The Debt of Tamar

by Dweck, Nicole

  He received a beating that shattered his leg and ruptured his spleen, but of all the blows he had suffered, there was just one that would leave him pain to last a lifetime. A fist to the face, brass knuckles to the eye.

  Slowly, the curtain would fall.

  Blind in one eye, he could never hope to fly.

  26

  Davide began the voyage reading a French translation of Defoe’s Adventures of Robinson Caruso, and while he thoroughly enjoyed chapter one, it was at the beginning of the second chapter at which he began to feel queasy and his bones began to ache.

  “…The Ship was no sooner gotten out of the harbor, than the Wind began to blow, in a most frightful manner; and as I had never been at Sea before, I was most inexpressibly sick in Body, and terrify'd in my Mind: I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was overtaken by the Judgment of Heaven for my wickedness leaving my Father's House, and abandoning my Duty; all the good Counsel of my Parents, my Father's Tears and my Mother's Entreaties came now fresh into my Mind, and my Conscience…reproached me with the Contempt of Advice, and the Breach of my Duty to G-d and my Father…”

  At these words, he closed the book and made his way to the upper deck of the ship. He closed his eyes and began to pray. Then, not wanting to tempt fate and jinx the journey, he tossed the book overboard, along with guttural remnants of what had been a splendid breakfast of jus d’orange and croissant au beurre. He removed the Polaroid from his jacket pocket. Sure enough, the colors had converged and the image was apparent. He stood center, flanked by his loving mother and loyal brother, before an enormous steamship that filled the frame beneath a blazing white sun. Most apparent was the thick scar above Edward’s left eye. Davide felt a sudden chill. He returned to his tiny cabin and collapsed on his paper-thin mattress. While he slept, he could sense the metal springs poke him as they recoiled and bounced to the undulations of the rough seas. After a short, aggravated nap, he made his way to the ship’s kitchen for a cup of tea that he hoped would soothe his stomach and calm his nerves.

  There, he befriended the head chef, a jolly drunk with happy little whiskers and a heart of gold. At his invitation, Davide spent the afternoons baking with the kitchen crew, teaching them the secrets of nutmeg and coco, as well as the key ingredients to his mother’s most coveted recipes. In the evenings, he lay up on deck, mapping the constellations and counting shooting stars. By the end of the journey, he was offered a job working with the kitchen crew. Not without some reluctance, he declined. He hadn’t come this far to turn around and go home.

  His ship passed through the Mediterranean, landing at the bustling port city of Haifa in northern Israel. From there he wandered east, making his way to the fishing village of Tiberius, situated on the sea of the Galilee. He passed through the marketplace, a raucous mix of Arab and Jewish merchants, each boasting the superiority of his own fish, dates, or olives. He meandered through the streets like a ghost, a melancholy soul in search of a body. Scouring the faces of tan-faced Sabras and thick-skinned Arabs, he searched the eyes of passing pedestrians. He needed a place to stay. He was hoping to find someone, anyone really, and maybe, along the way, he would find himself.

  Exhausted and thirsty, he reached a fishing harbor along the western shore of the sea. The tops of tall palms rustled in the warm summer winds, surrounded by low rolling hills and the crumbling remains of an ancient wall the Byzantine emperor Justinian had built centuries back.

  A burly fisherman with red hair and a pink nose, struggling under the weight of a bursting fish net, stood knee-deep in the fresh waters. The man’s boat bobbed gently against smooth boulders, nestled deep in the sands and peeping out from the slender tentacles of the shoreline’s burgundy reeds. The veins in his forehead bulged as he strained to lift his nets from the water.

  “A good omen,” Davide thought to himself. He dropped his suitcase and rolled up his sleeves. Then, he approached the man. They exchanged quiet nods. Davide grabbed hold of the net. Together, they heaved it out of the water and dropped it on the elevated wooden dock. The trapped fish wriggled feverishly, their bluish scales scintillating in the sunlight. His suit was drenched and he felt alive.

  “Toda,” said the big man. His face was soft and thick. Perspiration gleamed over his fat, sweet face. He leaned over, trying to catch his breath.

  “Do you speak French?” Davide asked.

  “A little. Where are you from?” The man’s voice was wholesome, deep and husky.

  “I just came from Paris. I am looking for a place to stay and for work too.”

  “Well, I can use an extra hand here on the dock. I don’t pay a lot of money, but we have an empty room in our house. It’s just over there, on that hill— you can stay with us if you work.” Davide looked out to where the fisherman was pointing.

  Davide smiled for the first time since his arrival in Palestine. He had a good feeling about the man. He appeared to be in his late forties, with big white teeth and an even bigger smile.

  “I’m Judah,” said the fisherman. The two exchanged a handshake. Davide’s hand sank deep into the sweaty warmth of the fisherman’s massive, bear-like paw. The boy felt safe in its embrace.

  “Davide. Davide Herzikova.”

  Judah’s home was a small one-story cottage at the east side of the hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee. The dirt path leading uphill to the home was steep and the well-trodden road was as smooth as the surface of a frozen lake. The engine roared as Judah pressed the gas hoisting the vehicle uphill while Davide grasped the dashboard with one hand and the door handle with the other.

  Anxious that the worn tires of the windowless pickup would skid and send the old Ford careening downhill, Davide shut his eyes and pressed his long frame back up against the tattered canvas seat cushion.

  Judah laughed gaily. At the top of the hill, he brought the vehicle to a halt beneath the shade of a low olive tree, then stepped out of the truck leaving the key in the ignition and the door ajar behind him. “Hose down the back of the truck!” Judah instructed as he walked away. “The pump’s over that way.” He dropped his fishing gear on the dry grass and left his boots at the door.

  Davide obliged, uncoiling the thick rubber hose from its harness, then jacked the pump until a steady stream of cool water spouted out. He hosed down the back of the pickup, washing away the stench of bait and the day’s catch. When he’d finished, he returned the hose to the harness and let the rusty truck bake dry under the warm steady sunshine.

  Removing his shoes as Judah had, he left them at the foot of the oak door beside the fisherman’s. His soft leather shoes looked so dainty— like lady’s slippers next to Judah’s thick lace-up boots. He carried them inside, leaving them just beyond the doorpost against the foyer wall and beneath the wooden console.

  The house was small, the walls decorated with antique maps and bookshelves crammed with all the classics. The blue and white flag of the newly established Jewish state was tacked up over a fireplace that Judah used to store unused netting traps and tightly bound reams of fishing string. His wife, a slender woman with an olive complexion and a lean, angular face, led Davide to his room, a cozy nook just off the kitchen. The wrought-iron bed frame was fitted with a bare, twin mattress. There was no closet, just a tall dresser, with two stubborn shelves at its base. Davide didn’t mind. He hadn’t brought much with him anyhow. There was a wooden desk under a bare window that looked out onto the lush property.

  “Judah removed them,” she explained when Davide’s eyes wandered to the bare curtain rod. “He says real men rise with the sun.” She shrugged, which Davide interpreted as an apology.

  Davide gazed out into the garden. There were several sprawling banana trees, tall and green, surrounded by lavender thistle and wild berry patches.

  “There are fresh linens in the closet, some soap under the sink. The laundry line is out back.” she said to Davide as he gazed out the window.

  “Merci.”

  “Supper at half past
six.”

  He thought she might be an austere woman, but just before she turned to leave, she smiled warmly, her teeth hidden but her eyes gentle. He thought to himself, she is not unkind.

  That evening, Davide had dinner with Judah the fisherman and his family. The fisherman had one daughter who was named after a Russian starlet featured in the silent black and white films her mother adored. She was a tall girl, with olive skin and long, slender limbs. With her head slung low, she said little throughout the meal. Every so often, she’d look up and smile. Then, she’d let her shy eyes wander around Davide’s periphery, as though any further would be a trespass. He admired her delicate wrists and soft, youthful hands as she cut her meat into small bits.

  “My family has resided in Tiberius since the late sixteenth century,” Judah explained to Davide, before taking a long sip of his kiddish wine. “We are descended from an Ottoman Jew. She arrived in Tiberius quite suddenly, with an entourage of maidservants and male guardians. They say she stepped off a ship hailing from Istanbul. She was a duchess, you know. Can you believe it?” Judah laughed, then rested his elbow on the table causing it to wobble momentarily. “We, descended from aristocracy.”

  At that moment, a drop of rain came through the roof and landed on the tip of Judah’s nose. Everyone broke into laughter. His wife reached over with her bangle-clad wrist, took her husband’s hand and pressed gently.

  “It was said she was the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of the isles of Naxos,” Judah continued, “but why she had left Istanbul in the first place, that part of the story is lost. She settled here, along the sea, with a mysterious fortune and a loyal entourage. They were all practicing Jews who went about their business with quiet dignity, babbling amongst themselves in their native tongue, only the duchess refused to speak. They say she roamed about Tiberius like a ghost, speaking to no one, just whispering words to this ring here.” At this, he pointed towards the ruby ring his wife was wearing. It was as though this ring was a key to some unknown world—as though, only it could understand her foreign tongue. His wife slipped the ring from her finger, then handed it to her husband.

  “Of course she came with much more jewelry, but this is all we have left. See here, this small inscription in the band, this is old Ottoman, but me, I don’t know what it means.” He shrugged as he handed the ring to Davide.

  The stone was flawless. Its color, intoxicating. The ruby was a deep, sumptuous crimson. The same color of the aged red-wine from Bordeaux Davide had only been allowed to sip on Easter and birthday celebrations. He turned it around, letting the shabbos candlelight flicker off its gleaming facets. Examining the cryptic inscription on the inset of the band, he wondered what it meant. Where did you come from? He wondered, half expecting the ring to respond. He was sure the answer was in the inscription. It was a question he had asked a thousand times before, but until that time, he asked it only of himself.

  For the first time in his life, he celebrated the Sabbath. The candles, the Challah, the sweet red wine. It all seemed so familiar—Judah, the red-faced man who smelled of the sea, and his soft-spoken wife with her silk headscarf and gold bangles—It felt like something that had been lost. Two thousand miles away from his birthplace, he finally found his home.

  The fisherman never asked Davide about his family. Like Judah’s own curious lineage, Davide’s past was shrouded in mystery. He, like that strange Ottoman traveler, arrived inexplicably on the shores of Lake Tiberius, a suitcase in tow, donning weathered, foreign garb. All he knew was that the boy was alone. The fisherman had seen the detached look in Davide’s eyes, and understood that he was a wandering spirit. He hired the boy as a fisherman but took him in as a son.

  27

  Work as a fisherman was not a tidy affair. Davide soon learned that his wardrobe of pleated slacks and cotton vests were useless at sea. His new attire consisted of synthetic trousers cut-off above the knee and thick-soled moccasins that he wore when stepping along the rocky shoreline on the occasion the boat needed towing. At dawn, Davide and Judah would board the weathered boat docked along the harbor and set out to cast their fishing nets with the hopes of catching a fat school of tilapia, flounder, or mullet.

  They’d unload the day’s catch onto the flat bed of Judah’s pickup and circle around to deliver orders to a handful of shopkeepers in the bustling marketplace. The first delivery went to Adon Haddad, a Sabra in a straw hat sporting a foul-mouthed parrot on his shoulder, whose screeching cusses amused everyone in the bazaar, save little old ladies and bearded yeshiva boys. Then, further down the market, they’d deliver flounder and tilapia to the Ruski, Sasha Chekov, a hulk of a man with a keloid scar across his neck and the words “Only God can judge me,” tattooed across his chest. Their best customer was Miss Hula, a middle-aged spinster who liked to pinch Davide’s cheeks and compliment him on his healthy complexion and fine broad shoulders. She was especially impressed with his Parisian accent and cackled when he said something she liked the sound of. She accosted him with slobbery kisses, her singsong voice whining as she recited the petty gossip she herself invented and spread throughout the village. Later, they’d head down the road to the Arab market to deliver catfish, because, as Davide learned, catfish did not have scales and therefore were not kosher.

  There were less prosperous days, when they would merely retrieve a few straggling sardines or a net full of seaweed. The work was arduous, but Davide enjoyed the summer sun on his bare back and shoulders and the cool breeze that sometimes rushed south from the Golan Heights. His arms grew thick from working the sails and drawing up the day’s trappings. His lean face bronzed and his pale eyes grew bright whenever he looked out upon the rippling waters of the Sea of Galilee. Summer rays beat down on the water’s surface, as though the sea and sky were engaged in a thrashing affair.

  In school, he’d been taught that these were the same waters Jesus had walked upon. He’d never believed that story until now. Even if Jesus was just a man, the lake held magic, of that he was sure.

  Saturdays were the only day Davide did not work. While everyone was gathered in the synagogue, Davide, ashamed that he could not read Hebrew or recite prayers, would wander through the ancient streets of Tiberius. There, in the quiet calm of the Sabbath, he came across an elderly Arab man, Sheik Mohammad. Sheik Mohammad was a Sufi mystic, a spiritual adviser who would interpret dreams for shekels. He was a short round man, with white hair and snow-sloped, whiskering brows. Bowlegged to a crippling degree, he required two canes when he walked, one on each side. As he moved, he resembled more of a gnarled tree trunk than a man. Bearded youths in skullcaps snickered as he shuffled passed. He would look up at them and smile, with eyes so soft and sweet that the boys would become utterly ashamed and wholly uplifted all at once. They were eyes that could melt lies on the tongues of their bearers and turn the hearts of bragging criminals.

  Davide found him sitting atop a wooden crate under a tin roof dangling with pots and pans in the metal worker’s bizarre. He dropped a shekel in the old man’s can.

  The Sheik looked up and smiled. “You’re a stranger here?”

  Davide felt his face flush, ashamed it was so obvious.

  “You’re looking for something?”

  He contemplated this for a moment. “I suppose I am.”

  “Come with me.” Without waiting for a reply, the man rose to his feet, grasping the arched tip of each one of his canes. “Hurry or we’ll miss it.”

  Davide made no effort to move.

  “Yalla!” He wobbled clumsily as Davide followed two steps behind. He kept his arms ready, half expecting the old Sufi to collapse like an accordion with each step. Down a quiet alley and across the empty square, Sheik Muhammad led Davide towards an unassuming building, then followed the hedges round back, stopping at the entrance to the cellar. The rusty iron doors opened out from the ground like outstretched arms. They framed a dim-lit stairway leading to the underground bunker. A faulty light bulb flickered overhead as the Sheik descended the step
s slowly and steadily. His arm linked through Davide’s as their heads bowed beneath the low ceiling.

  Fast paced chanting and the rhythmic beat of darbuka drums echoed up the stairwell. Inside, two-dozen men stood in long white robes, banging drums and stomping their bare feet, bells jingling about their ankles with each step. Clapping, singing and dancing ensued, until several men in tall burgundy hats took to the center of the room with outstretched arms. They began to twirl in an ecstatic dance like the spinning tops Davide played with as a boy.

  “What is this dance?” Davide whispered.

  Sheik Muhammad looked up at the boy. “This is no dance.” He turned away and let his eyes fall upon the whirling dervishes, their majestic white robes floating out from their waists in a perfect circumference of symmetry and grace. “This is a prayer. A prayer with all the body, mind, and soul.”

  The whirling dervishes tilted their chins towards the heavens and stretched out their arms as though cradling all the earth in their embrace. Davide felt a rush of excitement. He leaned in close to the Sheik. “Why do they whirl?” The music grew bolder and the walls of the cellar grew tipsy with the drunkenness of men’s spirits.

  “All of the universe is whirling,” the Sheik responded after some time. “The moon is whirling round the earth. Our earth is spinning on its axis whirling forever round the sun. The planets, the constellations. The clouds in the sky and the stars in the furthest galaxies. We are not careening aimlessly through the universe. All the heavens and all the earth whirl eternally in perfect accord.” He took David’s hand in his thick leathery palm. “These men whirl because they are at one with the universe.”

  Davide looked into the Sheik’s kind eyes, then stepped forward, and with arms outstretched towards the heavens, began to whirl. He would whirl in unison with all the earth, the moon and the sun. He would whirl with the stars in the sky. He wept for the mother and father he never knew. He wept for the millions lost to the ovens. He was taken over by this volition to feel thoroughly, to be swept into the violent rhythm of the earth’s fiery breath, to sigh when she sighed and sleep when she slept. He would reach out his arms and open his heart to the suffering of all humanity. Deep inside, he knew this was the only way he could lay claim to a small piece of the world’s joy. With arms raised toward the heavens, he whirled and whirled until he too was one with the universe.