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Authors: Amnon Jackont
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Shapira,
and hung up.
Anyone who knows Dad knows he's never
so much as bought a lottery ticket. What were they talking about? I
didn't even have to think. I remembered only too well the bottom line on
the slide: "Agitator; diagram 1,205 of 6,827."
The knowledge that `agitator' was
something connected to the secret side of Dad's work made me feel a bit
relieved. At least here everything was as it should be. That's what
Dad's life had been like for as long as I'd known him. In between the
exhibition openings and receptions in honor of Israeli authors, the
fund-raising concerts and film festivals, there had been a different life - one
of whisperings over the telephone, trips, locked briefcases, and dozens of keys
to mysterious locks.
For the rest of the evening Dad tried
to develop a conversation with me. He asked about the league results (he
wasn't really interested so I just gave him a brief run-down, to fulfill my
obligation) and about my getting ready for school, and told about a new film he
had seen on a plane. Then he discovered the FMR that had come in the
mail, lay down to read it, and fell asleep. Mom stayed in the kitchen and
chopped vegetables. I made myself a cup of cocoa and sat down opposite
her at the table.
"Aren't you going to sleep?" she
asked.
"In a little while," I answered.
She put the cut-up vegetables in a
bowl and went into the living room to make up the couch for Aunt Ida. I
thought about the lie she'd told for me that night, about the car that had
brought her the night before, and about what had happened in the Lincoln
Tunnel. Was the threat that the man in the back seat had delivered
related to how she spent her nights? From the bedroom came the sound of
Dad snoring. If I had had any thoughts yesterday of sharing the problem with
him, the solidarity that Mom had shown me this evening made it impossible.
Were her intentions really only good?
I had often seen her angry, sad, worried, tired, annoyed,
"straightening corners", or smoothing things out to suit her needs,
but I had never seen her lie, deny, stupefy, falsify, and pretend like I had
these last few days. Somewhere in my brain there was a word to explain
why she was behaving like this. I had to concentrate for a moment in
order to dredge it up: haunted. She felt haunted.
I rested my cup on the table by the
color brochure from The Society for Proper Nutrition and Care of the Body.
The thought that the solution was apt to contain the sentence "fruit
is sweet" was so contestable as to be insulting. Suddenly I had
another idea: if what had happened in the Lincoln Tunnel wasn't an
accident, and Mom really was being threatened by someone, what was the chance
that her winning the cruise was no more than a plot, designed in advance -
without any regard for the correctness of her answer - in order to harm her or
get back at her when she'd be on the ship, far from help?
I knew from experience not to pay
attention to nocturnal musings, not to let them get the better of me. I
remembered Mom's notebook. What could be more real than that? I
walked through the living room, carefully avoiding Aunt Ida's white, spindly
legs, which were sticking out off the end of the couch. The drawer barely
opened. When I got hold of the notebook I tugged at it, slowly, so as not to
make noise. Then I looked for a place to read.
The bathroom seemed suitable.
It provided privacy, quiet, and an alibi in the hour of need. But
the lighting must have been different, because this time I couldn't make out
the impressions left by the pen that had seemed so legible just a few hours
earlier.
Some of Mom's makeup was on the shelf
next to the mirror. I tried to shade in the impressions with her eyebrow
pencil, but all I succeeded in doing was blacking out the first four or five
words on the page. I then tried carefully drawing the edge of a lipstick
over the page, but this
and hung up.
Anyone who knows Dad knows he's never
so much as bought a lottery ticket. What were they talking about? I
didn't even have to think. I remembered only too well the bottom line on
the slide: "Agitator; diagram 1,205 of 6,827."
The knowledge that `agitator' was
something connected to the secret side of Dad's work made me feel a bit
relieved. At least here everything was as it should be. That's what
Dad's life had been like for as long as I'd known him. In between the
exhibition openings and receptions in honor of Israeli authors, the
fund-raising concerts and film festivals, there had been a different life - one
of whisperings over the telephone, trips, locked briefcases, and dozens of keys
to mysterious locks.
For the rest of the evening Dad tried
to develop a conversation with me. He asked about the league results (he
wasn't really interested so I just gave him a brief run-down, to fulfill my
obligation) and about my getting ready for school, and told about a new film he
had seen on a plane. Then he discovered the FMR that had come in the
mail, lay down to read it, and fell asleep. Mom stayed in the kitchen and
chopped vegetables. I made myself a cup of cocoa and sat down opposite
her at the table.
"Aren't you going to sleep?" she
asked.
"In a little while," I answered.
She put the cut-up vegetables in a
bowl and went into the living room to make up the couch for Aunt Ida. I
thought about the lie she'd told for me that night, about the car that had
brought her the night before, and about what had happened in the Lincoln
Tunnel. Was the threat that the man in the back seat had delivered
related to how she spent her nights? From the bedroom came the sound of
Dad snoring. If I had had any thoughts yesterday of sharing the problem with
him, the solidarity that Mom had shown me this evening made it impossible.
Were her intentions really only good?
I had often seen her angry, sad, worried, tired, annoyed,
"straightening corners", or smoothing things out to suit her needs,
but I had never seen her lie, deny, stupefy, falsify, and pretend like I had
these last few days. Somewhere in my brain there was a word to explain
why she was behaving like this. I had to concentrate for a moment in
order to dredge it up: haunted. She felt haunted.
I rested my cup on the table by the
color brochure from The Society for Proper Nutrition and Care of the Body.
The thought that the solution was apt to contain the sentence "fruit
is sweet" was so contestable as to be insulting. Suddenly I had
another idea: if what had happened in the Lincoln Tunnel wasn't an
accident, and Mom really was being threatened by someone, what was the chance
that her winning the cruise was no more than a plot, designed in advance -
without any regard for the correctness of her answer - in order to harm her or
get back at her when she'd be on the ship, far from help?
I knew from experience not to pay
attention to nocturnal musings, not to let them get the better of me. I
remembered Mom's notebook. What could be more real than that? I
walked through the living room, carefully avoiding Aunt Ida's white, spindly
legs, which were sticking out off the end of the couch. The drawer barely
opened. When I got hold of the notebook I tugged at it, slowly, so as not to
make noise. Then I looked for a place to read.
The bathroom seemed suitable.
It provided privacy, quiet, and an alibi in the hour of need. But
the lighting must have been different, because this time I couldn't make out
the impressions left by the pen that had seemed so legible just a few hours
earlier.
Some of Mom's makeup was on the shelf
next to the mirror. I tried to shade in the impressions with her eyebrow
pencil, but all I succeeded in doing was blacking out the first four or five
words on the page. I then tried carefully drawing the edge of a lipstick
over the page, but this
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