The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

Not yet. He had other things to do. Hors-d'oeuvres.

Project Untermensch.

The one who'd refused him had set things back, fucked up the weekly rhythm, really gotten him upset.

Stupid sand-nigger bitch, his money hadn't been good enough.

He'd watched her for a couple of days, gotten interested because of her face, the perfect fit for his mind-pictures. Even when she put on the tacky red wig, it was all right. He'd take it off. Along with everything else.

Everything came off.

Then she goes and fuck-you's him.

Unreal.

But that's what he got for improvising, deviating from the plan.

Trying to be casual-that never worked.

The important thing was structure. Following the rules. Keeping everything clean.

He'd gone home that night and punished himself for stepping out of bounds.

Using one of the little dancing beauties-the smallest bistoury-he'd incised a series of curved discipline cuts in the firm white skin of his inner thighs. Close to the scrotum-don't slip, ha, ha, or there'll be a major endocrine adjustment.

Cut, cut, dance, dance, crosses with bent ends. Rotated. One on each thigh. The crosses had seeped blood; he'd tasted it, bitter and metallic, poisoned by failure.

There, that'll show you, filthy boy.

Stupid sand-nigger whore.

A delay, but no big deal. The schedule could be fouled if the goal was kept sacred.

Project Untermensch. He heard children laughing. All these inferior slimefucks-it made his head hurt, filled his skull with a terrible roar. He hid his face behind the paper, concentrated on making the noise go away by thinking of his little beauties asleep in their velvet bed, so shiny and clean, extensions of his will, techno-perfection.

Structure was the answer. Keeping in step.

Goose step.

Dance, dance.

Moshe Kagan seemed amused rather than offended. He sat with Daniel in the living room of his home, a cheaply built four-room cube on a raised foundation, no different from any of the others in the Gvura settlement.

One corner of the room was filled with boxes of clothes.

On the wall behind Kagan was a framed poster featuring miniature oval portraits of great sages. Next to it hung a water-color of the Western Wall as it had been before '67-no sunlit expanse of plaza; the prayer space narrowed by a war wall and shadowed by jerry-built Arab houses. Daniel remembered coming upon it like that, after making his way through dead bodies and hailstorms of sniper fire. How demeaned the last remnant of the Temple had looked, rubble and rotting garbage piled up behind the wall, the Jordanians trying to bury the last reminder of three thousand years of Jewish presence in Jerusalem.

Underneath the watercolor was a hand-printed banner featuring the blue clenched-fist logo of the Gvura party and the legend: TO FORGET IS TO die. To the left of the banner was a glass-doored bookcase containing the twenty volumes of the Talmud, a Mikra'ot Gedolot Pentateuch with full rabbinic commentary, megillot, kabbalistic treaties, the Code of Jewish Law. Leaning against the case were an Uzi and an assault rifle.

An angry red sun Irad set itself resolutely in the sky and the drive down the Hebron Road had been hot and lonely. The unpaved turnoff to Beit Gvura anticipated Hebron by seven kilometers, a twisting and dusty climb, hell on the Escort's tires. Upon arrival, Daniel had passed through a guarded checkpoint, endured the hostile stares of a gauntlet of husky Gvura men before being escorted to Kagan's front door.

Lots of muscle, plenty of firearms on display, but the leader himself was something else: mid-fifties, small, fragile-looking, and cheerful, with a grizzled beard the color of scotch whisky and drooping blue eyes. His cheeks were hollow, his hair thinning, and he wore a large black velvet kipah that covered most of his head. His clothes were simple and spotless-white shirt, black trousers, black oxfords-and bagged on him, as if he'd just lost weight. But Daniel had never seen him any heavier, either in photos or onstage at rallies.

Kagan took a green apple out of the bowl on the coffee table that separated him from Daniel and rubbed it between his palms. He offered the bowl to the detective and, when Daniel declined, made the blessing over fruit and bit in. As he chewed, knotty lumps rose and fell in his jaw. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing thin forearms, sunburnt on top, fish-belly white on the inner side. Still banded, Daniel noticed, with the strap marks of the morning phylacteries.

"A terrible thing," he said, in perfect Hebrew. "Arab girls getting cut up."

"I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me about it, Rabbi."

Kagan's amusement spread into a smile. He ate half the apple before speaking.

"Terrible," he repeated. "The loss of any human life is tragic. We are all created in God's image."

Daniel felt he was being mocked. "I've heard you refer to Arabs as subhuman."

Kagan dismissed the comment with a wave of his hand. "Rhetoric. Hitting the ass across the face in order to get his attention-that's an old American joke."

"I see."

"Of course if they choose to reduce themselves to animals by acting in a subhuman manner, I have no compunction about pointing in out."

Kagan chewed the apple down to the core, bit into the core, and finished it too. When only the stem was left, he pulled it out of his mouth and twirled it between his fingertips. "Sharavi," he said. "Old Yemenite name. Are you de-scended from Mori Shalom Sharavi?"

"Yes."

"No hesitation, eh? I believe you. The Yemenites have the best yikhus, the finest lineage of any of us. Your nusakh of prayer is closest to the original, the way Jews davened before the Babylonian exile. What rginyan do you attend?"

"Sometimes I pray at the Kotel. Other times I go to a minyan in my building."

"Your building-ah, yes, the toothpick in Talbieh. Don't look so surprised, Inspector. When you told Bob Arnon you were religious I had you checked out, wanted to make sure it wasn't just government subterfuge. As far as my contacts can tell, you are what you say you are-that kipah isn't for show."

"Thank you your endorsement," said Daniel.

"No need to get upset," said Kagan genially. "Blame the government. Four months ago they tried to slip an undercover agent-I don't suppose you'd know anything about that, would you? Yemenite fellow, as a matter of fact-isn't that a coincidence? He, too, wore a kipah, knew the right things to say, bless this, bless that-blessings with false intention, taking God's name in vain. That's a major transgression, not that the government cares about transgressions."

Kagan took another apple out of the bowl, tossed it in the air and caught it. "No matter. We found him out, sent him home to his masters a little the worse for wear." He shook his head. "Tsk, tsk. Jews spying on Jews-that's what thousands died for, eh? If the spineless old ladies of the ruling party spent as much time tracking down terrorists as they did harassing good Jews, we'd have an Eretz YLsrael as the Almighty planned it for us-the one place in the world where a Jew could walk down the street like a prince. Without fear of pogroms or being stabbed in the back."

Kagan paused for breath. Daniel heard him wheezing- the man was an asthmatic of some kind. "Anyway, Inspector Sharavi, the minyan in your building is Ashkenazi, not for you. You should be maintaining your noble Yemenite heritage, not trying to blend in with the Europeans."

Daniel pulled out his note pad. "I'll need a list of all your members-"

"I'm sure you've already got that. In quadruplicate, maybe more."

"An updated list, along with each member's outside job and responsibilities here at the settlement. For the ones who travel, their travel logs."

"Travel logs." Kagan laughed. "You can't be serious."