The housing estates and settlements of early Israel were places of grief where the dead walked among the living, and the living did their best to find their way in an alien land. In the little breezeblock home where the Allons lived, candles burned next to photographs of loved ones lost to the fires of the Shoah. They had no other gravestone. They were smoke on the wind, ashes in a river.
The Allons did not particularly like Hebrew, so at home they spoke only German. Gabriel’s father spoke with a Bavarian accent; his mother, with the distinct accent of a Berliner. She was prone to melancholia and mood swings, and nightmares disturbed her sleep. She rarely laughed or smiled, she could not show pleasure at festive occasions, she did not like rich food or drink. She wore long sleeves always, even in the furnace heat of summer, and placed a fresh bandage each morning over the numbers tattooed on her left forearm. She referred to them as her mark of Jewish weakness, her emblem of Jewish shame. As a child, Gabriel learned to be quiet around her, lest he awaken the demons. Only once did he dare to ask her about the war. After giving him a hurried, evasive account of her time at Auschwitz, she fell into a deep depression and was bedridden for many days. Never again was the war or the Holocaust spoken of in the Allon household. Gabriel turned inward, solitary. When he was not painting, he took long runs along the irrigation ditches of the valley. He became a natural keeper of secrets, a perfect spy.
“I wish my story was unique, Natalie, but it is not. Uzi’s family was from Vienna. They are all gone. Dina’s ancestors were from the Ukraine. They were murdered at Babi Yar. Her father was like my mother, the only survivor, the last child. When he arrived in Israel he took the name Sarid, which means remnant. And when his last child was born, his sixth, he named her Dina.”
“Avenged.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Until now,” said Natalie, glancing at Dina across the table, “I was unaware she had a name.”
“Sometimes our Dina reminds me of my mother, which is why I love her. You see, Natalie, Dina is grieving, too. And she is very serious about her work. We all are. We see it as our solemn duty to make certain it never happens again.” He smiled in an attempt to lift the veil of death that had fallen over the luncheon table. “Forgive me, Natalie, but I’m afraid this valley has stirred many old memories. I hope your childhood wasn’t as difficult as mine.”
It was an invitation to share something of herself, an intimacy, some well of hidden pain. She did not accept it.
“Congratulations, Natalie. You just passed an important test. Never reveal anything about yourself to three intelligence officers unless one of them is holding a gun to your head.”
“Are you?”
“Heavens, no. Besides, we already know a great deal about you. We know, for example, that your family was from Algeria. They fled in 1962 after the war had ended. Not that they had a choice. The new regime declared that only Muslims could be citizens of Algeria.” He paused, then asked, “Can you imagine if we had done the same thing? What would they say about us then?”
Again, Natalie reserved judgment.
“More than a hundred thousand Jews were essentially driven into exile. Some came to Israel. The rest, like your family, chose France. They settled in Marseilles, where you were born in 1984. Your grandparents and parents all spoke the Algerian dialect of Arabic as well as French, and as a child you learned to speak Arabic, too.” He looked across the valley toward the village perched atop the hillock. “This is another thing you and I have in common. I, too, learned to speak a bit of Arabic as a child. It was the only way I could communicate with our neighbors from the tribe of Ismael.”
For many years, he continued, life was good for the Mizrahi clan and the rest of France’s Jews. Shamed by the Holocaust, the French kept their traditional anti-Semitism in check. But then the demographics of the country began to change. France’s Muslim population exploded in size, far eclipsing the small, vulnerable Jewish community, and the oldest hatred returned with a vengeance.
“Your mother and father had seen this movie before, as children in Algeria, and they weren’t about to wait for the ending. And so for the second time in their lives they packed their bags and fled, this time to Israel. And you, after a period of prolonged indecision, decided to join them.”
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about myself?”
“Forgive me, Natalie, but we’ve had our eye on you for some time. It is a habit of ours. Our service is constantly on the lookout for talented young immigrants and Jewish visitors to our country. The diaspora,” he added with a smile, “has its advantages.”
“How so?”
“Languages, for one. I was recruited because I spoke German. Not classroom German or audiotape German, but real German with the Berlin accent of my mother.”
“I presume you also knew how to fire a gun.”
“Not very well, actually. My IDF career was unremarkable, to say the least. I was much better with a paintbrush than I was with a gun. But this is unimportant,” he added. “What I really want to know is why you were reluctant to come to Israel.”
“I considered France my home. My career, my life,” she added, “was in France.”
“But you came here nonetheless.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to be separated from my parents.”
“You are a good child?”
“I am an only child.”
“Like me.”
She was silent.
“We like people of good character, Natalie. We’re not interested in people who desert their wives and children and don’t look after their parents. We employ them as paid sources if we have to, but we don’t like having them in our midst.”
“How do you know I’m—”
“A person of good character? Because we’ve been watching you, quietly and from a distance. Don’t worry, we’re not voyeurs unless we have to be. We’ve allowed you a zone of privacy, and we’ve averted our eyes whenever possible.”
“You had no right.”
“Actually,” he said, “we had every right. The rules that govern our conduct give us a certain room to maneuver.”
“Do they allow you to read other people’s mail?”
“That is our business.”
“I want those letters back.”
“What letters are those?”
“The letters you took from my bedroom.”
Gabriel looked reproachfully at Uzi Navot, who shrugged his heavy shoulders, as if to say it was possible—in fact, it was doubtless true—that certain private letters had been pinched from Natalie’s apartment.
“Your property,” said Gabriel apologetically, “will be returned as soon as possible.”
“How thoughtful of you.” Her voice contained a knife’s edge of resentment.
“Don’t be angry, Natalie. It’s all part of the process.”
“But I never applied to work for—”
“The Office,” said Gabriel. “We only call it the Office. And none of us ever asked to join. We are asked to join. That’s how it works.”