‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘Young lady, I’m afraid you’ll have to decide which answer you want – the answer to that question, or all the others.’
Andrea bit her lower lip, angry at herself. The old bastard was sharper than he appeared.
He’s thrown me a challenge without even ruffling his feathers. OK, old man, I’ll follow your lead. I’m going to open my heart completely, swallow your story and when you least expect it I’ll find out exactly what I want to know, even if I have to yank out your tongue with my tweezers.
‘Why do you drink if you’re on medication?’ Andrea said, her voice intentionally aggressive.
‘I suppose you have deduced that I use medication because of my agoraphobia,’ answered Kayn. ‘Yes, I take medication for anxiety and no, I shouldn’t be drinking. I do it anyway. When my great-grandfather was eighty years old, my grandfather hated seeing him shiker. That’s drunk. Please interrupt me if there is a Yiddish word that you don’t understand, Miss Otero.’
‘Then I’m going to have to interrupt you a lot, because I don’t know any.’
‘As you wish. My great-grandfather drank and drank, and my grandfather used to say: “You should take it easy, tateh”. He always replied: “Go fuck yourself, I’m eighty years old and I’ll drink if I want to.” He died at the age of ninety-eight when a mule kicked him in the gut.’
Andrea laughed. Kayn’s voice had changed as he spoke of his ancestor, enlivening his anecdote like a born storyteller and using different voices.
‘You know a lot about your family. Were you close to your elders?’
‘No, my parents died during the Second World War. Even though they told me stories I don’t remember much because of the way we spent my first years. Almost everything I know about my family has been gathered from a variety of outside sources. Let’s just say that when I was finally able to do so, I combed all of Europe in search of my roots.’
‘Talk to me about those roots. Do you mind if I record our interview?’ Andrea asked, taking her digital recorder out of her pocket. It could hold thirty-five hours of top-quality voice recording.
‘Go ahead. This story begins one harsh winter in Vienna, with a Jewish couple walking towards a Nazi hospital…’
56
ELLIS ISLAND, NEW YORK
December 1943
Yudel cried quietly in the darkness of the hold. The ship had reached the pier and the seamen were motioning the refugees crowded into every inch of the Turkish freighter to leave. All of them hurried forward in search of fresh air. But Yudel didn’t move. He grabbed Jora Myer’s cold fingers, refusing to believe that she was dead.
It was not his first contact with death. He had seen plenty of it since leaving the hiding place in Judge Rath’s house. Fleeing that small hole, which had been asphyxiating but safe, had been a tremendous shock. His first experience of sunlight had taught him that monsters lived out there in the open. His first experience of the city taught him that any little nook was a hiding place from which he could scan the street before scurrying rapidly to the next. His first experience of trains terrorised him, with their noise and the monsters walking up and down the aisles, looking for someone to grab. Luckily, if you showed them yellow cards they didn’t bother you. His first experience of an open field made him hate snow, and the brutal cold made his feet feel frozen as he walked. His first experience of the sea was one of a frightening and impossible vastness, the wall of a prison seen from the inside.
On the ship that took him to Istanbul, Yudel began to feel better as he huddled in a dark corner. It had taken them only a day and a half to reach the Turkish port, but it was seven months before they were able to leave it.
Jora Myer had fought tirelessly to get an exit visa. At that time Turkey was a neutral country and many refugees crowded the piers, forming long lines in front of the consulates or humanitarian organisations such as the Red Crescent. With each new day Great Britain was limiting the number of Jews entering Palestine. The United States refused to allow more Jews to enter. The world was turning a deaf ear to the disturbing news about the massacres in the concentration camps. Even a newspaper as prominent as The Times of London referred to the Nazi genocide merely as ‘horror stories’.
In spite of all the obstacles, Jora did all she could. She begged in the street and covered the tiny Yudel with her coat at night. She tried to avoid using the money that Dr Rath had given her. They slept wherever they could. Sometimes it was a smelly inn or the crowded entrance hall of the Red Crescent, where at night refugees covered every inch of the grey-tiled floor and being able to get up to relieve yourself was a luxury.
All Jora could do was hope and pray. She had no contacts and could speak only Yiddish and German, refusing to use the first language since it brought unhappy memories. Her health was not getting any better. The morning when she first coughed up blood she decided she couldn’t go on waiting. She screwed up her courage and decided to give all their remaining money to a Jamaican sailor who worked aboard a freighter that flew the American flag. The ship was leaving in a few days. The crewman managed to smuggle them into the hold. There they mixed with the hundreds lucky enough to have Jewish relatives in the United States who backed up their requests for visas.
Jora died of tuberculosis thirty-six hours before reaching the United States. Yudel had not left her side for a moment, despite his own illness. He had developed a severe ear infection and his hearing had been blocked for several days. His head felt like a barrel filled with jam, and any loud noises sounded like horses galloping on its lid. That’s why he couldn’t hear the sailor who was yelling at him to leave. Tired of threatening the boy, the sailor began to kick him.
‘Move it, blockhead. They’re waiting for you in Customs.’
Yudel again tried to hold on to Jora. The sailor – a short, pimply man – grabbed him by the neck and prised him away from her violently.
‘Somebody will come and get her. You, get out!’
The boy struggled free. He searched Jora’s coat and managed to find the letter from his father Jora had told him about so many times. He took it and hid it in his shirt before the seaman grabbed him again and forced him out into the frightening daylight.
Yudel walked down the gangplank and on into the building where customs officials dressed in blue uniforms waited at long tables to receive the lines of immigrants. Trembling with fever, Yudel waited in the queue. His feet were burning in his decrepit shoes, longing to escape, and to hide from the light.
Finally it was his turn. A customs official with small eyes and thin lips looked at him over gold spectacles.
‘Name and visa?’
Yudel looked at the floor. He didn’t understand.
‘I don’t have all day. Your name and your visa. Are you retarded?’
Another younger customs official with a bushy moustache tried to calm his colleague.
‘Take it easy, Creighton. He’s travelling alone and doesn’t understand.’
‘These Jewish rats understand more than you think. Dammit! This is my last ship today and my last rat. I have a mug of cold beer waiting for me at Murphy’s. If it makes you happy, you take care of him, Gunther.’
The official with the large moustache came around the table and squatted in front of Yudel. He began speaking to Yudel, first in French, then German and then Polish. The boy continued to look at the floor.
‘He doesn’t have a visa and he’s a half-wit. We’ll send him back to Europe on the next damned ship,’ interjected the official with glasses. ‘Say something, idiot.’ He reached over the table and boxed Yudel on the ear.
For a second Yudel felt nothing. But then pain suddenly filled his head as if he had been stabbed and a stream of hot pus shot out of his infected ear.
He screamed the word for compassion in Yiddish.
‘Rakhmones!’
The moustachioed official turned angrily on his co-worker.
‘Enough, Creighton!’
‘Unidentified child, doesn’t understand the language, no visa. Deportation.’
The man with the moustache quickly searched the boy’s pockets. There was no visa. In fact, there was nothing in his pockets except some bread crumbs and an envelope with Hebrew writing. He checked to see if it contained any money but there was only a letter, which he put back in Yudel’s pocket.
‘He understood you, dammit! Didn’t you hear his name? He’s probably lost his visa. You don’t want to deport him, Creighton. If you do that, we’ll be here for another fifteen minutes.’
The official with the glasses took a deep breath and gave up.
‘Tell him to say his surname out loud so I can hear him, and then we’ll go for a beer. If he can’t, he’ll be heading straight to Deportation.’
‘Help me, kid,’ whispered the moustached man. ‘Believe me, you don’t want to go back to Europe or end up in an orphanage. You have to convince this guy that you have people waiting for you outside.’ He tried again with the only word he knew in Yiddish. ‘Mishpokhe?’ meaning: family.
From his trembling lips, scarcely audible, Yudel spoke his second word. ‘Cohen,’ he said.
Relieved, moustache looked at glasses.
‘You heard him. He’s called Raymond. His name is Raymond Kayn.’
57
KAYN
Kneeling in front of the plastic toilet inside the tent, he fought back the urge to vomit while his assistant tried in vain to get him to drink some water. The old man finally managed to contain his nausea. He hated vomiting, that relaxing but exhausting sensation of expelling everything that was corroding him inside. It was a faithful reflection of his soul.
‘You don’t know how much this has cost me, Jacob. You have no idea, that rechielesnitseh [6]… talking to her, seeing myself so exposed. I couldn’t stand it any more. She wants another session.’
‘I’m afraid you are going to have to put up with her a little longer, sir.’
The old man looked at the bar at the other end of the room. His assistant, aware of the direction of his gaze, stared at him disapprovingly and the old man looked away and sighed.
‘Human beings are full of contradictions, Jacob. We end up enjoying what we hate the most. Telling a stranger about my life took a weight off my shoulders. For a moment I felt connected to the world. I had planned to deceive her, maybe mix in lies with some truths. Instead of that, I told her everything.’
‘You did it because you know it’s not a real interview. She won’t be able to publish it.’
‘Perhaps. Or maybe I just needed to talk. Do you think she suspects anything?’
‘I don’t think so, sir. In any case, we’ve almost reached the finish.’
‘She’s very bright, Jacob. Watch her closely. She could turn out to be more than a minor player in this whole thing.’
58
ANDREA AND DOC
The only thing she remembered from the nightmare was a cold sweat, being gripped by fear and gasping in the darkness, trying to remember where she was. It was a recurring dream but Andrea never knew what it was about. Everything was erased the moment she woke up, leaving her with only traces of fear and loneliness.
But now Doc was immediately by her side, crawling over to her mattress to sit with her and put a hand on her shoulder. One was afraid of going any further, the other that she wouldn’t. Andrea sobbed. Doc embraced her.
Their foreheads touched and then their lips.
Like a car that has struggled uphill for hours and has finally reached the top, the next moment was going to be decisive, the instant of equilibrium.
Andrea’s tongue searched desperately for Doc’s, and she returned the kiss. Doc pulled off Andrea’s T-shirt and traced the moist, salty skin of her breasts with her tongue. Andrea lay back on the mattress. She was no longer afraid.
The car raced headlong downhill, without any brakes.
59
THE EXCAVATION
AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN
Sunday, 16 July 2006. 1:28 a.m.
They remained next to each other, talking, for a long time; kissing every few words, as if they couldn’t believe that they had found each other and that the other person was still there.
‘Wow, Doc. You really know how to take care of your patients,’ Andrea said as she caressed Doc’s neck and played with the curls in her hair.
‘It’s part of my hypocritical oath.’
‘I thought it was the Hippocratic Oath.’
‘I took a different oath.’
‘It doesn’t matter how much you joke around, you’re not going to make me forget that I’m still angry with you.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth about myself, Andrea. I guess lying is part of my work.’
‘What else is part of your work?’
‘My government wants to know what’s happening here. And don’t ask me any more about it, because I’m not going to tell you.’
‘We have ways of making you talk,’ Andrea said, shifting her caresses to a different place on Doc’s body.
‘I’m sure I’ll be able to fight off the interrogation,’ Doc whispered.
Neither woman spoke for a few minutes until Doc let out a long, almost silent, moan. Then she pulled Andrea to her and whispered in her ear.
‘Chedva.’
‘What does that mean?’ Andrea whispered back.
‘It’s my name.’
Andrea exhaled her surprise. Doc sensed the joy in her and hugged her tight.
‘Your secret name?’
‘Never say it out loud. Now you’re the only one who knows it.’
‘And your parents?’
‘They’re no longer alive.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘My mother died when I was a girl and my father died in a prison on the Negev.’
‘Why was he there?’
‘Are you sure you want to know? It’s a shitty, frustrating story.’
‘My life is full of shitty frustrations, Doc. It’d be nice to hear someone else’s for a change.’
There was a brief silence.
‘My father was a katsa, a special agent for Mossad. There are only thirty at any one time, and hardly anyone at the Institute reaches that rank. I’ve been in it for seven years and I’m only bat leveyha, the lowest grade. I’m thirty-six years old, so I don’t think I’m going to be promoted. But my father was a katsa at the age of twenty-nine. He did a lot of work outside Israel and in 1983 he undertook one of his last operations. He lived in Beirut for several months.’
‘You didn’t go with him?’
‘I only travelled with him when he went to Europe or the United States. Beirut wasn’t a good place for a young girl back then. It wasn’t a good place for anyone, really. That’s where he met Father Fowler. Fowler was on his way to the Beqa’a Valley to rescue some missionaries. My father had a great deal of respect for him. He said rescuing those people was the bravest act he’d ever seen in his life, and there wasn’t one word about it in the press. The missionaries simply said they’d been released.’
‘I suppose that kind of work doesn’t welcome publicity.’
‘No, it doesn’t. During the mission my father uncovered something unexpected: information suggesting that a group of Islamic terrorists with a truck full of explosives was going to make an attempt on an American installation. My father reported this to his superior, who replied that if the Americans were sticking their noses into Lebanon they deserved everything they got.’
‘What did your father do?’
‘He sent an anonymous note to the American embassy, to warn them; but without a reliable source to back it up, the note was ignored. The next day a truck full of explosives crashed through the gate of a Marine compound, killing two hundred and forty-one Marines.’
‘My God.’
‘My father returned to Israel, but the story didn’t end there. The CIA demanded an explanation from Mossad and someone mentioned my father’s name. A few months later, wh
ile he was returning home from a trip to Germany, he was stopped at the airport. The police searched his bags and found two hundred grams of plutonium and proof that he was attempting to sell it to the Iranian government. With that amount of material Iran could have built a medium-sized nuclear bomb. My father went to jail, practically without a trial.’
‘Someone had planted the evidence against him?’
‘The CIA had its revenge. They used my father to send a message to agents all over the world: if you find out about something like this again, make sure you let us know or we’ll make sure you’re fucked.’
‘Oh, Doc, that must have destroyed you. At least your father knew that you believed in him.’
There was another silence, this time a long one.
‘I’m ashamed to say this, but… for quite a few years I didn’t believe in my father’s innocence. I thought he had grown tired, that he wanted to earn some money. He was completely alone. Everyone forgot about him, including me.’
‘Were you able to make your peace with him before he died?’
‘No.’
Suddenly Andrea embraced the doctor, who began to cry.
‘Two months after his death, a highly confidential sodi beyoter report was declassified. It stated that my father was innocent and supported this with concrete proof, including the fact that the plutonium had belonged to the United States.’
‘Wait… are you telling me that Mossad knew all about it from the beginning?’
‘They sold him out, Andrea. In order to cover up their duplicity they handed the CIA my father’s head. The CIA were satisfied, and life went on – except for the two hundred and forty-one soldiers, and my father in his maximum-security prison cell.’
‘The bastards…’
‘My father is buried in Gilot, to the north of Tel Aviv, a place reserved for those who have fallen in combat against the Arabs. He was the seventy-first member of Mossad to be buried there, with full honours and acclaimed as a war hero. None of which erases the unhappiness they caused me.’
Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition Page 22
