The Zigzag Kid

  The words danced slowly before my eyes. I had to stop reading. How did they do it, she and Dad? How did they think this up? When did they find the time to plan such a caper? And where did they come up with those two, the policeman and the prisoner? Could it be that … But … I am such an idiot … I leaned back and shut my eyes: what if they were only actors … I could run through the train and search the other cars … but they’d most likely changed out of their costumes by now, so I wouldn’t recognize them among all the passengers.

  I turned from the letter and stared out the window at the scenery. The whole thing was Gabi’s idea, that much was certain. I felt a little guilty for being so ungrateful after the trouble she’d obviously gone to, but I just sat there, stunned, and kind of gloomy, though I didn’t know why.

  Maybe their extravagant surprise hadn’t left enough room in me for gratitude. If Gabi had had children of her own, I mused, then stopped myself. It wasn’t nice even to think something like that. But she really did seem to enjoy shocking people at times, and liked to say the wickedest things and embarrass them half to death. Dad once remarked to her that it must get kind of tiring, having to be so special all the time, and Gabi flashed back that he spent so much energy keeping a low profile, he was half erased by now.

  Gabi has a dangerous mouth on her, but Dad’s no slouch either: a few well-chosen words from him would cut her like a knife, you could tell how deeply from the look on her face and the way she gasped and flapped her hands, breathless and speechless. And the words would still haunt her years later, no matter how much Dad tried to reassure her that he hadn’t meant it, he had just been angry. But she couldn’t put the insult behind her. He had called her insensitive, said something to the effect that she had the hide of an elephant, too. It was this “too,” this unfortunate allusion to another elephantine feature that made her leave.

  This sort of thing would happen once every few months. Gabi would run out of the house and disappear. At work, she would be inordinately courteous to Dad and about as friendly as a cold fork. She would follow his instructions to the letter and type his reports, but there were no smiles between them, no familiarities. Behind his back, she would phone me twice a day so we could work out strategies. Normally it would take him about a week to break down. First he would start grumbling about the food in the cafeteria, and then he would complain that the shirts he ironed himself were a disgrace to the department, and that our house was filthier than a jail cell the morning after. I knew he was trying to drag me into the fight, so I held my tongue. I refrained from pointing out that Gabi was not our servant, that she only kept house for us out of the goodness of her heart (and because she was allergic to dust). It was obvious to me that he missed her a lot, not merely as a cook or a laundress but as our Gabi; he was used to her being around the house, to her never-ending chatter, her emotional outbursts, and the jokes he tried not to laugh at.

  And he also missed her, I knew, because she made it easier for him to be with me.

  Why this was so, why the two of us needed Gabi to feel close to each other, I can’t explain. We both just knew it was good to have her there, because she made us, him and me, into a kind of family.

  So then we’d have a few more days of sulking and grumbling. And eventually Dad would try to find a pretext to engage her in friendly conversation at work, and she would harden her heart and say that unfortunately his subtleties were lost on her, due to a certain pathological condition of her hide. And he would beg her to return and promise to be nicer, and she would answer that his request had been duly noted and that he could expect her final decision within thirty days. And Dad would shout, “Thirty days, that’s insane! I want to make up with you here and now!” And Gabi would roll her eyes and announce in a voice like the one over the loudspeaker at the supermarket that before entering any agreement, she would present him with her NRP’s, or New Relationship Provisos; whereupon, with head held high, she would exit the room.

  And phone me right away to whisper that the old grouch had surrendered unconditionally once again, and we would all be going out for dinner.

  On these peacetime evenings Dad seemed almost happy. His eyes would shine after a few beers as he recounted the old stories we knew so well, like the one about busting the Japanese con man with the fake jewelry, or about the time he had to share a kennel with a dog for three days, a boxer bitch from Belgium with a pedigree and a million fleas—so he could catch a dognapper who’d crossed the sea to steal the priceless canine. From time to time Dad would interrupt the story and ask suspiciously whether he’d ever told it to us before, and we would shake our heads and say, No no, please go on, and as I watched him I could see that once” upon a time he had been young and adventurous.

  I sat in the train, thinking it would take me weeks to absorb everything—the policeman and the prisoner entering the compartment, raising their handcuffs over me, asking me to decide whether the prisoner had looked into the policeman’s eyes or not, and handing me a gun, and the way my finger twitched on the trigger when I thought the prisoner was about to escape through the window.

  In short, I felt like a couple of kids coming home from the movies, saying, Remember when this, remember when that.

  But unlike these young film buffs, I was not at all pleased. And the more I thought about what had just happened, the more furious I grew. How could Dad stay with a person like Gabi for so long, I wondered. If Gabi had been a real mother, she would have understood what such a prank might do to a kid like me.

  My pride was injured, too, not so much because she had fooled me but because I suddenly realized I was still a child, and grownups could plan things behind my back.

  Dad was definitely an accomplice. While Gabi directed the performance and wrote the actors’ lines, he was in charge of production. First she’d had to convince him that it could be done, and when he remained skeptical, she said it truly amazed her to see a man like him getting so worked up about such a simple operation. I’m sure she used the word “operation.” She knew that would get him. And still he hesitated, I know he did. In some respects he knows me better than she does. I mean, I am his blood, after all. He must have told her that this grand production might be too much for a kid, that the humor would be lost on me. And she laughed and said he should only have one quarter of Nonny’s sense of humor, and that before he got to be such a stick-in-the-mud, he had earned himself a certain reputation—or were all those stories about him just a lot of hot air? So what could he do, he had to prove to her that he was still the dashing young man who used to tear through the streets of Jerusalem on a motorcycle with a sidecar and a tomato plant; and they went on and on, never asking themselves how the poor bar mitzvah boy felt about any of this.

  There was a sour smell of perspiration in the compartment, the lingering smell of the policeman and the prisoner. I wondered how they had planned this escapade. Was it hard to learn the lines, I wanted to ask, and where did they find those costumes, and the ball and chain, and how much did it cost to put on a performance just for me, and how about train fare, the tickets must have been pretty expensive, too, maybe Dad and Gabi had reserved every seat in the compartment to prevent any hitches. This was some big operation.

  Gradually I felt better. After all, they had meant well. They only wanted to make me happy. They’d tried so hard, it was really nice of them … Wasn’t this fun. I sat there, muttering to myself, till I felt calm enough to pick up Gabi’s note again, and then I saw that the writing had changed.

  “As usual, the whole idea was Miss Gabriella’s,” scrawled Dad in big black letters. “Only, once she’d convinced me that you were going to have a perfectly wonderful time, our valiant Gabi suddenly got cold feet—what if it proved too much of a shock for you, and I told her—well, you can probably guess what I told her.”

  That at my age he was already running his father’s business, and that life is no insurance policy.

  “Right!” exulted Gabi’s small round letters. “And since your
father, being a member of the Israeli police force, does not even have a quarter of a business to leave you, but only a fat pile of bills …” (here Gabi sprinkled three drops of liquid on the paper and drew a balloon around them with the words: “The tears of the crocodile amanuensis”) … he is therefore duty-bound to toughen you up as your bar mitzvah draws near, in order to prepare you for the struggles, challenges, and dangers of life. But first, my little fledgling, I must inform you that the meeting with your uncle, the esteemed Dr. Samuel Shilhav, will not take place today as planned. And at this point I shall pause to let you commune with your grief.” Outside, a white-haired farmer with a sunburned face riding across the field in a mule cart was jolted suddenly by the loud whoop that came from the boy at the train window.

  “I am sorry, my dear neglected child, for having cruelly misled you to believe that you were heading for Haifa and the talons of that eminent educator, your uncle. We only resorted to such baseness in order to heighten the surprise and allay your suspicions, and for this we humbly beg your pardon.”

  I, too, bowed humbly before a fleeting image of my big, clumsy dad cracking his knuckles, and Gabi, curtsying like a ballerina with laughing eyes. I was utterly confused by the changes of the last hour: my misery about the trip to Haifa and the trick they had played on me quickly gave way to a thrill of anticipation. I felt like that tank filling up and emptying out in the famous algebra problem.

  Tight, dark letters invaded the bouncy round ones.

  “Thirteen is a special age, Nonny, the age when you assume responsibility for your actions and behavior. When I was your age, because of the catastrophes that befell the Jewish people, I…”

  A long, crooked line across the page here indicated that a certain plump hand had snatched the letter away from the pen, which was becoming lost in reminiscence.

  “Your father forgets that this is not a police briefing,” Gabi’s writing continued, “and I sometimes wonder whether he is in fact so different from his brother Samuel …”

  “Once you reach the age of thirteen you are no longer a child,” Dad’s black pen reiterated, “and though I wish I could be certain that you’ll undergo your transformation precisely then, unfortunately …”

  Here there were three blank lines. I could imagine them arguing in the kitchen, what she said and what he said. Gabi losing her temper and stamping her foot, and Dad insisting that they had to use the opportunity to teach me a lesson, and the winner, as usual, was the stronger of the two.

  “Having persuaded your father to fix himself a cup of coffee, I can now continue uninterrupted,” she went on in a feverish scrawl.

  “Dearest Nonny, your grouchy old dad is right, as usual: thirteen is a special age that marks the beginning of adulthood. I only hope you will be as nice an adult as you are a child.”

  I knew that here she would write: “says Gabi fawningly,” or “says Gabi groveling at the feet of the heir to millions,” as she usually did after expressing affection. Only this time she didn’t.

  “And we both wanted to plan something very special for your bar mitzvah, in addition to the shindig on Saturday and the camera your father promised you. We wanted to give you something money can’t buy, something to remind you of the three of us together, you, your dad, and I, while you were still a boy.”

  Those words, “the three of us,” reminded me of the trouble that was brewing: did “the three of us” mean we were going to be a permanent unit from now on, with Dad’s consent? Or was there a note of farewell in her words? I read them over. Everything seemed momentous to me. I couldn’t quite make up my mind. On the one hand, it was encouraging that Dad and Gabi had managed to plan such a complicated operation together, without any help from me. That seemed a good omen. Well done, bravo! On the other hand, the words had a parting tone I found alarming. “Something to remind you of the three of us together.” What did she mean by that, I wondered. Weren’t we together anymore?

  “And so we came up with this idea. That is, I came up with a modest idea, which in typical fashion your father developed into a major operation, oops, there he goes, pulling the letter away from—”

  The writing changed again. The tug-of-war was over, leaving a large coffee stain in the margin.

  “Justice has triumphed!” proclaimed Dad’s big ugly scrawl. “Let us not waste words! On this journey, anything can happen! Why, you may never get to Haifa! You may end up having the most incredible, hair-raising adventure of your life!”

  It was touching the way Dad imitated Gabi to make me like him better, kind of like a trained bear trying to dance the hora, and though he never laughed at my jokes, I was generous enough to smile.

  And he continued: “Perhaps you’ll meet new friends, or old enemies! Or maybe you’ll meet us! Get ready, get set, go!”

  “But first, how about a little scratch between the ears?” Gabi slipped in, very tiny.

  Nice girl, nice Gabi. I remote-scratched the frizzy hair between her ears, and Gabi purred with her legs crossed in the air and her tongue hanging out, and jumped up to write the following in a single breath:

  “The adventures we’ve planned for you are about to commence, if you so desire. But if, God forbid, you do not, just stay put for the next four excruciatingly boring hours, all the way to Haifa, and when you get there take the next train back to Jerusalem and you’ll never know what you’ve missed.

  “But if you are a valiant youth, rise up, O Nonny the Lionhearted, and boldly meet your fate!”

  Gabi writes the way she talks. Sometimes I think Dad and I must be the only people in the world who understand her.

  “Should you decide to embark on the perilous course we have painstakingly laid out for you, step down to the third compartment on your left (on your left with your back to the window, Columbus, let’s not discover India by mistake!). And what awaits you there? God only knows (and He’ll keep mum, as usual). You will be met by someone, though we cannot divulge to you whether this person will be male or female, young or old, or give you any kind of description. Seat number 3 will be empty and waiting for your little tush. Sit down there, and check out your fellow passengers. Choose one of them to be your partner in the adventure, approach, and say the secret password.”

  “What secret password?” I asked aloud.

  “Shh!” scolded Gabi. “The walls have ears! No … that’s not the password. The password is a question. Choose someone and ask, ‘Who am I?’ That’s all there is to it.”

  “Who am I?” I muttered a couple of times. Nothing easier.

  My God, I shuddered again: look what they’ve cooked up here, and without any help from me!

  “If you make the right choice, the stranger will tell you what your name is, entitling him to act as your guide for the rest of the adventure. He will be eager to regale you in his wild and mysterious way, and as soon as you recover from this episode, you will be sent to your next stop in this game of ours, where you will be awaited by yet another character whose only desire will be to amuse you till your little ears perk up more sharply than ever, and having achieved this, you will be sent to the next stop, and the next, and the next—whereupon … you will find a real surprise!”

  I put down the letter and took a deep breath. Everything had happened so quickly that only now did I begin to grasp the full scope of their plan. How many days and nights had they spent making these arrangements and coaching the actors? Maybe they even wrote a special part for each of them to perform for me, and just for me … Ah hah! I gasped. I tried to read on, but couldn’t, my eyes were getting bleary, and I knew that Dad had planned this the way he planned his police operations: studying every angle, every contingency, every possible and impossible course of action … and I felt proud that they had gone to so much trouble over me, and kind of amazed, too, because I’d always believed they needed me around to communicate with each other, and that without me, they wouldn’t know how to behave, and that it was my responsibility to keep them from fighting, yet now, all on their own
…

  “Nonny the Lionhearted,” wrote Gabi. “Nonny, my Nonny, if you use your intelligence and the discerning eye of the world’s foremost detective to identify the character who awaits you in each car, you will enter one of the most fabulous adventures ever fabulated for a boy of thirteen. And when you leave this train at journey’s end, you will be truly worthy of your age, a high-spirited youth who has passed through an ordeal of cunning and courage. In short—”

  And here Dad grabbed the paper and tooted his own horn in big ugly letters:

  IN SHORT, YOU’LL BE LIKE ME!

  “The important thing is to be yourself.” Gabi closed with a doodle of a kiss, Dad’s square face, and her own round one with a pair of rabbit ears, surmounted by a halo.

  I sat awhile, wondering how Gabi and Dad had managed to transform this creaky old train into a mobile funfair. At this very moment, persons unknown, young or old, male or female, were waiting for me to find them in their respective cars, according to plan. Yes, they were waiting for me, little me, with faces so inscrutable that the passengers next to them would never guess for whose sake they had boarded this train, would never dream that the entire journey was taking place for the benefit of one boy. But if I did not approach and ask my simple question—because suppose I turned out to be not so very brave and high-spirited after all—then they’d sit there in vain, the whole way to Haifa …

  4

  My Debut in a Monocle

  I walked out of the compartment. The left side is the side you wear your watch on (Dad taught me that), the side your heart is on (Gabi), so I turned to the left. Slowly I walked—don’t run—trying to keep a low profile. Craggy hills flew by the window, the rocks nearly grazing the train; as we rounded the bend I saw the caboose behind us, then it disappeared. In those days, the trains on the Jerusalem-Haifa line had closed compartments, four to a coach, linked by a corridor so narrow, a man standing there to look out the window would completely block the way. I, however, being slim, would have had little trouble getting by such a person, who would no doubt have watched me pass out of the corner of his eye, disappointed that I’d hindered him in the performance of his traditional role.