by Lavie Tidhar
He left Mr. Fledermaus’s shop. Outside it was already growing hot and the humidity soaked his clothes. He tried the next shop and the next but got no further, and so, with a sense of nothing to lose, he hailed a cab and rode it the short distance to the Pink Pelican.
“What do you think of these peace talks?” the driver said. He was a Luo, from the tribe that lived mostly around the shores of the lake. He drove with easy abandon through the thronged streets, beeping on the horn every now and then to scare away pedestrians who remained indifferent. “Think it will amount to something, this time?”
“What peace talks?” Tirosh, who had not really been paying much attention, said, and the driver grinned and said, “Exactly.”
The traffic was bad, and it took longer than it should have to reach the casino. The radio was on, and after a song by Hamlet Zhou, the Jewish-Zimbabwean musician, it segued to the news. The radio announcer was a crisply spoken woman with the clear vowels of formal Judean, and each syllable fell out of the transmitter as clear as crystal shards.
“The time is one o’clock and this is the Palestine news from Ararat City. Tensions remain high today along the separation barrier, as Palestinian Defence Forces continue to conduct an extensive manhunt in pursuit of suspected terrorists following the recent bus bomb attack which claimed over twenty lives. In Ararat City, talks are continuing between the Kalenjin representatives and the Zionist Congress—”
“Ha!” the driver said.
“—as Sultan Al-Said of Zanzibar has urged the two sides to reach a long-lasting solution in the ongoing debate over the Nakuru Protectorate’s independence and the so-called Right of Return. The weather is expected to remain hot, with bursts of rain. In international news, unrest continues in the Central African Republic as French mercenaries—”
The driver turned down the radio and opened the window. A hot wind hit Tirosh’s face and with it the smell of the lake, frying fish, exhaust fumes and uncollected rubbish. He closed his eyes, remembering long ago trips to the beach with his mother and father, when they had still been together: they’d drive down from the highlands in his father’s beat-up old Susita, their camping gear packed in the back, and his mother would put on the radio, which played the music one seldom heard anymore, of the old, Beautiful Palestina of yesteryear, melodious and earnest. His father would have the window open and be smoking a cigarette, one arm hanging over the side of the car, and Tirosh and Gideon would squabble in the back seat. Then the lake would hover into view and they’d skirt the town, make their way to the nearby beach with the palm trees lining up on the shore, and they’d set up camp. There was always something to do on those small excursions, and he and Gideon would often put together makeshift rods with wooden sticks and fishing line, and they’d spend hours trying to catch fish, though they seldom did. He wondered where those days had gone, and how they had once seemed as though they would last forever. Yet they had so quickly faded away. He wondered at the dull ache in his chest, when he thought about it. Some memories had become so clear to Tirosh, and yet others were unattainable, like film that had been overexposed to the sun. He could sense, vaguely, that they were there, but he could no longer bring them to the front of his mind.
The casino sat on the edge of town, away from the docks. It had its own private sand beach, and its servers glided through the corridors in their liveried uniforms. The staff was mostly black. The taxi discharged Tirosh outside the gates. It was an old colonial building, and palm trees lined the road, and sprinklers made a soft woosh-woosh-woosh sound as they watered the pristine and manicured grass.
A blast of cold air hit Tirosh as he entered the Pink Pelican Casino & Hotel Resort. For a moment he stood there, and was transported in his mind’s eye to his long ago childhood, when he and Gideon roamed those self-same corridors, and darted into the gaming rooms to play the slots when the attendants weren’t looking. Then, it had seemed a sort of wonderland. Now, however, as he advanced farther inside the casino, he could not help but feel a growing sense of disappointment. There were burn marks on the once-lush carpets, and the walls were smudged with dark stains and dust. One of the overhead lights was broken, and another, as he passed under it, kept flashing, on and off, on and off, distracting Tirosh. An air of genteel disuse lay over the old casino, and the few gamblers there seemed captive in the brightness of the slot machines, sitting before them on raised chairs as though they were witnesses at a trial. A dilapidated sign pointed Tirosh to the hotel reception, and he waited as a group of Tanzanian Catholic priests checked in. When at last they were done he approached the desk. A harassed-looking clerk welcomed him cautiously. Tirosh said, “I’m looking for a Mr. Cohen, from Uganda?”
The clerk’s face brightened and he nodded, twice, before he said, “Mr. Cohen, yes, of course. Who shall I say is calling?”
Tirosh hesitated. He said, “Just tell him it’s about the theodolite.”
The clerk, it seemed, was not unused to such requests. He lifted the phone and dialled a number and waited for two short rings.
“Mr. Cohen? There’s a man at reception who would like to see you. Yes. Yes. Of course. He says it’s about a theodolite, sir. Yes, I see. Very kind, sir. Yes, of course. I’ll tell him.”
He put down the receiver.
“Mr. Cohen regrets that he is unable to come down in person right now,” the clerk said. “But he suggests you return tonight. Would eight p.m. suit? Mr. Cohen has a private table reserved at our Lake View Restaurant when he stays here with us. You’re quite lucky to catch him, sir. Mr. Cohen is often absent as he goes on his travels.”
“I thought he lived in Uganda, and only visited here,” Tirosh said, and the clerk gave him a pitying glance.
“We prefer to think of this as Mr. Cohen’s primary residence. A valued guest, certainly. Would there be anything else, sir?”
“No,” Tirosh said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, sir. Please do enjoy our state-of-the-art gaming facilities. The poker room only opens in a couple of hours, but if sir would like to book a seat at the table I could—”
“No,” Tirosh said. “Thank you. I am not much into gambling.”
“Of course. Well, have a good day, sir.”
“You, too.”
When Tirosh left, a man emerged from the elevator and approached the desk. The clerk nodded in Tirosh’s direction, and the man who had come down nodded to the clerk before following Tirosh with unhurried steps. Tirosh did not notice. He stopped only once, to put a pound coin into a slot machine. When he pulled the lever the machine whirred, and the colourful symbols on the dials spun, fast at first and then slowing down, a whirl of coconuts and cherries, melons and papayas. Then it stopped, and a row of three identical melons came into alignment, and with it the ding-ding-ding of a winning bell, and a handful of pound coins clattered noisily into the cash tray. Tirosh scooped them up and looked at them in his palm, as though they were archaeological artefacts he had uncovered, but try as he might he could not, or so it seemed, discern their meaning.
He pocketed the coins and left the casino.
He was not aware of being followed.
24.
Tirosh’s phone rang outside. When he answered it there was a hiss of static and then a woman saying, “Tirosh? Tirosh, where the hell are you?”
“Elsa?” he said, though the name sounded unfamiliar, and he wondered why it had come into his head.
“Tirosh, I don’t know where you are, you never showed up at the university, the hotel says they have no record of you checking in. Where did you disappear to?”
She sounded distraught.
“But I’m here,” he said, wonderingly.
“Here where!”
“Home,” he said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I’m getting close, Elsa. Things are becoming clearer. There’s a missing girl, you see,” he said earnestly. “And it’s all to do with this wall, somehow. I’m on the trail. I’m pursuing a lead—” He said it with s
elf-importance.
“Tirosh, have you gone mad? Are you even in Tel Aviv anymore?”
“Tel Aviv?” he said, trying out the unfamiliar name. And, “I’m sorry, who did you say you were again?”
She was shouting at him down the phone, from far away, clearly concerned, whoever she was; and he felt a pang of pity for her. It was then, crossing the street to his hotel, that he ran into Melody Rosenberg.
“Lior?” He heard his name spoken, and before he knew it she was bearing down on him. “Lior Tirosh, is that you?”
The phone, with that unknown woman shouting desperately at him, was shut now like a glasses case and in his pocket, forgotten. Coming towards him, along the wide pavement, was a woman of Tirosh’s age, though she looked younger. She wore the very latest fashions from Paris, a dress and a shawl over her slim shoulders, and she was carrying delicate bags of duty-free shopping, and as she approached he could smell her expensive perfume, Judean Rose by Dior. He thought she looked very beautiful, and that she had barely aged since he’d last seen her, which seemed an eternity ago. And he said, “Melody? Is that you?” as she gave him a very grown-up hug.
“I don’t believe it!” she said. “I thought you lived in Paris.”
“Berlin,” he said. “I’m a writer now.”
“You were always a bit daydreamy,” she said, smiling. She had very nice, very even white teeth, and Tirosh thought they looked expensive. He’d always had a small crush on Melody Rosenberg, of the Rosenberg diamond dynasty, ever since he’d seen her on his first day at school, when they had moved from the farm to Ararat City. The Rosenbergs were as close as you could get to real aristocracy in Palestina. The family did business with the de Beers in South Africa and the Hasidic diamantaires in Antwerp, and were distantly related to the French branch of the Rothschilds by marriage; and Tirosh’s brother, Gideon, had gone out with Melody’s sister Tamara for a while.
“It’s been so long!” Melody said. “I’ve just come back from the mines in Tanzania myself.” She smiled, a little selfconsciously. “I ended up studying at the Sorbonne for three years, but now I’m in the family business. My sister got married and moved to America, of all places—that backwater!—and my father’s been ill for a long time, so . . .” She shrugged. “It turns out I’m pretty good at it,” she said.
“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” Tirosh said.
“He’s doing as well as can be expected,” Melody said. “Lior, it really is good to see you! Listen, I can’t stop—I’m on my way to a meeting with some Congolese diamond traders—but I’d love to catch up properly. It’s been so long!” She said it with the slight hesitation of a person unwilling to admit quite how long ago their childhood had been. “Why don’t you come over tonight to the villa? We’re having a small party, just a little gathering really, you remember where it is, don’t you?”
Tirosh did. They’d gone there, just the once, Gideon with Tamara and Tirosh dragging along for the weekend. The Rosenbergs had their own private beach. . . . He suddenly remembered, with acute embarrassment, that he had tried to kiss Melody that weekend, and how she’d turned her head away and then said, delicately, that she didn’t think of him in that way, and how they should just be friends. His cheeks burned at the memory. Melody had always been grown up, whereas he never seemed to have grown comfortably into an adult. Tirosh was the kind of guy who never felt very comfortable in his body. Perhaps that’s why he became a writer, and why forgetting came naturally to him. He was always the kind of guy to escape easily into daydreams.
“I’d like that,” he said, feeling shy. Melody hugged him again, her perfume enveloping Tirosh.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she said, and then, with a clicking of heels, she was gone, down the street until she turned and disappeared from sight.
Tirosh looked after her, longingly. When he turned back he saw a man watching him from the other side of the street, but he thought nothing of it, not then. He went back to the hotel and up to his room, where he stripped and showered before lying on the bed.
When he slept, he dreamed. In his dream he was married. They were living in a small apartment in Berlin near Görlitzer Park and they were happy, for a time. It was a small apartment and it was cold in winter. Tirosh had a desk facing the window, where he wrote. In the dream his wife was sitting on the toilet and Tirosh was standing in the door. His wife held a home pregnancy test stick in her hand and it was blue. She looked up at him and smiled. In the dream she was radiant, and he had to look away, and blink back tears, from the glare.
“Oh, Lior,” she said. “We’re going to be so happy.”
He woke up drenched in sweat, tangled in the sheets. The window was open, and a hot, damp wind stirred the dirty curtains. He washed his face in the sink and stared at himself in the mirror. He didn’t know the person who stared back at him. He wondered if he was happy.
When he stepped back out onto the street night had fallen, and the electric street lights burned with a cheery yellow glow. He walked to the Pink Pelican, enjoying the cooler air and the calls of the sugarcane sellers and the smell of grilled beef. Judean reggae blared out of loudspeakers on Sir Andrew Cohen Square, and couples strolled arm in arm along the promenade.
He must have been happy, he thought.
“Daddy, daddy,” a voice said, but when he looked back in alarm it was just some toddler, running after his parent, who lifted him up with seeming ease and carried him away. The boy looked contented.
The Lake View Restaurant, when he arrived, was already filling with tourists, but when Tirosh mentioned Mr. Cohen’s name he was ushered inside almost immediately, and escorted past the public dining room, along another carpeted corridor, and at last to a private room with floor-to-ceiling glass windows that overlooked the lake. The room was dark, and for a moment Tirosh’s eyes were drawn to the distant pier and the incoming ships and the glare of the port’s floodlights. The server who escorted him departed silently and shut the door. There was a large round table in the centre of the room and three shadows, two standing and one sitting down.
“Marcel, a light, please.”
One of the large standing shadows struck a match and lit a candle on the table. In its light, Tirosh saw Mr. Cohen. He was a short, thin man, quite elderly, but with large, animated eyes. When he stood to shake Tirosh’s hand he moved with a quick agility. His skin felt dry and warm in Tirosh’s palm.
“I’m intrigued, Mr. . . . ?”
“Tirosh. Lior Tirosh.”
“Ah . . . I did wonder what mystery man came calling this morning. But my door is always open, eh, Marcel? Eh?”
“Yes, Mr. Cohen,” the large man said. He took position by the door, standing with his arms crossed, and the look he gave Tirosh was indifferent—Mr. Cohen, the look seemed to suggest, received many dubious callers, and Tirosh was merely one of them, and soon to be thrown out with the rest.
There was a bottle of wine on the table, which had been set for one. Mr. Cohen motioned for Tirosh to sit down and resumed his own seat. He poured wine into his glass but did not offer any to Tirosh. Mr. Cohen took a sip, nodded in apparent satisfaction, and examined Tirosh.
“Tirosh, Tirosh, I have heard that name recently,” he said.
“It’s a common enough name,” Tirosh said, cautiously.
“What did you want to see me about, Mr. Tirosh?”
“I understand you specialise in antiquities,” Tirosh said. “Curios. Especially, items relating to the first expedition.”
“Ah . . .” Mr. Cohen said. “Yes, yes, indeed. I am no expert, you understand. Merely a keen amateur. I grew up in Entebbe under the British, you know. From an early age I apprenticed with an old trader, a Mr. Simpson. At the time we were shipping carvings and suchlike to folks back in Europe, but every now and then Mr. Simpson would travel across to Judea, as it was then, and I’d accompany him. Do you know, I am fascinated by the tale of that first expedition. How easily things could have turned out differently, had Mr. Wilbusch on
ly returned a negative report to the Zionist Congress back in Europe. How prophetic of him it must have been, to envision this land so transformed, a Jewish homeland—not a holy land, but a land all the same.”
“An unholy land,” Tirosh said, and Mr. Cohen chuckled appreciatively.
“Yes, yes. Quite, Mr. Tirosh.”
“I did not realise they had left much behind them,” Tirosh said.
“Oh, plenty!” Mr. Cohen said. “Don’t forget the three men travelled with much equipment, and many porters. Many porters. Then there was the matter of the attack, of course.”
“The attack?”
“Mr. Wilbusch was pursued by indigenous Nandi,” Mr. Cohen said, and chuckled again. “Quite prescient of them, really, don’t you think?”
“I heard Wilbusch was working for the Holy Landers,” Tirosh said. “That he was set from the start to return a negative report.”
“Perhaps, perhaps.”
“Until something changed his mind. Something he saw, in a sacred place.”
“I would not know about that, Mr. Tirosh. No, I am sure I won’t. I am not a superstitious man, merely a curious one. I love the past. And it provides me with a modest living. Yes, it does. Now, how can I help you, exactly?”
“I was told you may have an object of Wilbusch’s in your possession,” Tirosh said. Mr. Cohen regarded him gravely, his fingers entwined over the stem of the wine glass. “His theodolite.”
“Ah, yes,” Mr. Cohen said, “the theodolite. I’m—”
There was a knock on the door and he turned his head. “Marcel?”
The large man opened the door. A white waiter glided in, pushing a cart laden with food. The cart was covered in a starched cloth. “Your dinner, sir.”
