24   19 Nov. 91   Daniel just called to say that he will not be coming here during American Thanksgiving after all, after saying three days ago that he might do so. He will be spending it with Roger’s family. He has already explained to me the mix-up with Amy. It was very silly: she had written him about the weekend of 2-3 November and he misread it as 23. “The cusp merged with the hyphen,” he said, making it sound lascivious. Oh, those cusp-hyphen mergers! He didn’t sound the least bit upset about it, he even seemed relieved. This time I asked him, as light-heartedly as I could, what was really going on between him and Amy. For some reason he answered me in French (I don’t quite understand the language games he is playing with me), saying that he had lost interest in her. “J’ai perdu l’intérêt pour elle,” he said. It was not incorrect French but something a francophone would say about a hobby, not about a person. “Tu n’es plus intéressé à elle?” I prompted him. He laughed and changed back to English after saying “touché, maman.” But perhaps he really regarded the defloration of Amy more as a project than as a relationship, and the wording was appropriate. It is like what M. Daigle implied to me, but differently: by insisting that I call him M. Daigle and speak to him with vous, even after we had done it. And he too might have lost interest if I had not been so persistent. But let’s be frank, my journal. Mireille Bouchard was a sexy young thing. Amy Kenner is not. Pretty, yes, in a different sort of way. But sexy, definitely not. But who am I to pronounce mys on whether a woman is or is not sexy to a man? Being a sexy woman (I don’t need to be modest with you, my journal) does not make me an authority. A few years ago Daniel pointed out to me the nurse that he had been seeing after his first experience in New York. I think her name was Aggie – no, Angie. I remember thinking of her as not the least bit sexy, but D told me that the sex had been great, and this after he had slept with several other girls. Well, my journal, if Daniel was attracted to Amy then she was a lucky girl, and if it didn’t work out for them, tant pis pour elle. Too bad for her. I am sure that there is no shortage of girls at Columbia for D to choose from. Or in New York more generally. That’s what Sam used to tell me. What he liked especially was the variety: Jewish, Black, Puerto Rican (I think he included all Hispanics in that category), Oriental (that is how he called East Asians till l told him that in French oriental is Middle Eastern), and the ones that he called WASP. He explained to me that it originally meant White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but in his language it meant anyone who was white and not Jewish. That included me, though I am of course neither Anglo-Saxon nor Protestant. But that was a short time after he arrived in Montréal. He quickly learned that we French Canadians are different and we have nothing to do with WASPs. And Sam came to appreciate the ethnic diversity of Montréal. But of course it is nothing like that of New York. I am sure that Daniel enjoys it. I have heard about the Jewish Audrey and the WASP Karen and the Puerto Rican Cici. There must be plenty of others. Peace Now   Amid the buzz of the conversation, the hum of the fan and the hiss of the espresso machine, Daniel was at his usual coffeehouse table, skimming a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt for his course in twentieth-century American history. Between sips of his cappuccino he took notes on a yellow pad. A folded copy of the Spectator served both as a bookmark and as a book protector against coffee spills. “Daniel Wilner!” He suddenly heard a female voice with a familiar New York accent call out his name. He turned around. “Audrey Seligman!” She was standing in front of him, wearing the same mauve raincoat as on that day, two years before, when he ran into her on Broadway. The memory of her languid disrobing made him realize that he had unconsciously been using her as the standard by which he judged Claire Chen’s lack of skill in doing so, and he felt a stirring of desire. “I haven’t seen you in ages!” She sat down at his table. “Well,” she said, “I was gone all of last school year. I was in Israel, at the Hebrew University.” “How was it?” “Fabulous! I’m minoring in Hebrew, so I figured I might as well get a head start.” Daniel didn’t know what Audrey’s major was, but chose not to ask. “Did you?” he asked instead. “You bet. But most of all I got to understand the situation there, and how important it is to support Israel. How you can’t have peace with the Arabs until they all recognize Israel’s right to exist and stop supporting terrorism. And the only way they’ll do that is if Israel remains strong so that they’ll know they can’t possibly win. Ever,” she concluded emphatically. At last she smiled as if to apologize for her flight of rhetoric. “What about the Madrid Conference?” “That’s just what I mean. It’s empty talk, and we, I mean we Jews,” she interjected with a laugh, “can’t let down our guard. There’s going to be a talk about it tonight by someone from Peace Now – they’re the ones who think that you can negotiate peace with the Arabs – and I’m with a group that’s going to give out information outside the lecture hall. In fact, we’re having a meeting right now, and I’ve got to go. But call me some time!” She wrote her number in the margin of his yellow pad before scooting away. He noticed that she wore jeans over high-heeled boots. He opened his book again, but, unable to concentrate, idly scanned the newspaper instead. On page 4 he found a notice about the talk, titled Madrid and the Israeli Peace Movement, to be given by a leader of Peace Now named Arik Shaked. It might be interesting, he thought. And it might be intriguing to see Audrey as a political agitator. But he could not rid his mind of memories of Audrey undressing. Of all the women he had known, none had done it as seductively as Audrey, not only the first time but on later occasions as well. He then thought of Cici, whose disrobing was casual and effortless but was sensual because all her movements were sensual. Megan, on the other hand, liked him to undress her… What’s wrong with me? he suddenly said to himself. Comparing girls by the way they undress? I’m pathetic! Not literally, he corrected himself, because pathetic comes from pathos, which means ‘passion,’ and passion was precisely what he lacked, at least where sex was concerned. He didn’t feel himself as lacking in passion for learning, for music, or for the grand enterprise of his young life – the search for his father. Comparing girls by the way they undress? Like an old lecher writing his memoirs? But the Don Juans and the Casanovas of the world, when they wrote their memoirs, boasted of their conquests, of seductions carried out in the face of great obstacles, be they jealous husbands, imperious fathers or solemn vows of chastity. For Daniel Wilner sex had been easy, ever since, with Gen McGrath’s initiation, he had learned to sense a woman’s willingness. He was now twenty years old; he had been practicing effortless recreational sex – or rec sex, as his soccer buddies from Western Canada liked to call it – for somewhat over three years. And that’s what it was, even with Cici, though she liked to call it making love. Love! What is love? Whatever it might be, Daniel knew that he had not yet been in love. And yet seventeen to twenty – the time of his life as a so-called lover – were prime years for falling in love. Betty, at seventeen, was in love with Paul Berman, and may have previously been in love with Gérard Labouisse. Mireille Bouchard, at twenty-one, fell in love with Miki Wilner, and Daniel was the result. Miki and Brigitte were adolescent lovers at fifteen, but at seventeen – after Miki’s time of rec sex at the kibbutz – they became true lovers. What’s wrong with me? Daniel asked himself again. Where’s my love gene?   It was chilly and raining lightly when he approached Philosophy Hall. The group giving out information turned out to be four students with picket signs. One of them was Audrey, her sign reading PEACE NOW / NEVER WITH TERRORISTS! Another was handing fliers to people entering the building, mumbling something as she was doing so. Audrey was looking away, and Daniel felt relieved. He slithered inside without picking up a flier. The hall was almost packed. At five past eight a young man came to the lectern, picked up the microphone, and said casually, as if talking to a group of friends, “Hi, I’m Larry, the chairman of Columbia Shalom Akhshav. I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that Arik Shaked, for reasons not quite clear, could not leave Israel. The good news is that his wife, Doctor Ruth Shaked, happened to be attending a conference at Yale, and graciously agreed to come and speak in his place. She will introduce herself. Thanks for your understanding, and Shalom.” A short, slightly plump woman with graying black hair and sharp features, softened somewhat by her large black-rimmed glasses, approached the lectern and took the microphone from Larry.. Her skin was dark and marked by the hot dry air that Nili had mentioned. Her age was hard to determine: it could be anywhere between forty-five and sixty-five. “Thank you, Larry,” she said before clearing her throat. “First I will tell you a little about my background,” she began in an accent that betrayed some time spent in England, “and second how I came to be active in Peace Now. Then I will talk about the Madrid Conference. “I come from a kibbutz. My family were among the founders of the kibbutz. They were active in the Palmakh before independence and later they became very involved in the Israel Defense Forces. My uncle was a paratroop commander. My father was an artillery officer and then he was one of the founders of the Mossad. My brother was a high-ranking agent in the Mossad. “I was a loyal member of the kibbutz, loyal to all the ideals that it stood for, including the security of the State of Israel. And the kibbutz was good to me. After my military service they paid for my university education, including postgraduate school in England. And I came back to the kibbutz to work as a psychologist. “But two things happened. After the Six-Day War, when Israel was full of euphoria, when Israelis thought that they were the kings of the world, or at least of the Middle East, a book came out called The Long Seventh Day. The author was called Michael Wilner. He was a German Jewish journalist. I say was, because he died a few years later, when he was covering the Yom Kippur War.” Daniel felt glued to his chair. Petrified. Paralyzed. He could not breathe. The woman was talking about his father! “But when he was a boy he lived in my kibbutz, and he was called Miki.” She was from Refadim! She might have known him! Maybe I can talk to her afterwards and find out! “In the book he warned us against falling for delusions of grandeur. He predicted another war, which came a few years later and cost him his life. He predicted terrorist attacks, and even the Intifada, unless we Israelis made peace with the Palestinians. In Israel he was mostly criticized, and the library of my kibbutz refused to buy his book. But a few thinking people took him seriously, and that’s how the movement was born. I bought the book when I was in Jerusalem for a conference, but when I brought it back to the kibbutz, I felt that I had to hide it. “Reading the book gave me the intellectual sense that our security was a delusion as long we were at war with our neighbors. But then something more personal happened about a year later: my brother was found dead, floating in the fishpond of the kibbutz.” She was talking about Tzvi Kaplan! So she was Ruti, who had wanted Miki to take her virginity! And this was the memory that Amy’s letter had stirred in him! “We never knew if he was murdered or committed suicide. There was an investigation, but it was top secret, because they said that my brother was involved in a high-level operation. And when the investigation was concluded they wouldn’t tell me the results.” A high-level operation to frame Miki Wilner for murder! Daniel felt like shouting. “My brother’s death had to be hushed up, for fear of compromising the operation. Those of us who knew about it were not allowed to talk about it, because that would jeopardize national security. We couldn’t even have a funeral for him. That was when I said to myself, enough already! Enough of secret operations! Enough of so-called national security! Enough of war! I left the kibbutz, I moved to Jerusalem and I joined Peace Now. It was also where I met my husband, Arik Shaked.” He didn’t want to hear any more. He no longer cared about how Peace Now stood on the Madrid conference. He had found, unexpectedly, another source – an unwitting one – of information about his father. He now knew something that no one else did, except perhaps some mysterious Mossad investigators who might no longer be around. Brigitte and Nili knew that Miki Wilner had knocked Tzvi into the fishpond, but not the outcome. Ruth Shaked knew that her brother had died, but not how. There was no longer any point in talking to her. He knew more than she did, and he didn’t feel it was his place to give her this kind of information. He decided to leave, and wended his way out of the hall as discreetly as he could. It was easy, since some latecomers were still moving in. Outside the picketers were still there, Audrey among them. He made a point of not letting her see him. He needed to talk to somebody about what he had just learned. But who? Certainly not Audrey, the ultra-Zionist – she would hardly welcome the news that Daniel was the son of a critic of Israel who had moreover caused the death of a Mossad agent. He would, of course, inform Brigitte and Nili about it. He wondered if Nili knew that the Ruti of her kibbutz childhood was now the wife of a leader of Peace Now. But informing them – two of the three women in his father’s life that he knew of – wasn’t the same as talking to somebody. What about the third woman, Mireille Bouchard? This didn’t seem to be an option; by now he had the strong sense that his mother, though she had never said so, disapproved of his delving into his father’s history. Nor did it seem to him that either Betty or Fela, for different reasons, would be apt listeners for his tale. No, it had to be a friend. A New York friend, because face to face would be better than over the telephone, and he had already decided to stay in New York over Thanksgiving. He had been invited for the holiday dinner by Roger’s parents – in their Riverdale apartment, not the Hamptons – and he had accepted. Besides, at the moment he couldn’t think which of his Montreal friends he wanted to talk to about this matter. Harvey, perhaps, but he would do it later. Could he talk to Roger? No, this was too personal a matter for the kind of friendship they had, and a fortiori for his soccer pals. Ora? Now that was a possibility, since she knew about his quest, but she was not in New York and it would take some effort to find out where she was. How about Cici? Of course. It was she who had instilled in him the idea of a quest, and they were still friends. He was at Amsterdam and Ninety-Ninth, about halfway home, when he got out of his thoughts and into the world around him. It was no longer raining – in fact, it hadn’t been raining at all since he left Philosophy Hall. Still, not many people were out walking. He would call Cici as soon as he got home. And he might as well call Audrey as well – not to talk, but to make a date that would end in bed. If she wasn’t home yet, he would leave a message.   “That’s fantastic,” Cici said when he gave her a summary of what he had learned. “It’s… it’s like a movie! I’d love to talk to you about it. We could get together tomorrow, or we could wait a few days till my period’s over.” “Let’s wait,” Daniel responded without thinking. He immediately regretted it: he didn’t want a friendly confidential talk complicated by sex. But it was too late. Or was it? “No,” he said, “on second thought I’d rather not wait. Tomorrow would be great.” “Okay,” Cici said, “I can come over any time after three.” “I’ll be waiting for you.” Next he dialed the number that Audrey had written on his pad. While he heard the ringing it occurred to him that with Audrey he wanted the opposite of his wish with Cici: sex uncomplicated by too much talk. Audrey’s phone kept ringing, but there was neither a live nor a recorded answer. He decided to try again later that evening. But he got busy studying, and by the time he remembered it was almost midnight.   He had never before told Cici the full story, or what he knew of it, of his father, the false Ora, Axel Hemme and Tzvi Kaplan. When he did so that Friday afternoon, completing it with his discovery of Tzvi’s death, Cici seemed overwhelmed. “That’s some story!” she exclaimed. “It could be a movie!” But before long she began to analyze it. “Tell me again,” she said. “Did this Ruth lady say that the investigation was completed?” “I think so… yes, she did, definitely.” “So you think maybe they traced it back to your dad, and then they set a trap for him when he went back to Israel?” Daniel was momentarily breathless. “Of course that’s possible!” he said. “They must have realized that they couldn’t get him in Europe… Wow, Cici, you’re brilliant!” “I know,” she said, and laughed. “So now you have another pending assignment. You have to track down this mysterious Ora woman.” Mysterious Ora! The very words he had used when asking Brigitte to confirm the identity of the bosomy girl in the photograph. When he would write to Brigitte about his new knowledge, he would ask her for a copy of the photograph. Meanwhile, he stared at Cici wide-eyed. “What I mean is,” Cici explained, “if she was working for Tzvi and was on your father’s case before Tzvi’s death, there’s all the more reason that she would have stayed on the case. I think she’s the key to the mystery. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, it may take years and years, but you’ve got yourself another search. Like you French people say, cherchez la femme,” she concluded with a laugh. Daniel laughed too. “So I’ll go to Israel and show people the photograph and ask them if they know a woman named Ora who looked like this in nineteen-seventy?” Cici laughed again. “Something like that, maybe, but I have a feeling that other clues will turn up. Anyway, Danielito, I’ve got to go home and study.” She stood up. “Only two weeks to my GRE!” She gave him a friendly but extended kiss before taking her leave. Daniel, too, needed to get back to his studies, or, more specifically, to his PC, in whose company he expected to spend the rest of his afternoon and evening. He had managed to contact Audrey in the morning – her answering machine was on the blink, she said – and made a date with her for the following evening, a standard date of dinner, a movie and probably sex. Audrey! He had recently read in The New Yorker that many of the opposition movements that had led to the downfall of the Communist regimes in Europe had been funded, if not actually organized, by the CIA. Might not the group that Audrey belonged to be similarly sponsored by the Mossad? If so, then by joining her group he might look for a backdoor entrance into that formidable agency.   They met at the same pizzeria where they had their last date before the friendly breakup two years earlier. The weather was chilly but dry, and Audrey was wearing a camelhair overcoat rather than a raincoat. “I went to that talk Thursday night,” he began. Audrey stopped short in the midst of removing her overcoat, showing a black top with a neckline that was more revealing than anything Daniel remembered on her, though the change might not be specific to Audrey: he had noticed it in Megan a few months earlier, and he found cleavage bursting out all over New York when he got back. He thought that it might be due to the influence of Madonna, especially after the release of Truth or Dare. “You did? I didn’t see you!” “You were busy talking.” “My downfall!” she said with a laugh. “Me and my big mouth!” Her mouth was actually quite small, though accentuated by dark lipstick. “So what did you think?” she asked as she finally took off her coat and sat down. “I didn’t stay very long. You see, the speaker started out by mentioning my father…” “He did? Your father?” Audrey suddenly realized that her voice had risen by several decibels and looked around her to see the effect. There seemed to be none. “She did.” “What? It wasn’t Arik Shaked?” “No, he couldn’t make it, and his wife spoke in his place.” Somehow it did not surprise Daniel that Audrey had not found out about the substitution. “And it turned out that she knew my father.” “What?” “You see, I never told you much about my father, because I didn’t think at the time that it would interest you, but he was a journalist and after the Six-Day War he wrote a book called The Long Seventh Day. Did you ever hear about it? His name was Michael Wilner.” “No.” “Anyway, Ruth Shaked not only had read about the book, but she was from the same kibbutz where my father lived for a while.” “Your father lived on a kibbutz?” “Yes, as a teenager.” It was time to begin lying. “I didn’t think very much about my father – I never knew him, after all – but somehow hearing about him like that brought out the Jewish side of me and made me want to do something for Israel.” Audrey reached across the table and put her hands on his, stroking them lightly. Her touch was warm and gentle, and he felt a surge of desire, for a split-second imagining himself crawling under the table and under her skirt, tough of course her tights would be in the way. He thought that, at an appropriate moment, he might suggest skipping the movie. She kept holding his hands as the waitress came by to get their orders. They ordered a large Caesar salad and a pizza “with everything” to share. To drink they ordered tea, his hot and hers iced. “I wonder if I could join your organization,” he added. “Well, it’s not really an organization, just a group of kids – about ten of us – who had all spent a year studying in Israel. We were contacted by a woman named Keren – that’s not Karen but Keren – from the Jewish Agency to see if we wanted to help correct misinformation about Israel.” The effect of Audrey’s pronunciation, with her New York accent, of the two versions of the name was comical, but Daniel was not inclined to laugh. From what he knew of Israeli accents, Karen would probably sound like Keren, and in his own Canadian English the two words would probably also sound the same, like Mary, marry and merry, so that he would think of the woman as Karen. It was, after all, a matter of different transcriptions of the same Hebrew name, like Nili Rosen and Ora Rozen. He had heard about the Jewish Agency, or Sokhnut as people often called it, from Fela and her friends. Well, he thought, if the CIA had used embassies, consulates and the US Information Agency as cover, why couldn’t the Jewish Agency serve as a cover for the Mossad? “So is that a requirement, that you’ve spent a year in Israel?” “Not a requirement, no – it’s not like we’re an organization with by-laws and all that.” “Could I join you informally, as your boyfriend?” Audrey quickly released Daniel’s hands. “What? Aren’t you jumping the gun a little?” “I’m speaking hypothetically.” “Well, hypothetically, I don’t see why not.” She smiled and took his hands again. This time, though, instead of lust he felt hunger. Just at that moment the waitress brought the salad, garlic bread and teas, and the handholding was interrupted again. “I’ll ask Keren if you could come to our next meeting,” Audrey said as she took a bite of garlic bread. “No,” Daniel said, “I’d rather ask her myself, if you could give me her phone number. I was kidding about the boyfriend thing.” “I know.” Daniel wrote to Brigitte on Monday, but he didn’t get around to calling Karen Litov until Tuesday afternoon. He got her answering machine and left a message giving only his name and phone number, and the desire to speak with her. She did not call back either that day or the following one. He would not hear back from her until after Thanksgiving, Daniel concluded. Later that afternoon Audrey called him. She was at her parents’ house in Westchester for Thanksgiving holiday, and wondered if Daniel was free to join them for Thanksgiving dinner. He could stay the night, of course. Daniel regretfully replied that he already had a Thanksgiving engagement. His regret was genuine, because Audrey’s tone clearly implied that he would spend the night with her, and sex with Audrey on Saturday night had been very good. She seemed to have learned a thing or two in Israel. Besides Hebrew, and understanding the situation in the Middle East.