Thank God that Haifa is at least a pretty town they haven’t managed to ruin it yet. Screened by pine trees that help filter out the general filth. I drive along the ridge of the Carmel into the forest ocean down below on either side bathing my eyes in the green air eddying over the lush wadis.
Everyone knows me here at the prison I’m not even asked for my papers. These past few months I’ve spent whole days here if ever I’m imprisoned myself I can ask the judge for time off retroactively from my sentence.
What bedlam. Every other door is unlocked the jailers just jingle their keys for form’s sake and then wonder why prisoners escape. Escape isn’t the word they just have to open the door and walk out.
An old Druse jailer brings me to a dark cubbyhole it’s a good thing there are still Druse and Cherkesses to keep order in this country my young murderer sits waiting by a bare wooden table short slender and sullen but very muscular when he was still in handcuffs the first time I met him I noticed how easily he stretched them. I shake his hand. God is my witness that I’ve tried to like him but he’s an unfriendly fantasizing type to top it all off they found some marijuana in his house.
“What’s doing?” He looks at me with his mousy eyes.
“Is everything all right?”
He nods.
I toss my attaché case on the table I sit across from him I leaf through the file that I practically know by heart. The forty thousand pounds that I’ve gotten so far from his family have barely covered the ink and paper that I’ve wasted on him.
“Have you heard anything from that uncle of yours… that diamond dealer in Belgium?”
“He’s supposed to arrive any day.”
“He’s been supposed to arrive for three months now. Apparently he’s decided to come from Belgium on foot.”
He gives me a hard sullen stare. I should know by now that I have to be careful with my jokes here.
I begin to ask a few questions going over once more details of his testimony about the great day in his life that I’ve lived every minute of and know better by now than any day in my own. That’s my secret strategy for his defense I’ll break time down under the legal microscope into its tiniest particles I’ll wage war over each second. The prosecution has no idea what’s in store for it. I’ve catalogued the minutes one by one and I’ll prove that he couldn’t have done it. This trial will yet be a textbook case to be studied with astonishment and awe. It was Kedmi who first taught us to think in milliseconds…
I interrogate him and he answers briefly and to the point. He’s a lone wolf all that damn day he hardly talked to anyone but stupid he’s not. I already know all his answers I simply have to polish them here and there to put him through his paces once again. I want this trial in the worst possible way. Just the look of him is suspicious at least let him be clear and precise. But what’s the truth? I’m still groping in the dark for it. It’s enough to make me despair. The truth is hiding inside his skull like some wriggly slimy gray worm let’s hope the prosecution can’t get at it either.
The old jailer comes into the room with a note.
“Advocate Yisra’el Degmi? Your secretary wants you to call your wife.”
My murderer looks at me sharply.
“Thank you but the name is Kedmi.”
“You better finish with him soon, he has to go eat lunch.”
Everybody wants to give orders.
“I heard you. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone with him.”
I continue the questioning. He begins to lose patience he’s worried about missing his meal the smell of food drifts up the corridor the clink of dishes but I press on relentlessly if suddenly he gets hungry and is short with the prosecution he’ll be eating his meals in prison for the rest of his life.
Finally I’m done. I’m getting hungry too. We stand facing each other. Did he or didn’t he? God knows. But I have to be tough with him to spring him from here.
“Do you need anything? Is there anything that you’d like?”
He thinks it over and asks me to arrange to get him out for the night of the seder he wants to be with his parents they’ll be lonely without him.
He’s too much. Behind that hard-nosed exterior he’s so innocent I could plotz. He’s barely been in jail for three months and already he wants a vacation.
“Forget it. But maybe you could invite your parents to have the seder here with you in prison. It will be an unforgettable experience for them to hear some rapist sing the Four Questions.”
I begin to hum the tune to myself.
His fists ball in anger. Did he or didn’t he? Meanwhile it’s my duty to defend him as well and as cunningly as I can.
“You don’t believe me,” he whispers hopelessly his eyes growing red.
An actor in the bargain.
“Of course I do. Leave it to me, you’ll see that everything will be all right. Now go eat.”
I hurry out past rows of prisoners in gray uniforms murderers thieves terrorists each holding a plate and a spoon. I should eat here myself sometime and see what the food is like. There’s no one in the office I head straight for the telephone. My mother is right I shouldn’t have gotten involved. Ya’el. Her father is up. He doesn’t want me to go by myself. It’s immoral to send me in his name white he begs off. He has to talk to her or at least to be there with me.
“Fine. I’m not going. I’m chucking the whole business. Do what you please. Now it’s morality. Do you know what morality is? Do you? It’s a pebble in somebody’s shoe. I’ve had it! I’m tearing up the papers I drew up and going back to the office. There’s enough work for me there. I’m jumpy and I’m hungry. In a minute I’ll eat the dog’s vitamins and start to bark.”
I could always get the better of her by quietly beginning to rave. They’re used to giving in to hysteria. When Asa was a little boy he’d lie flailing his arms and legs on the floor and the whole family would kneel in homage.
All right all right. She’ll talk to her father. Maybe she’ll go herself tomorrow. I’m right. It’s best for me to go first. I should just be careful.
At the gate I’m stopped and sent back to have my exit card stamped. Getting in is easier than getting out. I have to waste fifteen minutes looking for the clerk with the stamp. Meanwhile the head warden gets hold of me a sly old bugger who has this ironic thing with lawyers. “What’s the matter with you people? You’re not helping us to solve the overcrowding here. Where are your golden tongues? Come, let me show you some drawings made by one of our high-security prisoners. They’re absolutely marvelous.”
It isn’t easy to shake him off.
Then down from the mountain from the forest to the sea I’ll zip through the bay area past the refinery driving thou art my comfort my desire my only love. I hug the curves of the-wounded-the-quarried-mountain road silently racing the cable cars that pass over my head with gravel for the big cement plant down below the panorama spreading out in the valley beneath me there’s the Galilee there’s Acre there are the white cliffs of the Lebanese border it’s like flying a plane coming in for a landing in the clear spring air the car wheels gently touching down on the tarmac of the highway to Acre I could get a free lunch if I stopped at my mother’s but there’s another woman that I’d rather see.
I’ve never cheated on Ya’el nor do I intend to but here and there I keep a few women on standby. In restaurants in cafes in the offices of courts and colleagues I see them now and then I exchange a few words with them I touch them lightly I drop a few soft promises. If only in thought I wish to be a candidate for love. A restaurant with glass walls by the highway near a gas station. Across the road a ceramics plant and beyond it the sea. Here I used to wait for Ya’el those first years she went to visit her mother when she preferred I didn’t come with her. Right away I noticed the round waitress with her slow challenging walk. Where is she now? I order lunch from the proprietor and go to call the office.