ABIGAIL_SPY & LIE

by Rose Fox

  His life had continued in the same way it had begun when he was a child.

  Shimon tried to forget his childhood. He had only hazy memories of his early years that he spent in the corrugated iron huts of the transit camp near Hadera, nothing of which remained.

  After the death of his ailing mother, his father remarried. He was seven when she came. She was skinny and her bones protruded. Her nose was red and always runny. He remembered that she would hide in a room which she kept dark with shapeless drapes to keep out the light of day. He didn’t like her and she didn’t like him and it seemed she didn’t like his father much, either. When he sneaked a look into her room, he saw her sniffing a light-colored powder.

  When their child was born, it never stopped crying and he was diagnosed as a drug addict from birth. Neighbors came and tried to help take care of him while his mother sat ensconced in the darkened room. Eventually they also got fed up and one day he heard the neighbor, Sonia, speaking on the phone in his house.

  “You have to come here and save this baby. Hey, give him some drugs, calm the little creature down, have mercy on him! God, listen how he cries.” After a few seconds, he heard her say, “I want to mention that there is also an older child here. Take him away and give him a place where he can grow up; he’s neglected and completely deserted.”

  One day, two women turned up, put him in the back seat of a car and drove him to a house where other children lived. This was also a temporary arrangement.

  Shimon had no memory of ever having been hugged or of anyone loving him. The adults in his family never treated him like a person, who could understand and never shared anything with him, neither good nor bad.

  “Everything’s fine,” he was always told, or “everything will be fine.”

  As a child, Shimon never lacked for anything, but no one asked him or tried to find out what he wanted. He simply existed. He never had a good friend nor could he develop friendships since he wandered from home to home and was never in one place long enough to put down roots.

  Everything changed when, one day, he came to an old house when he had just turned twelve years old. It was a house with many rooms and five boys like him lived there. From that moment something happened in his life and to this day he still yearned for that house.

  The father of the house, Victor, was an oversized man with dry hair, who always looked unkempt. He would gaze at Shimon with loving eyes and Shimon loved the expression in them and realized that no one had ever looked at him with an expression like that. One day, Victor called him to come to a room on the bottom floor.

  “Lock the door, child, no, not like that, with the key,” he said as he gazed at him with shining eyes and Shimon locked the door willingly.

  “Come here, Shimi, yes, here, don’t be afraid of me, come to me.”

  He recalled, as if it happened today, how Victor stroked his hair and looked at him lovingly, directly into his eyes. How much Shimon loved him and how happy he was to be stroked. He accepted what Victor did to him with pleasure and he was prepared to do anything Victor asked just so long as he would see that warmth reflected in his eyes.

  Shimon spent many days at this house and was prepared to live with that man forever, both as a father and a lover. But this good period also came to an end.

  One day two women arrived. The older of the two asked him to sit facing her and answer her questions. Shimon didn’t understand why she said he was an unfortunate boy, who had been exploited. She recorded all her questions on a black instrument that was placed between them on the table in the kitchen.

  “Did you have to strip completely? Did you take off your shirt as well as your pants?” She asked. He nodded. She asked once more in a soft voice and he didn’t understand why he heard so much pity in her voice.

  “Did he tell you to only take off your pants or did he ask you to take off everything?”

  “Only my pants,” he answered weakly.

  It was important to him to show her that Victor had not bothered or harassed him. He didn’t tell her that, had Victor asked it, he would have stripped off all his clothes whenever Victor wanted or as many times as he asked just so long as he would continue loving him.

  “I understand, darling, and how many times did this happen?” she continued questioning him as she leaned over him. He shrugged. He wasn’t able to say with what regularity Victor asked him to take off his clothes and also didn’t understand why all these details were important to her.

  “My poor, unfortunate child,” She said and he recoiled when she tried to stroke his head.

  Then he looked through the window and sadly watched them take away his only source of love, the person who had granted him the only tenderness he had ever known. He saw Victor being pushed into the police car that waited outside. He never ever saw him again.

  But, this was the relationship he knew. His relationships with women who were involved in his life, during his childhood, his youth or his adolescence were not good and in the nature of things he was not drawn to them. It never even occurred to him to form a relationship with a woman.

  His only long-term relationship had been with Aviv. Aviv was twenty years old and served military service in the Police Force, so it was clear to Shimon that he would also join the police. From the moment he joined, Shimon met only criminals and the policemen, who were his colleagues.

  One day he received a phone call that marked a turning point in his life.

  “Come, officer, let’s meet and talk. It’ll be worth your while.”

  The meeting took place in a deserted house on a sandy beach. Shimon strode through piles of trash and building rubble offloaded there by trucks. The strong smell of urine and alcohol pervaded the area and empty syringes, dry bread, empty sardine cans and two old wallets, emptied of their valuables stuck out from the mounds of sand.

  “Do you want to do business?” the thin fellow asked. His larynx bobbed up and down in his throat as he spoke and Shimon replied immediately:

  “Yes.”

  It didn’t even interest Shimon what business he had in mind; anything would be just fine.

  “Great. We’ll add you to our team to take care of us and warn us. I promise you’ll do well, kid.”

  “No problem.”

  “Listen, you’re a man’s man!” The spokesman said, and from that moment on Shimon was prepared to do anything for him.

  “Do you want to know how much we’ll pay you?”

  “Well…”

  The truth of it was that he didn’t care. He never balked at any payment and never argued about its size. This was how it came about that he agreed to secure any criminal act he was asked to protect.

  He never stopped to check out the conflict of interests between his job as a law-abiding policeman and his private work, even when it included securing and providing protection for traffickers of women or escorting thieves and robbers. If they asked him to accompany drug dealers or follow someone in a distant foreign country, he would simply arrange to take days out of his vacation quota from the police and would never divulge information or report it at the district office where he worked.

  His name became known in the criminal underworld and he was uncertain whether his colleagues in the police knew of his off-the-job activities and it never bothered him if they did.

  “Shimon, you have a visitor at Gate 3,” the announcement came over the loudspeaker.

  Shimon stayed sitting in his cell and had no intention of going to the visitors’ hall that day. He hadn’t forgotten his last visitor, who had landed him in trouble. Because of her he had squirmed for days from the harassment of the guards and he was also angered by the humiliation caused him by a woman.

  The announcement was repeated:

  “Shimon, to Gate 3, someone’s waiting for you…”

  Shimon hesitated, but became so curious that he decided to check out the visitor. He recalled the saying “curiosity killed the cat” and he felt like that same cat as he reached Gate 3. He raised his
arms and the guard frisked him, patted him fondly on his shoulder and directed him to the transparent wall, through which the visitors holding the telephone receivers at their ears could be seen.

  Shimon scanned the visitors for his visitor, but didn’t recognize anyone. He did so again and then turned around to go back to his cell. The guard noticed Shimon hesitating; approached him and pointed to the crouching figure of a man on the other side of the transparent wall as Shimon winced.

  The man’s face looked like a mask with one eye. The other eye was missing and appeared like a deep furrow in his face, which was elongated and unshaven. Shimon stood facing him and made no effort to hide the revulsion he felt.

  Shimon racked his memory but could not recall who he was. The visitor’s face was expressionless, like that of a poker player and a pale scar was drawn from his temple to his chin. The man remained sitting there and made no effort to make contact with Shimon, who sighed and picked up the receiver on his side of the wall. He waved it in his hand, hinting to the scarred figure sitting opposite him to do likewise.

  Shimon recoiled as he heard a crackling sound over the receiver. At that moment he felt like throwing it down, jumping up and running away but he restrained himself and remained seated. Indeed, the voice was being produced by an instrument that had been implanted in the throat of the man facing him, after he was saved from an attempt on his life. The instrument transmitted the sound waves in crunching sounds that began to be intelligible as words.

  “We will release you from prison and give you a new identity but on one condition.”

  The sound died down, apparently because he was waiting for a reaction.

  Shimon trembled. What a terrifying person sat facing him and it all seemed like a hallucination. He managed to understand what was being said and thought about it. Why was this man with the crackling voice prepared to provide him with a new identity and take the trouble to release him from prison? He stared at the man in horror and real fear. The voice continued to erupt on the phone:

  “You’re surprised, aren’t you?”

  Shimon swallowed hard and nodded in affirmative. All the time he spoke, the man’s lips moved according to the words and his hand grasped his throat, over his voice box, as if he was operating his voice from there.

  Suddenly Shimon heard something that changed his demeanor completely. The metallic sound was heard, “do you remember a man called Victor?”

  The man spread his arms to the side to hint at a big, broad figure and Shimon trembled from top to toe. A narrow smile appeared round Shimon's mouth and only good thoughts came to mind now. He nodded again and sat back in the chair as he recalled the good and loving person Victor had been to him. This time he listened more attentively to what the metallic voice was saying.

  “If you do what we tell you we will be able to act accordingly”

  “Yes, I’m listening,” Shimon said.

  “Write a farewell letter.”

  “A farewell letter? Farewell from whom?”

  “From life,” the voice creaked.

  It sounded logical to Shimon. He rolled the plan round in his mind, as he understood it. He was to write a farewell note and leave it in his cell to explain his disappearance. At that moment it seemed like a brilliant idea to him. Truly, it was the only way he could disappear without immediately being searched for.

  “Okay. What should I write?”

  “Like a suicide note of a despairing man, someone who is just fed up. Write it today, as soon as you get back to your cell.”

  The masked face turned round, the man dropped the receiver and he left the place, without looking back even once. The receiver dangled on the chord, swinging back and forth until it finally stopped and was motionless.

  Shimon asked for a page and an envelope, and an hour later he finished writing the letter and put it in the envelope he had been given. He left it on the mattress and waited.

  At half past twelve, an hour and a half after his meeting with that man, he heard the sound of keys clattering on a chain coming closer. A jailer he was unfamiliar with came and opened the barred door to his cell. The jailer signaled him to follow him and the large number of keys clinked and clanked with his every step. Shimon paced in rhythm to the sound the keys made. They noise carried on till they reached the showers, where it stopped.

  “Strip,” the man ordered, “go inside and take a shower.”

  Shimon didn’t understand why but he didn’t argue. The man stared at him and waited. Shimon stripped, entered the shower and stood under the shower head.

  The shower stands were separated by plastic curtains and when Shimon turned on the faucet, the stream of water flowed down on him spraying drops that hit the plastic curtains and made clicking sounds. Shimon raised his face to the stream of water and opened his mouth wide.

  Suddenly, the jailer approached him and put his arm out as if to hit him in the belly and Shimon was startled. He tried to get away from the jailer’s outstretched arm, lost his balance and slipped backwards. He was immediately caught by the curtain beside him and hung on to it. His head hit the tiled wall behind him and he slipped down on his back with his legs spread out in front of him. He groped blindly and caught the curtains in his fists and they wrapped around him.

  An hour later they found him lying on the shower floor, with his head covered by one plastic shower curtain and the other torn curtain flapping over him.

  He was dead.

  The matter was explained by the letter found on his bunk so there was no need to hold an investigation into his death. The file was closed and archived.

  It became just one more closed case that had been fully resolved.

  * * *

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was the night of her departure. Abigail was excited and apprehensive of what lay ahead. She sat down and read the material on the subject in order to assuage her fears. She read about Russia’s geography and about the make-up of the inhabitants of the huge continent that was divided into dozens of countries. She went over the lines again and again, but her mind was unable to absorb a thing. Finally, she gave up and pushed the papers away.

  She glanced at her special wristwatch and smiled to herself. Naim’s daughter, Nadia, had given it to her. It was a tiny radio transmitter and a kind of mini-computer. She laughed to herself and thought there couldn’t be a more suitable gift, especially now that she was traveling into unknown territory.

  She easily packed her belongings into a brown backpack and took care not to have any identifying papers on her, only a pen and a rolled sheaf of paper. She glanced at her watch. It was ten past nine, almost seven hours before the cab was to come and pick her up. She had enough time to sleep but knew she would be unable to.

  Abigail pulled the thick cord at the top of the knapsack and closed it. She set it near the window and peered outside to where a light was flashing. She thought that she had become paranoid, but she looked outside again, anyway. ‘What’s happening to me?’ she thought and continued looking in the direction facing her.

  Giant poplar trees that were planted on both sides of the street swayed in the night breeze and suddenly the two points of light sparkled again. She curled her hands into two cones like binoculars as she had seen her father do when he looked for his sons herding their cattle in the wide expanse of the desert dunes and had to focus into the distance.

  In the window on the other side of the road, a pair of glasses moved around and reflected two small circles of light. No, they weren’t glasses but binoculars, which were lowered now from the searching eyes of the person who was watching. Abigail noticed a dark shadow. Someone was spying on her apartment, following her movements and comings and goings. She shuddered. Who was it? Who was following her?

  She considered calling her dispatchers, but they had told her that from now, whatever the circumstances, she no longer could contact them, especially not from a radio transmitter she could be identified with. She leaned against the wall, rocking slowly and thinking
what she should do. Then she had an idea.

  In her bedroom, she always laid an enormous doll on her shiny coverlet. The doll stared out of its enormous green glassy eyes at anyone who entered the room. That wasn’t what interested Abigail now, nor did she recall that the doll had been a birthday gift from her sister Latifah, “because of her eyes”, as Latifah said at the time, when she was twelve years old.

  She tied the doll to a broomstick with her apron and leaned it opposite her bed in the room, but not facing the window. Since the doll was tied to the upper part of the broomstick, she hoped that it would resemble the figure of a person and deceive and mislead whoever was watching her from across the road. Meanwhile she began to carry out her plan.

  Abigail left the room crouching well below the window line so as not be seen and only straightened up when she was out of her room. For a few seconds she pondered about letting the whole matter go, not wanting to arouse attention, but she decided not to leave unfinished business, especially not before clarifying whether someone had discovered her planned departure and journey.

  She went down the stairs of her apartment building without turning on the lights in the stairwell. Before exiting the building she clung to the entrance and glanced again at the window on the second floor of the building opposite hers. She did not see points of light, though the dark figure still stood there.

  Abigail crossed the road, hoping that the tree tops were providing her with cover from prying eyes and she entered the building. She climbed up the stairs to the second floor. Abigail presumed that the layout of the apartments in the building were similar to her own and when she stood at the top of the stairs on the second floor she thought, right or left, then decided to go to the right because that faced the window in her apartment across the road.