Amos Oz - Don't Call It Night

She stood up, whirling her light skirt, thrusting her fair hair back from her left cheek, as though opening up to me: We're not going to get into trouble, Theo. At least, I might, but you won't. You'll go on being the gleam in the eye. You're not a part of this.

If I were a stubborn man I could easily have explained to her that, even though I had promised not to touch and I was not breaking my promise, strictly speaking any involvement of hers involved us both for the simple reason that we had a joint bank account. Not to mention the three hundred dollars a month that the father sent her to fund the committee, and nobody knew, least of all she herself, what precisely she did with the money. Nevertheless I did not bother. I merely said: Look. These receipts. They're printed anyway. Here they are, on the table, I'm leaving them and you can do whatever you like.

Benizri, she hissed suddenly, that obsequious, brilliantined Levantine, calls you an angel of a man. You know what you are, Theo? A tombstone. It doesn't matter. I've got a headache.

I went back to the hall and continued my ironing. Inwardly I agreed with her: It's hopeless. There won't ever be a clinic for drug addicts in Tel Kedar. Or if there is, it'll close within a month. Nevertheless, it's something she's got to find out for herself, without my help. I've got to be invisible. Although maybe, on the other hand, maybe what I ought to do is locate the Orvieto man and say a few words that'll take this nonsense away from Noa once and for all, making certain she never discovers how I managed to find the crook, what I told him or what I saved her from. But no. I'll wait.

SATURDAY. Three p.m. Theo was lying in his undershirt on the floor of his room with the fan blowing next to him. I was sitting at the kitchen table, with grapes and coffee in front of me, reading an American monograph entitled The Chemistry of Addiction. There has been a debate for several years between two opposing schools of thought about whether drug addiction is an illness or whether it is a congenital tendency to be dependent on so-called psychoactive substances, including those found in tobacco, alcohol, coffee, aphrodisiac plants; in fact in a certain sense one might say that substances that cause dependency can be found in almost everything. A parallel was then drawn, albeit with certain reservations, between drug addiction and known diseases, such as diabetes, that display hereditary factors and environmental conditions that accompany the development of the disease or impede it. An addict who has been weaned off the drug still carries with him a chronic latent problem, that is, he is more exposed than other people to the danger of a relapse, qualified in brackets by the Hebrew expression "liable to return to his evil ways", an expression that I find unfair, as I noted on a slip of paper on which I was collecting questions and objections that occurred to me in the course of my reading. Suddenly Muki Peleg appeared: excited, out of breath, dishevelled, with the flowing locks of the young philosopher from the brandy advertisement, in trendy baggy trousers, with an artistic silk scarf at the opening of his crisp red shirt, a fifty-year-old teenager; with dazzling sky-blue shoes, bearing a pattern of little ventilation holes in the form of the letter B. He begged my pardon a million times over, but he had something really urgent to say. He always has something really urgent to say about everything. If it's not one thing it's something else, but always unpostponable. I sometimes enjoy his utterly unquenchable enthusiasm.

I reached up to button the light dress I was wearing and found that it was already buttoned up. Seating Muki across the kitchen table from me I closed my book, using the page of notes as a bookmark. Despite his protestations I poured him a cold Coke and passed him the grapes. Where's Theo? Resting? Sincere apologies for bursting in at such an unsocial hour, I normally hold Saturday afternoon sacrosanct. But something's cropped up that we've simply got to make a decision on today. By the way, in that green dress you look just like a flower on its stalk. Except that any flower would look like a weed next to you. To cut a long story short, if it weren't for the urgent problem he would go down on his knees here and now, if I would only stroke him, as the legless man said to the armless woman. Jokingly he raised his six-fingered hand and put a finger pistol-like to his temple to illustrate the hopelessness of unrequited love. He was probably trying to be funny, but when he realized he had failed he laughed and said, Never mind, and he also said, I've got this thing going with Linda now. But that's not why I've come. The point is, we've got to tell Theo at once that a fantastic opportunity has come up and it would be a crime to miss it. In a word, I've found a building for us. A palace, as a matter of fact. And it's only eighty-five thousand dollars, and there's no agency fees because I'm the agent, the only condition is that we initial an agreement tomorrow and finalize the contract, hand over the cash and do the transfer of ownership, all signed and sealed with no loose ends, by Tuesday morning at the latest.

I told him to begin at the beginning.

Yes, miss. Sorry, teacher. Well, it's like this. You must know that building all by itself, with the tiled roof, near the industrial zone. Everybody knows it. The Alharizi house. Opposite Ben Elul's garage. The one that's been empty for nearly a year. To cut a long story short, it's like this. There was this television importer called Alharizi from Netanya, when the town was just beginning, who had the bright idea of starting up a sort of exclusive business. A house to let to artists who wanted to commune with the desert and so on. Or to have a good time with a little rosebud on the side, if you've heard of such an option. It very soon turned out that it wasn't such an attractive proposition, there's Elat, Arad, Mizre Ramon, there's no shortage of desert paradises. This Alharizi guy let the house to Desert Resources, who used it to house technicians working on the oil drillings. To cut a long story short, you know how it was, they drilled and they drilled and nothing came of it and so the building stood empty, there was nobody to let it to, and now the gent is in a tearing hurry to sell it. The important thing is to pull out in time, as Snow White said to the seven dwarfs. To cut a long story short, he was asking a hundred thousand but I got him down to eighty-five by promising he'd have the money in his hands this week: the guy's under pressure, there's some story, he's got the law on his tail, don't ask me how I found out, Noa. I've got my methods. The trouble is that the old fart, sorry, got in touch simultaneously with Peleg's Agency, i.e. me, and with Bargeloni Bros, those new agents, the bastards, no disrespect intended to any real-life bastards. And they've got a client of their own, a dentist with his own lab, an Argentinian, a new guy, competition for Nir and Dresdner. Don't ask me how I found out. I've got my methods. Will you get me another Coke? Just seeing you getting up and sitting down makes me thirsty, and that dress like cellophane on a stalk. To cut a long story short, it's like this: we've got a couple of days' lead on them because fortunately for us the dentist is on reserve duty filling teeth in the army. We've got to make our minds up today and get in touch with Ron Arbel so he can ring Nigeria tonight. If the money's available, we must rush round there tomorrow and sign a provisional agreement, and pay up and complete on Monday or Tuesday at the latest. So what do you think: aren't I the greatest? Say something nice. A kiss perhaps? And the property's all checked out. It's clean: no mortgage, no lien, no third party. Never mind what it means. Forget it, Noa. You take care of the pretty side of life and leave the ugly side to me. Just you wake Theo up and we'll pop round together to look at this Buckingham Palace, though actually I ought to tell you to do the opposite, let him sleep so you and I can go on having fun here in the kitchen, at least in theory, as the bread said when the butter spread all over it. Okay. I'm sorry. It just slipped out. To cut a long story short, miss, I'm handing you the clinic on a silver tray. It's quite a lot of money, actually, but weren't you afraid it might take us six months to locate suitable premises or that we might even have to build, which would have cost twice as much and taken four or five years, with all the permits? If we ever got there at all. Aren't you going to tell me I'm wonderful? Well don't, then. You're just mean. You know who really did tell me this week that I'm simply divine? You won't believe it: an Ethiopian woman. A divorcee. A peach. Didn't you know they get divorced, too? My second time with a black woman. Believe me, that was class. Classic class, if you really want to know. Eventually at three o'clock in the morning she let out such a loud scream the neighbours thought it was an air-raid alarm. Only make sure Linda doesn't find out. She's sure to take it amiss. To cut a long story short, we've got to the moment of truth. We've got to get Theo to say something about the state of the building and so on, and then we have to decide if we're going for the place or letting the dentist have it. If you want my opinion we should go for it. And I'm speaking as a member of the committee now, not as an estate agent, I've already told you that as an estate agent I won't accept a penny. Personally I'm all for a quick grab, as the Cossack said to the gypsy girl. Even if we haven't got the paperwork tied up just yet. What have we got to lose? Let's imagine the worst scenario, suppose we end up not getting planning permission. Suppose the clinic never gets off the ground. We can still say perfectly calmly to lawyer Arbel and mystery man Orvieto that the eighty-five thousand are as good as in a safe deposit: if our venture gets bogged down, I'll undertake to sell the property in six months' time for ninety or ninety-five. I'm even willing to let them have it in writing. Well, what do you think of me? Will you say something sweet?