“No two ways about it,” Diabolo answers unhesitatingly. “Gotta get the wheels back.”
“But how?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“When?”
“Tonight, man! But you’re starting to be a real pain in the ass with your problems, Elias!” Diabolo says. “Give me two thou’ for the kitty…” (A communal cash depot Diabolo invented to finance future parties and, incidentally, help new French immigrants.)
“Should I come with you?” Elias asks.
“You off your rocker, or what? Find yourself something to do instead, with a witness.”
“Yoni! You’re not in Jeru anymore?” Juliette exclaims as she walks by the sidewalk café of Florentin 10. They exchange affectionate kisses, give each other the well-known Israeli hug, and Juliette sits down with him.
“I’ve been here for six months already. All my buddies are here,” Yoni answers, adjusting his yarmulke.
“What’ll you have?”
“A café Affour. How about Maia? Where is she?”
“At home. We have an apartment on Matalon. So you’re not in Jeru anymore either?”
“Well, no, I… came… how can I say this? I came for… you know, I have a boyfriend, but, OK, so I… I didn’t see him yet…” And tears start flowing down Juliette’s cheeks, so Yoni gives her an affectionate squeeze on the wrist.
“Your boyfriend is Elias, right?”
“Yes, yes. You know him?”
“Yeah, sure. We went through our Hebrew immersion classes together.”
“Oh, I see…”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“No way!” she retorts. “He owes me an explanation. I want him to admit he did me wrong. You know where I can find him?”
The waitress brings over Yoni’s breakfast: sausages, sautéed potatoes, yogurt with cereal, and cream cheese. Juliette watches Yoni eat without daring to tell him that it isn’t very kosher. Neither the sausage nor the mix of meat and dairy. Well, he has a right to do that, but then, why the yarmulke?
“I heard he’s working at H24,” Yoni finally consents to tell her.
“The French channel?” Juliette says, getting up already.
At the entrance to H24, security stops Juliette. No pass, no H24 ID. But she asks the guy to call the editor-in-chief, and a few minutes later, Marcel arrives with his two phones screwed into his ears.
“Elias Benzaquen?” he says. “He’s our correspondent at the Gaza border. He’s never here.”
“When’s he coming back?” Juliette asks with a repressed sob, and Marcel realizes that a heavy drama is making a knot in this gorgeous young woman’s throat. It confirms Elias is a lady-killer, but part of his job is also not to give in to the swarms of pretty girls who’re constantly after him.
“That depends on events, I can’t tell you when, exactly,” he says as he leaves, a purely professional reflex.
At least Juliette now knows Elias isn’t permanently in Tel Aviv. She leaves H24 and goes to sit down on the dock, as the offices of the channel are right on the port of Yafo. Her thoughts wander as she watches the sea, so different from what it is in Tel Aviv, although the two places are right next to each other. In Yafo, it’s a Caribbean blue and so clear it makes you feel like plunging in—even drowning in it. You’d think it was a commercial for scuba diving. Seen from Yafo, the Tel Aviv beach takes on another dimension and makes you think of those huge seaside resorts in Florida, lined with tall buildings. Unlike Tel Aviv, there are also many Arabs out with their families in the port of Yafo, with the women wrapped in cloth like mummies and the men looking like sailors.
Juliette sits there, telling herself maybe she could get a job at H24. She’d be exactly where she’d have to be to collar Elias. But she probably doesn’t have the required competences, even though she’s fluent in Hebrew, English, and French. And then there’s the impression she left on Marcel, a poor unhappy woman—not exactly the best CV.
CHAPTER 8
When it gets out of Mitzpe Ramon, the Fiat 500 enters a narrow trail that winds up the flank of the hill, and Diabolo’s imposing form bounces up and down on the driver’s seat as if he were on a trampoline. According to the map Elias made him, you’ve got to trek like that for a little under a mile before you hit the Bedouin encampment. Down from the camp, a camel tethered to a stake shows you’re almost there. Then there are only three hundred yards to go, but on foot. There, Diabolo turns off the ignition. The twilight is still too light for him to intervene. As he waits for night to fall, he lights up a Cohiba and breathes out the biggest cloud of smoke you can get from a Havana cigar. Next to him, Jonathan Simsen gets a huge whiff right in the nose but doesn’t complain, even though he’s forbidden to open the windows so as not to alert a possible watchdog.
Once they can’t see at all, Diabolo gives Jonathan his orders: “You’re going to go back down toward Mitzpe Ramon and wait for me at the end of the path. You got to manage to drive without turning on the lights. If I’m not back in two hours, come back up here. OK?”
Diabolo painfully extricates himself from the car, cursing himself for not renting a vehicle better adapted to his corpulence. But he got it for practically nothing. Hardly a thousand shekels a month! While Jonathan maneuvers in the darkness, Diabolo slips toward a meager, vacillating gleam farther off, trusting the echo of a woman’s voice to guide him.
Prudently, he approaches the Bedouins’ camp: two tents. Luckily, no dog to reveal his presence by barking. He sees at a glance that two men and two women live there with a swarm of children. The four-wheel drive must be hidden between the two tents, but Diabolo can’t see it yet.
Once the kerosene lamp is out in the first tent, he goes ahead. But his first step crunches too much on the stony ground. So he delays again, and without putting one step right after another, it takes him over five minutes to reach the car, which is only twenty yards away.
When Diabolo sees that the vehicle is there between the two tents, he breathes a sigh of relief. He takes a Ping-Pong ball out of his pocket. He’d already carefully cut out one part of it like a soft-boiled egg, and now he slaps it against the lock of the door and crushes it with a sharp blow of his palm. It works! An old gypsy trick he learned in the prison of Fresnes. The lock opens through the push of compressed air. Things start going less well once he starts up the engine. Right away, one disheveled Bedouin surges out of the tent and then the other, armed with a long club. Then Diabolo takes more direct action. He throws the four-wheel drive into reverse and crashes headlong into one of them, while the second man throws himself at the door to try to climb into the car. Diabolo has to give him two hard shots with his elbow to neutralize him. His assailant falls back in his turn, and the way is finally clear. Diabolo stamps down the accelerator and succeeds in escaping with the four-wheel drive.
Dammit! Why must he always find himself in these rotten situations? Always on the margins and always in the red zone. Sure, out of friendship for Elias. But when he made his aliyah, he’d sworn to himself all that was over and done with. And yet it’s beginning again. He’s so sick of throwing out punches! At the same time, let’s be honest, it’s fun. Poor Diabolo, he’s so bored in normal life. He has so many ideas for making money, so many women to screw, so many parties to give, so many cigars to smoke. The days are too short and the temptations too great. Besides, it’s strange for a hedonist like him to take other people’s problems so seriously. But that’s the way he is. A real old-time hood, with balls and a soul. A head, too, Diabolo. You wouldn’t think it, but he has a degree in history. He tried to defend his doctoral dissertation twice, but no luck, the cops were holding him for questioning on both occasions. Otherwise he’d have a PhD in medieval history.