by Joshua Sobol
Stop it, she commands, let me listen.
He falls silent and looks at her. She smokes her cigarette and hums the song in a strange, unfamiliar abandonment. Her fingers drum on the steering wheel in time to the changing beat of the tune.
Listen to the way he groans, he says to her. Never mind the words. Soul, soul.
You’re disturbing me, she snaps.
Something about her has changed. Look at her swooning over this idiotic song. She never liked these songs. Suddenly she likes them. Interesting. As if she’s reading his thoughts, she suddenly says:
I’m sick of those anemic Ashkenazi songs. Without heart and balls. He at least isn’t afraid of expressing emotion. He isn’t afraid of sounding sentimental. He doesn’t care what anybody thinks. He says what’s in his heart. What’s in his guts. Open. Large as life.
‘Heart’, ‘guts’. Suddenly she’s talking about heart and guts. Words she never liked, words she mocked people for using. Mona the brainy. Suddenly she’s using them herself with a kind of frank enjoyment. Wallowing in them. Brandishing them. Like a child emerging from the latency period and suddenly discovering afresh the pleasures of sex which he enjoyed without inhibitions as an infant. Like a religious Jew becoming free and eating pork for the first time in his life. What’s happening to her?
44
If you play the emotional type, says Melissa, you’ll meet sirens who’ll lead you astray, and you’ll have to deal with them according to their deceitful-emotional nature. But if you choose to play the role of the leg-man, the gods will fell trees, or roll rocks into your path to bar your way, and you’ll have to exert all your strength to push them aside. On the other hand, if you choose to play the guts-man, you’ll come across obstacles that will require all your courage and daring to overcome. And if you choose the role of the brain-man, you’ll need to solve riddles and answer questions in order to neutralize the sphinx threatening to paralyze you.
So what is it? he questions the interior of the Land Rover.
What? Mona replies to this meaningless question.
Rocks? Sirens? Or is it someone who.….
What on earth are you talking about?
The news cuts into both the wailing of the singer and the senseless dialogue. The weary voice of an announcer informs them that the time is six a.m., and three soldiers have been killed by a terrorist attack on their post, and that the terrorist was eliminated by a force that returned fire, and that two terrorists were killed in work accidents in Nablus and Yabrod, and another two terrorists were killed when they tried to cross the fence next to Rafah, and two terrorists were wounded next to Ramallah—and without thinking he starts singing in French ‘And all for nothing’ by Yves Montand.
Stop singing, Mona commands him.
It was Danny’s song, he says.
What are you talking about? she says dismissively. Danny never sang French songs.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, he retorts indignantly, Danny only sang French songs.
Danny sings French songs? she mocks. Apparently you don’t know your son.
I wasn’t talking about our son, he says.
So what Danny were you talking about?
Danny Altwasser, the Alsatian.
Ah, she says. So say Daniel, not Danny.
For me he was Danny, he says.
What made you think of him all of a sudden, she demands crossly.
Everything was for nothing, he says.
What was for nothing? she asks.
The people who were killed, our people who were killed. For nothing, it was all for nothing.
The city had not yet awoken from its slumbers. The houses smelled of sleep. And there’s another man, he says to Melissa, the eyes-man. He’s the invisible man. The omnipotent character who populated the world of childhood fantasies. Going into rooms without anyone knowing he’s there. Moving objects on tables. Shaking lamps. Suddenly making a picture fall from the wall. Invading bedrooms. Pulling the blanket from a naked couple. Drawing the curtains in the room of a sick man for whom this is his last dawn on earth. Pausing for a moment next to cradles giving off the scent of babies. Accompanying the sons wandering the world, one somewhere in Nepal, another somewhere in Bolivia.
45
The sons, he says to himself, trying to test the extent of his closeness to them, but the words ‘the sons’ only serve to substantiate the infinite distance between them. He hears their names, Danny and Yoni, and sees his dead comrades, the Alsatian and Jonas. The one wrapped in white cloth soaking up the muddy water of the river, carried away on the slow current, and the other dying in his arms from a bullet from Adonis’ pistol, that hit him in the chest. The dagger thrown by Yadanuga in the direction of the murderer hit him in the arm and made him drop the pistol and pick up his heels and run. And when he raises his head from the dying Jonas, and sees the murderer disappearing into the distance he shouts at Yadanuga:
Take care of Jonas!
And sets out in pursuit of the man who according to all the signs is Tino the Syrian, and after an hour of running in the desert the fugitive begins to tire, and the distance between them narrows, and when he comes within range he reaches for his pistol and discovers to his dismay that it isn’t there, and in the nightmarishly long second in which he remembers that he put it down when he ripped Jonas’ shirt to examine his wound, the fugitive was suddenly hidden behind a fold in the ground and he disappeared from view as if the earth had swallowed him, and the wadi was filled by shadows and the gathering dusk covered everything in darkness, and it was impossible to see anything at all.
46
What are you doing? she asks.
Sending an SMS.
Who to?
Danny, he says.
Isn’t it night there now?
No, he says, it’s afternoon there now.
His fingers tap out the message, and he sends it on its way and says:
And to Yoni.
What’s the time there? she asks.
Ten o’clock at night, he says.
What did you write them? she asks.
V r ok how r u
Sure, ok, she says.
What do you want me to start telling them? he asks.
Nothing, she says.
He tries to see their faces, but they evade him.
Try to see them, he orders himself.
I can’t, he answers.
Make an effort, he demands.
They’re on two different continents. Which of them should I concentrate on?
Which of them can you see?
Neither of them, he admits in despair. I can’t see my sons. I can’t see their eyes. I can’t see them.
47
She presses the button to activate the computerized sound system. The menu of options comes up on the screen. She moves the cursor, chooses a track, types. Dense, jazzy lyrics in English, half sung half declaimed at a fast tempo, blare forth from the Land Rover’s state of the art sound system. Something out of date, that was once new and sophisticated. It sounded like an English band from the end of the seventies. Try to identify the band, he orders himself. A strange name surfaces in his memory: The Specials. Where did that name come from. It isn’t clear. It’s connected to the picture of a journey on an autostrada on a rainy windswept night. Only heavy trucks on the road. And there are three of them in the car. Yadanuga driving. You’re sitting next to him, ready to take over as soon as he gets tired. Jonas is sleeping on the back seat. They’re on their way back from an execution. In order to keep awake they occupy themselves with choosing a suitable name for a movie inspired by their operation. ‘Artificial respiration’ suggests Yadanuga. ‘Desolation’ you throw out a counter proposal. Yadanuga plays with the buttons of the radio and a station comes up and they’re deep in the seventies, with the legendary Sex Pistols punk parody of ‘I did it my way’, and he hears himself reflect aloud:
McLarn?
What McLarn? demands Mona in astonishment.
The
re’s a clothes shop called that, isn’t there?
If you mean Malcolm McLarn, she says, he once had a shop in partnership with Vivian Westwood.
Do you remember the address? he asks.
What do you need the address for? she asks in bewilderment, that shop hasn’t existed for ages.
Oh, no? he says doubtfully.
If I remember rightly, Malcolm McLarn left the fashion business after he became the manager of the Sex Pistols.
Then it’s apparently not McLarn, he concludes.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, she says.
She goes on driving in silence.
Is that The Specials? he asks about the song still coming over on the sound system.
Don’t you recognize it? I’m surprised at you—‘This town is turning into a ghost town’.
Right, he says, I recognize it now.
Your cell phone, she says in response to the electronic beep. He looks at the screen.
There’s an answer from Danny, he says.
What does he write? She asks.
i m ok, he reads from the screen.
Good, she says.
Here comes Yoni’s answer too.
What does he write?
Letters and numbers appear on the screen: c u b 4 2 b shvat i m ok.
He deciphers and translates:
‘See you before Tu b’Shavt, I’m okay.’
Oh! she exclaims. So he’s coming home!
Are you glad? he asks.
Aren’t you? she says in surprise.
I don’t know, he says, and for the first time he admits that he doesn’t know if he wants his sons to return to the country.
48
At midday she assembles them all in the office. They have heard something. They sit in suspense. Moran scribbles symmetrical shapes on the paper in front of her. Her scribbles are always symmetrical. An arrowhead pointing from left to right, and opposite it an arrowhead pointing from right to left. A vertical line drawn under the left arrowhead, immediately followed by a vertical line under the right arrowhead. Golan for his part plays with his palm computer. Always absorbed in some screen or other. Take the screen away from him and he’s blind in the dark. He touches the bottom of the screen rapidly with the electronic pencil in his hand, and the mini-computer squeaks and squeals like a little animal. Yadanuga on the other hand carves wood. In situations of suspense he always carves pieces of wood from branches he saws off all kinds of trees. Long waiting periods have given birth to sticks with detailed carvings, while short ones produced sketchy and sometimes unfinished carvings. Every surveillance gave birth to a carved stick. The surveillance of Busidi produced a stick with ocean waves, and wooded mountains soaring above them, on the Northern coast of Scotland. And the liquidation of the octet was immortalized in a view of the French Riviera, where the murderers enjoyed their last days and nights on earth, before they were taken out in a villa in the middle of a pine forest, on a hill overlooking Nice, the opposite of which is Sin, which gave rise to the passwords Sinbad the Sailor and Binbad the Bailor to convey the setting out on the mission and the homing in on the villa, and afterwards they called in Tinbad the Tailor, to report that the bastards had been sewn up, and Zinbad the Zailor, to confirm that the operation had been successfully completed and the quartet was in a safe place.
And while he is sunk in memories, wondering if all this has actually taken place in reality or if it all exists only in his imagination, and perhaps memory is only a form of imagination—he hears Mona’s voice announcing the change in directorship of the firm.
Hanina is taking a long leave, she says, and will be out of the country for an unspecified period of time. As of this moment I am taking his place as director of the firm, and of the pill campaign in particular. The firm is going with Moran and Golan’s idea. From this moment the efforts of the whole team will be directed towards executing that idea.
And when they all get up to leave, Yadanuga touches him with the tip of the stick in his hand—a fresh branch of the hushhash tree, whose thorns have been removed and whose bark has been carved with sexual symbols. He leans towards him and says:
I’ll be waiting for you on the motorbike.
49
They speed north. The powerful motor roars between their legs. If, of all his collection of motorbikes, Yadanuga has chosen the old Harley Davidson—which was used by the traffic cops in the fifties of the previous century to put the fear of God into the roads of the country—it was a sign that he was in a fighting mood. Any doubts were laid to rest by his wild driving of the terrifying vehicle, which testified that he was ready for war. As if taking part in a skiing competition on the alps, he slaloms between the cars crowding to exit the city, and without slowing down one iota he tilts the bike sideways on the curves until their knees almost shave the road, and with the same sure hand he straightens it up again, and they leave behind them the long rows of cars blowing their horns in the traffic jams, and here they are at the dunes, and the nature reserve of carobs and mastic trees, and in a swift, daring move Yadanuga turns the bike sharply to the left, charges through a gap in the dividing wall between the traffic going in different directions on the expressway, cuts across the lanes with one bold leap, and already they are racing along the dirt track winding down to the sea. Two prostitutes in G-strings rise to greet them from white plastic chairs in the shade of a spreading carob tree, displaying their bodies and waving their hands, showing their disappointment when the motorbike passes them without stopping, and only Shakespeare waves back at them from the passenger seat and blows them a kiss with warm regards from Melissa. They pass a white Fiat parked by the roadside, through whose open back door they can see a woman lying on the back seat, her left leg thrown over the backrest of the front seat, her right leg on the shelf between the back seat and the back window, and the bare backside of a man with his trousers down rises and sinks like a piston between her parted legs, and Hanina remarks to himself that nothing has changed in this nature reserve since the seventies of the previous century, when they used to drive down this dirt track to the beach in order to put in hours of training climbing up and down the cliffs.
Yadanuga, who apparently knows every old track and every new path here, navigates the motorbike down the little canyon towards the beach, and stops a few feet from the water line. He silences the monstrous engine, takes off his big leather gloves.
You know what I want.
To fight, says Hanina.
Get undressed, says Yadanuga and takes off his shoes and socks.
Hanina too removes his shoes and socks, and they arrange the shoes and socks next to the motorbike. Yadanuga takes off his heavy biker’s leather jacket, and Hanina removes his windbreaker with its synthetic fleece lining, which he had purchased in a cheap Chinese store on 14th Street, when he went out for a morning walk with Melissa and there was an icy wind blowing. Now Yadanuga takes off his sweater and tricot undershirt, and Hanina takes off his thick, turtleneck Irish sweater and gray flannel undershirt, and the two of them fold the garments and place them neatly on top of their shoes. They confront each other in their trousers, the upper halves of their bodies bare. Yadanuga opens his belt and Hanina follows suit. They take off their trousers with thoughtful, serious expressions on their faces, like two monks in some Indian sect preparing for a ritual salute to the setting sun, which is painting the gray winter sky a blazing red. Now they stand facing each other clothed only in their underpants.
Should we run first? asks Yadanuga.
If you like, says Hanina.
So let’s run, determines Yadanuga.
Let’s run, agrees Hanina.
They start running along the deserted beach, shoulder to shoulder, paying attention to each other’s breathing, inhaling together, exhaling together, silent together. The wet sand is firm beneath their feet. Without opening their mouths they run like this to the place where the cliff enters the sea and jagged rocks rise from the water erupting between them. Wordlessly the
y turn round and run back towards the lone motorbike stationed on the shore, as if to stand guard over the clothes stacked neatly at its feet. When they approach the bike Yadanuga stops and starts dancing on the spot, swinging his arms and loosening his muscles. Hanina follows suit and dances opposite him. They watch each other closely. And then Yadanuga’s right hand shoots out and his fist hits Hanina’s left shoulder. The blow is hard and painful, and is immediately countered by a left-handed punch to Yadanuga’s chest. Again Yadanuga sends his fist to Hanina’s left shoulder. And although Hanina could have evaded the blow, he leaves his body where it is and absorbs it, but counters with another jab to his opponent’s chest. Without agreeing in advance, these blows appear to mark the permitted limits which both of them respect. Neither of them tries to hit the other’s face, or go below the line of the diaphragm. But the blows raining down on their shoulders and chest, with increasing frequency, are painful enough, and their effect accumulates. Both of their shoulders and chests turn red, their breathing becomes heavy, and when Hanina feels that the pain is beginning to get to him, and he wonders whether he should start evading his opponent’s blows, Yadanuga opens his arms, and they embrace puffing and panting, patting each other’s shoulders, and it isn’t clear which of them smiled first and which of them responded with a light, almost inaudible snort, and which replied with a more well-defined titter, but the laughter which has apparently been building up for some time in both of them can no longer be contained, and suddenly they both burst out laughing loudly, and at the same time Yadanuga smacks Hanina on his bum, and Hanina gives Yadanuga a kick on his, and when Yadanuga wants to kick him back Hanina evades him, and again, as if at a prearranged signal, they fold their arms on their chests and break into a cockfight, hopping and skipping on one leg, circling each other like a couple of billy goats, jabbing at each other with their elbows, hopping backwards and charging again, like a pair of schoolboys rather than men with gray in their hair, and all this time they don’t stop laughing, pushing each other and laughing, thrusting back and laughing, until they both fall onto the wet sand and lie there, abandoning their hot bodies to the velvety touch of the cool sand, and together they stand up and go to the motorbike, and Yadanuga asks Hanina if he has sand on his back, and they clean the sand off each other, and when they’re getting dressed Yadanuga says:
