Assaf Gavron - Almost Dead

‘Do you want money?’ he’d asked.

‘I want to meet, and to hear the whole story.’

‘And after you hear the whole story?’

‘Then I’ll decide what to do.’

I ordered hot chocolate, he ordered tea. Outside the café window it was clear but cool. My hearing was almost back to normal. After several weeks of constant pain, the discomfort from the wounds to my calf, my thigh and my lower arm was beginning to subside. I spent a couple of weeks with Mother and Father, and when I came back to Tel Aviv, Dafdaf came and stayed in the flat along with my brother, who flew over from Maryland to be with me. Between them they dealt with every phone call or text or email from Noah’s Ark and Left and Right and all the rest of them. They said no to everything for me. Including Duchi.

‘Are you going to go to the police?’

I gave Warshawski my coldest stare. You could see the fear crawling all over him.

‘I don’t know. I want to hear the whole story.’

‘Who are you? Who are you acting for?’

If I wanted to know anything, I had to maintain his fear. I couldn’t say who I really was: it was the card I had to keep hidden.

‘We are whoever we are, and we work for whoever we work for. I can’t tell you who it is but let me give you some friendly advice: don’t mess with us. It won’t be worth your while.’

He asked for a cigarette. I raised my eyebrows in surprise but lit up for both of us. His hands were trembling. ‘I’m not supposed to smoke,’ he said. I waited.

‘I discovered my wife was having an affair. There were signs. Her skin had a glow to it. Dvora always said I had the eyesight of a hawk. I also have an extremely good memory.’ He exhaled smoke, with eyes lowered, the cigarette vibrating in his jolting fingers. ‘What’s the point?’ he said. ‘What is the point of this? You won’t understand.’

‘So you realised your wife was having an affair.’

‘It was just…forget it, young man. My marriage was over before that. It was just the last straw. It hurt. This country…’ There was something very unsettling about Warshawski. I was beginning to wonder if it hadn’t been a mistake to come here without Bar. I felt out of my depth.

‘Tell me what happened with Dvora,’ I said.

‘One day I came home in the middle of the day. I never do, though I live near the hospital. It was a time when I was…I was tired. As I was arriving at our building, I saw him leaving. Dvora was at home. She was wearing a robe. She works at the shop at the Tel Aviv Museum. She doesn’t come back home just like that in the middle of a working day and put on a robe. She said she didn’t feel well, but I’m not a fool.’ Warshawski rubbed his eyes under his glasses. ‘I didn’t say anything. I turned around and walked out on her there and then. I saw him four or five days later in a hospital corridor. He was wearing a nurse’s uniform. I didn’t recognise him at first, but my memory got there in the end. The label on his chest said “Tomer”. All I could find out from the hospital was he was called Tomer and worked part time in physiotherapy. But something was niggling me. He was familiar from somewhere.’ Warshawski looked at me, enjoying his own sleuthing. ‘His brother’s greengrocer’s. America Fruit and Veg.’

‘What did Dvora tell you?’

‘Listen, you won’t understand. I told you, young man. You don’t want to hear the story of my life. It would take me a week. It would…’ He was groping for words. ‘Our marriage was already finished. It had happened before. If I hadn’t bumped into him in the hospital corridor, I wouldn’t even have…’

‘OK. I understand,’ I said, though I didn’t entirely. ‘Let’s not get into it. Go on.’

‘So I went to the greengrocer’s and it all fell into place. I told Amin there was a nurse in the hospital who looked a lot like him. He says it’s his brother. “Tamer.” “Tamer? Not Tomer?” “He calls himself Tomer in the hospital so there won’t be any problems, you understand?” I did. I got out of there and walked a few steps down the street before I flopped down on a bench. I wanted to throw up. I was ashamed. I was, I was…’ Warshawski raised his head and looked at me but I merely stared back at him. ‘This country…Listen, I don’t know your opinions. In the hospital I don’t dare say anything. There is a witch-hunt against anyone who dares to say that this country is falling into the abyss. That we need a strong leader, someone who knows how to get things done. Have you ever read Grey Wolf , the biography of Kemal Atatürk?’ I shook my head. ‘Do you know who he is?’

‘The, uh, the Turk.’

‘Read it, young man. The subtitle is “An Intimate Study of a Dictator”. I’ll tell you something else.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Read Mein Kampf . If you want, I have recordings of Hitler’s speeches I can lend you.’ I looked around me uncomfortably, but the café was almost empty. ‘I don’t need anyone to tell me about Hitler, but only a blind man could fail to see that what’s going on here is another Weimar. The humiliation, the shame, the betrayal of the people by weak governments, the left-wing control of the media, people escaping into sex, hedonism, anything, the fear… ’ He fished another cigarette out of my pack.

‘Are you sure those cigarettes are good for you?’

He laughed. ‘I’m sure they’re not. Cheeky boy.’

I didn’t want to hear any of this. The fear seemed to be transferring itself from him to me. I could see it leaving his body, could feel it settling in mine.

‘I thought about going to Amin’s store at night and burning it down. I thought about the ways I could hurt Tamer himself. Poisonous rats were scurrying round my head, gnawing at me, making their plans. Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with them. I have no problem with them selling me fruit and vegetables, as Amin does. But I remember one attack, in Jerusalem. I sat in front of the TV and I wanted someone to…You sit in front of the TV and you can’t understand this impotence. Screw what the world thinks. Screw everything. The Arabs are making fools of us. We must teach them a lesson.’ Warshawski was finding his voice. He wasn’t hesitant any more — his confession had begun to evolve into a speech.

He had still been a baby when his family emigrated from Poland to Israel at the end of the Second World War. He didn’t remember Europe but he remembered his childhood in Israel very clearly: Independence Day celebrations, the constant Arab attacks on Hadera. His father and mother were both in the Jewish underground, the IZL, during its heyday. In the quieter early sixties he was a radio operator in the army, serving at Zrifin Base. To see the first settlers celebrating Passover night in Hebron and then, months later, in the second settlement at Sebsastia had made him burst with pride. The nuclear medicine came naturally: a mother who wanted her son to be a doctor, a son too obedient or meek to oppose her. The degree, the apprenticeship, the wife, the kids. ‘Kids?’ I said. He nodded, and didn’t elaborate. He was a riddle. He had a straightforward, regular, respectable side, but he was detached from it. His real self seemed to be with Mein Kampf and the teaching of lessons to others.

He ordered another cup of tea from the waitress, and took another cigarette without asking. His fingers were still shaking — not fear, but an old man’s palsy. I reminded myself of the email Bar had sent me that morning: ‘Binyamin-Moshe Warshawski = the Arab did her’. It didn’t seem funny any more.

‘And Giora Guetta?’

‘I met him in Jerusalem. I went to teach a course in Hadassah. They’d installed a new system, a wonderful machine. Our department in Ichilov had already been using the same system for a year — we were the first to get it. So I was the leading expert in the country. It’s a Positron Emission Tomography system — it combines positron tomography with a particle accelerator. We were one of the first in the world to use it. A unique system, very complex — it gives a complete map of the body, its pathologies, its…never mind.’ He laughed, seeing the look on my face. ‘I had to travel to Jerusalem for three days, and I preferred to stay in the King David. Better than driving back and forth every day in that traffic. Guetta worked there as a security guard. I didn’t notice him the first day: you never notice the faces of security guards. But on my second morning, we got talking in the lobby. He was getting something from the drinks machine and he’d come up a shekel short, so I gave him one. It was a particularly warm day, at the end of the summer. Nearly a year ago, now. Guetta said, “I owe you one” and I waved my hand and said, “Come on, you don’t owe me a thing. Drink. Enjoy.” And then that evening I was thinking about it. Jerusalem always depresses me. And I’d been thinking about Dvora and this kid…’ He was remembering it. ‘When I came back from Hadassah the next day, I asked him if he’d like to join me for coffee in the lobby after his shift. He gave me a look. I had to tell him I wasn’t like that. “But,” I said, “I might have a job offer for you.”’