19
Monday,
August 24, 1970
1969-70
That morning he had to skip the Dans
breakfast. In order to catch the eleven oclock flight to Zurich, he had to be
at Lod by eight, and the shuttle that took him there left the hotel at 7:15.
And then, in the line for the
security check, about eight or ten meters in front of him, he saw her.
This was not a mere
resemblance, like that blonde in Jerusalem, two days before, who put him in
mind of Brigitte. No, this was the girl, the Mossads Ora, looking, from the
back, just as she did when he dropped her off at the Blankenese station. The
fit of her jeans was the same, and the long brown hair covered the big hoop
earrings that she was probably wearing in exactly the same way.
What was she doing, checking
in at the airport, as if she were just another passenger and not a Mossad
agent, at the same time as he?
Had he been followed? Had his
presence in Refadim been detected? Was he still in danger?
Of course, before he could
think of what, if anything, he could do that was in any way different from what
was planned, he would have to get a front or at least a side view of her, to be
absolutely certain of her identity, if only to be able to report it to Interpol
without coming across as paranoid.
She was alone, and showed no
inclination to turn her head in any direction. There were now only a few people
between her and the security-control agent. It was important for Miki to see if
she would be treated differently from other passengers.
She was not. The same
questioning, the same scrutiny of her passport, the same examination of her
baggage, all while never looking in any direction but straight in front of her.
She got through the control
and walked straight ahead. He still had at least twenty people ahead of him in
his line; it would be some forty minutes, he calculated. And, within the first
of these minutes, she vanished.
His anxiety now combined with
his hunger to form what he experienced as a single sensation of discomfort. The
only relief that he could provide for himself was to remind himself continually
that he would be with Brigitte again that night. It worked; once again, that
Norderney photograph came to dominate his conscious mind.
Once he cleared security, he
raced to the nearest coffee bar, which served an English-style breakfast of
runny fried eggs and lukewarm toast that he wolfed down with two cups of
coffee. Only then did he go to the Swissair counter to check in.
His flight, it turned out,
was going on to London after stopping in Zurich. He requested, and was given,
an upgrade to business class of the tourist-class ticket that Hagemann had
given him, so that he could sit as near the front of the plane as possible; he
had enough dollars left in cash to make the payment.
And then he saw her again in
the line at the gate, her head still turned away from him. It was uncanny, as
if she knew that he was there and would not let him see her face. He thought he
might see her on the bus that took them from the gate to the aircraft, but he
had no such luck. The bus that she was on filled up before he was out the gate,
and, once aboard, after ascertaining that she was not in either the first-class
or the business-class section, he knew that there was no way that he would see
her again before Zurich.
* * *
The Hebrew version of The Long Seventh Day
took much longer to go to press than the English and French ones. Max, at
first, entrusted the translation to a young Israeli woman of German-Jewish
descent who was a doctoral student in German literature at the Free University
of Berlin. But while this young woman had done some acceptable translations of
fiction, she did not know enough of the German terminology relating to modern
history and politics. Max then found another Israeli, this one a native of
Germany who had been living in Munich for some years, but this man had not kept
up with changes in Hebrew. Finally, Max and Miki had to work together over the
summer, becoming close friends and consuming copious amounts of St. Pauli beer,
to splice what the two translators had written and make sure the terminology
was adequately translated. The typescript was finally ready at the end of the
summer, and, because of the High Holy Days and Sukkot, did not get to the
printers until October. By the time the book was shipped to bookstores, at the
end of the month, Israel was deep in the Knesset election campaign.
Miki arrived in Israel a week
after the Bundestag elections in which the SPD-FDP coalition won a majority
that enabled Willy Brandt, at last, to become chancellor. It was also a few
days after Israels football team, led by Mordechai Spiegler, had won the
second of two matches against New Zealand, holding the Kiwis scoreless both
times. This meant that if Israel were to defeat Australia whose best
athletes, like New Zealands, concentrated on rugby rather than soccer
in December, then it would be the only country representing Asia in the
following years World Cup. What a great irony, he thought. Ask any Israeli if
he thinks of himself as an Asian, and youll get an incredulous laugh. And all
that because the Arab countries and their sympathizers, including North Korea
as a loyal Soviet satellite, had refused to play Israel.
He chided himself for not
thinking, in writing his book, of the possibility of Israels participation in
yet another international sporting event in Mexico after the previous years
Olympics that might provide an opportunity for a display of terrorism against
it. He would discuss it in his talks, though he would emphasize, just as he had
in the books prediction about the Olympics, that the Mexican security
apparatus, helped by the USA, was more than adequate to stave off such a
threat. He would repeat his skepticism about the capacity of the West German
police to do the same in Munich, three years hence.
His first appearance was at a
meeting that Uri Avnery had arranged in Rehovot. It was, technically, a
campaign meeting for the Haolam Hazeh party, but to Avnery the election
campaign was aimed more at education about the future of the country than
propaganda for the immediate elections. In his introduction, he made it clear
that his friend Miki Wilner was not there to ask people to vote for this or
that party, but to give them his vision of the future, a vision that events so
far had proven very clear-sighted.
As Miki rose to go to the
table that served as the dais, sketchy notes in had, he saw that the audience
was small and mostly middle-aged, or at least with no one who was significantly
younger than he was, with one striking exception.
In the last row he saw a
young woman, perhaps even a girl, with long brown hair, wearing jeans and a
navy-blue short-sleeved, high-necked top fitting snugly around her opulent
breasts. From her earlobes hung enormous hoop earrings that came within a few
millimeters of touching her shoulders when she sat with her head upright.
Last week, he began,
Moteleh Spiegler showed us that it is possible to be a hero in this country
while wearing a uniform that consists of a striped jersey and shorts, and
firing balls that dont hurt anyone, except in their pride.
The audience laughed. The
girl smiled. She had a pretty smile.
Unfortunately, Miki
continued, being a peaceful hero in these days is no guarantee against danger.
Israelis are in danger wherever they appear, and especially when they appear in
situations of high profile. They are, just as you are here in the Land of
Israel, in danger from terrorism. My friend Uri Avnery may not like the term terrorism
when applied to the actions of organizations like Fatah, but it doesnt matter
what we call it. What matters is to ask yourselves what you can do to protect
yourselves from this danger, at home and abroad.
This time the girls face was
expressionless.
As we have seen, greater
military strength, and even whatever is or is not being done in Dimona some
in the audience laughed nervously at the allusion to the suspected-but-denied
work on atomic weapons will not protect you, just as it has not protected
the United States against getting bogged down in Vietnam.
The girl seemed to stop
paying attention. She slumped in her chair, he head slightly tilted to her
right so that the right earring was resting on her shoulder.
And, unfortunately, your
conflict with your neighbors is being compared to the imperialistic actions of
the United States. I believe that this comparison is unfair, and I have said so
in my book, where I have listed all the ways in which I think that its unfair.
Did you think that I wasnt going to mention my book?
This time the audience
laughed heartily. The laughter seemed to startle the girl out of her
distraction and made her sit up straight and look at him directly. But she
showed no emotion, and this was how she remained for the rest of his talk:
mostly distracted, perhaps even dozing, but every so often startled into
attention, when she looked at him expressionlessly.
When his talk ended, she
walked out before the friendly discussion began. At the end he received warm
applause, and decided to keep the same format for his subsequent talks.
In Jerusalem his host was
Amos Oz. In Tel Aviv, Hanoch Levin, a young playwright who, the year before,
had written the satirical cabaret show You and Me and the Next War. In
Haifa, it was Buli Yehoshua. He had expected to change the details of his talks
as events might dictate, but it so happened that the string of violent clashes
the one that had begun in February with the bombardment of the Dead Sea Works by Katyusha rockets launched from
Jordan, continued with bomb explosions in Jerusalem, an airplane hijacking, and
almost weekly, sometimes daily, cross-border attacks, all with massive Israeli
retaliation with airplanes and tanks had run out of steam as the Jewish New
Year began, a few days after crushing air and land attacks on Egypt. Now,
during the election campaign, the countrys mood seemed sanguine, almost
euphoric. (Miki had left his own euphoria, occasioned by Willy Brandts
election victory, back at home.) He decided to emphasize even more the cautions
that he had been urging against such optimism.
One evening, in a bar in Tel Aviv, he overheard a soldier taking leave
from his friends and declaring lightheartedly, Well, its time for me to get
back to the Sinai and kill some Arabs. Hanoch Levin, who was sitting across
from Miki, gave him a meaningful look, and they each raised their glass and
took another drink. Just then a burly unshaven man holding a large glass filled
with some sort of liquor, from which he was swigging loudly, passed their table
and put his arm around Miki, shouting something in what sounded like Russian
and looking at the far corner of the room, as though he were posing for a
photograph. A drunken sailor, Miki thought.
The girl with the big
earrings was, strangely enough, present at every meeting, wearing jeans and the
same huge earrings, though different tops. Each time, she vanished after his
talk.
Who could she be? When he
asked his hosts and others who had attended the meetings, no one had any idea.
They proposed conjectures, about which they argued among themselves. A
reporter? No, because then she would have paid some attention to what he said.
A spy? Very unlikely, because her appearance was far too striking, but if she
were one, then for whom? For Israel? For West Germany? For America? For the
Soviets?
Back in Hamburg, when he told
Brigitte about the girl, she had a solution of her own to the mystery. Thats
quite simple, she said. She is a fan of yours! I often see people who come to
see me in the same play time after time, and they leave right at the final
curtain. They dont stay to applaud, because they believe and other actors
have told me this that they have a special relationship with me, not merely
as members of an audience. Ive told you that you are a star!
But she barely paid
attention to me!
It doesnt matter. She just
wants to be in your presence. Its like some sort of primitive magic.
Brigittes thirty-fifth birthday
was a few days later. They had a
small party, and afterwards, in the course of hanging a diamond-amethyst-pearl
necklace which he had bought for her from Kleinberg for eight hundred dollars
(one thousand five hundred in New York) on her lovely neck, he told her
about his coming millionaire status.
At last youre richer than I
am, she said as she kissed him back.
But she asked him no further questions. In the bedroom that night, she wore
nothing but the new necklace and the earrings from three years before.
* * *
He was among the first passengers to disembark in
Zurich, and, as he walked to the gate no bus was needed he longed for the
feeling of safety that a Swiss policemans presence would give him. But, as he
lingered near the gate, no one in a non-airline uniform was in sight. Other
passengers kept arriving and going on towards passport control. He glanced at
them sideways, having removed the by now thoroughly superfluous sunglasses,
looking for the girl, but she was nowhere to be seen either. Finally the gate
closed, and he was left all alone in the gate area. It dawned on him that she
was going on to London.
Perhaps she was not, after
all, pursuing him. He remembered her story about her summer in London. Perhaps
she was based there.
Or perhaps she was not that
girl at all, only someone who, from behind, looked amazingly, uncannily like
her.
Still, no policeman was
coming. He was becoming anxious. He wondered if he had, to paraphrase John Le
Carré, been left out in the cold. He imagined himself spending the rest of his life,
or at least the next few days until the matter was cleared up wandering
around, in his disguise, as Etzel Andergast.
He had no choice but to walk
in the direction of passport control, joining a small crowd of passengers who
had arrived on another flight at a neighboring gate. And then he remembered: in
Switzerland it is the canton police, not a federal agency as in West Germany or
the USA, that handles passport control at airports. When he came close enough
to see the agent checking passports behind the counter, he saw that the uniform
and badge were indeed those of a Zurich policeman. He got into the line and,
sure enough, when it was his turn and the policeman saw the passport in the
name of Etzel Andergast, he said to Miki, Please wait a moment, and made a
quick telephone call in Swiss German. After five minutes another policeman
came, said to Miki, Come with me please, and together, without a word
exchanged between them, they walked to the airport police station. Miki was
told to sit in the waiting room, and after another fifteen minutes it was now
almost five oclock a man in civilian clothes came in, gave Miki a handshake
and, with a smile, said, Good day, Doctor Wilner, I am Inspector Ränkli. I am
a liaison officer with Interpol, and you can now be yourself again. Come into
this office with me.
After Miki surrendered the
false passport and drivers license, Ränkli gave him all the documents and keys
that he had left behind in Stuttgart, and Miki gave the inspector his account
just as he had rehearsed it. He did not include an addendum about possibly
seeing the Mossads Ora at Lod airport. Inspector Ränkli took notes, and in the
end seemed pleased. All right, Doctor Wilner, he said, we are satisfied.
Have you, perhaps, forgotten something? When Miki looked puzzled, the
inspector pointed at his chin. Suddenly enlightened, Miki ripped off the beard
the stinging pain on his skin felt delicious and pulled the wig from his
head, and gave them to Ränkli. The inspector placed them, along with his notes,
in an attaché case, out of which he took an envelope that he handed to Miki.
Here is the ticket for your flight to Hamburg. It leaves at half past five, so
you must hurry. The policeman who brought you here will take you directly to the
aircraft. Your gracious wife will be informed of your flight by Hamburg
police.
The policeman came in and
said to Miki, exactly as he had before, Come with me please. This time,
however, Miki was led to a car, and after two minutes he was dropped off on the
tarmac, in front of the Swissair plane that was about to leave for Hamburg, its
propellers already turning. Only two hours more, and he would be with Brigitte.
And then, once he relaxed in
his seat with all thoughts of Ora having left him, the vague memory that was
evoked during the previous nights walk suddenly became clear. The funny
incident in the dimly lit bar was the one with the Russian sailor! Only he was
not a Russian sailor, but a Bulgarian gangster named Petrov, and he really did
pose for a photograph that was taken by someone with a camera equipped with a
fast shutter and using, probably, high-speed film that did not require flash.
It was too bad that the photograph of him and Petrov was not shown to him; he
would have recognized it immediately.
* * *
After Mikis return to Hamburg, it did not take
long for violent confrontation between Israel and its neighbors to resume. In November, Egyptian frogmen from Aqaba
sabotaged two Israeli ships in the harbor of Eilat. In December, an airlifted IDF unit penetrated deep into Egyptian
territory and removed an advanced Soviet radar installation. In
January, Israeli planes began attacking targets deep in Egyptian
territory. In February, Egyptian frogmen sank two Israeli navy boats in the
harbor of Eilat.
Shortly thereafter, and a few days before his thirty-fifth birthday,
something happened that shook Miki up in a way that he had vaguely anticipated,
but only in his direst nightmares. It was enough to make him ask Brigitte to
cancel any plans she might have made for a birthday party for him. She had
indeed made such plans, but after what had happened she was, like him, in no
mood to celebrate, and everyone she had invited was in full sympathy with the
cancellation. She had, however, already bought him a present, which was
delivered to their house, as scheduled, on his birthday. It was a Bianchi
ten-speed bicycle.
The dreadful event happened
right in West Germany: Arab terrorists, apparently from the PFLP, attacked El
Al passengers on a bus at the Munich airport, with one Israeli killed and
eleven others injured, including the actress Hanna Meron, one of whose legs was
filled with grenade fragments. Initial reports had suggested that her leg might
be saved, but once she was sent back to Israel, surgeons there determined that
amputation was necessary after all.
Munich, of all places! he thought. He had written what seemed like a
clear warning to the Bavarian authorities to step up their security
arrangements in preparation for the Olympics. He had spoken about it on the
most popular news show in West Germany. Surely the elders of Munich would have
heard him, as the king of Nineveh had listened to Jonah and averted disaster.
But no; they probably said to one another, What does that Hamburg Jew know
about security?
Miki had met Hanna Meron. She was the leading actress of the Kameri
Theater, where Hanoch Levin was going to have a play produced, and she had come
to Mikis talk on Hanochs invitation. When she told him that she would be in
Germany where she was born early in the next year, he invited her to come
to Hamburg to meet his wife, of whom she of course had heard, and she said that
she would try, though her schedule was tight. The Kameri was the Tel Aviv
equivalent of the Kammerspiele a small theater playing modern repertory and
Hanna had played some of the same roles as Brigitte: Eliza in Pygmalion,
Laura in The Glass Menagerie. Surely the two actresses would find plenty
to talk about, particularly since Hanna had not forgotten her German.
He sent a telegram expressing his deepest sympathy and best wishes in
care of the Kameri. He received a reply from Hanoch Levin, telling him that
Hanna was in great spirits and was looking forward to returning to the stage,
and inviting him to visit Israel, if possible with his beautiful wife, in April
or May, when Hanochs piece a
cabaret-style show called Bathtub Queen would be performed.
The next day a registered letter came addressed to Dr. Michael Wilner,
bearing Canadian stamps and the return address of a law firm in Montreal. It
informed Dr. Wilner that an investment account in the Bank of Montreal, with a
balance at the time of writing of Can$1,005,633.05, would be at his disposal as
soon as the enclosed signature form, to be signed by him and notarized, was
received at the bank. Upon receipt of said form he would be sent a checkbook
and further instructions.
He was now a millionaire, and in German marks a multimillionaire.
Brigitte was at the time involved in a film project based on
Schnitzlers story Casanovas Homecoming. Studio work in Hamburg would
end in early May, and then there would be a break of some ten days before
location work would begin in Venice. Since the precise dates had not yet been
set, they had not made their vacation plans yet. They decided that they would
at last go to Israel together.
The day after they made the decision, and only eleven days after the
Munich incident, a Swissair plane exploded on its way from Zurich to Tel Aviv.
All forty-seven people aboard, fifteen of them Israeli, were killed. Once
again, the PFLP claimed responsibility.
Lets fly Swissair, Brigitte said. You know what they say in
English: lightning never strikes twice in the same place.
I wish that were true, Miki answered, but when it comes to terrorists,
you have a point. Unlike you actors, they dont like to do repeat performances.
Besides, I like Swissair.
For himself, Miki decided that, given the performance of his Canadian
account, he would put the bulk of his book earnings into it, out of the German savings
account, where the money was earning only a modest interest. If Im rich, he
said to himself, I might as well get richer. Richer than my wife the film star!
And he laughed at himself inwardly.
* * *
She was waiting for him just outside the gate. She
was dressed in jeans and a simple black top, but her hair was styled in the
permanent that she still called her incognito hairdo, and that he still called
the Minna von Barnhelm coiffure. He guessed that perhaps the role for which she
was rehearsing, in that secret television series, called for it. Perhaps it was
set in the eighteenth or nineteenth century.
They had, on previous
occasions, been apart for more than the five days that this separation had
lasted, but never had the separation felt so long. The lack of telephone
contact was one thing that made it so; they were in the habit of calling each
other daily. But for him there was also the extent and nature of the adventure
he had lived through, and for her the anxiety that she felt for him.
As soon as they were near
each other, he dropped his duffel bag to the ground and they fell into a tight
embrace punctuated by greedy kisses. No words were exchanged except murmurings
of each others names. Both were keenly aware of their own and the others
surging desire. There was no time to be wasted. They turned away from each
other and, with their arms tightly around each others torsos, he picked up the
bag and they began to walk, as fast as they could, to the garage. Once they
were seated in her car, there was another deep kiss, and then she started the
motor.
During the half-hour drive
from the airport to Blankenese, he told her about the preceding days events in
sporadic fashion.
You were wrong about the
girl, he began.
You mean she was not a fan
of yours?
Thats right. She is a
Mossad agent. And the person she works for
Do you remember my friend Tzvi, in
the kibbutz, that I told you about?
The one whose sister you
thought you had raped?
Yes, hes the one. He and
some other people cooked up a scheme to frame me for killing the wrong Hemme,
or at least for hiring the killer, who was a Bulgarian gangster who lived in
Israel. Actually it was the girl who hired him. They set it up when I was in
Israel last year; they got a photograph of me and him in a bar in Tel Aviv.
Then they sent the girl to follow me and get me off my guard.
Slow down, sweetheart.
Youre losing me. Im supposed to be able to follow complicated plots, its my
profession, but
Who are they?
The Mossad. Whether they did
this on their own, perhaps as a personal operation by Tzvi, or on orders from
above, I dont know, and I probably never will. You see, Tzvi is dead. I think
I killed him.
Brigitte took her right hand
off the wheel and touched Mikis forehead with it. I dont feel any fever,
she said, but you seem to be hallucinating.
I probably am, he said.
Im imagining that Im being driven by an incredibly beautiful woman to her
luxurious house, where shes going to feed me delicious food and drink, and
were going to have a tempestuous night of love together. That sort of thing
doesnt happen in real life. But people do kill other people all the time,
especially angry men.
* * *
The Wilners ten-day stay in Israel was not a
quiet one. On the day they arrived, a
Sunday, an IDF unit killed 21 Palestinian infiltrators in the
Jordan Valley. Two days later, Katyusha rockets were fired from Lebanon on the town of Kiryat Shmona. A few days after
that, Israeli forces crossed into Lebanon and destroyed some Fatah camps.
But by far the greatest source of unrest among Israelis at the time was
the tempest that had erupted around Bathtub Queen.
After a whirlwind tour of the country in which they visited Rehovot,
Jerusalem, Haifa and Acre, Miki and Brigitte returned to Tel Aviv on the following
Sunday, which happened to coincide with the Remembrance Day that precedes
Israeli Independence Day. That afternoon, the ceremonies were shown on
television, including a melodramatic performance of the hero-worshiping song Ballad
for a Medic by the actor-singer Yoram Gaon, the star of the musical Kazablan.
The song and the patriotic speechmaking, by the likes of Golda Meir and
Moshe Dayan, were an appropriate preparation for Bathtub Queen, which
they went to see that evening and in which all such patriotism, self-sacrifice
and hero worship were mercilessly and sometimes, Miki had to admit,
tastelessly ripped apart. He was kept busy during the brief breaks between
the skits explaining them to Brigitte in English on her request, since she
did not want to draw attention with German whispering and while she, skilled
as she was in reading stage gestures, managed to get much of the meaning on her
own, some of the details needed translating.
Such was the proclamation by
the Golda Meir figure, For seventy-one years I have been examining myself and
I discover in me such righteousness that God only help me. And every day it
surprises me anew. Im right, right, right and right again. And the
declaration by the war hero with a pure soul: I envelop myself in a hard
shell only to cover up my inner soft-heartedness and my gentleness. And the
core of the plot, the fate of the exploited Palestinian worker Samatokha, of
whom the couple that employs him says, He is our Arab. He knows how to stand
on two legs, just like us. Only at home he walks on all fours. But thats not
because he wants to its just because of the height of the ceiling. And
later, We are not smashing his head in
because we are cultured people. They complain to him: Where will it all end,
Samatokha? Yesterday a bomb in the supermarket, this morning in the offices of
the Kameri. Where will it end? When the wife points out to her husband that
Samatokha didnt have anything to do with the terrorist attacks, the husband
replies: Of course, I know that, but if I were a primitive guy, I wouldnt
distinguish between an Arab who puts bombs and an Arab who doesnt put bombs.
An Arab is an Arab.
Samatokha is finally rescued
by a noble-hearted Israeli woman. As the mother of three children, one of whom
is a combat soldier, and as the daughter of Shoah survivors, I am hereby
authorized to declare: Dont hurt Arabs. My husband is a contractor and he
needs working hands in order to build you two-, two-and-a-half-, three-, and
four-room apartments, with central heating and fittings for a telephone.
A good part of the audience
seemed to have been composed of people who had gone with the express purpose of
whistling and booing. But those same people could be seen laughing, in spite of
themselves, and trying to hide their laughter.
The next day they had lunch
with Hanoch Levin, Hanna Meron and a few other members of the Kameri ensemble.
Two days later they flew to Rome. Once there, Brigitte found out that the
filming in Venice would be delayed, because of rain, until the following
Monday. Instead of taking the connecting flight to Venice, therefore, they
stayed in Rome for two nights. On Friday they took a train to Florence, where
that evening they attended a concert conducted by Claudio Abbado, with Gundula
Janowitz whose marvelous voice they had previously heard at the Hamburg Opera
singing in Pergolesis Stabat Mater and in Verdis Four Sacred
Pieces. Before they left Hamburg, Billung had made reservations for them
for the concert it would have been a side trip from Venice if the filming had
begun as scheduled and for a room in the Hotel Cavour. It was a memorable
night. By the time they arrived in Venice on Sunday afternoon after an
overnight stopover in Milan, where they went to hear the Ambrosian Pentecost
high mass in the Duomo, Brigittes period had begun.
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