It was an odd sort of scene. They looked like a couple of cartoon characters, the prisoner with his striped shirt and cap, and the policeman with his large hat slipping over his eyes. They stood in the aisle together, rocking indecisively to the rhythm of the train. This, for some reason, made me nervous.
At first they tried to sit in their reserved places, the prisoner beside me, the policeman facing us, but they were obliged to lean forward on account of the handcuffs. And then all at once they stood up and started rocking again, which seemed to relax them so much that the prisoner’s head drooped down, brushing against the policeman’s shoulder, and the policeman appeared to be about to fall asleep. I wanted out of there, fast; I kept wishing there were an adult around, because those two didn’t seem quite like adults to me, or like kids either, for that matter; they were sort of undefinable.
The policeman shook himself out of his peculiar lethargy and whispered something to the prisoner. I couldn’t hear what exactly, but I knew it was about me, because the prisoner threw me a sidelong glance: “No way!” he shouted in a whisper. “You can’t do that! These seats are reserved!”
The policeman tried to calm him, pointing out that since the car was practically empty, it would be perfectly all right under the circumstances to sit in unreserved seats. But the prisoner wouldn’t hear of it. “Rules are rules!” he bristled. “If you and I don’t obey them, who will?” And as he stamped his foot indignantly, I noticed the ball and chain around his ankle, just like in a book.
I’m getting out of here, I thought. This is not a good place to be.
“Who’s going to notice if we sit in somebody else’s seat for a couple of minutes?” the policeman flashed back in an angry whisper, with an ingratiating smile at me, the crooked smile of a conscience-stricken jailer. “You won’t report us, kiddo, will you?”
I could only shake my head in reply, but I noted the “kiddo” and held it against him.
And they sat down to the right and left of me.
Why, with a whole car to themselves, did they have to sandwich me in like that? Their wrists, double cuffed, were practically on my lap. I was pretty scared. They seemed to be up to something; they were trying to intimidate me, but at the same time they were ignoring me. There was a long silence. My eyes kept darting back to my knees, over which two arms were swinging to the rhythm of the train, one hairy and thin, the other smooth and solid, the arm of the law and the arm of the lawbreaker, with the arm of the law looking distinctly weaker.
What was there to be afraid of, though? I mean, the law was on my side, practically on top of me, in fact, and yet I felt as if I were falling into a mysterious trap, as if those two were implicating me in some conspiracy.
But now they seemed to relax a little. The policeman leaned back and hummed to himself, twiddling his mustache with the fingers of his free hand as he strained to reach the high notes. The prisoner stared out the window at the passing scenery, the rocky hillsides of Jerusalem, and heaved a sigh.
“If someone arouses your suspicion, keep cool and wait. Don’t talk too much. Let him do the talking and go about his business while you sit tight. All you do is quietly lay a trap for him and eventually he’ll reveal his intentions.” That’s what I was taught by Dad, my guide in this particular field. I took a deep breath. Here was my big chance to test myself in a real-life situation. I would ignore them, pretend everything was normal, until they made their first mistake.
Look to the right. Look to the left. There they sat. The whole thing seemed like a huge mistake, but I still couldn’t figure out what it was.
Okay, I have to get ready for the meeting with Uncle Samuel, I told myself. Because last year he talked at me for two whole hours, and I didn’t think I could go through that again. For two whole hours I watched his pouting mouth open and close under his mustache, until I could see it over his mustache, too. I was undoubtedly the subject of every article he’d ever published. For months, for years, he had been sitting in his office, writing against me. I bet he even kept a portrait of me on his desk with the legend: Wanted Dead or Alive by the Ministry of Education. And now I would be falling right into his hands—a man like him would never miss such an opportunity. And his stuffy office would fill up with puffy pairs of lips opening and closing and spouting out more and more uncles of the puffy-lipped variety. Books and journals fluttered around me and rustled to the rhythm of my name. I was afraid I might die there of didactic poisoning.
I couldn’t make out what he was saying anymore. He seemed to be accusing me of following the prophets of Baal and Astarte, or of taking part in the seventeenth-century pogroms of Chmielnicki. He had the whole of history on his side, and I would have confessed to anything.
Finally, after two mustachioed hours, I remembered Gabi’s words of advice. “Cry,” she had whispered in my ear the night before. “If things become unbearable, start blubbering and see what happens.”
Look to the left. Look to the right. Nothing. The policeman and the prisoner were sitting perfectly still, staring off in opposite directions. Maybe there was nothing unusual going on here, after all. Maybe I was simply nervous about traveling alone. Or maybe they, too, had learned how to wage a war of nerves.
Uncle Samuel, I prompted myself; remember how it was last time you visited him.
I had never had any difficulty crying myself blue, and with Uncle ranting at me there, I was pretty miserable. It was easy enough to cough up the bitter lump of all that had happened to me, or that I had been told, or that I longed for.
I started sobbing, soft little sobs at first. And to make myself even sadder, I thought about the things Dad used to say, like, that he didn’t know what to do with me, just when I seemed to be growing up I would suddenly regress, and how had a man like him produced a son like me? And he was right, but didn’t he know how hard I was trying? Then I started to cry in earnest, because nothing ever comes out the way I mean it to. Even my sadness didn’t come out the way I meant it to, crashing into the spectacle of Uncle Samuel’s feet in the sandals he always wore over heavy gray socks, and that tie around his neck, even in summer, and his Terylene trousers worn ragged by the generations of pupils reared upon his knees—how sad yet comical it all seemed.
So I found myself laughing and crying, blubbering and sniveling, half for real, half not, experiencing a strangely pleasing blend of emotions, as though eating chocolate behind the dentist’s back, and I sobbed with remorse, self-pity, and overwhelming gratitude before this courageous man who was fighting single-handedly to save my wicked soul …
Uncle Samuel stopped talking. He gazed at me, his face gently radiant. Through the dimness I could see the glow of an awestruck smile over his mustache. “Well well,” he muttered, his hand fluttering tentatively over my head. “I never thought my words would have such an effect on you … the simple outpouring of a fervent heart.” And suddenly he thundered “Yempa!,” which I took to be the victory cry of a distinguished educator over the forces of darkness. He rubbed his hands together and left the room. From the hall he called again, in that same curiously lighthearted way, to his housekeeper, Mrs. Yempa, and asked her to look in on me and help me calm down.
But I had resorted to tears already during the previous Shilhavization. What would I do this time? Gabi had whispered no new secrets in my ear to help me face Uncle today, large as life.
She was alone with Dad now. She was going to leave us.
I couldn’t sit still between the two silent weirdos anymore. I had to get up right away, that is I tried to, but startled them to their feet, so that they had to raise their handcuffed fists together to let me by. They stood in my way, swaying drowsily again like a pair of droopy-lidded ducklings, till in my exasperation I blurted, “Hey, why don’t we just switch places so the two of you can sit together?”
My voice sounded choked and shrill, yet they smiled happily enough as they twirled me around in an effort to move past without bumping me with their handcuffs. On we danced, arms flapping, unt
il finally they figured out a way to sit together. I collapsed on the seat facing them.
“Quit staring!” barked the policeman, shaking a finger at the prisoner.
“Honest to God, I wasn’t staring!” swore the prisoner, hand to heart.
“I saw you eyeing me before!” the policeman upbraided him.
“I swear on my daughter’s life, I wasn’t looking at you! Did you see me looking at him?”
His question was addressed to me. Why me? What did I have to do with it? Now the policeman leaned forward with him, waiting for my answer, waiting so intently he began to chew on his mustache. Their movements were disturbingly theatrical, yet strangely fascinating, too. I wanted to get out fast, but I couldn’t move.
“I … I think you were looking at him just a little,” I sputtered.
“Aha!” The policeman raised a triumphant finger. “You look at me one more time and you’ve had it!”
The prisoner stared fixedly out the window. We were passing through a pine forest. A herd of goats grazed in the underbrush. A she-goat reared up and started munching on the foliage of a young tree. The policeman looked away, in the direction of our compartment door. I was afraid to look in either direction, but I was also afraid to shut my eyes. I only wished I could disappear.
“There! You looked at me again!” shouted the policeman, springing to his feet and falling back on account of the handcuffs. “You looked!”
“I swear on my daughter’s life, I wasn’t looking at you!” cried the prisoner, likewise springing up and waving angrily, then falling back on account of the handcuffs.
“You’re still looking!” roared the policeman. “You’re staring me in the eye! Stop it!”
But this time the prisoner held his ground. He pushed his big face right into the policeman’s. What was this? What was going on between them? Some weird kind of staring match: they gawk at each other, then look away. The prisoner leaned forward, and the more the policeman tried to avert his eyes, the more the prisoner would squirm around him, trying to catch his eye. He was practically on top of him now!
“Hey … let me go …” muttered the prisoner.
“Shut up!” the policeman grumbled back at him. “Shut up and look out the window! Not at me! Out the window!”
“Let me go …” whispered the prisoner in a new insinuating voice. “It wasn’t my fault… you know I had no choice …”
“Tell it to the judge!” snarled the policeman, and gritted his teeth.
“Give me a break, I have a little daughter …”
“Oh yeah? Well, so do I! Out the window!”
And still the prisoner stared fiercely at the policeman, slowly forcing him to turn his head around. It was a distressing sight, and it filled me with a sense of foreboding: the policeman kept trying to resist. I watched him as he struggled, hunching his shoulders to avoid the prisoner’s gaze. But it overpowered him. It bored into his head until gradually he surrendered, relaxing his shoulders with a deep sigh, squinting at the prisoner and snickering boyishly, till his eyes began to look weary and glazed.
“You’ve had a long, hard day, Avigdor …” cooed the prisoner. “You had to chase me down all those alleys, shooting and yelling, and everything by the book …”
The policeman rolled his eyes.
“Sometimes it’s hard to be a lawman …” whispered the prisoner. “So much responsibility … never a moment’s rest…”
Now I, too, was gaping. That’s just what Dad used to say when he came home from work in the evening and flopped down on the couch; those were his exact words whenever he complained, either to me or to himself, “so much responsibility and never a moment’s rest.” At times like that I used to imagine having a mother who would massage his stiff neck. But we didn’t have a mother, we had a Gabi, and she wouldn’t dare.
The prisoner reached cautiously into the dozing policeman’s belt and pulled out a large set of keys, at least ten of them. He chose one and unlocked the cuff. His liberated hand did a merry dance in the air. There was a deep red imprint around his wrist.
“It was worth being cuffed just for this,” he said.
Then he pulled off his striped shirt and prisoner’s cap and set them down on the seat beside me. And I froze. He was going to bolt now, I would be an eyewitness to a prisoner’s escape, yet for all my experience and training and my dad and that, I couldn’t so much as move a finger.
“Would you please hang on to this for a second?” he addressed me pleasantly, and handed me the black gun he had just taken from the policeman’s holster.
I recognized it at once: a Wembley service revolver. Dad had one just like it at work, one I’d held in my hand at least a thousand times. I’d even shot blanks from it at the firing range, but I had never been in a situation like this before, facing a real criminal with a gun in my hands. What was I supposed to do? Kill him? My finger twitched on the trigger. How could I shoot him? What did he ever do to me? I had only one wish—to see the round face of Uncle Samuel as soon as possible. I would run straight into his arms, transformed forever into a model citizen.
“Thanks, kid,” said the prisoner, taking back the gun and sticking it in his belt. And then he carefully unbuttoned the sleeping policeman’s shirt and slipped it off, as though he were a baby. The policeman, Avigdor, slept on in his undershirt and never even dreamed of waking up. You could nudge him, shake him, bounce him around—and still he went on sleeping! I was furious: Dad hadn’t been late for work in twenty years, he always took on the most dangerous cases, even when he was sick with a temperature, while this crooked cop here …
The prisoner dressed him quickly in the striped shirt and set the prison cap on his head. Then he slipped free of the ball and chain, locked it around the policeman’s ankle, squeezed himself into the uniform, put on the police hat, and turned to the window.
“A good detective thinks like a criminal.” I knew that, too, and I knew exactly what would happen next, that he would open the window and jump out of the moving train, to freedom. Do something! I ordered myself. Jump! I told myself.
But nothing happened.
The prisoner looked out at the hilly countryside rushing by, then took a deep breath of freedom, heaved a sigh, and sat down beside the oblivious policeman. Gloomily he slipped his hand back into the open cuff that dangled from the sleeper’s wrist and locked it. Once again they were bound together.
“Wake up! You fell asleep!” blared the former prisoner, nudging the policeman with his shoulder.
The policeman sat bolt upright and glanced around bewilderedly.
“Huh? What happened?” he asked. “What did I do?”
“You fell asleep,” shouted the former prisoner, drawing closer, with his visor in the policeman’s face.
“I did not fall asleep,” muttered the policeman. He fumbled with the handcuff, then felt down his leg to the ball and chain, stopped in astonishment, wrinkling his brow in an effort to remember something, gave up and slumped back in his seat like an empty sack. A few more ghastly moments went by, and the ex-policeman turned to the man in the uniform sitting beside him.
“Let me go …” he whispered.
“Shut up!” barked the big former prisoner.
“I’m innocent,” pleaded the ex-policeman. “You know I never …”
“Tell it to the judge,” drawled the other indifferently.
“The judge?” repeated the policeman. He sat hunched over on the seat with a drooping mustache. It suits this guy to be a prisoner, I thought. This was the most profound thought I could dredge up just then.
“Give me a break …” he started again with a mournful smile. “You know, I have a little daughter at home …”
“Oh yeah? Well, so do I.” The retired prisoner cut him short, glanced at his watch, and said, “Get up! ’Tenshun! Make it snappy!”
“Where to?” asked the policeman, turning pale.
“To the courthouse!” ordered the prisoner. “Forward march!”
“Already
?” whispered the policeman, shuffling his feet. The prisoner bullied him out of the compartment and closed the door behind them. There. It was over. I still couldn’t move. For a second I saw the former prisoner’s face again, framed in the glass of the compartment door—a smiling face, a friendly face, in fact. He looked back at me and put a finger to his lips, as though asking me to keep mum about all that I had witnessed. One moment he was there, the next he was gone.
That was that.
Even now, some thirty years later, the memory of that moment troubles me, and I’d like, if I may, to let off some steam and tell you that in the next chapter I plan to introduce something new: from here on in, every chapter will have a name, a name that hints at its contents.
Or a nickname.
I wished the train would turn in its tracks. I wanted to go home, to Gabi and Dad, especially Dad. I mean, he is an expert on crime, and I wasn’t up to this sort of thing yet, sorry to disappoint you.
And then I saw the envelope on the former prisoner’s seat. But what was it doing there? It wasn’t there before they entered the compartment. And the weirdest part was that I saw my name written on it in a large, familiar scrawl.
3
Tenderhearted Elephants
“Greetings to the Bar Mitzvah Boy, and may the gods grant you length of days and brevity of nose. I hope you were not too upset by the little prank we played on you, your dad and I, and that even though it may have been somewhat alarming, you will, ere long, forgive us, your unworthy servants.”
What was I supposed to do? Scream? Stick my head out the train window and shout, “I am such an idiot!” Or write a letter to UNICEF complaining about the way Dad and Gabi were treating me?
“But before you write your letter of complaint to the United Nations,” Gabi went on, “consider this: first, the good folks there are tired of deciphering your hieroglyphic scribbles, and second, it is customary to give the accused a chance to speak before sentencing.”