and then he produces a special voice, monotonous and metallic, by whose means he commands the system to bring up the ultimate-love-pill project, all in one zero two. The DVD goes into action, and the Barko projects onto the shining screen the lecture delivered by Sol Lewis himself, and intended for the ears of the directors of the advertising agencies selected to enter the final stage of the competition for the rights to design the advertising campaign to promote the all-in-one new pill produced by Biomedic Org-Chemic Industries. The figure of Sol Lewis now fills the screen. He is sitting behind a desk, upon which three thick volumes are lying, his head as bald as a potato, his flushed face ruthlessly shaved, his thick neck strangled by a blue tie, and speaking directly to the camera. His lecture is very methodical, very clear and organized, and he repeats three or four times every message he wants to convey to the directors of the advertising agencies who have reached the short list before the finishing line. Hanina waits for Sol to stop the screening and give him the CD, so that he can pass it on to Mackie, otherwise known as Yadanuga, ‘the art director of my office’, he explains to Sol Lewis, but Sol has no intention of foregoing the pleasure of watching his skilled and eloquent performance in the company of another viewer. Hanina stares with empty eyes at the figure several times larger than life talking and talking and talking on the screen in front of him, and tries to pretend that he is riveted by the sea of verbiage. There is no doubt that this nudnik derives sexual gratification from the use he makes of his mouth in order to spew out more and more words, more and more well-organized sentences, whose sole purpose is to clarify to the directors of the advertising agencies, and their creative and technical teams, what Biomedic Org-Chemic Industries expects them to convey, by means of a striking image and a thirty second clip, to the potential purchasers of the pill which is about to grant them total satisfaction and blissful happiness in their emotional, sex and love lives.

  Three times, each time slightly differently, Sol Lewis explains to them, that in contrast to its predecessors, the new pill is intended for both men and women; that it increases not only the capacity, but also the desire of both sexes—and in addition to its amazing ability to lengthen the male member by three inches if taken for three months, it also has the ability to lengthen the duration of the sexual act and to shorten the recovery time between the orgasm and the new erection. But the main thing, Sol explains—and in this too the pill is essentially different from all its predecessors—is that this astonishing all-in-one product by Biomedic Org-Chemic Industries not only arouses the sexual mechanism, it also has an wonderfully beneficial effect on the emotions it enables participants in their orgy of pleasure to derive from their sexual interaction. In other words, Sol Lewis repeats for the benefit of those who have not yet understood the message, this pill awakens and arouses love between the two participants in the above sexual interaction.

  And for anyone who has not yet grasped the significance of the revolution this wonder pill is going to bring about in our lives, Sol Lewis repeats for the third time, couples who take the pill in the afternoon will find themselves falling madly in love during the course of dinner, especially since red wine in the amount of up to three quarters of a pint per person increases the effect of the pill twofold, both on the emotional and the functional plane, and thus, after drinking two glasses of wine, or after emptying a bottle together, our happy couple will reach a pre-climactic state in the flaring of their passion for each other, while the climax of their mutual love will of course be reserved for those who continue the journey of desire with the help of the pill to the full realization of the act of love, in the laundered and squeaky-clean formulation of Sol Lewis, whose thick tongue occasionally licks his fat pink lips, and whose eyes pop out of their sockets behind his gleaming glasses.

  Somehow the screening comes to an end, not before Sol Lewis reminds his listeners in the advertising agencies that they are expected to convey this entire complex package of messages by means of a single image, which will be developed in the course of a thirty second clip, and whose content will be conveyed to the viewer by means of a visual message alone. ‘Let the picture talk’, Sol exhorts his anonymous listeners, ‘let it talk to the Chinese, to the Portuguese, to Germans and Russians in the very same language. Let it persuade the educated viewer in a language that will also be clear to a goat herd in the Caucasus’, he repeats the message for the third time, and concludes his speech with the magic formula: ‘Remember that everyone wants to be happy. And when you say ‘happy’ you say love, passion, intimacy, potency, excitement, enjoyment, pleasure, satisfaction.’

  Impressive, says Hanina. Very impressive.

  The result of many hours of hard work, says Sol.

  I’ll show it to my team, promises Hanina, I’m sure it will be a powerful source of inspiration for them.

  Give it your best shot, Sol urges him, I know that the Japanese team have already invested a huge effort in the project.

  My people will do their best, promises Hanina.

  That’s not enough, Sol warns him. If you want to win, you’ll have to outdo yourselves. In the past you’ve proved that you can do it, if you see what I mean.

  Don’t worry, Hanina reassures him. I was in command of a team that took care of international terrorists.

  No, really! exclaims Sol in excitement. What do you say! His face turns red, his eyes are damp, his potato nose quivers, he looks as if he has taken one of his own magic pills. What do you say! He says again, and his voice betrays a longing for closeness to the tough, virile man standing in front of him, and for a moment it seems that he will be unable to resist the impulse to fall on the object of his desire and clasp him to his bosom in a tight embrace.

  But the agitated Sol is still at the stage of foreplay:

  You killed terrorists with your own hands? He whispers in an aroused voice.

  With my own hands, admits Hanina and displays hands equipped with short, thick fingers of equal length. Sol stares spellbound at the hands of his interlocutor, and suddenly he takes one of Hanina’s hard hands in his hand, which is as soft as a warm roll, and declares with profound emotion:

  I’m rooting for you. My grandmother’s mother’s name was Leah. Lewis comes from Leahles. When they arrived in America they changed Leyeles to Lewis.

  Wos zogs du! the words escape Hanina.

  Where’s the Yiddish from?! asks Sol.

  From my parents, says Hanina. They spoke to each other in Yiddish.

  I only know a few words, apologizes Sol, and lists his Yiddish vocabulary: meshuga, a zoch un wei, a yachne, shul, davenen, a kurvele.

  Apropos the kurvele, says Hanina, have you tried this pill yourself?

  God forbid, says Sol. If I had to try all our products I would have been making fartzen in zamd a long time ago.

  You know that expression? marvels Hanina.

  My parents used it, Sol recalls and is flooded with longings for his parents, who for many years have been breaking wind in the Jewish cemetery in Brooklyn.

  Can you let me have a few of the pills? asks Hanina.

  Just for you, says Sol. They’re not packaged for marketing yet. I have to warn you that they’re still in the experimental stage. And it goes without saying, don’t pass them on to anyone else and don’t talk about them to anyone.

  You’re talking to a graveyard of secrets, says Hanina.

  I know, Sol whispers admiringly. I know.

  5

  Hanina emerges into the city, where a wintry wind is raging, howling in the narrow passages quarried through it by the skyscrapers like tunnels in th
e bowels of a mountain. He strides down the street illuminated by thousands of sparkling Christmas lights, and as he calls the young sales assistant on his cell phone the fingers of his left hand play with the packet of Sol Leyeles’s pills in his pocket.

  Hi honey, he says, this is the dangerous man with the short leg here.

  Hi, she says, do you want to come round?

  If you want me to.

  Very much, she says, but I have to warn you that it will cost you something.

  Sure, he says, in this life the only thing you get for nothing is death.

  It’s five hundred dollars till midnight, or a thousand for the whole night.

  Including breakfast? he asks.

  You’re a real piece of work! She laughs with a sound of tinkling bells from the other side of the satellite wandering through space. For you—including breakfast.

  Dinner is on me, he says after she gives him the address. And he adds: Including red wine.

  6

  After clicking three locks and drawing back two bolts, she opens the door and sways and shies away from him like a praying mantis in brief black running pants and a black tank top, all arms and legs of a still-growing adolescent girl. Her long skinny legs shoot up like two bamboo canes from black Doc Martens, high and heavy, as if she has just returned from a hike in the country. The contrast between the clumsy masculine boots and the stork legs underlines her boyish appearance, and he wonders if he isn’t getting involved with a minor here. The wide bracelets on her wrists draw his attention to the vein-slashing scars underneath them. He looks up and meets her narrowed eyes, weepy eyes that examine him with feline curiosity. She sees that he has registered the scars and sends him a smile that may be naive or embarrassed, or maybe it comes from bottomless sadness and terrible bitterness, because her full lips stay sealed when she smiles, and he asks himself if they express sensuality or disgust, and the narrowed weepy eyes, are they alive or dead? A dark grasshopper silhouette against a background of Manhattan’s sea of lights, whose waves break against the glass of the huge picture window, which takes up an entire wall of the one room apartment, whose area he estimates with a comprehensive glance at thirty-five square meters. He notes to himself that there is only one entrance, that the kitchenette adjoins the living space, with no dividing wall, takes a quick look inside the open bathroom door to make sure there’s nobody there—and thus, in the habit acquired during the years of pursuit and liquidation, he concludes the screening procedure and answers the questionnaire he internalized during those stormy years, the strict compliance with which saved his life and the lives of the members of his team, until the Alsatian caught it in India, and Jonas ended his life in the team’s last liquidation operation, in the terrible pursuit in the desert of Tino the Syrian, who he is now trying to reach through this young woman, facing him here in all the enigma of her youth. He hands her the bottle of Cote-de-Ventoux he bought in the wine shop on the corner of 14th Street, and says: