gold bricks. I’ve got pictures of the boxes, and Schreiber’s testimony. He’s seen it with his own eyes.”
“But what’s he talking about?” Tzilla cried. “Why are they leaving Israel?”
“Why?” Balilty chuckled. “Because they’re jumping off a sinking ship. I’ve known about this for a while, we’ve collected quite a bit of material. This tape you’ve brought can certainly help us,” he told Natasha, “you’ve done a great job, no question about it.”
“Please explain to me,” Tzilla interjected, “do me a favor; I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
“There’s not much to explain here,” Balilty said dispassionately.
“Rabbi Elharizi himself dealt with transferring the money. He’s not just any old rabbi, he’s a rabbi with vision! Wouldn’t you say that’s true?” he asked, turning to Michael, who was sitting the whole time behind his desk, at his usual place, feeling the weak December sun penetrating the room through the dirty window and waiting, resigned, for his room to empty of people.
“It’s very simple,” Balilty continued. “Brilliant and simple. All the brilliant ideas are ultimately simple, don’t you think?”
No one answered him.
“And it’s not Rabbi Elharizi on his own,” Balilty proclaimed, “he’s got Rabbi Bashari the Cabalistic mystic with him. You saw him in the background, didn’t you, sitting in his armchair? We think of him as a puppet, but his followers believe he has supernatural powers. Don’t ask! No outsider could ever understand it.”
“So, like, he’s going to bring whole families to Canada?” Tzilla asked.
“Tens of thousands of them,” Natasha said, her eyes flashing.
“There’s already a whole settlement set up there, they’ve got …”
“Not tens of thousands,” Balilty corrected her, “it’s more like hundreds of thousands.” When he saw the look of disbelief on Tzilla’s face, he hastened to add, “We’re talking about vision here! This is prophecy!
There were doubters in the distant past, too, but believe me, we’re talking about a prophecy of destruction and redemption here! Our people have attended rallies, and I’ve heard all about this from them, but we didn’t have any concrete evidence before. We weren’t able to get our hands on a videocassette or a finger on all that money. I still haven’t figured out where this young lady here got it all,” he said, glancing at Natasha, “how she managed to come up with all the material we couldn’t—”
“There are about one hundred seventy-five thousand believers at present,” Natasha said.
“Anyway,” Balilty continued, “whole families are going to emigrate to this Canadian New Yavneh. Rabbi Elharizi himself said that Jerusalem will soon be laid to waste, that’s what he saw in his vision.
And here,” Balilty said, pointing at the empty blue screen, “will be the New Yavneh. Is that all, Natasha?”
“There’s just a little bit more,” she said humbly. Balilty extended the remote control to her, and she fast- forwarded the tape until the screen showed Rabbi Elharizi, once again in the hooded garb of a Greek Orthodox priest. Natasha’s voice intoned, “Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai was smuggled in shrouds and a coffin out of besieged Jerusalem, but Rabbi Elharizi has made do with a different disguise …”
“Great work,” Balilty mumbled. “That’s first-class journalism,
honey. Come with me, we’ll take this film to where it needs to be.
What do you say?”
Natasha looked at Michael. He intended to nod in affirmation, but just then the telephone rang, and Tzilla rushed to answer it. While she chattered happily into the receiver, obviously talking with someone she particularly cared for, Natasha followed Balilty out of the room, closing the door behind her.
“It’s Yuval,” Tzilla said with a big smile, handing him the phone. “He’s in Jerusalem, arrived here half an hour ago. He wants to know if you have a little time for him. Did you even know he’s doing a stint in the army reserves? He’s barely got half a day off before he has to go back.”
Michael took the receiver, wondering from where he could draw the strength to sound normal, but his son, uncharacteristically agitated, did not even ask how he was, only whether Michael could meet him. “Are you all right, Yuval?” he asked, startled; abruptly, he snapped out of the state of floating he had been immersed in.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Yuval reassured him. “I just wanted … I’ve got a couple of hours, I wanted … I was hoping that if you had a little time …”
Michael recognized the budding disappointment he remembered so well from his son’s childhood, which had affected Yuval each time like a slap to the face; time after time he had let the boy down by failing to keep their appointments. So Michael hastened to name a place they could meet.
Pale rays of sunlight filtered through the glass-brick walls of the coffee shop, where large gas heaters warmed the room, illuminating Yuval’s whiskers and the dark eyebrows he had inherited from his father.
“Let’s have breakfast,” Yuval said, and Michael, nodding, signaled to the waitress. She hastened to inform them about the healthy-breakfast special. “It’s new,” she told them, “not on the menu yet.”
“I’d like a three-egg omelet and a big salad,” Yuval said. “How about you?”
“The same for me,” Michael told the waitress.
“And we don’t smoke,” Yuval announced to the coffee shop at large, which at the time contained only the two of them, an older man reading a newspaper, and a young woman who continually looked at her watch.
“I didn’t know you were doing reserve duty,” Michael said. “How come you didn’t tell me?”
“Didn’t have a chance,” Yuval said. “It’s just an exercise. It was supposed to be a regular three-day exercise, but—never mind, it’s not important … I wanted to ask you something,” he said hesitantly, glancing away as if uncomfortable.
“I’m listening,” Michael said, simultaneously thanking God for installing in children the mechanism that prevents them from discerning that something has befallen their parents.
“It’s something we almost talked about once,” Yuval said, “when I was doing my regular army service.” He fell silent for a moment, then said, “Back then I had—I don’t know if you remember, but—I had thoughts about … you probably don’t remember—”
“I’m going to need some kind of clue, some kind of a lead.
Anything,” Michael said apologetically. “There were a few things that …
how can I know if you don’t say anything?”
“Tell me,” Yuval said, leaning forward, “without making fun of me”—Michael was about to assure him he would never dream of making fun of him, but Yuval did not wait for his reassurance—“and don’t tell me this isn’t the kind of question a guy who’s one year away from finishing his bachelor’s degree should be asking, okay?” Again, he did not wait for an answer: “I wanted to ask you—but really now—if you’re a Zionist. Are you a Zionist, Dad?”
The arrival of the waitress with a tray upon which stood their mugs of coffee and a basket of fresh rolls, and her setting of the table with plates and forks and knives and spoons and napkins, delayed Michael’s response and restrained the astonishment he was about to express. Of all the things in the world he was preparing himself for— problems with a girl or a crisis at university or even waffling thoughts about the future—he had never imagined that this was the matter about which his son would ask to meet with him so urgently.
“Why are you asking?” Michael was trying to gain time; finally the waitress left them alone.
“First answer me,” his son said as he pulled a fresh roll from the basket, tore it open, and smeared it with butter.
“True, it’s no longer the clear and simple question it was once,”
Michael pondered. “What exactly are you referring to? The need for a Jewish state?”
Yuval nodded. “I guess,” he conceded.
“If that’s the issue, then yes, I suppose I am a Zionist. Sure, Zionism has brought on tragedy—both sides are its victims—but what can you do? I … if Zionism means a home for the Jewish people, then you could say I am a Zionist.”
“Why?” Yuval exclaimed. “Like, you really care if you live in a Jewish state?”
“I guess I do,” Michael said after several moments. “Jews, too, need their own homeland. Where else would your grandparents have gone after the Holocaust?”
“But why here, in Israel?” Yuval demanded. He lay the buttered roll down next to him, as yet uneaten, and opened three packets of sugar to pour into his coffee, then handed three more to his father, who absentmindedly poured them into his own mug. Yuval watched him, alert with anticipation.
“It’s our home, no?” Michael asked at last.
