Песах Амнуэль - Zion's Fiction - A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature

In the stairwell I found myself face-to-face with Mr. Eliahu, accompanied by an execution office cop. I was going up, he was going down. “You are extremely lucky, Master Menashe, because Mister Azulay is a real mensch, and thanks to him you may keep staying here rather than live on a bench in the street.”

“He paid you?” I asked. All of a sudden, my face became red and hot.

“He most definitely has,” said Mr. Eliahu. “Paid everything, with arrears interest and also for the next six months—adding a handsome compensation for all your smart-ass shenanigans. A right upstanding gentleman, Mr. Azulay is. I just cannot figure out what he sees in you.”

Max and Co. were going out for a walking meditation. They passed me on the way down. When Azulay came down the stairs toward me, I looked him in the eyes. Shame on him. Did I ask him to pay for anything for me? I’m willing to live with the consequences of what I do. No, rather, I want to live with the consequences of what I do. Sink down, hit the bottom, with nobody to care about me. Now even this was taken away from me.

But Azulay didn’t look away. On the contrary, he looked directly at me in a really annoying way. “You spoiled-rotten piece of shit,” he said to me, aloud. “Say what?” I asked. Max kept going down with the whole troop behind him. “You spoiled-rotten piece of shit,” Azulay said again, this time more loudly. Mor and Hagit turned their heads to look at us.

“You must be thinking you’re something,” said Azulay. Mor grabbed Hagit by that chubby hand of hers and they kept going down the stairs, in a hurry to catch up with the rest of the group. Azulay moved towards me. I suddenly realized he was quite a large man, about as tall as myself, but very broad and well-muscled, with a healthy beer gut dropping down from above his belt. “You think you’re special, huh?” he asked, and his thick black eyebrows came closer as he stared at me. “Why don’t you play alongside with Tony in Florentine , if you’re so special?”

With Azulay standing in my way, I felt not so good, suddenly. He was one step above me, so close I could smell his sour sweat. I only wanted to sit down, maybe smoke a joint, clear my head. I had no time for him. “Don’t you have to go with them?” I asked, smiling. Azulay raised his gigantic, heavy hand and brought it down on my cheek. The sound was not pleasant. My right ear started humming, and my eyes lost focus for a second. Azulay turned away from me and went down a couple of steps in a slow, dignified walk. Then, suddenly, he started running heavily to catch up with the group, which was now way ahead of him.

What’s going on here? Has everybody gone completely bonkers?

When I came back to the apartment, my cheek was still smarting from the slap Azulay landed on me. I found Tony sitting on the floor watching Ricki Lake . “Come on, Ido,” he winked at me. “I’ll treat you to a beer from my private stock.” He pulled out a six-pack of Tuborgs from under the box Max used to sit on when lecturing and took out a cigar from the pocket of the black jacket he was wearing. Tony snapped the cigar’s end in one asinine bite, lit it, and gestured, in a twist of his cleft lip, to come with him to the balcony.

The balcony has always been our apartment’s garbage dump. As part of Max’s efforts to break down Mor’s and Azulay’s egos, all those dry leaves, empty beer bottles, broken furniture, and other junk that used to fill it were all gone. Now the floor sparkled (smelling of orchids, you guessed it). Pots with flowering geraniums (that also smelled like orchids for some reason) were hanging from the ledge, lit by hidden lamps at night. To complete the setup there were two chairs and a plastic table covered in a tablecloth of handmade lace, on which stood a vase full of fresh flowers, replaced each day.

Tony had told Max he’s done enough walking meditation in his former profession and didn’t need any more of it, thank you very much. So Max excused him. Tony used these breaks to have the time of his life.

He asked me to open a can of Tuborg for him. Because of his hooves, he couldn’t do it for himself, despite persistent attempts. He then took it in in one swig. Finally, he let out a lengthy burp and took a drag from his cigar.

“Howzzit going, Ido?” he asked, laying a finely filed, nail-polished hoof on my shoulder.

“What can I tell you?” I said. “Life sucks.”

“Behhh,” said Tony. “C’mon, tell me about it. Four hours of meditation every day, two hours group singing and dancing—and pit-bottom, round-table talks. Getting under your skin, telling you you feel bad because you’re alienated from the world. I’m just an ass, I’m not cut out for this shit. So I cut corners here and there, to make it barely bearable. That’s how you have to take it, one day at a time.”

Tony squashed the can and let it fly in a splendid volley shot to the neighbors’ balcony. Then I opened another can for him, and he swallowed this one, too, in one swig. “So why are you staying on?” I asked.

“You may laugh at me until forever, Ido, but something about this makes me feel good. Can’t describe this feeling—but for the first time in my stinking life, I’m being taken seriously; they listen to me. Maybe they’re a little overenthusiastic, but they really care about me. For the first time I matter to someone, and not just as horsepower.”

Tony spoke real plain, but everything he said went right into your heart. That’s why they liked him on TV. More precisely, that’s one of the reasons. The other reason, of course, was that he was a talking donkey. Since the accident, Tony’s become a ratings buster—and Max realized this real quick and took advantage. TV stars and producers from Channel 2 would beat a path to our place begging Max to allow Tony to appear on their shows. However, Max didn’t actually need this publicity. He’s acquired a lot of following anyway. Therefore, even though he didn’t need money either—he’s rounded up some heavyweight contributors—he demanded incredible sums of them. As he explained to me, hitting their pockets was the best way to bust their egos. Those producers would come out of their meetings with Max with their cheeks wet, having gone through whole boxes of tissue, their souls pure as a baby’s smile and their pocketbooks much lighter.

That memorable Florentine episode, with Tony as the spiritual donkey who makes Iggy see the light, was a hit, a bombshell. Busted all ratings records. The bank account of the Insights of Love LLC expanded accordingly.

I, too, liked Tony. There was something easygoing about him. He wasn’t as fanatic as the rest of them. After a chat with Tony, a small joint, and a few beers, life seemed like something I could cope with.

The Coast Guard has arrived. That’s how I called her privately, in my mind, in my long sessions with myself: the Coast Guard . It started on the beach: “Ido, put on your sun screen!” “Ido, don’t take off your hat!” “Ido, don’t go into deep water!” “Ido, don’t talk to strangers, because who knows what kind of maniacs you can see today at the seaside, now that the country is not what it used to be twenty years ago; then you could walk the streets without any worries. Just read the paper. Only yesterday they killed someone because of an argument over a deck chair.”

“But Mom, you wouldn’t let me go to the beach twenty years ago, either.”

“Okay, what’s the matter with you, sweetheart? You were little then.”

“What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Resting, learning, healing myself.”

“Over here?!”

“Yeah, over here. What’s wrong with over here?”

“This is my place, Mom. I moved here to get away from you. You can’t just barge in without invitation. This is a place where people live, it’s not the Carmel Forest.”