their age difference.
“ He was eighteen, I was thirty-seven.”
“ A boy with good taste.”
“ Thank you.” She thought for a moment, and then told the stranger what she had not told anyone else. “I killed him.”
He pointed to the stone. “Says here he was killed in battle. You don’t look Arab to me.”
“ If not for me, he wouldn’t have been on the Golan Heights. Or in the army.”
“ That explains it.” The man put down the folded chair and leaned on it like a crutch. “The men of Neturay Karta don’t enlist in the army.”
“ How do you know he was from Neturay Karta?”
“ I see his father here every once in a while. The infamous Rabbi Abraham Gerster, leader of the ultra-Orthodox fanatics. But he’s not the extremist the media made him out to be. A kind man, actually.”
“ True.” Tanya sighed. “And I took away his only child.”
“ Do you have any children?”
Tanya hesitated. “A daughter.”
“ No husband?”
She shook her head. No one but Elie and Abraham knew that her daughter, Professor Bira Galinski, was the daughter of SS Oberstgruppenfuhrer Klaus von Koenig, whom Abraham shot dead in the snowy forest one night near the end of World War II.
“ Guilt is the worst pain.” The man pointed at his son’s grave. “Shalom was our only child. Our pride and joy. A handsome, smart, miracle boy. Our precious Shalom.” He sighed. “An irony, isn’t it? We named our baby for peace, and he grew up to die in war.”
“ Yes,” Tanya said, choking on sudden tears. “An irony.”
“ As an only child, Shalom was supposed to serve in an office, far from the front. But I agreed to sign a consent form. He wanted to serve as a frogman. It was a matter of pride for him, to serve in a fighting unit, like his friends. And he had never asked for anything else. What could I do? Refuse his only request?” He stooped, as if all the air deflated from him. “ Ay, yai, yai. Don’t tell me about guilt. I hold a world record in guilt.”
“ I’m close behind you,” Tanya said. “If not for me seducing him, Lemmy would have stayed in the yeshiva, studying Talmud, becoming a rabbi. I often think of what he lost-all those beginnings that make life worth it-a wedding, a first child’s birth, a baby’s smile, the joys of a full life-”
“ Don’t beat yourself up.” The old man waved his hand. “Those black hats live in a kosher cocoon. At least you gave him a taste of real life before he died.”
She remembered Lemmy on top of her, inside her, crying her name, possessed by passion and joy. The memory made her smile. “Thank you for putting it in perspective.”
“ My pleasure.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Got to see the wife before dark. She’s at Sanhedriah Cemetery. So, shalom!”
“ Shalom.”
He turned toward his son’s grave and yelled, “See you tomorrow, Boychik! ”
Tanya sat on the ground by Lemmy’s grave. His face came to her, tanned under the military haircut, his blue eyes squinted in laughter, his lips moist and sweet and warm. Despite what the old man had said, the guilt would forever fester in her. She had won Lemmy’s heart, and his body too. But to achieve that, she had to tear him away from his world and put him on a path that took him to war and made him another statistic in the great victory of the Six Day War. And now, twenty-eight years later, Abraham was living as a monk among the ultra-Orthodox, and Tanya was working around the clock without a break lest her mind find the time to roam a regrettable past. And if she ever retired from Mossad, would she come here every day with a beach chair to carry on a conversation with a dead boy?
A while later she got up to leave. It was true, she realized, that the older you get, the fresher your memories become. Before she reached the gate, rain started to fall. She quickened her pace. The drizzle turned to a downpour. The guards hid under a canopy.
Bira leaned over and opened the passenger door. She held a pen between her teeth and a pile of students’ exams in her lap. “You’re soaked.” She handed Tanya a box of Kleenex.
The rain drummed on the roof of the car, and the water formed streams down the windshield, giving the world a distorted, gray appearance.
When she wiped her face, the thin tissue paper fell apart, the pieces sticking to Tanya’s skin. “Look at this. Who makes this junk?”
“ It’s not a bath towel, Mom.”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“Do you see these spots?” Tanya showed the back of her hand to Bira. “Like an old woman!”
Bira put the exams on the back seat and turned on the engine. “You’re sixty-seven. What do you expect? Acne?”
“ I expect nothing,” Tanya said. “I had misery when I was young and beautiful, so why should I care about getting old.”
“ Why don’t you retire and come live with us? The kids would love it. Eytan wants to build an extra bathroom to provide you with privacy. He’s giving a new meaning to the Oedipal complex-he’s in love with his mother-in- law!”
Tanya looked out the window at the passing views of wet sidewalks and people bent under umbrellas. “A man told me that he sees Abraham here often.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“ I wish you didn’t choose a career that runs so opposite to his people.”
“ You agree with what he said?” Bira quoted. “‘Archeologists incite hate and violence between secular and Orthodox Jews for the sake of meaningless clay shards!’”
“Here we go again.” Tanya sighed. “You could sympathize a tiny bit with his lifelong efforts to prevent fighting among Jews-”
“By appeasing those fanatical black hats?”
“Fine. You win.” Tanya looked away. “Let’s go home. I only have one night to spend with my grandkids.”
“Only one night?” Bira glanced at her mother while changing gears. “Can’t they leave you alone? You’ve done so much. Let others risk their lives.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not risking my life. I’m a government bureaucrat, a paper-pusher.”
“ I read the news, okay?” Bira drove slowly, staring forward through the mist left by the swishing wipers. “The Palestinian, Al-Mazir, killed in Paris. The attack on the synagogue. Abu Yusef’s macabre departure. The Saudi prince’s botched haircut. And the next day you suddenly show up in Jerusalem with a nasty bruise on your forehead, looking like you’ve been up for a week straight. I’m not stupid, and you’re too old to dodge bullets.”
“ Rabin is older than me. And Golda Meir was even older when she took office. Maybe I’ll run for prime minister? Shamir left Mossad to enter politics.”
“You took over his job, didn’t you?”
Tanya looked at her with surprise. “Shamir ran the Europe desk before me. But we are very different.”
“I hope so. Had Shamir won another term as prime minister, we would still have no hope of peace. I couldn’t wait for Rabin to beat him in ninety-two.”
“Me too,” Tanya said quietly. “Me too.”
*
“ Herr Horch?” Christopher was on the intercom. “There’s a call for you. From Jerusalem.”
“From whom?” A cold front passed through Lemmy’s chest.
“ He says his name is Grant Guerra.”
“From Senlis?”
“It’s the same name, but the call came from Jerusalem through the international operator. It’s a collect call.”
“I’ll take it.” Lemmy had seen the news of Abu Yusef’s gruesome assassination and the ensuing firefight at the villa in Ermenonville, where most of his men were either killed or injured in a massive police raid. A clever setup, vintage Elie Weiss. But why would Elie’s agent call from Jerusalem?
