Jonathan de Shalit: Traitor

BAT YAM, PROMENADE, JUNE 2013

It was ten in the morning, and there were few people on the promenade. The restaurant owners were sitting idly outside their establishments, and the walkway’s benches were dotted with old folk with time on their hands. The French tourists had yet to arrive, and school wasn’t out yet for the summer. It was early June, and the humidity was still bearable, but the heat was on. It would be sticky and scorching in just a few weeks. The clear air would turn hazy. The light clouds would scatter and disappear and the sky would take on the appearance of sheet metal. Somewhat out of character, Ya’ara walked along the pedestrian path in a daydream, with a takeaway coffee from the corner of the street in her one hand and her motorcycle helmet in the other, looking for a bench on which to sit, a bench that offered a view of the shipwreck off the coast.

She found one, sat down, and stretched her legs out in front of her, the paper cup clasped between her hands. Tiny gusts of cool air were coming off the sea. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a woman approach her. “May I sit down, please?” the woman asked in Russian. Her voice was deep and lovely, and it sent a tremor of sorts through Ya’ara. There was something familiar about it. She didn’t divert her gaze, and with her eyes still fixed on the sea she said, “With pleasure, here you go, there’s room for both of us.”

“Galina…?”

Ya’ara looked at the woman who was sitting to her right.

“Galina?” the woman asked again. “Or at least that’s the name you used back then.”

Ya’ara froze. Sitting alongside her was Katrina Geifman, Igor Abramovich’s lover, the woman she had met with less than four months ago—it seemed like light-years away—in the icy cold of Dimitrovgrad. She was still beautiful, but had lost much weight, her cheekbones were pronounced, her blue eyes sparkled, and the wrinkles around the corners of her full mouth appeared to have deepened.

“You must think I’m a ghost,” she said.

“I tried to contact you,” Ya’ara said. “I called and called and there was no answer. I was afraid something had happened to you.”

“They took me,” Katrina responded. “I thought I was going to die there, during the interrogation, in custody.” She paused, and her eyes filled with tears. “I wanted to die. That’s the truth.”

Ya’ara took her hand. They were both looking straight ahead, at the sea. White seagulls glided through the air close to the beach.

“But there was someone there who saved me. He smuggled me out. They must have thought he was going to finish the job. To put a bullet in the back of my head. But he took me to his mother’s home. I have no idea why he did it, why someone would tempt fate like that. His mother was a partisan fighter during the Great Patriotic War. An old woman who fears nothing. The heart of an angel. And soft hands. They cared for me as you would care for a baby, and I eventually got back onto my feet. He told me I couldn’t remain in Russia. That they’d find me and kill us both. He gave me a Czech passport he had made for me and money, too. He accompanied me all the way to the border with Ukraine. He drove through the night, and then the following night, too, and sent me over the border. I can still picture him there, just standing there and not moving, the sun rising over the hills, and him just standing there and watching me. And I went. I think he was the bravest man I’ve ever met.”

“And how did you get here?” And why did you come? Ya’ara didn’t voice her second question out loud.

“I wanted to see Galina,” Katrina said, answering the question she wasn’t asked. “I had to. I wanted to get in touch with the one person who forms a part of the sweetest moments in my life. I didn’t know how to find her, but the Bat Yam Artists Association was able to track her down. Someone by the name of Vladislav is still in contact with her. He used to be a friend of Igor. And I wanted to see you, too. To find out where you live I had to remember things I’d already forgotten, and it took a fair deal of patience to learn that you come here at least once a week, to the Bat Yam Promenade.”

Ya’ara felt a cold shiver down her spine. She suppressed the fear that momentarily froze her.

“How was your encounter? Yours and Galina’s?”

“You know how it goes. Such reunions always come with an element of disappointment. But it did me good. It took me back to those times. And she was a lot nicer than she had been back then. Oh, well, she was a seventeen-year-old girl then, at odds with herself, and full of hate for me for taking her father away from her, and worse even, for taking the place of her mother. That’s how children see it. She’s a lot more amiable these days, of course. And you must know that she doesn’t look like you at all.”

“My name’s Ya’ara.”

“I know. They slammed me with it during my interrogation, time and again, between punching me in the face and forcing my head into a bucket of ice water.”

“I’m sorry,” Ya’ara said softly. “If you prefer, you can call me Anna. That was once my name.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart. You helped me to get my revenge on them. It was so easy for them to break me back then. And there are some breaks from which there’s no coming back. So I still need to forgive myself. You have no need to ask for forgiveness.”

“There was nothing else you could have done. They threatened to take your daughter.”

“I don’t know…”

They sat there together in silence for a short while and the sun warmed their bodies. Ya’ara closed her eyes and allowed the sea breeze to caress her. After what had happened, she knew that even if she wanted to, she would never work for the organization again. Aharon would have made sure she’d been marked as an unstable element. Someone who despite her talents couldn’t be trusted. She didn’t want to go back to film school. Even the script she had written for her final graduation project had lost its appeal. The future looked remarkably empty to her.

“What are your plans now?” she asked Katrina Geifman. “Do you have enough money? I can help you.”

“I don’t know yet. I want to stay here for a few months. To wait for the winter. And then I’ll see.”

“Do you have a phone?” Ya’ara asked. “I want you to have my number. This doesn’t end here, on a bench overlooking the sea.”

“I know already that Cobra is dead,” Katrina said after they had exchanged phone numbers. “I saw a picture of him on an Internet news site while I was still in Ukraine. I wanted to know what was happening in Israel and I searched every day. Killed in a car accident. That’s what the report said. He looked just like he did when I used to provide security for the meetings with him. A little older, but exactly the same. I didn’t know back then who he was, only that he was someone important. Now I know just how important. I don’t know who had a hand in the accident. God, perhaps. I’ve seen more than enough through the years to learn not to believe in Him, but I don’t see any other way of explaining it.” She looked at Ya’ara, allowing the silence to ask what she hadn’t dared to voice out loud.

Ya’ara didn’t say a word. Katrina’s question remained unanswered. They sat there on the bench, gazing at the sea. The sun had climbed to a higher point in the sky, its heat more concentrated now, radiating orange. Anyone observing them from the side would have assumed perhaps that they were mother and daughter. But there was no one there to look at them. The promenade was deserted. Strange, Ya’ara thought to herself, as if someone had evacuated the area for the purpose of shooting a movie scene. “I’ll call,” she said to Katrina as she stood and regathered her hair, which shone in the glare of the sun. She picked up the black helmet that had been resting on the bench next to her and started walking. She could still feel the soft touch of Katrina’s hand as she got onto the large motorcycle and headed south with a low growl, which gradually intensified. The wind swept over her face, the blue sea appeared to flash by on her right, and the urban landscape gave way to sand dunes. The sky opened wider, her heart did the same, and she rode on, sucking clean air deep into her lungs. She was on the move.