The Last of the Wise Lovers

  Then I remembered there was something else, and I had noticed it at The Society for Proper Nutrition and Care of the Body- when I had wandered into the office with the large desk and a map of the world on the wall. Then I remembered there was one other time when I had noticed the same something: it was at your house - and then, too, the thought had flashed through my mind and disappeared. What was it? Something I'd heard? Seen? Smelled?

  I sat on the bed and tried to concentrate. My thoughts kept returning to your housekeeper Dorothy, for some reason. Had I been looking at her when the thought had crossed my mind? And if so, why? Was it something she'd done? Something she'd said? Something she'd been wearing? After several minutes of this I gave up. I went to the window and looked outside, intensely annoyed. I knew I'd remember this detail long after it had ceased to be important to me.

  For ten minutes or more I stared out at the darkness, my mind wandering aimlessly; and then, without even trying, as if some great processor in my brain had finished chewing up all the data and finally spit out the answer, I remembered: the carpet.

  It was a completely insane hypothesis. Was there really some connection between the golf balls I'd seen strewn on the carpet in that office at The Society for Proper Nutrition and Care of the Body and Dorothy's complaining to me, when I was at your place, about your carpets getting wrecked by your nightly golf games? I ran to my desk and thumbed through the notebooks again, trying to fit this new detail in any place I could. It wasn't a perfect fit, but for the most part it worked pretty well, and that was enough to give me an idea who had been behind it all: who had threatened Mom, who had controlled her, who had been her `wise lover', and who had employed the guy in the blue Chevrolet. I still couldn't explain why - or how - the man had done what he had, but I had a fair idea who he was.

  It was such a far-reaching conclusion, and so hard to digest, that I just threw myself on the bed and stared at the ceiling, stunned. A little while later, for no apparent reason, my eyes welled up with tears and I felt betrayed, cheated - and pitiable. But not for long. All of a sudden I was overcome with an earthshaking sense of release. After all that had happened, after my unjustified suspicion of Dad, my anger at Mom, and especially my fumbling for days in a tunnel of darkness, I finally, finally knew who it was all about. I didn't know what it was all about, but I knew who. I hadn't guessed; I knew! I was so excited I got up and started to pace the room. I walked briskly back and forth, literally bouncing off the walls. Things - significant and insignificant - seemed clearer and simpler with each passing minute. The night Mom had gotten out of a car at the end of the street, the pills, the conversations with you, with Mom, the way she'd been sitting in Temple, oblivious to everything around her...

  My next thought was that I had to get out of there. Not to waste a minute. I stripped the pillow of its case and stuffed the notebooks in it. Then I tried the door. It was locked. The only other option was the window. I opened it. The ground was about five feet under me, which explained why none of the guards thought I'd try to escape through the window. Clenching the pillowcase between my teeth, I stuck one foot out the window and onto the drain pipe. Then I pulled out my other leg and pressed myself against the wall of the house.

  I had often climbed into my room this way when I'd come home late or forgotten my key. Now I discovered that it was harder to climb down than up. I slid most of the way down - it seemed like the whole house shook. I could see one of the guards through a first-floor window. He looked unperturbed. Apparently they couldn't hear the noise from inside. Carefully I crawled around the house.

  I'd gotten to the front - almost to the garage door - when someone right next to me said, "Where do you think you're going?"

  It was the second guard. For the umpteenth time I discovered just how careful you have to be when you're dealing with professionals. I broke into a run. I made it to the middle of the front lawn before he caught up to me and whacked me on the back.

  I whirled around and pounded my fists into his face, his chest, his balls. I had the advantage. His prowess had been learned in a course for gorillas, but mine was the result of two weeks of pent-up anger, fear, and tension - plus being a pretty good athlete. We rolled on the grass and tried to hurt each other as much as possible. Finally, he grabbed a fistful of dirt from one of the flower beds and tossed it in my face. Half blind, I staggered to my feet and shoved him backwards into the basement window - which shattered and caved in with him. The other guard must have figured out that something was going on.

  He came out on the kitchen porch and shouted, "Jack? Hey, Jack!" I dug a piece of slate out of the path and hurled it at him. It hit him square in the stomach, and he doubled over. I grabbed the pillowcase, notebooks and all, and ran toward the street.

  At first every bone in my body ached. Then I must have broken through what athletes call the "wall of pain" because all I felt was more and more power surging up from inside, bolstered by the knowledge I had longed for: who was on which side, who to be wary of and why. When I got to the deli I stopped in the middle of the parking lot, gasping for air. Suddenly, I felt weak. I didn't collapse, I just sat down on the asphalt and breathed the way you should after a great strain: two breaths in, one long breath out.

  A car that had been parked, half hidden behind a billboard, turned on its lights and came toward me at considerable speed. I got up and started to run again, but of course the car was faster. It passed me and cut off my path so that my next step landed me on the hood. The driver got out, ran quickly around to the front of the car and opened the passenger door. I tried to get up and break away, but he grabbed my arms and pushed me into the back seat.

  Before closing the door he said, "It's a good thing you showed up - we'd planned a major operation to get you out of there." His voice was familiar and reassuring. From the back window I could see two other cars move out of the side streets and flash their headlights.

  "What about Mom?" I asked.

  "Don't worry. Everything's been taken care of. We've got quite a few hours of driving ahead of us. It's best you get some sleep."

  Suddenly I felt an overwhelming desire to give in to my exhaustion and to the sense of security, like I had years ago as a kid.

  "Ok, Dad," I mumbled, escaping into sleep.

  *

  The next morning I awoke in a bed, with only a vague recollection of a very long ride. I examined the room inch by inch. It was almost empty except for two beds, a night table, and a TV set. In the bed next to mine Dad was asleep; he was fully clothed and a newspaper was folded over his face. Quite a lot of light filtered in from behind a curtain that covered one wall. I got up and pulled the curtain aside a bit. The sun was shining right in my eyes, above a wide plain and a straight road that stretched as far as I could see. Dad's car was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a small Japanese car stood in the parking lot.

  "This is Pennsylvania," Dad said in back of me. "This is where we have to wait."

  I turned around. He lifted himself up on the bed and sat leaning against the wall. The notebooks were on the night table beside him. The pillowcase had been tossed onto the floor.

  When I looked at it he said, "We can't go back there ever again."

  If that was the case, then this was the only memento I had from the house. I picked the pillowcase up off the floor.

  Dad said, "Leave it. Our guys'll clean up after us and get rid of all the traces." He opened the night table drawer, took out a very worn-looking Israeli passport and threw it to me. My picture was in it, and my name was listed as Eli Nahmias, age 21, from Jerusalem.

  "What about you?" I asked. "Are you a Nahmias, too?"

  "I'm a Holtz. Moshe Holtz."

  I screwed up my face.

  "You preferred Jenkins...”

  I threw a glance at the notebooks.

  "I read them," he said. "All of them."

  My ears were burning. There was a medicinal taste in my mouth. I thought of all the things I'd written about him, about Mom, about the others
.

  "They weren't meant for you."

  "A pity. Much pain could have been prevented."

  I was silent.

  "But I don't blame you. I know how hard it is."

  I looked at the rug.

  "I wonder whether you know the truth."

  "I think so," I said, uncertain.

  "Let's hear it," he said commandingly.

  In that room, with his feet up on the bed, he wasn't at all the guy I'd known at home. There was something authoritative and energetic about him that I liked better with each passing minute, though he seemed like a stranger - and perhaps even a little dangerous. Suddenly I felt a twinge of my former suspicion. This time it seemed like he was trying to back me into a corner.

  Apparently he sensed what I was feeling, for he smiled and said, "I'll write it down on a piece of paper. You do the same. After you read what I've written you can decide whether or not to show me what you've written...”

  We tore out the first page of the Gideon's Bible that had been lying on the night table and rent it in two. Dad wrote something on his half and folded it over. I did the same. Dad sailed his folded piece of paper over to me. All that was on it was a name.

  Your name.

  I threw my note over to him. He didn't even bother to open it.

  "When did you find out?" I asked.

  "Yesterday," he pursed his lips, "but I had no illusions before that, either. It's been quite a while since your mother and I were a loving couple; but I didn't think it was Harry."

  I was silent. I'd never had such an open conversation with him before. I didn't know what to say.

  "He even managed to fool you," he said empathetically. "It was a clever bit of work for him to ask you to write down everything you knew at one shot so he could decide how to extricate himself, who to blame and with whom to side...”

  "Do you hate him?"

  He took a deep breath and said simply, "Yes."

  I tried to decide what I thought of you.

  "Especially," Dad added, "because all this time, the whole time all of this was going on, he was so flawless, so very wonderful and ...” he pursed his lips again, perhaps to hold back a wave of emotion.

  That was the first time in all the years I'd known him that I saw something of what went on inside him. It aroused my pity and my empathy and even made me think that perhaps my sensitivity, which had always been ascribed to Mom, was actually something I'd gotten from him.

  Nevertheless, I couldn't help noting, "Mom's like that, too, disguising her weaknesses pretty elaborately...”

  He sat silent.

  "And you always went along and covered up for her...”

  "She was also the source of much good...” he said with a bit of longing. I guess I must have looked doubtful, because his longing turned to embarrassment, "... you see, I wasn't exactly a Don Juan, and she - she was beautiful, cultured, she had class - I could only dream of a woman like her. Her attention to me, her consent to marry me, our life together, your birth - all these made something of me...” Suddenly I understood a little better the story of their first meeting, at that exhibition. It seemed that was the juncture where each had encountered the road that led to what he lacked most.

  My pensiveness disturbed him. He tried to get me to understand some of the anger he felt toward you.

  "When I read how he sat across from you and explained that it was possible to see things a different way, all the while pumping you for information about Mom and getting you to promise you'd let him know every step you took...” he slammed his fist into the pile of notebooks. "How is it you didn't make the connection between that guy's showing up at the club and the conversation you'd had from the pay phone not ten minutes before?"

  No matter how I longed to identify with him, I couldn't really be angry with you. The phone rang. Dad waited five rings before lifting the receiver. He listened to whoever was talking on the other end, uttering only a final, "Good".

  After he'd hung up he said, "In a little while we'll know what's up with Mom."

  "She's at some sanatorium. He sent her...”

  "Not any more. Our people whisked her away from there a few minutes before the police showed up. Right now, she's on her way to a plane."

  "What about us?"

  "We wait here."

  "Isn't it dangerous?"

  "Perhaps. But that's the deal I was able to strike." There was a flash of pride in his eyes and for a moment he seemed like my good old Dad, the hotshot. "We don't leave until your mother is in a safe place."

  "What did you promise in return?"

  "Silence. We know quite a bit - you, in particular...”

  "I know very little. Even now I still don't know who the driver of the Chevrolet was, who put the heat on Mom, who...”

  "But you know about my activities. Since the Pollard affair, that's exactly the kind of information the Americans are itching to get their hands on, and exactly the kind of information we can't afford to let out...”

  "Does this mean you're putting the squeeze on your friends?"

  He smiled tensely. "In a sense, yes."

  "And they won't take revenge on you later?"

  "My career is over, anyway."

  I felt awful.

  "I'm sorry," I mumbled, "I...”

  "I should have been more careful."

  I respected him for not blaming the one who had really betrayed him: Mom.

  "Where does she want to go?"

  "I don't know. She's been talking about a separation for a long time. I'm sure she has a plan."

  Our eyes met. I'm certain the same thought passed through our heads at that moment: she hasn't got any plans and her talk about a "separation" is just a lot of hot air. He shrugged his shoulders, got up and turned on the television.

  "But where will she go?" I asked. The noise of the television drowned out my words. Suddenly I was afraid I'd never see her again, and it felt abysmal; like death. On the screen a car salesman was extolling the virtues of the new Mazda.

  "Turn it off," I choked.

  "The news will be on in a minute," he said drily, decisively, and I wondered if this was how things would be from now on, and what would become of us - where we'd live, what we'd do - and whether it would be possible to get some sort of pardon for Mom after all.

  Then a picture of the Temple flashed on the screen. Dad turned up the sound. Both of us listened attentively. The whole story was there, but with a few essential alterations: New York City Police had not yet succeeded in capturing the unidentified youth who had broken into Temple Beth Hashem two days earlier and shot off a gun in the middle of Rosh Hashanah services. According to some of those present, he had shouted anti-Semitic slogans. Others claimed to have heard him shout anti-Israel slogans. He had been detained by security guards but had "escaped from their custody" several hours later. Then came the usual responses: someone from the Israeli Embassy denounced the event, someone from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith protested, the New York City Police issued an official apology and so on and on. No one mentioned Mom, Dad, you, or me. Dad turned off the TV.

  "Not a bad version. Very smooth. And most important: there's no one who can possibly refute it, not even that poor, confused -"

  "Aunt Ida?"

  He looked at me, uncomprehending. "No, that librarian, Miss, uh --"

  "Ms. Yardley?"

  "That's it, Yardley. We owe her quite a lot. She saw you sitting on the library steps when she left that concert with everybody, and watched you throw something into the trash. She waited until you'd gone and then fished out the crumpled slide, brought it to the police, and lodged a complaint about theft, and destruction of public property. Someone there had had enough sense to ask for the catalog number of the missing slide. She gave the call letters of several art and science slides that had been stolen or taken out and not returned during the last year, but that particular slide didn't fit any of them. Yardley didn't give up. She announced that she would not leave the police stati
on until the complaint had been officially filed. The detective who was handling her tried examining the slide under a magnifying glass, and when he saw the top secret classification he immediately notified the C.I.A. Luckily for us, someone managed to warn us in time...” his fist landed on the mattress, hard, "but damn it we were so close to getting it all, and at such a low price...”

  I thought back to our ride to Kennedy Airport and what he had said about a `small, sneaky bunch of bastards' and the threats to Israel's existence. It sounded convincing, in retrospect.

  He added, "In a sense, that hurts me even more than what happened to your mother. Everything was over between us, anyway, and if she hadn't have fallen in love with Harry, she would've eventually gone off with someone else... but professional betrayal...”

  All of a sudden I didn't understand what was going on, as if I'd walked in in the middle of a movie.

  "Professional?"

  He got up and placed a hand on my shoulder exactly as you once had, until I suspected he might unwittingly be imitating what I'd written in the notebooks.

  "You don't understand any of this, do you?"

  I shook my head.

  "Let's start from the beginning. Who was your uncle? How did he earn his livelihood?"

  "Medicinal herbs, vitamins, health food...”

  He snorted in disdain. "Those were just his covers. The warehouses, the drying and grinding plants, the groves in South America, the fields in the Far East - they brought him very little revenue, some years he even lost money on them. The thing he really traded was information. That was what he really did. He bought information wherever he had connections, and he also provided some general services for various agencies - the C.I.A., the NARCS...” I tilted my head until my cheek brushed against the hand that was on my shoulder. There was a softness in his voice that I'd forgotten, that same softness which he'd used to tell me bedtime stories so many years before.