The Zigzag Kid Read online

  “Best of all, today and tomorrow you and I will do great things!” rasped Felix in the voice of Grandpa Noah.

  “Like what?” I asked warily, and immediately repeated the question in Tammy’s voice so no one would suspect anything.

  “Perhaps we make this world more exciting.” He laughed. “When people hear what we did, they will say, ‘Oo-la-la! Such finesse! They were so daring, those two!’ ”

  “But what will we do?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know. You decide. Anything. There are no limits! No laws! Only courage! Nerve! You must to dare.”

  Hah. I must to dare. Easy enough to say. But what do I really want? To sneak into the movies? To break into the teachers’ lounge at school? To steal the skeleton from the science room? I realized these wishes would sound pitiful to a man like him. I had to try harder, to liberate myself, to be worthy of Felix, to take risks, to be crazy, to be a criminal. I must to dare …

  Should I climb up to the roof of one of the embassies and change the flag, as Dad did once before he joined the police force? Or steal a zebra from the zoo and ride away on it?

  I wanted to do something new, something all my own.

  The heavyset waiter who had been serving us approached our table again, leaned over, and removed the bottle of pink champagne from the bucket of ice water. He poured more sparkling wine into Felix’s glass, I was still on my first. The bubbles danced in it. I’ll never forget the moment at the beginning of the meal when the waiter popped the cork with a loud bang and champagne gushed out of the bottle …

  Life sure is different at home, I thought. If I were home at this hour, Gabi would already be gone and Dad and I would be in our rooms, with everything peaceful and quiet. I would be playing table soccer against myself or leafing through a catalogue of service revolvers and police equipment, or doing calisthenics, or just lying in bed, sucking candy, thinking of nothing at all, deep in reverie, with my eyes closing and my finger tracing the scratch on the wall—I could almost feel it with my fingernail now—a scratch the shape of a thunderbolt, which I had put there, and which I would dig into whenever I felt the need to cry; Dad would be in his room, reading the paper (he’d started to wear reading glasses of late, but didn’t like being seen in them), or working on his case files, or phoning headquarters every five minutes to check on the patrols. Then one of us—usually me, because I was always hungry—would start to fix supper. When it was just the two of us, we ate simply: mushroom soup from a mix, canned corn and chickpeas (and meatballs for Dad). Side by side, in contented silence, we would work at our respective tasks, listening to the Hebrew-song radio program we both liked so much. Sometimes I would tell him things that happened at school, but he never really listened. I could tell him things that didn’t happen, make up children’s names, lie to him, and he would only look at me distantly and sigh. It was hard to imagine how I would feel the next time I was home at this hour, now that I knew how exciting life could be in places like this restaurant.

  “I see you have trouble deciding, little Tammy?”

  I smiled at him dreamily. “Yes, there’s so much I—”

  “Fine. Think slow. No hurry.”

  Again I drifted off, slowly stroking my pigtail. What should I ask for? How far would I dare to go? I was totally unprepared for this, for a fairy godfather like Felix to come along and offer me three wishes. Every time I tugged at the pigtail, my wig would stretch, right over my forehead, and that felt good. It tickled. Now what should I ask him for? What did I want to do most of all?

  To stay here in the dream. To sink into it as though it were a featherbed. And to feel a little homesick.

  Because on the days when Gabi stayed with us, the days she didn’t have classes in cinematography or beginner’s French or how to feel full and lose weight fast—in short, on a Sunday or a Wednesday, we would all be in the kitchen together, fixing supper, eating and talking, and arguing. Sometimes I would just sit there and let them go at each other. That’s when they seemed most like a real couple. Dad would start nearly everything he said with “Look—uh—Gabi,” as if he had trouble remembering her name, or as if her name were “Uhgabi,” and she would get back at him by calling him “dearest” or “apple of my eye” or “flower of my youth.” On rare occasions, Dad would tell us about his problems at work. Once, Gabi helped him solve the case of a diamond polisher who kept getting robbed. (It seems the diamond polisher was using Dad’s coat pockets to hide the stones. As soon as Dad carried out his daily search of the other employees, the diamond polisher would pick his pockets, sell the diamonds, and claim the insurance money, to boot.) After supper we would wander into the living room to read the papers, and Dad would put his feet up and smoke the daily cigarette Gabi allowed him. And she would go back to the kitchen to make the special Bedouin coffee you have to bring to a boil seven times, and from there she would inform us noisily about the latest world news, and then she would corner me and ask about school, who liked whom in my class, and whether we did the latest dances at parties yet (as if I knew). That was the kind of thing that used to thrill her when she was a girl.

  Then at around ten o’clock, by which time Dad and I were already exhausted, she would suddenly decide to tackle our closets and take out the winter clothes or the summer clothes and sort them in piles for ironing, folding, mending, and the house would be filled with flying, floating, and flapping garments, and Gabi, her pants rolled up to her knees and her cheeks flushed, would sing Beatles songs as she loaded the washing machine, or ironed, or mopped the hall, running to the kitchen between chores to fix us the treat rated seventh on the international YUMTUM scale (yummy in the tummy): instant chocolate pudding, which only Gabi knew how to make so smooth, without the yucky lumps. And meanwhile, she would order Dad to wash the dishes and hang out the laundry and throw away the old newspapers that were cluttering up the house; me, she would send to straighten the big mess in my room, and Dad and I, like chastened slaves, would grumble about her and make faces behind her back whenever we met between the hall and the bathroom, but what choice did we have, born for a life of toil, hooked on the instant pudding only she knew how to make without lumps, and at midnight the three of us would collapse, with the house fit again for human habitation and the silence broken only by our three spoons scraping the last drop of pudding from the bottom of our dishes, and my lids would droop, and Dad would forget himself and put a hand on her shoulder and kiss her forehead as though I weren’t there, but what did I care, let him kiss her, I wished he would, and now the day was over and I curled up on my chair so that he would carry me to bed in his strong but (for me) gentle arms, and now I am sound asleep, but who just kissed me so tenderly and was that an expression of friendship between two pros?

  As though from afar I heard Felix whisper: “But now you must to dare! You must to think big, my Tammyleh! Think in color, like cinema, like theater!”

  As he pronounced the word “theater,” a firecracker went off in my head: what a jackass I’d been, or rather, what a jenny ass. But I didn’t dare tell him my new idea. I was afraid he might think it was stupid, that I was a real jerk for blowing my chance to become a daring criminal and requesting presents for a girl instead.

  “Presents for someone, perhaps?” asked Felix with a smile that made me worry he could see everything on my face; but if I had such a thin skin, how come he didn’t realize that I knew who he was?

  “Yes …” He smiled, leaning back contentedly. “I see everything on your face—is something for your lady you want. How lovely! Like what was his name, Don Quixote, who fought for Mistress Dulcinea!”

  Even I, who’d never bothered much with books as a child, knew that once upon a time, a not so beautiful lady in the village of Toboso had inspired Don Quixote to set out on his adventures.

  “So what you say, Tammy?” Felix pressed me with a sly twinkle. “Have we decided yet who will win your courage? Who is your beautiful lady? Felix can keep secret!”

  “Gabi,” I blurted
.

  “Gabi?” he burst out, aglow with laughter. “I expected to hear you name prettiest girl in your class, not your stepmother!”

  “Gabi is not my mother, step or otherwise. She’s Gabi!”

  “Gabi, then. Beg pardon. So you are her champion.”

  “Well, first I thought of Zohara,” I lied, “but Zohara is dead, and no one else has offered to be Gabi’s knight, so—”

  “I understand!” Felix raised a finger. “Gabi you say, Gabi it is!” I felt childish and silly. Why didn’t I name some girl I knew, like Semadar Cantor, or Bathsheba Rubin, the rival queens of the class. But I didn’t like either of them or want to serve in their name.

  But Zohara. Why hadn’t I thought of her first?

  “You give me big surprise!” said Felix. “You are very fine gentleman for Gabi, her true knight. Ladies will love you for this, take it from Felix …” And then he added: “You make me feel new, I am like new man.”

  Me? Him?

  “So we offer our courage for Mistress Gabi.” He shook my hand across the table. “What special present would you like to bring her? How about small diamond or modest cruise to Cyprus?”

  “No … she gets seasick, even at the beach …” I mumbled, and as for a diamond, that would be too grandiose for Gabi. I stared down at the table. I shrugged my shoulders as if to say I had no idea what she might want. Because I didn’t know how to tell him without feeling like a total idiot.

  “But surely there is one thing above all that she wants,” Felix prompted, and by now I recognized that tone of his which said: “Don’t be ashamed to dream, ask for everything, for what is possible and for what is not. You must to dare!”

  I started to giggle. “I know this is silly, but… No, never mind, it’s ridiculous.”

  Felix leaned toward me. His eyes lit up. “Ridiculous is my middle name,” he said guilefully. “I am world champion at being ridiculous.”

  “Well,” I said offhandedly, “actually, there is this actress Gabi likes, I mean, she’s a great fan of hers.”

  “Actress, you say?”

  “Yes, in the National Theater. Lola Ciperola.”

  A spark of light? A warning flash? What was that sudden gleam in his eyes? And did he really prick his ears like a panther?

  “Lola Ciperola? Ah yes—I know this name—I even met her once.” His eyes looked like narrow blue slits now, and I knew he was withdrawing into a lively dialogue with himself, a vigorous debate. But soon he was back again.

  “Yes, Lola— She was famous even in my time! When I was young, she was queen of Tel Aviv.” And his arms swayed over the table in a graceful dance as he sang: “ ‘Your eyes shine / Di-a-monds / From the quay, you wave farewell—’ Ah yes, Lola sang as well as acted, and she danced, too—she could do everything!” Again his voice faded in contemplation. “Only I didn’t know she is still popular with young people like Miss Gabi—”

  Here was my big chance: I stretched my legs and told him that Gabi did a great imitation of Lola Ciperola, that she often made me laugh and cry with scenes from Lola’s plays. There were a number I even knew by heart, thanks to Gabi.

  “So, Miss Gabi is great fan of Lola’s?”

  “Yes … and she sings ‘Your Eyes Shine’ just like Lola, same movements and everything, you can hardly tell the difference. Anyway, Gabi says that if she had a—uhm—a scarf—no, forget it.”

  “No!” His voice resounded and his smile grew wider. “We forget nothing! You must to tell me everything! Now what about this scarf? This scarf is Lola’s?”

  Oh the hell with it, what did I care?

  “Sometimes Gabi says, jokingly of course, that if she could somehow get hold of Lola Ciperola’s scarf, she, too, could become an actress or a singer, anything she wanted. Oh, never mind.”

  “Lola’s scarf?”

  “You see,” I endeavored to explain, “Lola Ciperola always wears a purple scarf in her pictures, whether she’s at home or at the theater or anywhere, it’s her trademark.”

  “Yes, this I know. It has always been so—Lola’s purple scarf— Did you see it once?”

  “Once?” I beamed. “Eleven times!”

  “Oho! And how is that?”

  “Mostly at the theater,” I answered. “Three times Gabi took me to Romeo and Juliet, twice to Crime and Punishment, once to Blood Wedding, and four times to Macbeth. And once I actually met her in person, on the street in Tel Aviv.”

  “You meet her by chance?”

  I hesitated. This was supposed to be our secret, mine and Gabi’s. Not even Dad was allowed to know.

  “By chance. We were waiting near her house, and she came out.”

  “By chance you wait near her house?”

  “Yes—we just happened to be—”

  We had waited for her maybe fifty times before, but she appeared only that once.

  “And did you speak to her?”

  “We almost did. Gabi asked her what time it was, but she didn’t hear. She was in a hurry.”

  How Gabi’s hand on my shoulder fluttered as Lola Ciperola walked by! We had been waiting for an hour and a half by the bushes in front of her house in Tel Aviv. We almost froze, it was so cold, the clouds were low and heavy, but suddenly the whole world turned to gold, and there she was in the back of a cab, wearing a broad-brim hat. She waited for the driver to open the door, put a long, shapely leg out of the cab, declined his hand, and said in her hoarse, majestic voice: “You may charge it to the theater.” And away she went, like a queen, with her purple scarf floating out behind her. For almost a whole minute we stood within touching distance of her, which is why we waited for her so many times after that, spending hours in the heat and cold and rain and wind, our umbrellas blown inside out and our hearts pounding with disappointment, but we never stopped trying on our excursions to Tel Aviv.

  “And did Lola not speak to you?”

  “No, she was in kind of a hurry.” Gabi had pushed me right in front of her, but a woman like Lola Ciperola is too busy to notice what goes on at her feet. She didn’t even glance at us, but strode ahead, dignified and stately, and we forgave her and didn’t take it too much to heart, because she was Lola and we were only us.

  Felix reflected a moment, hiding his mouth behind his shapely hand. Now that he knew, I couldn’t hold back anymore. “Gabi said that there’s a secret charm in Lola Ciperola’s scarf, but she was only joking, I’m sure.” Even her name tasted sweet to me, like white Swiss chocolate.

  “But exactly what is this charm of Lola’s?” asked Felix pensively. I was amazed at how familiarly he pronounced her name.

  “Her charm in being an actress of such”—I groped for Gabi’s word—“such genius.”

  The heavyset waiter with the puffy face brought us a tray of coffee. He kept trying to ingratiate himself with Felix, hoping to get a nice fat tip from the elegant gentleman. Looking at the prices on the menu I calculated how much the meal would cost and nearly fainted: it amounted to half Dad’s monthly salary. Maybe being a waiter wasn’t such a bad profession. Maybe Gabi’s idea of opening a restaurant was a good one, after all. Slowly I sipped the black coffee, which tasted horribly bitter, though I tried not to let it show on my face so Felix wouldn’t guess I’d never drunk black coffee before.

  Felix was lost in thought, and I began to wonder about Lola Ciperola’s admirers, the poets and artists of her circle, and how once in an interview in the evening paper Maariv she declared she would never marry, because marriage was a form of bondage and she could not conceive of letting any man dominate her body and soul. “No man on earth would be worth it,” she said in an interview with Woman’s Magazine, “and no man alive has ever loved a woman the way a woman can love a man.” That’s the kind of unabashed statement she made all the time.

  “I could kiss her every word,” said Gabi, licking her lips. “If I had one fourth of that woman’s courage, I would be happy.”

  The waiters carried a cake with lighted candles to a pretty woman sitting in
the far corner, and everyone in the restaurant sang “Happy birthday to you.” I felt nice and warm. Candlelight flickered on the tall glasses. My cheeks burned. Now that I had disclosed my idea to Felix, I felt quite exuberant, easily able to switch back and forth between Tammy and Nonny by smoothing down my pigtail and tugging at it like a bell rope to summon up the little Tammy within. My gestures and expressions stayed pretty much the same, and all I had to do was shift the center of feeling, as it were, from one square of my heart to the other with a barely perceptible click.

  Then Felix pulled the monocle out of his pocket, stared at me curiously, and nodded till his face grew gentle and happy; it didn’t bother me a bit that he was aware of my clicking back and forth. I was so delighted to see my reflection in his monocle again, because it made me feel omnipotent, as if I had been dipped in a magic potion and could turn into anything or anyone I wanted, even a girl, no sweat, I was a pro, a master. A prodigy of change. With a few days’ practice, I could be like Felix. His double even. His heir.

  Felix put the monocle back in his pocket, raised his champagne glass as if to toast my performance, and drank it down. “Excellent meal,” he said, licking his lips. “Many years ago, when Felix was still Felix, at least one night of week I would reserve this restaurant for me and my friends. In those days I had money to pay for meals.” He smiled broadly. I hadn’t listened too closely. I should have, but the excitement went to my head. He wiped his mouth with his handkerchief: “And does Mistress Gabi also wish to be great actress?”