The Zigzag Kid Read online

  It was so dark out. And the whispers, the shadowy movements.

  I had to keep reminding myself that from a purely professional standpoint Dad could count on me not to let him down. True, I was only thirteen, but I had nearly ten years of training behind me. From the age of three. That’s what Dad wanted, because Mozart’s father taught him how to play the piano at the age of three. He started off by training me how to describe people accurately. Sometimes he would play memory games with me: What color shirt was the bus driver wearing? Who was wearing glasses in the shop we just left? What had every child worn to nursery school that morning? What color dress was your nursery-school teacher wearing at your birthday party?

  With a perfectly straight face. In dead earnest. Red with rage if I made a mistake. And whatever I didn’t know one day, I had to make up the next. And there were punishments. But the worst punishment of all was his sneer of contempt when I failed.

  And at the age of five: What’s the license-plate number of the car parked in front of the house? How many traffic lights do we pass on the way to Grandma Tsitka’s? In which hand does the new mailman carry letters? What kind of accent did the person who came to the door collecting for charity have? How do you jump-start a car? Why did you pull your blanket over both ears again last night, where’s your vigilance? You’re not going to get your allowance this week. Don’t cry. One day you’ll thank me for this.

  I was running too fast, afraid I might give myself away.

  For my tenth birthday, as I already mentioned, Dad gave me an IdentiKit. When I was twelve, he took me to the police firing range, for target practice, not with live ammo yet, only blanks, but from a real gun, a .38-caliber Wembley. Once a month we’d go there alone at night, just him and me, with warm leather flaps over our ears and a cold gun in our hands, the weight of it, and the blast that made me recoil, and Dad’s warm breath on my cheek as he guided my hand, and the tall green targets in the shape of a human body. “Aim at the head! Aim at the heart! Go on! Draw! Fire!”

  A hundred times. A thousand times. Draw! Fire! You’re walking down the street and somebody holds a knife to your back—draw! You’re asleep in your bed and somebody breaks in and creeps into your room. Draw! You witness somebody snatching a boy and trying to shove him into a car. Draw! He tries to escape? Stand straight, spread your legs for balance, steady your right hand with your left, close one eye and aim, now fire! No good, by the time you moved, he could have killed you twice! Now draw! Always be the first to shoot and you’ll live to tell the tale! Go on, draw! Let your instincts work for you! Time’s a-wasting! You don’t have so many years left to learn, pretty soon you’ll be on the job yourself! You’re twelve, kid! Draw! Fire!

  When Gabi said I was spending too much time at the police station, “playing cowboys” and seeing things it wasn’t good for a boy my age to see, Dad answered that this was the only way I would ever learn to overcome my weaknesses and develop into a strong and serious man. Because by “playing cowboys,” as she so derisively called it, I was learning the most important lesson of life, the lesson about the eternal war between order and chaos, between law and the lawlessness that tried to tear everything down. Gabi listened patiently and said, yes, children make excellent detectives, because for them the world is one big riddle to solve, but every age has its riddles, and at his age there are other mysteries, including several about his own life; and Dad started blaring that she wasn’t going to teach him how to raise his child, and okay, he may have made some mistakes with me, but to his mind, his greatest duty as a father was to train me for real life, for the war of survival. And Gabi said, “He’ll turn out exactly how you’re training him to be, and then you’ll regret it.”

  A cricket chirred from a bush somewhere. A breeze blew in from the sea, and I happily inhaled the salty smell and drew strength from it. I stood up straight, with my head held high. This would be the night of my big test. I had to be as smart as he is, if not smarter. To try to think the way he does, and then to trick him. Knowledge is power, knowledge is powerrr! I understood his thinking and how he would go about such an operation. But he didn’t know who I was anymore. He lacked up-to-date information on me. The Nonny he knew was a different boy. He was certain I would try to escape from Felix the first chance I got. He himself had taught me how to escape from kidnappers. But he didn’t know me anymore. I felt strangely regretful for having run so far away, and I realized that maybe, for the first time in my life, I stood a fair chance of surprising him.

  I started walking faster, attended by the fresh, caressing sea breezes. I could tell from the tingling in my back that very soon he would finish spreading his nets. I tried to imagine how he would present the situation to himself and to his detectives:

  A Felix kidnapped Nonny and is holding him against his will. B. Felix is hiding somewhere in the vicinity. D. Felix must be apprehended before he hurts Nonny.

  But there was also a point C. which he couldn’t say aloud, a most important point for him: they had to catch Felix before he told Nonny the story of Zohara.

  I, in any case, was eager to hear the story from beginning to end. It was the story of my life and I had a right to know it. No one was going to interrupt this time if I could help it, not even Dad. Especially not Dad. No more secrets! No more cover-ups!

  I felt like a knight striding bravely off to battle, ready to fight for Zohara and her story.

  And if he tries to stop me, I’ll run away.

  And if he fights with me, I’ll fight back. Once and for all, I’ve got to find out who I am.

  Seems strange: I need the man who kidnapped me and I’m running away from the one who came to my rescue.

  I was so nervous I forgot my disguise and walked briskly, holding my clenched fists out, not the walk of a sweet little girl. But Zohara was no sweet little girl either. I could just imagine her at my age. A pretty face, if a little sharp-featured, with flashing eyes. The kind of girl other girls hate and whisper about and the boys are a little scared of, too, and whom her teachers would try to transfer to a school more suitable for someone of her zigzag temperament.

  And her mother?

  Who was her mother? Of course she had a mother. And a father. Who were they? Why was I trembling?

  I forced myself to slow down again. What was going on? How did Dad know Felix would hide in this neighborhood, of all places? What did everyone else know that I didn’t? What did they understand that I didn’t? It took every bit of strength I had to keep up my cover. Only years of training kept me sane. I walked past a police car parked at the curb. The policeman sitting inside it ignored me. With my eyes I followed a bird in flight from a cypress tree, say, to the power lines. Little Zohara taking an interest in our feathered friends. I look to the right, straining to see through the darkness. I knew it! There they were, those two men wearing dark shirts. They were standing on top of the highest roof on the street with a tripod set up for an infrared telescope.

  Dad was tightening the ring around me. This was a manhunt, just like in the movies. A manhunt for Felix and me. He would search from house to house until he found us. I felt a chill up my spine. As though a strong, invisible net were hovering around me, waiting to swoop down and haul me off. I shuddered but kept walking. Please don’t let them see the fear on my face. How did Dad think to look for me and Felix here, of all places? Why couldn’t I break through the cement wall in my brain? The answer always seemed to be fluttering right in front of my eyes, yet I couldn’t… Go on, keep moving, don’t blow it now. In a couple of minutes the police will be everywhere. They’ll spread out to every possible observation point. No one will be able to escape their scrutiny. All they had to do was sit tight, knowing that even an ingenious kidnapper like Felix will have to leave his hideout at some point, if only to buy food, or to move you, the victim of the kidnapping, somewhere else.

  Dad’s here already, I thought to myself. Of course he was. He wouldn’t be holed up in some office at a time like this. He was here for sure, in a
patrol car, reading a street map by the pale glow of his flashlight.

  I could sense his presence. Stalking me. His muscular body bursting with energy. He was very close now. Watching. Waiting. I could feel him in the air, I could smell him there. Perhaps he was staring at my back this very moment. Those penetrating little eyes. Had he begun to wonder what really happened between me and Felix? Did he already suspect that for the past two days I had been purposely ignoring the silent cries his heart sent out to me? Did the furrow between his eyes grow suddenly deeper, as though someone had gouged it with a knife?

  I started walking faster. My heart was pounding. I was like a hunted animal. A siren wailed somewhere and I jumped in alarm. No one noticed, though. Across the street I saw a policeman checking the papers of an old pedestrian. The pedestrian was furious and started gesturing excitedly. The policeman explained something, and the pedestrian immediately relaxed.

  Get out of here. Beat it. Don’t let Dad catch you. You don’t belong to him. Not only to him.

  I used every bit of know-how, every bit of training, everything he’d been teaching me since I learned how to walk. I took it all in at a glance, the phony license plates on the squad cars, the gleam of binoculars on the rooftops, the Palladium shoes worn by the young couple who’d just walked past me, arm in arm, and also, what was happening to me with Dad, or as opposed to Dad, and how both our lives were changing now.

  I walked at a medium pace, taking notice of anything that might interest little Zohara. She was me. I found some pretext to look over my right shoulder. I checked the roofs. Lola’s quiet neighborhood was bustling with mysterious activity. Everywhere there were cops rushing around, manning positions, getting their equipment ready.

  I knew cops, I knew everything about them. I could smell their agitation in the air now. I hoped that Felix would make it out of there before they closed off Lola’s street. I’d go nuts if they caught him before he could tell me the rest of the story. Before he could give me the present from Zohara.

  I wondered what the present was. What could she send me from her land of the dead?

  It was an eerie night. A light breeze shook the pointed tops of the cypress trees. Everything whished and rustled. I felt as though I were walking on air, detached from the world. As though I were missing, or lost. It felt strange, like floating in space. Maybe that’s why the police have so much trouble finding missing persons. Maybe some missing persons don’t want to be found. Because when you’re missing, you are yourself alone. Free-floating through the world. You can choose what to be next. You are unique.

  I was so alone at those moments. A tiny point in a vast world, me.

  But who was this “me”? How had things gotten so screwed up that I turned into a criminal on the run from my own father? What was this powerful force sucking me further, deeper into the story?

  I was plunging dizzily down, with no will of my own.

  From the depths of my soul, an unfamiliar entity rose up to meet me, spreading like a cloud through my innermost recesses, whispering, “It’s you, it’s you on the run from Dad. You were always like this. You sensed it and it frightened you. And now you’ve learned the secret: this is who you really are. But only in part. Yet because of this part you will always be a bit of a fugitive, a bit of a criminal, and probably never your father’s successor and the best detective in the world.”

  And along with this anguished whisper, I heard another voice inside, cackling fiendishly: “If you choose, you can follow in the footsteps of your mother … and Felix.” And then I realized that maybe he had kidnapped me in order to pass on some of the tricks of his trade, his professional skills …

  On the outside, I had my clothes for cover, and their softness pervaded me. They rustled to the rhythm of my walk. Once upon a time there was a woman named Zohara, and before that she was a girl. I still didn’t know much about her as a girl, but her clothes communicated to me. They spoke right to my skin, her skirt and her blouse, and even the sandals that had absorbed the sweat of her feet.

  I could practically walk there with my eyes closed. As though my feet knew the way from Lola’s house to the Habimah National Theater. I simply stopped thinking and let Zohara’s sandals whisk me there. And they did. They walked me down the sidewalk, aware of every pothole and street crossing and row of trees. Once when I tried to turn right, they forced me to go left. I never met such a determined pair of sandals. Twenty-five years had elapsed since they last took this route, but the memory was embedded in them. As I walked, they sent little messages through my feet, until finally I began to understand. I am so slow sometimes, it drives me crazy. Once there was a girl named Zohara. Don’t you dare call her a girl, though, or she’ll punch you. Zohara inhabited a lonely world, rejected by other children, a prey to grown-up thoughts, running for her life sometimes to fantasy and fairy tale, to the tiny creatures behind her lids that performed plays and films just for her. And what else? Oh yes, she loved strawberry jam and chocolate.

  She lived in a tall building, and her bedroom looked out to where the sea was widest and bluest. She liked to hide raspberry candies inside a secret hole in the mattress. And to hang picture postcards from all over the world on the wall. And to collect soldier dolls from faraway lands. But why did she collect those dolls? Who gave them to her? And who sent the picture postcards?

  Maybe it was her father. The father I hadn’t thought of till now. Obviously she had a father, didn’t she?

  I reeled like a drunk. The sandals made me dance as though they had been possessed by a sudden joy. My eyes filled with silly tears. Ridiculous—me, a boy, crying like a girl. Like a girl trying not to cry, who scratched a lightning bolt on the wall to keep herself from crying. Why hadn’t I seen what was going on during those two crazy days? The bedroom in Lola’s apartment. The smell of the pillow and the clothes in the wardrobe. And the picture postcards from around the world.

  Because I was afraid, afraid to know.

  Lola sat up with me all night long. And she knew my birthday.

  How could I have missed that?

  And Dad had guessed that Felix would take me here, to Lola’s house.

  My route. The route that was planned for me in advance.

  Like fate.

  The story Felix was telling me.

  I stumbled, I staggered. How many more surprises could I take, and what else would happen on this journey?

  “There is little hill near traffic light, there, turn right, then left,” Felix said in his directions.

  I turned right, then left.

  “Then look sharply to left.”

  I faced left, and looked up like an hour hand approaching nine o’clock.

  There was a woman beside an electric pole, waving her scarf at me. It was Lola.

  She was standing next to a motorcycle with a sidecar. I was struck by a long-forgotten memory: the motorcycle, the sidecar, the tomato plant. A wild stallion of a man who laughed like a horse, until one day he stopped and became very sad and law-abiding. But sitting on the motorcycle was Felix, wearing a peculiar pair of goggles and a leather helmet.

  Naturally he’d made it past Dad’s men. And naturally he had arrived here before me. He stepped on the gas and started her up.

  Our Rolls.

  And Lola Ciperola, the famous actress.

  Who was Zohara’s mother.

  And Felix Glick, the man with the golden ears of wheat, who loved my mother.

  But not like a lover, the way a man loves a woman. He loved her like a father. The way he would love a daughter.

  Why hadn’t I seen that before?

  Felix was her father. Lola was her mother.

  The golden ear of wheat and the purple scarf.

  The parents of my mother, Zohara.

  Both of them beckoning me to hurry up.

  My grandmother and grandfather.

  25

  Zohara Sets Forth to Cross the Moon, and Cupid Resorts to Firearms

  We sped through the night on the mot
orcycle with the sidecar, me and Felix and Lola Ciperola. The wind slapped our faces and ruffled our hair, and we had to shout over the noise to hear each other. Felix drove, with Lola behind him hugging his waist, and I sat in the sidecar, snug as a bug. Then we changed places—I sat behind him, hugging his waist, and Lola Ciperola curled up snug as a bug in the sidecar.

  On into the darkness we sailed. The city lights glared overhead, reflecting us in the smoky glasses of blind beggars and elegant display windows. The shadow of the motorcycle lapped up the sidewalks, the billboards, the benches where lovers sit, clinging tightly to each other; like a paper silhouette, we whizzed past the cafés, the sleepy boulevards, the late-night street sweepers, and a pack of dogs out on the town, barking boisterously as we rode by, a Dalmatian, a German shepherd, and the leader, a little white poodle, or a little dachshund, a huge Great Dane, and an ugly sheepdog, like delegates sent by the dogs of Tel Aviv to see us off on our nocturnal voyage in search of Zohara.

  Perhaps I should begin with a description of the meeting that took place outside the National Theater, the meeting with my grandfather and grandmother, the incredible double gift I received for my bar mitzvah, without an exchange slip, of course.

  I started walking up the street at an easy, casual pace, but a few steps later I broke into a run. Lola waved her scarf at me, in a self-restrained way at first, as befitting the first lady of the National Theater, but as I approached she started running toward me. No one in the street (or in the world) would have recognized her the way she looked then—wearing blue jeans, with her long hair down and no makeup. We flew into each other’s arms. She could tell by the expression on my face that I already knew. We collided and hugged, and I burrowed my head into her shoulder. “You’re Zohara’s mother,” I said, and she answered, “Yes, oh yes, and I’m so glad you found out. I couldn’t keep from telling you anymore.” My neck became wet after a sudden barometric drop outside the theater.

  Felix stood nodding, with his hands on his hips. “Are you ready? Beg pardon, but we must to get moving! There will be plenty of time later for schmaltz and tears and coochie-coo.”