Prisoner Z is having a very reasonable breakdown, considering the news. The guard, expecting as much, had already fetched a feel-good pill and now takes turns reaching his hand through the slot, offering the capsule resting in his palm, and trying to speak sense to Prisoner Z through it.
“Sister-fucker! Son of a whore!” is what Prisoner Z yells. “Let your guard down—guard—and I’ll split your head like a sunflower seed! Come in so I can show you from where the fish pees!”
“A classic,” the guard says, admiring, while also respecting the gravity of the situation.
“Deep breaths,” he says to Prisoner Z. “You need to slow down your heart.”
Prisoner Z appears to process this last bit. He takes some deep breaths, eventually climbing down from his bed.
Looking petulant, in the guard’s opinion, Prisoner Z approaches the slot, opening his mouth and sticking out his tongue.
This time, when the guard puts his hand through, Prisoner Z accepts the capsule. He steps back so the guard can see its gelatin jacket stuck to the end of his tongue, and then, like that, he swallows.
2002, Karlsruhe
Z dials from a pay phone at the Karlsruhe station, while waiting on his connecting train. He can’t believe it when Farid answers, and he says, “I thought you’d already have gone to ground.”
“And miss a chance to talk to you and whoever else is on the line?”
“It’s only me this morning. The others are busy scrubbing away fingerprints and pulling up stakes. We should probably talk quickly. I can’t promise they won’t be listening again soon.”
“Let me guess. This is the call where you try and turn me—on the day you killed my brother? Is that what your recruitment manual recommends?”
“No. It’s not recruitment. If anything, I’m calling to turn myself.”
A soft laughter comes from Farid, hardly different from the sound of the crying that Z had heard during the four a.m. talk.
“I’m serious,” Z says. “I’m bringing you a second deal.”
“From a man whose face I can trust?”
“I want to help level the scales.”
“And how will you do that, Joshua? Because I already have my own plan for the same.”
“I can get you things, Farid. Useful things. I have access.”
“You’re going to compromise your side, because you feel guilty?”
“I’m going to protect my side by trying to fix an imbalance that cannot and should not be maintained.”
“So what is my part in this?”
“Your part is no part. I will get you what you need to protect your people. All I ask is that you do nothing in return. End the cycle. That’s how I’ll protect mine.”
Farid takes a moment, and Z listens to the sound of a train rolling off.
“Call me after,” is what Farid says. “Let’s finish this round first.”
“Please,” Z says. “Don’t do it. Whatever it is, just see what I get you before. See the lengths to which I’ll go. Give me a couple of days. You can give me that long.”
“After,” Farid says. “Talk to me then. If you’re going to murder our children, you must be prepared to drink from the same cup of poison.”
2002, Paris
Z tells her about those sweet and pure years in Jerusalem, the Peace Process years. He tells the waitress how wonderful it felt to live there, even with the terror that darkened so many days. He shares with her his memories of what it was like to be the new immigrant, what it meant for him to make do, while he was broke and alone and yet always exhilarated by that ancient city.
He was so busy then, becoming fluent in Hebrew, getting himself educated, and embarking on a career that quickly turned into a secret other.
When he had his Hebrew to study, and his schoolwork to do, he would always take the bus up the mountain, even if his classes had been down on Givat Ram.
He’d hop off at the last stop and file past security, pausing for inspection by one of the old men (and they were always old), whose investigations consisted of pressing their fingers to the bottom of his book bag as if checking to see if it was ripe.
Z would settle into the library’s fourth floor, feeling himself cocooned in a vision of Israel’s brightest possible future. That’s what he was trying to express to the waitress, how for him, for his dreams of what Israel might become, Mount Scopus summed it up.
Crammed together at those study tables were religious and secular, Arab and Jew, rich and poor, white and brown and (sometimes) black. The social groupings based on subject and course. The focus of the students—as with all universities the universe over—resting on the twin pillars of learning and getting laid.
That campus was a place of sex and study, a refuge from the attendant politics and attendant hatreds that constantly rattled the state. It was as if all of that noise was filtered out, and what was left was just pure hope. They were up on that mountain waiting for the inevitable harmony to set in, a promised change that had literally drawn Z from America. He had moved to Israel to contribute to that happy age. He had rushed his aliyah, transferring to Hebrew University in the middle of his graduate degree, because he was afraid if he stayed in America any longer, he’d miss it.
He was afraid peace would start without him.
Z admits, in response to the waitress’s question, that of course there were the junior politicians in student government, and the junior idiots and crackpots on campus, who would one day, likewise, see their professional idiocies and crackpottitudes blossom. But the overarching, dominant goodness and happy idealism of the place easily drowned them out.
Nothing better demonstrated the unique normality of that oasis than the unstated policy that one could leave one’s bag on a table and, for a few moments, walk away.
Really, outside of the university, Z could think of no other place in the whole country where a bag left unattended wouldn’t have the first person to spot it yelling out without hesitation, the bomb squad summoned, a cordon immediately thrown. So often and frequently did this happen that whenever anyone was late to a dinner or a drink, all they would need say was, “Suspicious object”—everyone’s permanent, eternally reusable excuse. Z always remembers the face of a businessman running back to fetch his forgotten briefcase just in time to see the sappers set it off, all his papers swirling down onto the sidewalk after being blasted into the air.
But on campus, no one expected you to drag all your books from your favorite carrel to run out for a coffee or a smoke or a quick pee.
When Z was hungry, which, in those days, in his slightly younger man’s body, he always ravenously was, he’d wend through the absurdly byzantine main building and make his way across the donor-named Nancy Reagan Plaza, to the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria, which served—as far as he was concerned—the best schnitzel in town.