Final Stop, Algiers: A Thriller

by Mishka Ben-David

  Towards the end, when I was already sated but Niki wanted more, and was murmuring or gasping “Yes” with each movement, my thoughts wandered to a different series of “Yeses.” On the eve of my discharge from the military, I gave my men a lecture on the United Nations resolution of 29 November 1947, when the UN’s General Assembly decided on the partition of Palestine, the move that led to the establishment of the State of Israel. There’s a recording of that vote, which I’d played to my unit, with the GA’s president calling out “Yes” after the names of each country that voted in favour. Those historic thirty-three yeses that brought about the establishment of the State of Israel somehow came back to me every time Niki said yes. I amused myself by counting her yeses, to see if the partition plan would have passed on this historic occasion as well. At the UN, between Australia’s and Belgium’s votes in favour, there had been a longish pause in the yeses, because Afghanistan voted no and Argentina abstained, and Niki, who was still in low gear, sounded almost as monotonous as the president. But the pauses gradually became shorter, and between Ukraine’s yes and Venezuela’s, I hardly had the time to murmur the names of the countries. Then, with exquisite timing, after the thirty-third yes, Niki collapsed on top of me, exhausted and the recognition of the State of Israel was reconfirmed in the nicest possible way.

  For sex like this, friends of mine have travelled to Bangkok and paid sizeable sums, and here we were just doing what comes naturally. However, after the second two hours, and then another two, the Hilton would have been cheaper.

  The bitter pill came when we were standing outside the hotel.

  “I won’t be able to see you again,” Niki told me, and I choked. I thought that I’d found the love of my life, she’d been so cute, sexy, tender, wild, loving and exciting, all at the same time. And very beautiful, of course. We had spent the last hour locked in an embrace, almost without moving, gently massaging each other’s bodies with the tips of our fingers, Niki stroking and kissing the scar on my shoulder, and I felt a happiness and serenity that I had never ever felt with any other girl.

  “Say that again?” I muttered incredulously.

  Niki’s eyes were full of tears. “Don’t get me wrong. It was marvellous for me, with you, and I could easily fall in love with you. But you’re a complication I do not need in my life.”

  “Romances are made of complications like this,” I came up with, heaven knows how. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I left my home in Canada and I came here to fulfil the Japanese half that’s hiding inside me. With you, I’d go to completely different places. It’s difficult. Don’t make it even more difficult, please.” And she burst into tears and made off down the road, taking her high heels off and running with the small steps that were all her tight blue gown allowed her to make. Unbelievingly, I stood there, leaning against a wall, in a daze, and watching the love of my life in her blue dress, weeping and gradually disappearing from my sight, with her small Japanese steps.

  Osnat, who’d been my girlfriend since the end of my officers’ course, had broken up with me on the eve of my trip to Japan. Our romance had survived many forced separations while we were in the army, and when Osnat was discharged and began studying film at Tel Aviv University, I rented a small apartment for us, using my army pay, and we managed to stay together right up until my service ended. But when I was planning my long trip to the Orient, Osnat said that this was too much for her, and I understood, and we broke up without hard feelings. I had in any case seen that her Tel Aviv world, cavorting around the clock with groups of film students doing their various filming and directing assignments, could not be my world.

  It had hurt, but not like now. I’d loved Osnat, but not like this. I don’t know if an hour of chatting and a one-night stand can be called love, but that’s what it was. Without meaning to, Niki had bored her way deep into my heart.

  I roamed the streets all morning, feeling sorry for myself and not understanding what had hit me, until I came across a billboard announcing a drumming performance, and I thought the noise and the energy would help me break out of my bubble. I bought a ticket, and found myself in the front row. On the stage was an enormous two-sided drum on a raised platform, looming over me like a sacrificial altar, with three large two-sided drums and a number of smaller ones below it. In the first part of the programme the troupe, called Kodo, reminded me of the Israeli Mayumana dance and percussion troupe. But Niki remained in my mind throughout. In the second part, though, the Kodo drummers put themselves, and me, and the whole audience, into a trance with powerful beating of the huge drum and the other large drums. It was both primordial and spell-binding. I asked myself if I would have been able to beat the drums with such strength, with the two large wooden drumsticks, at that rhythm and for as much time, as those slight but very muscular, perspiring Japanese were doing, a metre away from me. There were three girls in the troupe, one of whom reminded me of Niki and the energy that charged my batteries only made me determined not to give up on her. I knew what I had to do.

  When the show was over and I got up to leave, I found that someone was staring at me. It wasn’t because I was a foreigner, I knew. For all the weeks I’d been here, not one Japanese had dared to stare at me; my private space was protected by the force of an ancient and rigid tradition. I stared back. I sensed that he was the bouncer who had come out of the club and walked towards me. I couldn’t be sure, and the man looked away. Either way, I had taken a decision and I was determined to implement it.

  Everything in Japan is expensive, but nevertheless, I did some shopping for things I didn’t have in my 80-litre rucksack: first, I bought myself a white shirt and black cotton trousers. I couldn’t find a good fit, and both items were too snug – the shirt in the shoulders and the trousers around the waist. I also bought black leather shoes, pointed and funny. And, as all the men who came to the club last night were also wearing jackets and ties, and fearing that this was a mandatory dress code, I also bought a jacket – sleeves too short – and a tie, asking the sales clerk to tie the knot for me because I didn’t know how to.

  I decided not to turn up at the club early, but only when it had filled up a little, in the hope that I wouldn’t stand out so much.

  The doorman wasn’t the same as the night before, and also not the man who’d stared at me at the end of the Kodo drummers’ performance. He gave me a quick once-over, and bowed deeply. Compared to what I’d paid for my outfit, the twelve-thousand-yen entry fee for this hour of the evening was an expense I could handle – on condition, of course, that I wouldn’t be slung out.

  I was greeted by dimmed coloured lights, like a Tel Aviv discotheque, western music of the 1960s, and a lot of smoke. About twenty men and hostesses, perhaps more, were sitting in the smallish room, divided among three low tables. The atmosphere was relaxed, everyone looked and sounded comfortable as they sat there chatting and laughing. I surveyed the groups, one at a time. Niki wasn’t there. I didn’t feel that joining one of the tables would be the right thing to do, so I went to the bar, where a hostess was already waiting for me. She was light skinned and turned out to be French. If Niki wasn’t there I was wasting my time, but the entrance fee included a drink, so I sat down and order saké. The barman asked me something and the girl translated, “Hot or cold, with an extra dash of alcohol or not?” She called the drink “sakai” and began an explanation in broken English of its history and different types, but then I saw Niki.

  On a small dance floor on one side of the room, to the strains of “Oh Carol” played by a small combo, two couples were dancing, bodies pressed close together. Niki was one of the girls. The pang that I felt was intense. My hostess asked me if something was wrong, and I said no, but the drink in the shallow cup had done nothing for me and tasted like ordinary wine, so I ordered a double whisky. The barman asked me what brand, and I shrugged. Scotch or Irish? I didn’t care. Single malt? Didn’t know what that meant. He poured what he poured, and I swallowed it in two gulps.
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  The scene was totally surreal. There were multi-coloured lights flashing around the dancing couples, doubled and tripled by revolving disco mirror balls. The whisky had gone to my head and made the already horrifyingly slow dancing even slower, and Niki and her partner merged before my eyes into one, hovering, unmoving body, as the world around them rotated slowly.

  When the music ended, her partner ushered Niki towards a corner table, laid for two. He looked like an American, tall and handsome, and she was giggling merrily along with him. The French girl followed my gaze.

  “It’s the custom to invite one of the hostesses to a meal, if she appeals to you,” she said.

  I understood that this was another way to separate the customers from their money.

  “And also to dance?” I asked.

  “Of course. ’Specially if she’s your personal hostess for the evening.”

  She explained that once a month, each hostess had to bring a man with her who hadn’t been to the club before, and then she was his personal, exclusive hostess. I realized I wouldn’t be able to approach Niki if she was the American’s “personal, exclusive hostess” for this evening. Running through my mind were thoughts about the limits of this “exclusivity,” despite Niki’s assurances that sex wasn’t part of this occupation. I wanted to attract her attention, and I asked my hostess to dance with me. The band was playing “California Dreaming” to which I had last slow-danced as a thirteen-year-old boy. It worked: I went afterwards to the men’s room, at the end of a short corridor, lined with unfinished wine bottles marked with the names of regular customers, waiting for their next visit. When I came out, Niki was there, pale and frightened.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked quietly, with pursed lips.

  “I thought I could be with you, but I see someone else is the lucky guy.”

  “Don’t be a fool. You’ve got to go. You’re endangering me and yourself.”

  She looked over my shoulder, and I turned and saw the barman signalling with his head in our direction.

  “I’ll just watch you,” I said. “I’m not here to cause trouble.”

  She was ravishing, in a turquoise dress this time, with a necklace and earrings.

  “Nothing has changed since this morning. And nothing will change. Please go.”

  Niki’s partner needed the men’s room too, and raised an eyebrow when he saw us looking as if we were exchanging secrets, but Niki shot him her engaging smile and slipped into the ladies’ room. The bouncer was behind him, and I went back to the barman and Frenchy.

  The whisky and the saké were swilling around in my head. I asked for some paper, and the barman gave me some napkins. I asked for a pencil, and I got a fountain pen. From the angle I was sitting at, I could see only Niki’s lovely profile, and I began with that: her nose, her pointed chin, her small breasts, her slender legs. I drew it all in one line. Then I went on to her hair, gathered behind, and her slender back. Only then did I add the light touches that represented her dress.

  The barman and my hostess were impressed. Drawing had been my strong point at high school. I didn’t have the patience for oil painting, or even acrylic, although it dries rapidly; I liked seeing quick results. I had a nimble and skilled hand, acquired while still in junior school, when I created the comic-book character Israman, “the first Israeli superhero” as I called him, rightly or wrongly. I copied each comic book by hand ten times and gave it to my better friends and to girls I was interested in.

  The barman brought me larger sheets of paper and some pencils and pens. I asked for another whisky. Niki and her partner got up to dance, and now I drew them both. Then, I drew her without looking, from memory. After another few outrageously expensive drinks, I began to be an idiot and drew, for example, some scenes of the previous night that came into my mind. More than that, I don’t remember. Only that two tough little guys, something like Oddjob in the James Bond film Goldfinger took me downstairs, shoved me into a cab, and tossed my drawings in after me. With the last of my strength, I threw them back. “These are Niki’s!” I said in somebody else’s voice. I think I saw a turquoise dress and Niki’s voice giving my address, and her hand giving the driver a banknote.

  When I returned to the club, two days later, the doorman barred my way. My description had apparently been given to all the bouncers. The door of the elevator behind him opened and in a move that surprised me, and of course also him, I shoved the refrigerator-shaped guy aside and slithered in as the doors closed. I was inside the club before he managed to report the unwanted customer, but Frenchy’s wide-eyed look from the bar and a shake of her head told me what I could have guessed myself, and a quick survey of the place confirmed: Niki didn’t work there anymore.

  The hostess and the barman shot meaningful glances at the security men, clearly signalling to me that there was no chance of anyone telling me anything about her.

  “Is she still here?” I asked before the two Oddjobs closed on me. Frenchy lowered her eyes and gave another shake of her head.

  I thought I’d wait for her outside, follow her a little and then try to get something out of her about what had happened to Niki. But I was joined by the pissed-off human refrigerators who walked two paces behind me all the way to the subway station, staying close until I was on the train.

  Part One

  The Double

  1.

  An Exhibition in Tel Aviv

  THE FITZ GALLERY in south Tel Aviv may not be a Mecca for your average Israeli artist, especially not for a Bezalel Art Academy graduate for whom great things had been predicted. But the predictions had come to nothing, and when the owner of the little gallery approached me after seeing my pictures in a group show of works by Bezalel graduates, I accepted his offer and my first solo exhibition was on its way. A mid-September date was set for the opening, just before the Sukkot holidays, when people are looking for things to do. “But don’t expect much of a crowd, apart from your family and friends, and don’t expect too much from them either,” the gallery owner said. “With all the terrorist attacks going on, people don’t like going out if they don’t have a good reason.”

  I knew he was right. Without making any conscious decision, I realized that I too hardly ever just wandered around anymore since the Second Intifada – the second Palestinian uprising – had broken out, two years earlier in 2000, and suicide bombings had begun again. I stayed away from places where people gathered, even at traffic lights, in case that gathering became a terrorist’s target, and when I had to go somewhere I went by car or I walked, to avoid getting on a bus. I kept my errands brief and quickly got back home or to my studio and, strangely, this also affected my painting style. Instead of frenzied sketching and coloured pencils, I began working in oils, a medium that demands a lot of patience, but I enjoyed the versatility and the effects made possible by the slow-drying paint.

  The Fitz Gallery consisted of three whitewashed rooms with arched ceilings in a renovated Arab house on the edge of Neveh Tzedek, an artsy Tel Aviv neighbourhood. In the main room, which faced the entrance and was larger than the other two, I hung my recent paintings. Many of these were depictions of gates and doors and entranceways, windows and porticoes, which I painted with such near-photographic accuracy that there were people who thought that they were actually photographs that I’d gone over with a brush. Whenever I thought I’d do a self-portrait, like any self-respecting artist, I found myself painting the entrance to my house, as if it were only that far and no further that I would allow myself to be exposed. Or sometimes it was the porch, or the view from a window.

  In the room on the left, we hung the portraits that I’d sketched. Hundreds of portraits of passersby, old men and pedlars in Carmel Market in Tel Aviv, old women with baskets in Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehudah Market, Hasidim in buses, girls on university lawns. I sketched very quickly, and after one look I never needed my model any longer, as the lines were already engraved on my mind. Most of the drawings were made on the pages of a med
ium-sized sketchbook that I took everywhere I went from the time I started studying and began to see myself as a professional artist. I also carried a few mechanical pencils with leads of various thicknesses, and some fountain pens. Sometimes my sketching attracted girls who sensed that they’d been caught by my gaze and my pencil. This could have been a very good pick-up technique, but I never made use of it after my drawings of Niki were tossed into my cab, and I’d tossed them out again.

  In the smaller room on the right I insisted on placing my Israman comics, over the objections of the gallery owner. He argued that they were childish, nationalistic, and a lot of other similar adjectives, but that didn’t matter to me – precisely because of my social milieu and what was going on in the country at the time. It had taken me a whole semester of my first year at Bezalel to realize that my military service could be a minus, rather than the plus I assumed it would be. Bezalel was, perhaps, a cross-section of Israeli society, but the nature of the fine arts department was a little different, and in the unspoken hierarchy that existed among its students I was only one level above the special forces veterans who were the lowest of the low – and there were very few of those. After another two semesters, I had just about internalized that an officer-artist was a peculiar two-headed creature, a person who had to be afflicted with some degree of schizophrenia. For after all, everyone knows that an artist is a sensitive soul, humane, and a lover of humanity, a cosmopolitan who carries the world’s suffering on his shoulders, whereas an officer is an obtuse, misanthropic, nationalistic person who only adds to the world’s misery. Moreover, the former is an absent-minded dreamer, while the latter is a practical, focused man, and the two could never live under one roof together.