by Shlomo Kalo
“One day a week, i.e. four days a month, earns you enough to support a family of four, with honour and integrity?” I expressed my astonishment.
“Exactly so!” my cousin retorted, still miffed by the suspicions I had raised over cheating.
“But my dear Cousin,” I persisted. “it still depends on the luck of the cards.”
“You intellectuals call it the luck of the cards.”
“And what do you call it?”
“By the right word and the true name.”
“Which is?” – I wasn’t letting up.
“God.”
This was not a comfortable situation, since in that country there was a communist regime, and anyone mentioning the name of God aroused immediate suspicion and could expect his situation to become immeasurably more serious.
“Can you elucidate?” I asked.
“Gladly,” my cousin replied and for the first time I felt he had got over the offence I had caused him with my suspicions. “You have to be worthy of God’s attention.”
“And that means?” I pressed him, conceding nothing but full of curiosity.
“Behaving as God wants you to behave.”
“How?”
“Not lying, not deceiving, not cheating and most of all, being charitable.”
“That’s all there is to it then, being charitable?”
“Hardly a case of ‘that’s all there is to it’. You have to give with all your heart.”
“For example?” I demanded an illustration and it was supplied at once.
“For example, you see one of the players in the game, in desperation, making a fatal mistake, and you can tell, just by looking at his face, that he’s in a desperate financial plight and his family is destitute. There’s a thousand dollars in the pot. You make an educated guess at which cards he’s holding. You know for sure that with the cards you have, the pot is yours, but you fold all the same. You let him win and he takes the thousand dollars with a warm sense of achievement. You don’t see yourself as a sucker, but on the contrary, you know for certain that your conduct is compatible with the will of God and you feel greatly relieved at heart. You even breathe more easily. You haven’t strayed onto the slippery slope of chasing petty profit.
“God will refund you double, fourfold or more, whatever sum you donated to that poor sod, thereby giving him a few moments of happiness and satisfaction.”
“And that’s all?” I concluded, disappointed.
“That’s all,” he confirmed in his deep, throaty, manly voice.
“And what about all those duplicate packs and switching cards?” I knew I was offending him again.
“That’s all!” he repeated emphatically in that throaty, deep voice, tempered by years of chain-smoking.
“May God be with you!” I blessed him, a strange thing for me to say in those days, and quite dangerous.
“And with you too,” he replied and added: “Don’t worry, you haven’t got a dishonest cousin. Even in these hectic times, he’s supporting his family with integrity and honour. And if you ever need a loan, don’t be shy about approaching your cousin.”
He arrived in Israel with his family, didn’t find work, but did find poker enthusiasts like himself, and continued to practise his bizarre profession. Sometimes he was invited to the homes of poker fanatics, and usually went away satisfied, with a clear profit, leaving behind him among his fellow players not the slightest trace of a suspicion that they had been duped.
One Sabbath, leaving a house in which a game had taken place, with twelve thousand dollars in his pocket, he was knocked down by a drunk driver and killed instantly. His body was taken to the pathology lab, and was returned the following day to his wife and two children. Everything was intact – identity papers, small change. Of the money that he won, those twelve thousand dollars in hard cash, not a cent was found on his body.
His family and fellow players saw no point in claims and investigations; it was agreed that these “would not bring the dead back to life”.
May he rest in Paradise! This chapter is a modest memorial to him.
Chapter Eleven
We strolled in the old city, thronged as it was with people of every sex, race and age, noisy and confident in their superior origin, trading in all kinds of weird and wonderful merchandise – some of it stolen and offered at eminently reasonable prices, to say the least.
Most brothels in Zurich (such premises do exist), are located in the old city, and as in any profitable and self-respecting business, each brothel individually advertises its wares, in the most direct, unmediated and tangible way possible: an impressive display of colour photographs showing the goods up for sale, in every imaginable posture.
As we often had occasion to cross the old city, we felt a certain sense of unease, confronted by the shop windows of the spacious houses of ill repute, until my wife took the initiative and suggested:
“Look at all the flesh on show here!”
I refused.
“Why?” she asked.
“I’m not interested.”
“Take a look first, and then decide if you’re interested or not.”
“I’m not interested.”
“I can sense the curiosity that you’re charged up with.”
We stopped in front of the display window of one of the more respectable whorehouses. My wife asked me to choose something. I refused.
“It can’t do any harm,” she insisted, “it’s not as if you’re going in there. Just tell me which girl and which pose appeal to you.”
I refused again. And it was obvious I was going to keep on refusing, if necessary, from here to Alaska. And since, under pressure from my wife, I glanced in passing at the lurid display, it can be stated with confidence – there isn’t the faintest hint of anything authentically Swiss there, taking its honoured place among the artistic creations of Swiss artists and displayed in impressive nude sculptures, at the corners and in the gardens of the city. Perhaps it’s to the credit of the Swiss, or perhaps it’s the reverse: the Swiss are fed up with Swiss people of the feminine gender and they chase after something, anything else to experience, so long as it isn’t Swiss. One way or the other, you won’t find in the shop windows of Zurich’s brothels anything reminiscent of the buxom feminine form that is archetypically Swiss.
Every Saturday we visited the colourful flea-market and bought items for which, in the final analysis, there was no demand in our own country.
We weren’t bored, we appreciated everything, and always promised ourselves we would return next year, a promise which we have kept in the letter and in the spirit, for more than a whole decade. We felt at home in Zurich. We enjoyed everything, and especially the pure air, clear of smog, redolent of fragrant groves. Anyway, this year was a departure from the familiar, agreeable and appropriate routine. One way or the other, a few days of relaxation made their invigorating contribution, until that Tuesday when the telephone once again ripped apart the smog-free air with typically Swiss brusqueness, and my wife and I knew that our serenity was about to be broken. Shmulik was on the line and he gave me a stark warning, one of the starkest imaginable.
“Beware,” he said, “especially of anyone walking behind you. If this situation arises, do everything you can to shake him off, as quickly and effectively as possible. If there’s no other choice, just run away from him, go into a shop, a cinema, a café, so you can come out again and disappear. I don’t need to teach you these things, which I’m sure you learned in the ‘Combat Squads’ in Bulgaria. Anyway, always try to be part of a crowd. Warn your wife too. Women, despite a tendency towards hysteria, have a more highly developed instinct than men have for detecting danger. My best wishes and my compliments to her. I hope there’ll be no more need for phone conversations like this, before you come back to this country. Enjoy your vacation! Incidentally,” Shmulik remembered – “checks in the blood-banks of several hospitals have yielded surprising results, and a number of cleaning workers and nurses, male and f
emale, have been sacked, after confessing what was on their consciences. There was a network, not so much surprising as astounding. It’s in our hands now. Stocks of blood are being held under rigorous supervision. You deserve a medal for this, but as you know, our country doesn’t do medals. My best wishes again and see you soon!” End of conversation.
I told my wife, who characteristically became very tense. We went out for a walk in the woods, which in a sense was the longest living of all our walks, having been part of our routine for the past ten years.
Without realising it, my wife – despite her highly developed instinct for danger, as Shmulik had put it, and I – despite the exercises of more than thirty years ago and my experience, albeit ephemeral, of these things, were constantly turning our heads, checking every shadow, moving or otherwise, and sighing with relief when the pedestrian passed us by, taking no notice of us and making no impression on us whatsoever. This was the way we liked it.
Meetings with Israelis aren’t uncommon. Especially around Jewish festival days, almost every fourth tourist arriving at the Bahnhoff is an Israeli. I went with my wife to the “H&M” clothing superstore; she picked up an item and went into one of the changing cubicles to try it on. At that moment I was approached by a tall woman with sunburnt face, flushed as if she had just run a marathon:
“Oh, it’s you!” she began in Hebrew, which could not be described as anything but ‘strident’, and immediately added – “I recognised you! Speak Hebrew?” she went on to ask in English, not giving me a chance to reply, “I recognised her too!” She pointed to the cubicle where my wife had disappeared behind the curtain, passed a hand over her scalp, indicating that my wife’s short hair was an unmistakable mark of recognition, and in the same emphatic tone she added, “I’m listening to her song all the time!”
“Which one?” I asked.
“All of them. All the discs, all on auto-play, I’ve got her on continuous loop!”
A mannish, formidable Israeli woman, and there’s no wonder that I felt cowed by her solid presence. Suddenly she disappeared, as abruptly as she had descended on us, to my relief and to the relief of my wife, who had apparently heard every word she said from behind the curtain.
That’s the way we are, we Israelis, and I only wish I could add “And it’s nothing to be ashamed of”.
We entered the “Manor”, with the express intention of using the toilets on the top floor. As we climbed the stairs, my wife stopped beside a wooden wall panel covered with socks, of all materials, styles and sizes. She swooped on them with me following close behind, examined some of them, picked out nine pairs, and smiled one of her most charming smiles, pointing with her free right hand to the bundle clutched in her left and explained:
“Exactly the fabric I was looking for. Top quality, there’s nothing like this at home.” She went to the cash-desk, pulled out a credit card. While she waited for the conclusion of the paying process, her eye strayed over an extensive display of shoulder-bags, including an interesting specimen coloured khaki.
“This will go perfectly with the khaki skirt that we bought,” she pointed out.
“A singular khaki shoulder-bag for the khaki skirt that we bought,” I commented.
She picked up the bag, shouldered it, paced to right and left in front of the mirror and concluded: “It’s a perfect match.”
“And what about the bag you already have?” – my voice wasn’t hoarse, rather it was surprisingly clear.
“It’s falling to bits,” she declared, moving towards the cash-desk. Halfway there, she stopped, turned, came to me and urged me in a tone of entreaty, “Please, say ‘yes’ as if you meant it. Otherwise I won’t feel comfortable buying this wonderful shoulder-bag, which is really cheap…”
“In francs,” I commented.
“Over here,” she replied, “francs are worth the same as shekels. If you don’t want it, I’ll do without it.”
Of course I wanted it, contrary to all the principles of logic ingrained in my heart. But the day was fine, and without the bag it was sure to cloud over and something of the Japanese “wa” would go to waste.
We reached the toilets on the top floor, laden with socks and the bag, and as it turned out, they didn’t impede us at all.
We went down from the toilets, not using the escalator but the lift that happened to be available. By mistake, we arrived on the basement floor. As we emerged from the belly of the lift, my wife’s expert eye lighted on a khaki waistcoat, for men. She made a beeline for the waistcoat, as if all this had been planned a week ago, took it down from the peg, handed it to me and said:
“Put it on! No obligation to buy,” she added. The logic worked, the fitting room was close by; I put the waistcoat on.
“Nice work,” I declared, glancing in the mirror and feeling quite comfortable in the garment. In the final analysis it’s as my wife said: francs abroad are the same as shekels at home. Nevertheless, I tried to raise to the surface the ideologies of former times, regarding the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the hunger afflicting the Dark Continent and the man who doesn’t care, thinking only of wearing elegant waistcoats, and so on and so on. My wife was on her way to the cash-desk, the waistcoat over her left arm and the credit card in her right hand. I caught up with her by the cash-desk.
The charming young cashier was emitting lavish blessings. The credit card was proffered. I turned to my wife, with a vehement request:
“Tell the cashier they should be paying you a percentage…”
“How do I say that?”
“In English, of course.”
She did as I asked.
The cashier listened attentively, and it turned out that unlike thousands of cashiers all over the world, she did not become a computer. Her unequivocal answer was evidence of a healthy sense of humour.
“Tell your husband,” she said to my wife, “that he has a wonderful wife who buys him wonderful presents!”
Indeed, the charming cashier was absolutely right. My wife looked at her face and then at mine and burst into laughter, pure, sincere and captivating. I laughed with her and the cashier joined in. We left the “Manor”.
Chapter Twelve
The time was exactly 11.00 a.m. when the telephone ripped through our tranquillity with a sharp, dry and insistent ring.
My wife picked up the receiver. I stood facing her, watching the drastic changes affecting her face, which suddenly turned pale, a clear, unnatural pallor, such as I hadn’t seen before then. Her hand gripping the receiver shook, once and then once more. The expression on her face was suddenly that of a small animal, closely pursued by a predator. I waited for the end of the conversation and eventually it came. The receiver was replaced on the cradle with a weary, ponderous movement, as if it weighed half a ton.
“What’s up?” I asked, troubled to the last fibre of my nervous system, still in full working order.
“Someone has been asking about you, he wants you to go down to meet him, to discuss something important and extremely urgent. The reception clerk says the man looks suspicious to her. Apparently an Arab – according to her guess and judging by the name she read in his passport: Abd Rahman. She reckons the best thing to do is tell him you’re not in your room, or you don’t want to see him…”
Well, this was it, this was what Shmulik warned me about. In the “Combat Squads” we had learned that when you go out to meet an enemy, you should make sure you have equality of forces, carry a gun in your pocket at least. Of course, the best advice was to try to occupy a position of decisively superior strength.
“It seems to me, the best thing,” – my wife commented, sensing my indecision, “is to accept the clerk’s advice. She sounded scared out of her wits…”
“She’s as nervous as a baby mouse!” I said without thinking.
“I hope you’re not intending to go down there!”
“That is the most appropriate thing to do!” I declared provocatively, “After all, no one’s going to dare to kidna
p me or attack me in front of witnesses.” I opened a counter-offensive, relying on the axiom that the best form of defence is attack. “The detective novels you read and the suspense films you watch, have broken down all the barriers of logic in your muddled mind.”
My wife was silent for a long moment.
It was easy to guess at the struggle going on in her heart, everything revolving around the question, how to stop me going down to the hotel reception, where the fragile clerk was sitting, scared to death; this was actually a good reason for not panicking, because if a kidnapper or hired assassin came, he would make a point of presenting a reassuring appearance, and on no account would he arouse fear or draw any kind of attention, thus jeopardising his project.
I decided to go down although I realised that my decision was based, in part, on a childish need to prove myself, to reassure my wife and perhaps to teach her, for future reference, that no purpose is ever served by panic and hysteria. I put on heavy boots, bearing in mind that if fisticuffs should ensue, any kick from a boot such as this, designed for climbing in the Alps, would put a leg in plaster for an appreciable time.
“I’ll be right back!” I announced with a smile, intended to express unshakable confidence in the cultural tradition of the world, and to put firmly in their place all the action and suspense programmes which cram the television screens to the point of suffocation.
My wife tried to convince me that if she were to accompany me, the meeting would take on the cachet of official family business, and this would have a profoundly calming effect.
“I don’t think there’s going to be any need for that kind of calming,” I commented, “and you would just be adding to the tension and unease. When all’s said and done, look at the name my visitor has chosen for himself: ‘Rahman’, i.e. ‘merciful’. It’s a name that speaks for itself.”
