by Joshua Sobol
But my gut-feeling warns me against this dangerous adventure, he admits.
And at the same time your strong legs are already waiting impatiently to set out.
You mean, my short legs.
Strong, she repeats emphatically, I’ve seen all kinds of legs in my life, but never legs as strong as yours.
And so out of proportion, insists Hanina, admit it: completely out of proportion to the rest of my body.
What’s true is true, she admits and passes an amused glance over his naked body facing her in the bathtub, your proportions are quite special.
Strange and ugly, he insists.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as you know, she says, but he holds his ground:
There’s nothing beautiful about me. And I’m not trying to fish for compliments. Look at my neck.
27
Melissa tilts her head with a lascivious smile, puts out a long-fingered hand and strokes his neck with a delight unlike anything he has ever known, and says that before she says anything about his bull neck it is only fitting that she devote a few words as well to the back which carries this neck, and therefore she asks him to kindly turn over onto his stomach.
Why don’t we get out of the bath? he suggests.
After drying his body with a hair dryer, which looks like a huge revolver, she runs the balls of her fingers over the width of his back, and then its length, and now she is ready to admit that his back really is long in relation to his short legs, which accounts for the fact that, in conjunction with his Modigliani neck, he nevertheless reaches a height of five foot ten inches—she accurately estimates at the end of the measurements taken by her outspread fingers in their agile crabwise scuttle from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.
Admit it, this body is composed of parts stolen from all the races walking the face of the earth, he laughs, and she agrees with him, and is even prepared to specify:
A Mongolian skull, Tartar cheekbones, a Norman chin, a male Nefertiti neck, a Latin back, African hips, the backside of a matador and legs that I don’t know where you got them from.
This body can tell you a tale of the journey of survival of the race that brought me into the world, he says.
She laughs: This bizarre combination misled my friend, who brought you trousers too long for your legs. I admit that I’ve never seen anything like them before.
Just say chimpanzee legs, he tries to make it easier for her.
You like putting yourself down more than you deserve, she protests.
Throw me a banana, he requests and lies on his naked back with his legs in the air.
She throws him a banana, and before she knows what’s happening he sends out a leg and catches the banana in mid-flight with the long toes of his left foot, and peels it with the help of his right big toe in three rapid movements, and again with the help of the toes of his left foot he breaks the banana in two, and while his right foot throws one half to Melissa, his left foot flings the other half into the air so that it falls straight into his mouth.
Melissa can’t believe her eyes. Amused and laughing in all her stringy nakedness she throws him an apple, and he catches it with his foot. She throws him another apple, which he catches with his other foot, and when she throws him a third apple, the secret nameless friend begins to juggle the three apples with his feet before her astonished eyes, until she springs from her place intending to land on this mischievous foot-juggler lying on his back on the floor, but before she realizes what’s happening to her his feet begin to turn her in the air like a giant fan, and she laughs and laughs, stop it, you lunatic! You’re killing me! I’m dying! But he swivels his strong legs, those legs that will still be spoken of in connection with the development of the new Olympic sport of infinite distance running, and then his feet throw her up into the air and catch her very gently like the hands of a father catching his baby daughter, as if she were a pillow full of feathers and not a long-limbed woman, and Melissa indeed laughs out loud like a little child, until Hanina slows down and lowers her gently to his body, and she lies on top of him exhausted, choking and sobbing with laughter—
28
You’re sighing like an old Jewish woman again, mocks Mona. Once in a while it helps to let out a good Jewish krechts, he says.
Once in a while? she retorts—this is your third or fourth krechts since we set sail.
Don’t despise the Jewish krechts, he says. More than the Jewish people preserved the krechts, the krechts preserved the Jewish people.
All right, all right, she dismisses the subject in disgust, but he stands his ground:
In certain situations all you can do is let out a krechts. He lies on his back, raises his legs in the air, bends his knees to his stomach, turns the soles of his feet to the sky, and lets out another sigh, which ends with ‘Ai, Mona, Mona …’
Is there something you want to say to me?
Come and lie down on my feet, he proposes.
What else do you want me to do?
Nothing, I’ll do all the rest.
What will you do? she expresses mistrust in his intentions.
Don’t ask questions, he requests, just lie down on my feet.
Have you got any more ideas?
Come on, he coaxes her, I’ll do something to you that nobody else has ever done before.
We’ve exhausted the subject, she pronounces.
Please, he sighs deeply, please.
Sit up and hold this rope tight, she orders him, and don’t do anything I don’t tell you to do.
He raises himself to a sitting position, and she throws him a thick rope, attached with a ring to the bottom of the boat. A damp rag of darkness covers the universe. Even the tip of the spotless white sail is swallowed up in the dense darkness of the last hour of night before the dawn. He turns his head back to see how far they are from the shore, but there is no trace of the shore. No spot of light flickers in the gloom. The green lamp pulsing its pale light like a heart on the point of the prow is the only light in the immense darkness. The bow cuts a white line over the dark water, which rises and falls like the breathing belly of a giant animal, and they are borne on this belly, which suddenly lifts them high in the air and immediately slips away and disappears beneath them, and the little boat plunges into the chasm like an airplane entering an air pocket, and for a minute he stops breathing and his guts rise into his throat, and before he can recover from his astonishment the breathing belly flings them up into the air again, and again they slide down into the dark chasm, and the bow of the boat rises like a roller-coaster and their little nutshell is slammed down to the bottom of the pit of water gaping in front of it.
What’s happening? he asks anxiously.
Nothing, she dismisses him. Hold tight to the rope. We’ll be out of it soon.
She maneuvers the sail with her strong hands, pulling ropes whose operations he doesn’t understand, moving swiftly from side to side and casting the weight of her body first to one side and then the other, leaning over the sides of the sloop.
You’re something, he starts to say to her but at that moment the little boat rises to the pinnacle of the Ferris wheel, and when it begins its swift slide down, the upper valve of his stomach opens, and all the Kentucky whiskey in his guts rises into his mouth in a wave of fermented corn. He barely manages to lean over the side of the boat before a murky jet bursts out of his mouth, and then another and another, and his stomach convulses in painful spasms, and it seems as if in a moment his guts will turn inside out, and as he crouches there leaning over the railing, a great spray of water from the bows washes over his face, and in the fog that descends on him for a moment he sees
29
A skinny body like a wet rag, folded in on itself, on the stone quay next to the water churning and rushing under the wooden bridge in Lucerne, and he sends a last look at that head, which made murderous plans and also executed them in vile ways, and reads the place and the time running in little letters at the bottom of the picture, o
nly a moment before that head had turned when they called its name, to make sure there was no mistake in the identity, and the man still had time to send his hand under the flap of his jacket, but the kick of death hit him on the chin, and he rose and fell back with a popping sound, and now he hears the Alsatian’s voice whispering in his heavy French accent, ça va pied-mort, ça suffit, it’s okay, death-foot, it’s enough, and he leans over the man and puts his hand in his pockets and takes out a wallet stuffed with bank notes, and airline tickets, and a silver Lebel 7.65 French pistol, which he makes haste to slip into his black leather bag, and then they push the body over the edge of the quay, and the raging current snatches it up greedily and whirls it round and takes it on a long journey to the depths of the cold winter night, and the Alsatian asks him to give his regards to Lorelei before the waters of the Rhine carry him out into the ocean, and at that moment the Alsatian didn’t know that his body too would be given up to the water of another river, which would carry him to another ocean, two dead men in the tens of thousands of dead in one war which according to his calculation had already been going on for eighty years, ever since they had smashed in the faces of Josef Louisdor and Josef Haim Brenner with a hoe, but all the seas were one sea, and all the dead were one dead, and only the living were distinguished from one another as long as they were alive, each living person and his world closed in on him, and where was this thought leading, he tries to think—
30
What’s going on with you and Moran? Mona’s voice cuts the thread of his thoughts with an unexpected question.
He sits up and turns his face dripping with salt water to her.
What? he asks, not believing that he heard the question correctly.
Is there something going on between you? she asks.
He sees her dimly through the veil of salt burning his eyes.
Don’t lie, she says. I saw how you were drowning in her eyes.
I was drowning in her eyes? he repeats in surprise.
I know that horny look of yours, she states.
Moran doesn’t turn me on, he says.
It’s a pity you didn’t see yourself looking at her.
I don’t remember looking at her in any special way, he says.
And how you looked, she says, hypnotized as a snake by a snake charmer.
You’re imagining things, he says.
Listen, Nini, she says, if you’re fucking her—go ahead and fuck her, but don’t bullshit me.
I’m not fucking her, he states firmly, and adds in a feebler tone: And I don’t want to fuck her either.
You look at her like a drunk at a bottle, she says, you don’t hear what’s being said to you, you don’t function, you’re simply out of it.
It’s not because of her, he says.
Oh no?
Moran to me is as transparent as the rays of a glorious sun, he is astonished at the image that comes out of Shakespeare’s mouth.
Is that so? she says. I wonder who they illuminate, the rays of this glorious sun.
You won’t believe me if I tell you, he says.
Go on, let it out, she says.
The granddaughter of the assistant hangman at Nuremberg.
What? she says. Say that again.
At Nuremberg they executed the Nazi leaders? he asks.
So?
The hangman was an American, he says.
Maybe he was, she concurs. What’s that got to do with it?
He had an assistant who cut the hole in the floor.
What hole?
That the hanged man falls through the minute they open the trapdoor he’s standing on.
What is this nonsense, she wrinkles her brow.
This assistant hangman married a black girl, he explains, and I met his granddaughter in New York. A shop assistant at Yves St Laurent, no, at Ralph Lauren, no.….
Make up your mind, Yves St Laurent or Ralph Lauren?
Maybe Ralph Klein or Stephen Klein, he says.
Ralph Klein was a basketball coach, Mona says scornfully. Maybe you mean Calvin Klein, or Stephane Kellian.
Perhaps, he says. I don’t remember what shop I met her in.
A-ha, she nods her head. An interesting story. Now let’s have the truth.
That’s the truth, he says.
Listen, Nini, she says, and the way she says ‘Nini’ already sounds like a rebuke. Listen, Nini! I’m fed up with your adolescent fantasies about cocoa colored Barbies.
Melissa isn’t exactly a Barbie, he says, but she cuts him short.
Melissa! She spits the name out in contempt. Are you sure it’s not Verbena? Or maybe Chamomile? Melissa! Couldn’t you invent a more idiotic name?
It’s true, he fights a rear-guard battle in a lost war.
Melissa! She laughs. How about Earl Grey, or Orange Pekoe?
I knew you wouldn’t believe me. He apologizes for his failure to persuade her.
If you don’t tell me the truth now, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, she threatens, I’m sailing back into the heart of the storm, and it isn’t only your stinking whiskey you’ll throw up, but your spleen and your gall bladder as well, and you know I’m not joking.
No, no, pleads Nini the frightened child, full of guilt for being born as a child of the second generation, and for the very fact of his existence in place of his two dead half-brothers, don’t take us back into the storm, I’ll tell you the truth.
Go ahead, says his mother, I’m listening.
I met her in Florence, he says. You won’t believe me, but it’s the truth: she’s an American policewoman who was disguised as a nun.
Go on, she says, I’m listening.
From Vermont, he goes on cautiously with the story that Yadanuga didn’t believe.
Pretty? she asks.
Not on first sight, he says. Not stunning. Not glamorous.
Don’t try to soften the blow.
I’m not. It’s the truth. She isn’t gorgeous.
Tall? she inquires.
Small, he lies.
How old? she demands.
Thirty-two, he invents a number.
What was she doing in Florence?
She was at a conference on computer crime.
Why was she disguised as a nun?
It gave her protection from men.
Is she an expert on computers?
Exactly, he says. The subject of computer crime—
Are you in love? She interrupts him.
Well, he hesitates.
Why did you come back? Why didn’t you stay with her?
I don’t know, he confesses.
So why are you giving me a lecture on computer crime? You think I’m interested in what she does?
No, he hesitates.
I ask you why you didn’t stay with her, and you tell me, I don’t know?
That’s the situation, he says. That’s exactly what happened.
What exactly happened?
Nothing. A week passed, and.…
You fought?
No.
You didn’t get tired of her in a week.
No.
For that you need a little longer.
Right.
Did she make a scene?
No, not at all.
Because you don’t like scenes.
Right.
If she made a scene, I’d understand.
I wouldn’t have stayed with her for a single minute.
I know. I know you.
When you’re right you’re right.
So what happened? In a week you hardly have time to begin to admire one another. It’s still the time when the food tastes more and more delicious, the wine has more of a kick, the fucking is only beginning to get better …
There wasn’t any fucking, he hurries to slip one true fact into the fantasy he’s weaving, but this poor truth is rejected with contempt:
Don’t give me that bullshit! What happened to make you get up and leave after a week?
If I’d stayed there I would
have murdered someone, he confesses.
Mona stands up in the boat. With great care she folds the sail, takes off her life-jacket, throws off her shirt, and unfastens the hooks of her bra, freeing her breasts which burst joyfully into the night air, shaking themselves like two wet puppies; she wriggles out of her trousers, drops her panties, jumps onto the prow and sets her strong feet on either side of it, and before he has time to admire the beauty of her muscular buttocks she dives into the water of the bay and distances herself from the boat with a few strong crawl strokes, smooth and supple and elegant as a dolphin, and is swallowed up in the darkness.
Mona? he calls hesitantly. Mona?!
No answer. For a moment he wonders whether to strip and jump into the sea after her, but the water is too wet, and the night is too cold, and even if he jumps into the water, how will he find her in the darkness? And anyway, Mona is a professional swimmer, who had swum for the national youth team in her time, she was a master of all the styles of swimming, whereas he was an amateur with no style at all. If it was a question of running, he consoles himself, you would overtake her even if she had a start of two kilometers, but when it comes to swimming you haven’t got a chance to come close to her. He strains his eyes and scans the sea around him, but the darkness of the water merges with the darkness of the air very near to the boat, and beyond the point where the two darknesses merge it’s impossible to see anything. There’s nothing for it but to wait in the hope that she’ll return.
There’s no danger that she’ll drown herself like Jack London, who she admires so much, the thought crosses his mind, she isn’t the suicidal type. But suddenly the possibility occurs to him that she might simply swim ashore and leave him alone in the boat in the middle of the sea. She’s capable of it. But on the other hand, she wouldn’t go ashore naked, even though she is capable of that too. But the keys of the Land Rover are still on the boat, in her trouser pocket, he reassures himself
31
And he lies down on his back again, on the soft sand of the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, opposite the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, with Melissa lounging next to him, sliding her slender foot over his legs covered with frizzy black hair, and saying to him:
