by Y. I. Latz
“What’s up?” I ask. I couldn’t find a better way to phrase it.
She doesn’t reply. Examines the small cell. The expression of disgust on her face heightens. Her eyes reprimand me with an “I can’t believe how low you’ve fallen” sort of look.
She chuckles—
Her eyes have discovered a small photo propped up on the dresser, as if it were the portrait of a beloved family member.
Ray Clemence—
The legendary former goalie for the Tottenham Hotspur soccer team. My interrogators as well as the guards have shown quite a bit of interest in him in the past. I was happy to explain. However, they’d never heard his name.
This was not the case with my wife.
She inhales and opens her mouth. “You asked what’s up? I’ll tell you what’s up. There’s mold on the ceiling and the walls in the bathroom; the living room, bedroom, study, and storage shed are a royal mess since they searched them and I don’t have the time and the energy to put them back in order again; our Neta has been depressed since she came back from Colombia, and is staying in bed at home like a zombie; IDF2 has cut off your salary as well as your pension, and I don’t have any idea where I’ll find the fortune your lawyer is demanding. Does that tell you ‘what’s up’?”
I nod.
She continues, emotional. “And here’s the most important thing. The members of the kibbutz have started asking how come you’ve been dispatched abroad for so long and there’s no sign of life from you. At the moment, luckily for me, I’m not allowed to tell them the truth, and so I’ve been spared the immense mortification of telling them that their big hero isn’t on some daring patriotic mission somewhere abroad, and is actually not a patriot at all, but is jailed like some drugged-up rat in an Israeli prison, accused of treason.”
“I’m not a traitor!”
“Forget it.”
“I’m not a traitor, I’m not a traitor!”
“I’m not the one you have to convince. It’s them.”
“I’m! Not! A traitor!”
“Okay, you’re not.”
“You have to believe me!”
“Why is it so important to you, in your condition, what I believe and whether I believe you?”
“It’s important to me!” The first tears well up in my eyes.
She’s not impressed.
She bypasses the issue and resumes speaking. “We’re so lucky to have a good friend like Albert. You have no idea how much he’s helped me, with money, small repairs, medical expenses, a psychiatrist for Neta, and in general. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know what would have happened to us.”
Albert??
I lean in toward her. “Don’t worry about the money,” I whisper to her from the corner of my mouth.
She reacts with suspicion. “What are you prattling on about? How could I not worry?”
“It’ll be okay.”
“How?”
“Shush.”
“No! How?!”
“Shush. It just will.”
“This isn’t another one of your lies, is it?”
“Shush. No.”
“I have a right to ask. How?”
I’m risking a lot with my answer. I hadn’t planned on telling her. In fact, I was planning the exact opposite. Not to tell her. But the situation is beyond me and my nerves are utterly shot anyway. I’m no longer the man I was.
I whisper to her, as softly as I can, “Several hundred thousand dollars will soon be transferred to your account.”
She looks at me as if I’ve said the exact opposite: that this sum will soon be deducted from our account. “Who’ll transfer it? How will they transfer it? Why will they transfer it? Did you steal that money?”
“No!”
“How much, exactly?”
“A lot.”
“How much is a lot? Ten thousand? Fifty thousand? A hundred thousand?”
“At least two hundred.”
“Two hundred thousand?!”
“Shush.”
“Dollars?”
“Pound.”
“You mean euro.”
“I mean pound.”
“Why pound? Pounds are British currency. What do you have to do with British currency?”
I shrink in my seat. She continues. “That’s a lot of money! Is this related to…your account at that bank in New Jersey?”
“Shush.” I’m frightened, and continue to whisper to her in a voice that even I am having a hard time hearing. “Jersey. I’ve explained this to you before. The island of Jersey. England. Not New Jersey, which is in the United States. I promise. Soon. But don’t tell them. Okay? Not a word.”
This is too much for the guards. They reprimand me. Lay down the law. I’m not allowed to whisper. I have to speak clearly, in a way that enables them to hear me and that will also be picked up by their microphones.
She’s crying. Burying her face in her hands.
I feel awkward. Should I walk over to her? Hug her? Stay where I am? What is she expecting me to do?
She keeps my deliberation brief. Bounces back quickly.
Her smile returns. She’s completely different. As if she weren’t the same person. She lets down her hair and tosses it back. Pretends we’re not where we actually are.
Abruptly, she leans in toward me. Her eyes radiate affection. She stares at me for a long interval.
Seeing and not seeing me.
Finally, she says one word: “Listen.”
I get it—
◊◊◊
Today, I know how much my wife’s little secret tormented her. She had meant to tell me a long time ago. But she’d seen me sink low, and out of pity, had put off the inevitable.
It’s true, our relationship had its ups and downs. In recent years, there had been plenty of conflict. She attacked, I defended. Everything I did—and the things I didn’t do—made her angry. She said I’d become a stranger, odd and introverted, with no trace of the incredibly friendly guy she’d married.
In our last conversations before my arrest, the reprimands stopped coming. I tended to think she had agreed to let it slide. How could I know this was not an indication of resigning herself to a life without intimacy, of the kind I had imposed on her, but rather a clear sign of the renewed blossoming of a fifty-year-old woman who was re-experiencing love with a man, this time one who was not her husband?
We’ve been married for nearly twenty-five years, and most of the time, our love has flourished. I never thought she had any reason to complain. She felt differently. Under cover of the atmosphere of reconciliation, she began to weave her plan of disengagement. The relative peace was merely the quiet before the storm.
I failed to recognize the writing on the wall. I nodded off while on duty. How could I have known that the boxes full of rare exotic fruit that began to fill our home were not an expression of a sudden gourmet tendency that had surfaced in her, but rather a gesture on behalf of the fruit stand owner from the nearby intersection, “Albert the Fruit King,” considered by all—including myself—to be a dashing figure, who had stolen her heart?
Once, following one of our bitter arguments, an uncontrollable curiosity took control of me. I went through her laptop and found a text file that had been intended for me, but was never sent. “You’re selfish, insensitive, stingy and a coward,” she’d written to me. In another file, titled “The Future,” she indulged in various musings. Among them, I found, “I’m at the end of my rope. Can’t stand him anymore. God, he’s so disgusting.”
I could deal with most of the false accusations. But not this one. Disgusting? I kept my silence for many days. Disgusting? My mind roiled. Disgusting? Perhaps because it was an observation as baseless as it was malicious, and perhaps because it was my first exposure to the full force of the hostility directed at me by t
he one I loved most of all.
My Smadar.
◊◊◊
She produces a binder with documents from her cloth bag, clears out room for it on the table, and places it between us.
I reach out for it.
“You don’t have to sign now,” she says, choosing to emphasize the last word.
“Let’s get it over with. Why wait?” I respond gallantly.
“Are you sure?”
I don’t bother to read all the documents. At the top of each of them is the logo of a law firm and the heading, “Divorce Settlement.” I add my signature next to each blue X penned in. There are many such marks.
“Is that it?” I ask once I’m done.
Before she replies, she goes over each of the pages attentively, making sure I didn’t skip any of the X’s.
Once she’s finished, her face assumes an expression of satisfaction that was probably not intentional.
She plants a quick lip-smack on my cheek.
The two guards tense up.
Her eyes grow even brighter. “I want you to know that half of everything is yours. It’ll wait for you until…you’re all done with these…issues of yours.”
She can’t find a more apt expression.
These issues—
She examines my reaction. I don’t say a word. She adds, “Your attorney is your trustee until you’re released. I agreed on all the details with him. Don’t worry. What’s yours is yours.”
“Give Neta my share,” I say, referring to our daughter. “I don’t need anything.”
“Neta’s young. She’ll get along just fine on her own. Start worrying about yourself. You’re only fifty-one. One way or another, you’ll be released eventually. But if you ask me, there won’t be much left after you pay your greedy lawyer the hundreds of thousands he’s demanding. Are you sure you don’t want to replace him? I looked online and found the names of a few other successful attorneys, with proven track records.”
I express my objection.
She shrugs. Gives up. Tries to sit back in her uncomfortable chair. There’s surprise in her eyes. As if she’s seeing me for the first time.
“What’s that above your eye?” she asks in concern, reaching out.
I shift back.
“A wound? Did you bump into something? Or did someone hit you?”
I don’t react.
“And over here? And here? And here?”
The two guards rise from their seats.
“Did they do that to you?” She directs a look of pure hostility at them.
“No, no, no,” I answer quickly. “No way. It’s really nothing.”
“Your eyes are still red. Are you sure they’re giving you drops, like they promised to?”
I nod, looking down.
Her hand grazes my cheek.
The two guards are huffy, but don’t say a word. “What’s this, are those tears in your eyes?” she asks. Without waiting for an answer, she’s already wiping them away with a tissue that has materialized in her hand. “You know, I’m still scared.”
“You shouldn’t be. The kibbutz is secure.”
“There isn’t a day when I’m not scared. The nights are the worst. Every noise startles me.”
“Didn’t we agree that your father would stay over?”
“There’s no need. Albert has moved in with us.”
“What?!”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know. I mentioned him during my last visit. He’s the owner of the fruit stand. You’ll understand… I’m sure you’ll understand. If someone gets it, it’s you. Would you believe that at the age of fifty, I’d find another gigantic love, like in the old days?”
◊◊◊
She keeps talking.
I don’t hear, can’t take it in, can’t assimilate it.
The pain in my heart—
If only I could quiet it. It assails me in waves. I can hardly breathe. Fire is scorching me from inside.
She notices my distress. Reaches out to me with a consoling hand. The male guard and the female guard tense simultaneously. She ignores them. Takes hold of my arm and pulls me toward her. I let her do with it as she will. My arm is being held by her two hands, as if it didn’t belong to me.
“What’s going to happen to you now?” she asks, her voice so soft.
I shrug. She lets go of my arm.
“Is this necessary?” I dare to ask, my voice cracking, tilting my head toward the envelope with the documents I just signed.
“That’s exactly what I asked you when all this blew up in our face,” she replies, flinty. “Remember what you said in reply?”
I don’t respond.
“I’ll remind you. You said that sometimes life controls us, rather than us controlling it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.”
“What about Neta?” I ask.
“She’s getting better.”
“She’s started to bounce back, after all this?”
“After all what?! After your arrest? After everything she’s been through in Colombia? What?”
“After Colombia.”
“She’s back to playing soccer again. Imagine,” she says, “at age twenty-three! You see what kind of influence you have on her?”
The two guards exhale noisily together. The time allotted to us was up quite a while ago.
The pain—
If only I could get over it. It drills into me incessantly. Like a dental procedure with no numbing.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Your lips are moving.”
“Just some silly stuff.”
“You don’t love me anymore,” she says, in a teasing tone.
“I don’t love you?! I love you very much!”
“You didn’t say no to the divorce, so that proves it.”
“It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“It is, but I expected it would be harder for me. That you’d make a fuss. Object. Lash out at me.”
“Would it have done me any good?”
“No.”
“See?”
She gets up.
I stay seated. “Could you whistle to me?” I ask.
She stares at me. “What did you just ask?”
“That you whistle to me.”
A tiny smile appears on her face. The first smile in ages from a dear woman I once loved.
“You’ve forgotten our song again,” she berates me jokingly.
I shrug.
“Lovers don’t forget their song,” she continues.
She begins to whistle.
Una notte a Napoli—
“Good night, Napoli—”
Her body moves in sync with the tune while her feet stay in place.
This is the song of my life.
The devil’s revenge. From the moment I was incarcerated, it’s been erased from my memory. Swirling into other songs in my mind.
She finishes whistling. Lays a hand on my cheek. I close my eyes. “You’re not going to cry, are you?”
I nod as if I were a little boy. “Our country means a lot to me,” I say.
“Don’t start.” Her reaction is unyielding. Her sweet smile disappears.
“I’m not a traitor,” I say once more.
“I thought we were done with that phase.”
“And I didn’t kill him. You have to believe me.”
“You’re confused again! I’m not the one who has to believe you. It’s them.”
She bites her lip.
“I love you,” I say.
“And I love you,” she says back.
“I… You… He…” I search for the proper words.
“Don�
��t worry,” my wife says harshly. “I’m not going to marry him.”
She opens her arms.
I nestle inside them.
As stated, hugs are strictly prohibited.
The male guard and the female guard stare at us, but don’t intervene.
They know just like we do—
This is the last embrace.
* * *
1 The Shin Bet, also known as the Israel Security Agency or the Shabak, is Israel’s internal security service, charged with defending Israel against terrorism and espionage.
2 Israel Defense Forces, the Israeli Army.
Chapter Three
Who Killed the Mossad3 Agent
A moment after my wife leaves my cell, my interrogation resumes. Marina and Jimmy burst in, spurred by their eagerness to keep going. The others follow them in. I estimate Smadar is still within the boundaries of the unit. If she listened, she could hear them screaming at me.
On the other hand, it’s very possible that she has.
“We’re asking you for the last time, where’s the ‘Holy Trinity’ that you stole from your American whore?”
“Professor Shin Il Jong is not a whore.”
“Why do you need more trouble? Don’t you have enough? Tell us where you hid her laptop, camera and cell phone, and put an end to your nightmare.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I wait. My eyes close instinctively. But no slap arrives. I wait another moment. Maybe it’s on its way. It isn’t. I open my eyes, apprehensive. I assess it’s coming soon, probably more than once.
Marina is standing up. The fake pleasant expression she was exhibiting a moment ago has disappeared without a trace. “I thought we’d decided there’d be no more games. Didn’t we?”
I don’t react.
Her voice grows louder. “You’ve really messed with the Americans. The entire CIA is on its feet. They’ll never forgive you. Imagine if the prime minister decided to extradite you to them. Just between the two of us? That would be the best solution. Those guys at the CIA are worse than ISIS. Should I tell you about the creative methods of torture they used on the poor Taliban agents they got their hands on? Huh?”
