"Where are we?"
"General Hospital, West Roxbury. They called me, said you gave my name. I couldn't figure out how you managed to do that when you were unconscious. They said you were in a road accident. Somebody brought you in. The doctors say you've got a severe concussion and possible internal injuries. Doesn't look like a road accident to me."
"Hey, mister, you awake?" A new voice had joined in the conversation. It was deep and rough. Not a member of the hospital staff.
"Leave him alone," Eric began.
"I'm not going to bother him," the voice answered quickly. "Just being friendly."
I turned to the owner of the voice, pain shooting through my whole body. Next to the bed was a middle-aged man with curly gray hair, large blue eyes, and a pleasant smile, maybe too pleasant.
"Hello," he said, "I'm Bill. I'm in for a head injury. Those broads won't let me go home. What about you? What are you here for?"
"I'm David," I said. I needed a few friends in this place. At this moment in time, I wasn't annoyed with my new pal's disabilities. "Someone thought it would be fun to beat me up."
"I was afraid of that," said Eric.
"Trying to peddle your drugs in his territory? Set your girls up -" Bill tried to show sympathy.
"Enough," Eric cut in, the smile on his face like that of a kindergarten teacher, something I'd never seen there before. "I'm very glad you've made friends. Now, if you would be so kind as to excuse us..."
"Sure, I'll be so kind," Bill said, adding with a grin. "But you gotta know that once they bring you in here, you're in for life. When were you born?"
"Excuse me?"
"When were you born? Just tell me. You must remember."
"1963."
"No, your birthday."
"June 13th, 1963."
"Sunday!" he said, his face lighting up.
He was right. My father was in New York for the weekend; my mother was escorted to the hospital by the driver of the taxi she had to call. This childlike man obviously had a rare talent.
"What about you?" he asked Eric, the grin still in place.
"What difference does it make?" Eric answered. "What I'd like to know is what day of the week I'll die."
"Give me the date," Bill said, "and I'll tell you."
"Tomorrow," Eric said, his voice getting progressively louder. "Now, I have to take care of David. Tomorrow, I'll tell you when I was born, and when my father was born, and my mother, and my stepmother, and my father's mistress, and the schnauzer we had in Vienna, and my cactus plant. Okay?"
"Okay, mister, okay, it's cool. But not the cactus plant. I don't care much for plants. They’re cruel. I just wanted to show you a trick. You gotta watch your temper, old man. At your age it can be dangerous. I'd talk to a doctor if I was you."
His face disappeared from my field of vision. I heard him shuffling out of the room.
We didn't speak for a while. I had no idea that breathing could be so hard. Eric kept hold of my hand, saying nothing.
"Are there guards here?" I eventually asked.
"To protect you or to protect them from you?" He sounded weary. "I don't know much about your business, but I don't think so. If they did this to you on purpose, they're probably convinced they did a good job and think you'll be out of commission for the near future."
Exerting considerable effort, I turned to look at him. He seemed very tense and sad.
"When they called me," he said, "they said someone had brought you in after a hit and run accident." I had never seen him look so old before. He already had his fill of trouble and pain. It wasn't fair for him to have to take care of me now.
"Hit and run?" I repeated.
He nodded.
Hit? Oh, yes. Run? Not necessarily. I asked him to move closer. "Don't worry about me. I've got to get out of here!"I whispered.
Tears welled up in his eyes. I think he feared for my sanity, but I had no choice. It was all up to him now. I had no way of knowing who in this hospital was aware of the real circumstances of my injuries and was still keeping me under surveillance.
"Please," I whispered, "you've got to believe me. Physically, I'm not in such bad shape. I have to get out of here."
"My poor boy," he answered, "I think you're crazy, but I still believe it's your right to destroy yourself if you want to. I've been out of the persuasion business for a long time."
He smiled sadly and helped me up. He stuffed my clothes under his shirt, equipping himself with an instant paunch that looked pretty natural on him. If it hadn't hurt so much, I might have smiled. I could walk, but breathing was still excruciatingly painful and an invisible cannon continued to fire agonizing volleys in my head. Our arms around each other, we shuffled to the men's room. I was glad we were in a city hospital. There's never enough staff in these places to keep an eye on all the patients. I went into a stall that reeked of Lysol and urine.
"Need any help?" I heard Eric's grainy voice through the door.
"No," I whispered. "In the meantime, you figure out how we're going to get out of here without running into interference."
My clothes were torn and stained with blood. I put them on with a sense of repulsion. I heard something crinkling in the shirt pocket. My mother's letter had survived the encounter with the Mental Home staff. When I came out five minutes later, Bill, the oddball date genius, was standing there, giggling.
"I see you catch on fast," he said. "So you decided to make a run for it?"
"That's right."
"Way to go! When I first got here I really believed they wanted to cure me. I'd get out too, if I had somewhere to go."
"Okay," Eric said to him, "let's go over the plan. David and I are walking out. If a nurse comes from the direction of his room, stall her. I don't care how. Got it?"
"Of course I got it," Bill said, offended. "I'm no idiot! But you still have to tell me."
"I know." Eric agreed right away. "January 20, 1920."
"It was a Monday," Bill shot back right away.
"You’re damn right, genius. Let's go now."
I leaned on Eric's arm and limped very slowly out of the bathroom. Putting one foot carefully in front of the other, we started down the broad, soiled corridor.
Behind us we heard Bill stop two nurses coming down the hall and ask them when they were born. I was wondering whether we had been right to recruit him for this mission.
"God protects the innocent and they protect us," Eric said, as if he had read my mind. Once he was out of the stuffy depressing hospital room, his natural high spirits returned.
We heard the nurses say something to Bill and then giggle in surprise when he replied. "Give me an arithmetic problem with seven figures. Even multiplication or division," he begged.
"So you’re a Rain man , huh?" they giggled again.
With the last of my strength I dragged myself to the elevator. We were on the fourth floor. Elevators in hospitals are accursed contraptions, especially when you're waiting for one. An eternity or two passed, during which we were joined by two squeamish women, an amputee in a wheelchair, and an impatient intern. I wondered when someone would notice I was gone.
The elevator finally arrived and the doors opened noisily. Inside were a patient on a gurney, two orderlies, a food cart and a dolly of garbage bags. There wasn't one square inch of free space. The doors closed, making a racket, and we went on waiting. Each of the two women, followed by the intern, decided that if they didn't push the button personally the next elevator would never come. Eric began softly whistling a gypsy melody. I looked down the hallway.
The nurses had left Bill behind and an insistent orderly was demanding his right to enter the room, ignoring Bill's attempts to strike up a conversation. Bill stood in the doorway, blocking the entrance.
An empty elevator finally arrived and we were swallowed up inside. It stopped, as we might have expected, on every floor as it descended to the lobby, but this nightmare also came to an end eventually. The hospital entrance was jammed. Eric leaned me up ag
ainst a column and hurried out to bring the car around.
"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," he warned before he left.
For a long year, which the clock insisted on marking off as minutes, I waited by the main gate, deliberately averting my eyes from the people rushing by. I stole only a quick glance at the mental home next door. It looked threatening and degenerate. Eric finally pulled up in his twenty-year-old Chevy and helped me in. I lay down on the back seat, hurting and woozy. Silently, he took off, and I knew he was heading for his house in Brookline. I flinched in pain with every pothole or bump in the road. Somewhere along the way I fell asleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When I awoke the next morning I found Eric sitting by my bed. He must have been there the whole night. I grinned and he nodded doubtfully, distrustful of the smile.
"You won't be able to pull one over on me again," he said, but I kept my lips turned up until the worried look began to fade from his face. He got up and went into the kitchen, where he started his normal breakfast routine. Apparently, he decided that a green salad would do me good.
"Healthy or ailing, it's all a matter of the right food," he chatted at me from the kitchen. "Maybe a lust for life as well, but that, of course, also depends on the right food. There are two, maybe three, secrets to making a green salad. First, you have to wash the lettuce thoroughly. Second, never use a knife. The proper way to preserve and release the vitamins and the flavor is to tear the leaves apart by hand, and graze every bite for a long time, like a horse does. See how healthy they are?"
I don't think even Eric believed that. The third "secret" was the dressing. Eric used only a mixture of mustard, olive oil, and lemon juice, which he added just before serving. He tossed the salad a few times and then added, "Both lettuce and olive oil are very good for reducing cholesterol. I, for one, don't care if it's the good kind or the bad kind - not at my age. Cholesterol was discovered too late for me. When I was a young man, a good dinner there in the Carpathians meant thick beef soup, a little paté de foisgras, a big slice of bread, turkey with cranberry sauce, roast lamb with squash, roast duck, chicken paprikash, some more squash - this time with cheese - cherries and coffee. After a dinner like that, you have a good reason to feel content. To feel like a worthwhile human being."He came back into the room carrying a tray with a large bowl of salad and a cup of coffee. From the longing in his eyes, it was obvious he had been speaking with more than just a touch of nostalgia.
When I finished eating, I stuck my hand into the pocket of my shirt. The letter wasn't there. Sometime during the night Eric had changed my clothes. I rose up on my elbow and was about to call him when I saw the white gleam of the envelope on the small table he had placed by my bed. I picked it up, but didn't have the strength to open it. Instead, I called the all-powerful head of the Jewish community. It was time for one final - or so I hoped - effort to clear up this affair and rescue Kate.
"Are you alright?" There was sincere concern in Allie's voice.
I didn't have time for polite conversation. "Great," I answered. "Remember Kate? She's gone. Snatched either by the Americans or the Israelis. You're the only person I know who has good enough contacts on both sides to get her back. She never hurt anyone."
"Is anyone after you?"
"I think they're all out to get me now, but for no good reason. They're trying to keep sweep very nasty affairs under the carpet, and they think if I disappear it'll be easier for them to hide their dirty laundry."
Silence from the other end. "Where are you?" she finally asked.
I had an instant of doubt - remembering what Eric had said about Allie exchanging secrets with the consul - but there was no time for hesitation. I had put my trust in Fay five minutes after I met her, so how could I not trust Allie, who I'd known all my life? I also remembered her remarkable resourcefulness and her dedication. When the time came, she could be a real Jewish mother at her best.
"Brookline, where else?"
"Meet me in half an hour at the House of Pancakes," she instructed, and hung up.
Five minutes later I was standing in Eric's shower, letting the hot water stream over my body. The shower was welcome and hypnotic. As I soaped myself, I tried to plan my next move. "What you can't get by force, you can get by coercion," Eric was fond of saying, without really meaning it. In fact, he was one of the finest diplomats I'd ever known, and was very good at getting what he wanted by exercising an enviable talent for persuasion and enormous personal charm. Up to now, I'd tried getting Kate back by rushing blindly into things. Maybe it was time to open negotiations. Eric had the charm, but Allie had the connections. I wrapped myself in the thick pastel towel Eric had given me and had a hunch I was now on the right track.
*
The House of Pancakes was my kind of place - but not Allie's. It was designed like an imitation Swiss chalet, but the waitresses dressed like Tyrolean maid hens looked too tired to be of much use at that hour of the morning. The coffee and pancakes, on the other hand, were fresh and delicious. It was obvious Allie didn't want to be seen with me in the places she usually frequented. She bravely ignored the truck drivers and bleached blonds that filled the restaurant and chose a booth as far as possible from the street, where she might easily be recognized. I told her bits and pieces of the story, but didn't mention Gadi. Atypically for her, she listened in silence. At one point her eyes revealed actual shock.
She was out of her element - important people, endless receptions, amiable small talk, the need to move fast to get into the group shot with the governor, the senator, or the president of the country. Things were different here. She hadn't even found time to make her face up properly. I felt sorry for her. Here, without make-up, she looked every day of her sixty-plus years.
"Damn fools!" she spat out softly when I fell silent. "Damn fools! Israel can't seem to get anything right anymore. Poor woman. Somebody has gone out of his mind and clearly no one can stop him. How dare you recruit a young Jewish boy to spy on the US Defense Department? Can't you see what can happen?"
"He did it for a good cause," I tried. "And who gives a damn that he's Jewish, except for you people? If a Chinese American was caught spying, I bet it wouldn't matter to any other Chinese American."
Allie was paying no attention to me at all. She seemed to be talking to herself: "You'll alienate the entire Jewish community. How can you compare us to Chinese Americans? Don't you understand that the history of Israel is our history? It's a history of love, marriage, alliance. If we didn't love Israel, if we didn't see our greatest hopes and dreams realized in your country, then it really wouldn't matter to us at all."
Your country - suddenly she considered me as an Israeli. I didn't know quite what that meant. "Allie", I said, "you need Israel. It's the foundation of your whole organization, your power, your donations."
She stared at me with a trace of repulsion. "We don't need you anymore to get people to donate. They'll pledge the same amount, maybe even more, for local Jewish community centers, swimming pools, saunas. We'll find another depressed community to save, maybe in Belarus, Iran, Ethiopia. We can get along fine without you!"
I didn't respond, but she seemed to supply her own answer when she said, "But it won't be the same anymore. We wanted so much to see our reflection in your country, so much..."
"What about anti-Semitism?" I said softly. "What's America going to be like ten or twenty years from now? Do you really believe the Blacks or the Hispanics will ever learn to love you?"
"Don't try that patriotic bull on me again," she snapped. "Look where it got you this time."
It's not my fault, Allie, I thought, but aloud I said, "It's more than patriotism; it's the dark side of the national struggle for survival. Our people were always the most professional," I recited.
"To hell with your professionalism," she said furiously. "People today would sell their mothers for five hundred dollars or less just to keep up the image of that crazy `professionalism.' Show me one person who says he's a real
pro and doesn't wallow in his own huge ego." She pushed the coffee cup away from her in rage. "Don't you see, we always believed this was a story of true love that had developed into a mature relationship with the necessary compromises and tolerance and satisfaction. How naive we were! The truth is, you never grew up. We still have to clean up after you. Just like changing your diapers. We'll come through this crisis, one way or another, but there'll be a scar. And who knows, maybe it will develop into incurable gangrene."
Allie's half-maternal, half-medical outlook was tiring me out. "Are you going to help me get Kate?" I asked.
"Sure," she answered, and a stone was lifted from my heart. She could say whatever she wanted, but when it came to action time, she was there for me. Now she had taken it upon her highly capable and sympathetic shoulders to deal with what had turned out to be a much more tangled and tacky story than it had originally appeared. I hadn't been sure that her personal interests, her affection for me, and her memories of my father would overcome the political implications of this very sensitive affair, but they seemed to have won out. "That poor woman didn't hurt anyone, and the sooner we can get her out of there the better," she said. "But there's one thing I need first," she added, catching me unawares. "Help me get a hold of Yitzhak."
I remained silent; I knew she meant the Minister of Defense.
"I have to talk to him urgently before we do anything," she went on. "He may be the only politician I know who's not good at lying. I never understood why you people kept giving him the most important jobs, as if you didn't have enough good people. I'm beginning to see now why. He's the only one who can help us now."
There was nothing more to say. I knew Allie very well: she wouldn't say anymore or settle for any less than what she had asked for. She was determined not to trust anyone except the Israeli Defense Minister, whom she had considered one of her best friends for many years.