Avner Mandelman Read online

  It was during the War of Independence, in the attack on the Castel, the obdurate Arab village that guarded the entrance to Jerusalem, that my father’s commando unit had finally cornered Abu Jalood, the mysterious gang leader who the tall tales insisted could change at will into a Debba.

  The Castel battle, as most battles are, was confused and uncertain. My father’s unit was cut off several times; other times it seemed it was they who had cut off the village defenders, the members of seven Arab gangs who had arrived the week before, at Abu Jalood’s behest. For the first time in memory traditional enmity was set aside in the service of a common cause.

  The fight remained bitter to the end. Half my father’s friends died that night. Nachman Shein, who had written the operetta The Penny and the Moon, was shot in the leg and a month later died of blood poisoning in Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital. Tzvi Zilbershatz, who had played the Moneylender in the operetta, fell on the steps of the mosque. Two character actors were mortally wounded.

  An hour before dawn, my father and Nachman Shein were alone. The other men from their unit were stuck on the other side of the mountain, where most of the burned Armed Personnel Carriers lie to this day. There was no moon, but several houses were burning and by the light of the flickering fires they could see Abu Jalood’s renowned blue abbaya flapping in the window, as the cornered enemy rushed hither and yon, oblivious to the bullets.

  Several times my father and Shein tried to storm the house, but obstinate fire forced them back into their hiding place behind a clump of rocks. And all the while, as Shein wrote later in Davar, Abu Jalood was cursing them from within the mukhtar’s house, hollering in a high-pitched, spirited voice.

  Finally my father could bear the curses no longer. He rushed the house, broke the door with the butt of his Sten, and disappeared inside.

  There ensued a terrific fight, with oaths, and shouts, and cries, and inhuman growls, and yelps of pain, and at long last, after what seemed like an hour, my father emerged, white as a fresh wedding bedsheet, holding up the famous blue abbaya, the long Turkish rifle, and, in his other hand, the long mustache he had just cut off the face of Abu Jalood.

  About the same time the others, who had finished cleansing the other end of the village, joined forces with my father and Shein. As they entered the mukhtar’s house, they found a mound of earth, with a crude wooden crescent on top. The house today is a restricted military zone: too many Arab agitators used to come and hold demonstrations there.

  “I have just buried a noble enemy,” my father said to his comrades. (This is corroborated by many.)

  It has been frequently noted that my father himself had never given a single interview about the battle, though everyone else who had been there was most voluble about it.

  “What happened, happened,” he said.

  Perhaps it was my father’s refusal to elaborate, or maybe the legends already were circulating, but a great many Arabs refused to believe that the Jews had slain their hero in the Castel. Abu Jalood, many insisted, had not been killed but rather secretly captured. Others hinted that, breathing his last, their hero swiftly turned into a Debba and faded into the darkness whence he had come—and from where he would one day return to avenge his own blood, and that of his people.

  I remember how, as children in Tel Aviv, we used to go poking sticks in dark attics and in sewage pipes, “looking for the Debba.” There even flowered in the 1950s a pitiful little underground of Arab teenagers who went by the name of ‘Ibnatel-Jalood, who were caught planting crude nail bombs in the Egged bus station in Tzfatt. I can’t remember what happened to them; probably got ten years.

  The conquest of the Castel was later seen by many as the turning point in the battle for Jerusalem, and two military historians at Tel Aviv University even went so far as to claim that the death of Abu Jalood was the major turning point in the War of Independence itself. Without Abu Jalood to hold them together, the Arab gangs fell back into their old squabbling, fighting with one another for prestige, instead of fighting the attacking Jews. So that when Menachem Begin’s forces launched an attack on Yaffo on the eve of the British departure, in 1948, the city fell like a ripe pomegranate into their hands.

  After his memorable feat, my father could have had his pick of military postings. Some said he could have joined the general staff in some capacity or other. Others even mentioned politics. Yet not a year after, when the UN-sponsored cease-fire was signed, my father inexplicably returned to Tel Aviv, reopened his shoe store, and went back to selling shoes, winter boots, and—later, in the times of the Tzena’, the Scarcity—even cobbling shoes himself.

  I hazily remember how once Shim’on Gershonovitz himself implored my father to accept some sort of position in the party, or perhaps in the Interior Ministry itself. I was young then and did not fully understand.

  I was sitting in my father’s store, my bare feet before me, waiting for him to glue a torn strap in my sandal, when Gershonovitz suddenly entered. He had left his official Lark outside, two of its wheels on the curb.

  He sat down beside me, his already fat behind taking up nearly the entire width of the seat.

  “So, young man,” he boomed at me, “you came to learn the trade?”

  My father raised his head and gave the fat man a brief look, then returned to his hammering on the strap, which a moment before he had smeared with glue.

  “No,” I said, feeling foolish. “I came to fix—”

  “What do you want, Shimmel?” my father asked. His voice was even, the kind he used when I had broken something and he came into my room for a reckoning.

  Without any preliminaries Gershonovitz said something about the party now finalizing its list for the Knesset, and that certain committee members had mused about the dearth of old chevermanim—literally, brave boys—in the ranks, so he decided, why not—

  “I told you a thousand times,” my father said, “the answer is no.”

  I had gotten up to go outside, feeling in a confused way that perhaps this was something my father wanted to discuss alone with Gershonovitz. But my father held up his hammer. “No, David, you stay right there. He will be leaving soon.”

  The neck of the fat man visibly darkened. “It’s not as if you will do us any favors,” he said. “But think of the State, and the things you could—” He stopped. “It’s a waste,” he said at last, speaking softly. “Such a waste. And for what?”

  “That’s enough,” my father said. Then, to my surprise, he said, “If you want, I can give you sandals, size forty-eight. That’s your size, no?”

  Gershonovitz got up. “All right, Srulik,” he said. “Do what you want. I told them, but they said go try one more—”

  “Only twenty-three lirot,” my father said. “For you, twenty-two.”

  Gershonovitz sat back on the bench, beside me. My father sat on the inclined bench where the customers put their feet up to be measured, and, his own legs widespread, fitted the big, bulbous feet with a pair of brown biblical sandals.

  As the fat man was leaving, he paused at the door and pointed his thumb at me. “And he and his brother? Also no?”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about, but felt vaguely afraid.

  My father did not raise his head. “When they grow up, yes.”

  I recall I felt a slight shiver.

  “Ahh,” said the fat man. “Good.”

  After he had left, I asked my father, “What did he—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” my father said. “If you want, you can put your sandals on now.”

  Then he said he had just received two tickets for Tfilla Zakka—Honest Prayer—a new play put on by the newest young genius in HaBimah, and that I could go with my brother, if I wanted.

  Theater people were always leaving tickets for my father. He used to give them big discounts. For some, he fixed their shoes for free.

  13

  UNCLE MORDECHAI PARKED IN front of Mr. Gelber’s office. The Toyota parked right behind us. We ignored it and w
ent in.

  It didn’t take me long to tell Mr. Gelber of my decision.

  “You will?” he squealed, “But yesterday—”

  “So yesterday I said no. Today I say yes. It’s for the money, what do you think.”

  “Shit in yogurt, for the money,” Uncle Mordechai muttered.

  I remained silent. What could I do? Tell him about my black dreams?

  Mr. Gelber spread his arms wide. “But I told you! I told you it’ll cost everything he left you! Maybe more! Why waste good money …”

  I said that if I do it cheap, maybe the play would even make money.

  It sounded feeble in my own ears.

  Margalit said tenderly, “But Isser wanted him to do it, so he would remember.”

  “No, it’s for the money,” I said obstinately, and turned to my uncle. “For your share, too.”

  Uncle Mordechai bristled. “Don’t do me any favors. What will I do with the money, start buying Ha‘Olam HaZeh magazine?”

  This was the magazine of the Israeli bohema; it dug up political scandal and often featured bare breasts on the back page.

  Margalit blushed. Mr. Gelber also seemed offended. At last he gave an angry snort, mopped his face, and in a tight legalistic voice said that all right, if I had decided to follow the stipulation, it was his duty to inform me I now had until May 15 at midnight to fulfill the request, as per probate regulations of 1953, paragraph aleph …

  I tried to focus on his words, but street noises made it difficult for me to concentrate, also the flying dust. Legal briefs were piled everywhere, and folded newspapers, the weekend issue of Ma‘ariv on top.

  RABIN TO RESIGN! proclaimed the headline. “Elections slated for May 16!”

  At the bottom of the page was the black-bordered death notice for Israel (Isser) Starkman (G.I.), may the Holy Name avenge his blood.

  I swiped at the dust in my eyes as Mr. Gelber finished his little oration. “All right, fine. I have no idea where you’ll get actors or a hall, but if that’s what you want to do, who am I to say no?”

  “Don’t worry,” I snapped. “I’ll get people and whatever else is needed. If the estate would advance—I think you said a hundred thousand shekels? I’d need actors, and a director, and someone with production experience—”

  Uncle Mordechai yelped, “Hundred thousand shekels?!”

  “Oh, at least,” Mr. Gelber trilled. “What am I saying? Two hundred! With inflation today—”

  “But if the judge gave an order—”

  “Menuchin?” Gelber chuckled.

  “Don’t look at me,” Uncle Mordechai said. “I have only a pension. Go ask Kramer in Canada.”

  There was a short silence. I said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get the money.” I turned to Uncle Mordechai. “And I’ll also need you to tell me something, about what happened then—”

  “Like when?” he asked warily.

  “In forty-eight, and before—I’ll need to know the background—”

  “No, no,” Uncle Mordechai said in Arabic. “Illi fat matt.” The past is dead.

  “For the play,” I said desperately. “Only for the play.”

  Uncle Mordechai stood up and slapped his thighs. “You do what you want. But me, keep me out of it. You hear? Now: you want to come to Tveriah for the shivah, or you want to go back to your friends in the bohema?”

  “I want a fried musht,” I said at last.

  Perhaps in Tveriah, in the shivah, my uncle would be more forthcoming.

  As we all got up, the phone on Mr. Gelber’s desk rang. He picked it up and listened for a while. “No,” he said, his forehead turning red. “No.”

  Mr. Gelber put down the receiver. “Wrong number,” he said heavily.

  The Toyota was still at the curb, one man smoking in the backseat. The driver was reading a newspaper. They could not have been more noticeable if they had hoisted a large sign over their heads.

  My uncle pretended not to see. “So now we go home.”

  On the way we stopped by the apartment. Neither Ruthy nor Ehud was in. As I was picking up my knapsack the phone rang. For a heart-stopping moment I thought it was Jenny. But it was Mr. Gelber.

  “Oh, it’s so lucky that I caught you! Listen, listen!” He chortled, and in one long desperate whoosh said that he had just gotten off the phone with Judge Menuchin and the judge had agreed that if I just read the play for him in chambers, the court might be persuaded to consider this a performance and deem the stipulation fulfilled and thereby cause the funds to be freed. “So you could then depart as speedily as—”

  I hung up, went out, and hopped down the stairs.

  If I’d had any doubts before, I had none now. Everything revolved around my father’s play, and someone did not want me to stage it.

  Uncle Mordechai took the Haifa road north. The Toyota maintained a constant distance of a hundred yards behind us. Ten kilometers out, near the Mossad HQ in Glilot, I said, “They’ve been following me from the moment I landed. And I think Ehud’s phone is tapped.”

  “Well, sure,” my uncle muttered. “Someone like you leaves, then comes back without a passport, of course they’ll follow you.”

  This was also what Ehud had said, but I no longer believed it. “So it’s nothing to do with the play?”

  Uncle Mordechai threw me a covert look. “From this I know nothing.”

  Margalit stared out the window and we drove on in silence, the Toyota following, insultingly close.

  I expected us to be tailed all the way to Tveriah, but just before Hadera my uncle muttered an old army curse, turned abruptly into a dirt road between orange groves, and drove at high speed through injill-overgrown side roads between Yemenite villages, before emerging out of an avocado grove into the Afula road. He drove expertly and fast, watching the rear-view mirror, every now and then slowing down, letting cars pass us by. But the Toyota had disappeared and no other one took its place, and so we drove free and escortless all the way to Tveriah.

  I kept quiet, marshaling my resolve and my questions.

  PART II

  Al Infitar

  (The Cleaving)

  14

  EVADING THE TAILERS WAS of course pointless—everyone knew where the shivah would be held—so when my uncle at last drove down the dark hilly street where his house stood, another Toyota, a gray one, was parked across the road, its roof sprouting double antennas. I could see the glow of a cigarette inside.

  My uncle said nothing, just parked and then prowled around the house, listening, and—much to my unease—sniffing the night air like a wolf, head thrown back and nose up, nostrils open wide, swaying his head from side to side; at last, without speaking, he motioned for us to enter.

  Once inside he made straight for the kitchen cupboard and broke out a new bottle of 777. Margalit brought three glasses and we drank, sitting at the window overlooking the blue-black Kinneret. I wanted to ask my uncle about my father’s early days, but the moment did not seem right. Little blue lights bobbed in the middle distance—fishing boats going out for the nightly catch. The smell of the water was in my nostrils, and I could hear jackal howls coming all the way from the Golan Heights.

  Next morning I woke with a sandy tongue and my head buzzing with remnants of blackness; but some white snatches of soaring chants were there, too, lacing the dark.

  I looked outside the window. The Toyota was still there.

  Uncle Mordechai was standing in the kitchen by the Primus stove, frying fish. “Yes, for breakfast, for breakfast. It won’t kill you.” He sprinkled pepper from the bottom of his fist.

  I pointed to the window. “So it’s nothing to do with the play?”

  My uncle threw me a black brow-knit glare. Obviously the moment was still not right. I waited, then said lamely, “You think anyone else from the funeral will come to the shivah?”

  Uncle Mordechai said nothing.

  “Maybe we should invite the tailers in, to say Kaddish with us.”

  “Over my dead body,” said my
uncle.

  But two people did come.

  First, as I was digging into my fish, a black patrol car came to a halt in the yard, and soon Inspector Amzaleg entered, not even bothering to knock. “One for me, too?”

  “I bought five mushts,” my uncle said.

  “He loved them so much, the bastard,” Amzaleg said.

  For a moment I thought Uncle Mordechai would start crying, but he only sneezed.

  Amzaleg kicked his shoes off. “Bring the fish here.”

  As he burrowed in, I said, “These tails outside, they help you investigate?”

  Amzaleg gave a curt head shake and dug into the crisp musht without looking up. “You want to be an idiot hero with this play, go ahead. But do yourself a big favor and leave the police job to us.”

  I asked him if he was warning me officially.

  “Yes, I am,” he snapped, pointing the fork at me.

  “Shut up and eat your fish,” Uncle Mordechai said.

  When breakfast was over, we sat on the cool tiled floor to play poker. We were well into the game when I asked my uncle, as casually as I could, what he could tell me about the play and my father’s doings before ’48.

  “That’s not for now,” he growled into his cards.

  “So when?”

  “When the Angel of Death comes for me, maybe.”

  “But Mordechai—” I began, but he cut me off.

  “Ask Shimmel. Maybe he can tell you something.”

  I felt a slight shock. “You think he’ll come?”

  “No,” my uncle said. “He would be ashamed.”

  “He should be,” Margalit said.

  But that afternoon the fat man walked in—like Amzaleg, he did not knock. Through the open door I could see his gray Lark parked behind my uncle’s jeep. It, too, had a dipole antenna.

  I shook his hand foolishly, torn between my sudden urge to flee and my desire to query him.

  “So, young man,” he boomed at me, “we are orphans now?”