by Lavie Tidhar
“Ah, excellent!” Mr. Cohen said.
It was, however, the last thing he said.
The waiter was dressed in a white jacket and black trousers. He was himself, it seemed, a Palestinian, like Tirosh.
He removed an automatic handgun equipped with a silencer from under the cloth.
Marcel moved towards him, but the assassin coolly fired at him, twice in close range, and the big man dropped to the ground. Tirosh ducked as the assassin turned and shot the other bodyguard in the forehead.
Mr. Cohen opened his mouth, perhaps to protest, perhaps to plead. Tirosh never found out. The assassin fired two short bursts, a part of Mr. Cohen’s head disappeared in a burst of blood and bone, and then it was done, and three men lay dead in the room.
Tirosh faced up to the assassin. He was just a young man, with hair cut short and a pleasant enough face. He could have been a waiter or a soldier. He could have been anyone.
Tirosh raised his hands, protectively. The assassin never spoke. He reached over almost casually. Tirosh could just see the arm holding the gun rising, then falling towards him.
A pain exploded in the side of his head and he sank to his feet.
Through the pain he saw the assassin do something curious.
With the blood of the fallen man he drew a symbol on the wall, a sort of tree or map; and, it must have been Tirosh’s imagination, the blood seemed to flare, for just one second, as though it had been set on fire.
He tried to crawl away. Dimly he heard the assassin’s footsteps.
The man knelt beside him. He took Tirosh’s fingers gently, then eased the gun he had used into Tirosh’s hand.
He placed Tirosh’s finger on the trigger and squeezed out a shot. It hit the wall above Mr. Cohen’s table.
“Hush,” the assassin said. “Easy now.”
Tirosh tried to move the gun, to point it at the assassin. The man pushed it down with his boot.
Tirosh saw that he held another, clean gun.
The assassin’s arm descended a second time and a second time Tirosh experienced a blow to the head.
This time, mercifully, he lost consciousness.
25.
In that place the mind escapes to when confronted by trauma it was dark. It was a place well known to Tirosh, who tended to spend much of his time in his own head. His mind was a warm, dark cell.
In between consciousness and dream, Tirosh began to discern blades of light. There was a teenaged boy who bore Tirosh’s face, clambering up a mountain. The mountain was Elgon, and the boy was Tirosh, and he knew this mountain well. It was the summer holidays and he was staying with his father on the farm, away from the city. The Rosenbergs had gone to the lake and Gideon had gone with them and so it was only Tirosh and his father on the farm.
The boy who was Tirosh took to hiking much of the day on his own. Mostly he daydreamed, of the stories he would one day write (though he was not yet sure how one went about writing such stories), and of the adventures of Avrom Tarzan, the Judean Jungle Boy, and his battles against the Ugandan poachers and South African mercenaries, and his expedition into the Hollow Earth.
It was this last story (which Tirosh had devoured avidly only the month before) that led him to explore the caves on Elgon, despite his father’s warning. Now he climbed, hand and feet, over the rise. When he stood he could look down and see how far he’d come, Ararat City far in the distance, its white houses against the blue sky, and there the farm, and the villages, and there a giraffe reaching the high branches for the leaves of a tree.
But the young Tirosh did not care for the view. The mouth of the cave yawned ahead of him. He pushed through shrubberies and saw tiny insects scuttle away in distress as he passed. Inside the hollow of the mountain the air turned still and humid, and he could smell distant running water, lichen, and a certain fetid air that came and went without warning.
His father had often told him not to go near the caves. The elephants went there, and other things: there could be snakes there, or Ugandan raiders, and stories abounded that, back in the early struggle for independence from the British, some Palestinian freedom fighters had hidden caches of arms and munitions in the Elgon caves.
Tirosh was well equipped for this exploratory journey, with a flashlight and a thermos and a bag of sandwiches and a compass, and he marked his passage on the walls of the caves, the better to know his way out again, and as he did he noticed old, similar symbols etched in the stone.
There had certainly been people there before him. He found traces of their passing, some more recent than others. When he emerged into a large cave he found the remains of a small fire, ringed by stones, and farther on his way he saw discarded sugarcane bark and, later still, a bullet casing.
His heart raced when he picked up the casing. Did it mean someone had been shot, or was being shot at, in the caves? He had been going for quite some time, and he was no longer sure what the time was outside. The caves seemed to go on forever, branching off from one another and turning back upon themselves unexpectedly, and more than once he’d come across a sign on the wall he was sure he himself had drawn, though he could not remember being there.
Though the paths he followed went up and down, up and down, then sideways and round, he began to sense that his ultimate direction was deeper and lower into the mountain. What propelled him to go on he didn’t know.
He began to imagine he could hear voices, whispering in his ears, hurrying him along. The sound of water grew louder in his ear. The cave walls expanded around him for a time, and he found himself walking through a series of rooms where the walls were filled with fantastical art, showing long-extinct beasts and small graceful hunters, and symbols he could not quite comprehend, though they evoked in him unpleasant feelings when he stopped to study them.
More and more he saw trees etched into the walls of the cave, and some of them seemed grotesque to him and almost alive. Then the sound of water grew louder and the light all but disappeared so that the blade of his torchlight’s beam shone weakly into the darkness, and he moved slowly and cautiously, and wondered if he would die there, or if he would ever find his way back and whether his father would miss him and come looking for him. But it did not stop him, and he thought nothing would.
When he came at last to the place he almost slipped and fell on wet stone, and it was with panic that he put out his hands and held on to the walls. His torchlight fell and tumbled down and away from him, the beam of light spinning in the dark. Then it hit not the ground but a body of black water, with a splash, and disappeared.
Tirosh crawled forward and down. At first it was very dark and he dared not move much, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark he began to discern thin threads of sunlight falling down from far overhead and, raising his face, saw that he was in a vast cave or hollow that must have reached all the way to the top of Mount Elgon, allowing some sunlight in through hidden slits or cuts in the roof; and slowly, slowly, he could see.
He stood very still, his heart beating to the sound of rushing water. When he looked around him everything seemed ghostly. He could see the black river, and he followed along the slippery bank until it fed into a large black pool. Tirosh knelt by the pool and put his hand into the black water and gasped—it was icy cold. He was thirsty, and he cupped water in his palm and drank from it—just a little. It tasted pure and clear, but it was foolish to do so. One does not lightly drink from the black waters of the Sambatyon.
At this point Tirosh’s dream recollection became confused. He was not sure, afterwards, what had happened or how he had emerged from those subterranean depths back into the world; in his memory there was a series of narrow tunnels that he traversed, emerging into sudden, bright sunlight, as though no time at all had passed outside, and the chilling memory, which must have been an illusion, of a dark tree in a secluded spot, stark against the mountain, from which hung not fruit but dozens and dozens of ancient human skulls.
Now, in his dazed state, he seemed to recall so
mething else, too. For a long time he had forgotten this episode, as indeed he had forgotten many other things. But now he seemed to think he had been there once more; and with this uncomfortable realisation Tirosh woke up.
His head hurt indomitably. He blinked and looked at the room. Mr. Cohen with half his head missing was lying on the floor behind the dining room table. His bodyguards were slumped down against the walls. Tirosh looked down at his hand.
There was a gun in his hand.
That moment, unfortunately, the door opened. A woman in a server’s uniform stood there. She had began to say, “Mr. Cohen, there’s a—” then stopped, suddenly, and saw the room.
Her hand rose to her mouth, stifling a scream.
Her eyes met Tirosh’s.
“Please,” she said. “Please, don’t—”
“No, no,” Tirosh said, earnestly. “You don’t understand.”
The gun was still in his hand. His fingerprints were all over the gun. He stared at her in confusion, until she turned and ran.
He stood up. He was beginning to realise his predicament then. There were three dead men in the room with him, and he was the only, and very likely, suspect.
He thought he should stay there until someone came, so he could explain. The police would be there soon.
It occurred to him that this would be the second time he was accused of murder in the space of so many days.
What he should have done is stay where he was and put down the weapon.
Instead he kept the gun and he ran.
26.
Tirosh fled. He took comfort in the fact he had never given his name, but of course, that would hardly matter. He walked out of the restaurant without running, and once outside he began to walk, quickly but without drawing attention to himself. He bought himself a suit on the way, from a cheap stall still open at that hour, where they didn’t ask any questions about his appearance. He went back to his hotel room and washed and changed rapidly and then left. He had no luggage. Everything he’d brought with him, which wasn’t much, had been left in Ararat.
What he did next was pretty smart of him, I think. He hailed down a taxi and gave the driver the address for the Rosenbergs’ place.
By this time the police had been summoned to the Lake View Restaurant and the first call for me had been made, but I wasn’t there.
No one would have thought to look for the killer in one of the wealthiest addresses in all of Palestina.
It wasn’t a long drive. The cab went along the coastal road until it had left the town and the port behind it, and the darkness grew more profound, and Tirosh could see the stars overhead when he looked out of the cab window.
As they drove away from the town silence descended, and with it came the peaceful sound of waves beating gently against the lakeshore, and the call of birds and the hum of insects. The houses grew larger and farther apart from one another, set in their own plots of land. Presently he heard faint music, which grew louder as the cab slowed down and then came to a halt outside a large gate that stood open. Tirosh paid and the cab drove away, leaving him standing there.
He took a deep breath of fresh air.
Rows of trees led up to the entrance, and cars were parked every which way outside. They were the sort of cars writers like Tirosh often wrote about but could never afford: Ferraris and Maseratis from Italy, Rolls-Royces from England, Mercedes vehicles from the Reich . . . The cars gleamed in the light spilling out from the windows of the beach house.
Tirosh went up to the house, where a silent server welcomed him in with a nod when he offered his name.
Melody had mentioned a small gathering, but what welcomed Tirosh as he stepped in was a full-blown party, and seemed to include anyone who was anyone in the upper strata of the Palestinian social world. Tirosh remembered some of them from school, and others from the television or the newspapers.
There were Arisons and Adelsons, Salomons and Abramoviches, Ephrussis and Blavatniks, Soroses and Brins. They were like so many fish swimming around each other: the men in suits and the women in furs and dresses, and their kids cool in jeans and T-shirts that must have cost more than a workman’s annual salary. There was no Gross amongst them, and Tirosh felt a pang of sympathy for the construction magnate, who for all his money clearly did not belong in this world of old and inherited money. He saw members of the ancient, European nobility there: von Oppenheims and von Löwenthals and de Morpurgos, Rothschilds and Auerbachs. Some had grown up in Palestina, but many held dual nationalities, retained the old bases back in Europe, the seats of trade. They did not bear those new-fangled names like “Tirosh.”
But he didn’t really have time to be resentful. Melody found him standing there, and once again her scent enveloped him, and she looked at him and said, “Lior, you look like shit!”
“Sorry,” Tirosh said. “I had a rough day.”
“Let’s get you changed. You can’t walk around like this.” She threaded her arm through his and escorted him along. “My brother’s clothes might fit you.”
She took him to a room with a walk-in closet. The room was bigger than Tirosh’s apartment had been back in Berlin.
“Well?”
“What?”
“Well, take them off!”
Melody made a face. Tirosh obeyed, reluctantly. He felt exposed standing there, under her gaze. He unbuttoned the cheap shirt, then let it fall to the floor.
“Take it all off,” Melody said. She came closer and lifted his vest, pushing it up and over his head. She was standing quite close, he thought.
“Lior?”
“Yes, Melody?”
Her fingers traced a line, very lightly, on his stomach. “You’ve changed,” she said. She said it with some wonder.
“I was away, for a long time.”
“I remember when you left. Everyone just thought you disappeared. I think they even sent out search parties to look for you, then your father said you were fine, and you’d gone overseas to study.”
Her hand kept moving across his body. He found it hard to swallow.
“What do you mean?” he said. “What search parties?”
He remembered leaving. His mother and father both together, for once, at the airport. His mother’s hug, his father’s rough handshake. Remembered boarding the plane, which took off into the clear air, and climbed above the clouds. . . .
“When you went missing,” she said, as though it were obvious. “Everyone was worried sick, they thought you fell and broke your leg or something, near the caves. Apparently you were always going into the caves there, even though you knew it wasn’t safe.”
“But I didn’t,” he protested. “I never . . .”
It was hard to think. There was a heat in his body that he’d almost forgotten, and Melody’s hands were both moving now, up and down his torso.
“Melody . . .”
“In here,” she said. There was a hungry urgency in her voice. She pushed him into the closet and came in after him and shut the door. She laughed, softly, and the sound sent a shiver down his spine.
“You smell different,” she said. “You smell of gunpowder and blood. That was blood on your vest, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t . . .”
“It’s funny how people change,” she said. Then she was in his arms, warm and willing, pushing him amidst bespoke suits from Savile Row and Milan, amidst cashmere and linen, silk, tweed and wool. Then her lips were on his, soft and plump, and he thought with an aching loneliness of that summer long ago when he had tried to kiss her and they agreed to be just friends.
But they were grown up, and they were different people now.
“Oh, Lior . . .”
“But I didn’t,” he said. “I never went missing. There was never . . .”
She silenced him with her lips. Her hands were on him and he stopped talking, there was nothing more to say. He held her, it was like a dream or a fantasy. He kissed her then, they were hidden amidst all the clothes, like a couple of teenagers in a
forest. She slid her dress off and Tirosh held his breath and she laughed, gaily and easily—it seemed so simple to her, and so strange to Tirosh. He had never really lived the life of his storybook heroes, until now.
They moved against each other, with each other. He remembered cold black water, flowing. Why was he thinking of that? He did not want to think of that, not now. He held Melody desperately, burying his face in the crook of her neck. His lips tasted salt, a sweet scent. He remembered falling.
The water had been so cold.
He was drowning.
Melody said his name. A shiver ran through him. He held on to her like a desperate man. She gasped and pulled him deeper, deeper and down. Tirosh’s thrashing had a desperate quality, he was cold and then hot, he held on to her as she called out his name and as she cried out and as she raked his naked back with her nails. Then the awful black water fell away from him and he dropped.
He was falling, through warm air, into another place
They lay there, still entwined, for a long moment, amidst the suits and the coats. The sounds of the party slowly penetrated into their private world. At last Melody disentangled herself. She smiled at him, a little dreamily.
“That was nice,” she said.
“Yes,” Tirosh said. He had broken through the black water, he thought, he was safe, there was air, and light. He smiled then, shyly. “I always wanted to—”
“I know,” she said. She stroked his cheek. “You’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t you, Lior.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I think I am.”
“I like it,” she said. Then she rose and put the dress back on and reached down. He took her hand and stood.
“I should get back to the party,” she said.
“Melody—”
“You’re sweet,” she said, distractedly. Tirosh sat up and pulled on the expensive shirt she offered him. The silk felt cool against his skin. Dressed in someone else’s clothes he followed her back into the party. Melody moved away with a final, affectionate squeeze of Tirosh’s hand. He thought it had meant very little to her, what had happened. Tirosh walked amongst the partygoers, a glass of wine in his hand. He stepped out of doors, onto the Rosenbergs’ private beach.
