With lightning speed he whips an ampoule of blood from his pocket and smears it over his shoulder, on his white tee-shirt. He smears another ampoule on his trousers, in the area of the thigh, and stands up bloody with theatre-blood and limps over to a nearby rock, takes shelter behind it, and crawls quickly to the side, behind another rock. A
quick glance in the direction of his enemy brings a smile to his lips. The guy is training his field glasses on the first rock.
Swallow the bait, go on, piece of fashionable shit that you’ve turned into, Hanina urges him, and he swallows it. He sprays the rock and its surroundings with bullets, changes the magazine again, and starts running towards the rocks.
Hanina takes off his shirt and trousers, crawls behind the first rock, which took most of the fire, pulls up handfuls of weeds that look to him like a local variety of wild alfalfa, stuffs his shirt and trousers with them, and arranges the result in the figure of a man curled up behind the rock. He wonders if it really is alfalfa, which actually originated in southwest Asia, in other words our own Middle East, and lent its Arabic name of
alfasfasah
to the Spanish corruption alfalfa, which was adopted in America too, whereas in England the plant is known by another name, let’s see—Luce? No, that’s
A Comedy of Errors
. Maybe Lucio?
Measure for Measure?
No no … and not Lucentio either, we’re not in
The Taming of the Shrew
, maybe Lucetta? No, my dear Gentleman of Verona, let’s see, let’s see, Luciana? No you’re in
A Comedy of Errors
again, not Lucullus, we’re not in
Timon
, and not
Julius Caesar
, just a minute—Lucerne, Lucerne! That’s the English name for alfalfa. I wonder where it came from. Perhaps the French
luzerne
, that comes from the Provencal
luzerno
, which means a glow-worm, which the French call
ver luisant .…
maybe the Provencals gave this name to alfalfa because of the gleam of its seeds, and what’s all this got to do with the city of Lucerne in Switzerland, where you kicked to death the partner of this man, who three years later, after the failed assassination attempt against the hunter of wild boars in Lebanon, murdered Jonas, and is now chasing you without knowing who it is that he’s pursuing, or perhaps he does know and that’s why he came armed to the teeth.…
And while these thoughts chase each other in Shakespeare’s head, he chooses a stone the size of a man’s skull, covers it with his baseball cap, and whispers to it, ‘Turn my heart to stone, stone, make me a man of stone with a heart of stone, or I won’t be able to do what I have to do’, and so saying he attaches it to the neck of his bloodstained tee-shirt. Then he breaks another ampoule of blood from the theatrical accessories store, smears it over his naked shoulder and thigh, and the minute the guy enters the dead zone, his fingers activate his state of the art stopwatch—automatically synchronized by means of a radio wave with the nuclear time-setting center near Grenoble—and sets it to send a warning signal after one hundred and twenty seconds, and his legs lift him from his place, wearing nothing but white underpants and marathon running shoes, and even before he can command them they take off at a rapid run on the path between the low hills leading in the direction of the sun now standing at an angle of forty-five degrees above the horizon line.
When the watch vibrates on his wrist to warn him that the two minutes are up, he stops and looks back. His eyes measure the distance to the rock from which he set off at a run: about eight hundred meters. His armed pursuer has not yet seen him, due to the fold in the ground rising to the height of a man. His legs demand another thirty seconds of fast running, and while his fingers are busy setting the stop-watch again he says: Take me, legs, you are the lifeline connecting me to the world. And again they set out at a fast run.
Thirty seconds of running for survival. He hears Shakespeare’s voice commanding his tongue to run freely in his head. Not exactly freely—how would you translate ‘this tongue that runs so roundly in thy head’?
Perhaps the right word would be ‘smoothly’? He says to Shakespeare. And perhaps ‘lightly’ would be better.
‘Smoothly’ has a connotation of dishonesty, but ‘lightly’ is associated with ‘light-headed’, ‘light-minded’, with the giving of a light and frivolous answer to a weighty and hard question. Is that what you’re doing now, Hananiah ben Hezekiah ben Gruen? Giving an answer as flighty as water to a grave question which you were asked and to which you had no reply?
What exactly was the question that you asked me in the way in which you lived your life, father?
If you answer it lightly and smoothly, with a tongue running freely and loosely in your head, that head deserves to be crushed and unyoked from the shoulders that have cast off the yoke of duty, Richard the Second warns him, while his legs carry him with a lightness that exceeds even the lightness of his tongue, running round in his head and saying to him:
A fine pair of legs you’ve raised, legs that feel at home everywhere on earth. Just let them run, and they’re at home. On the banks of the Ganges, on the marble steps of an Indian temple, on
hamada
desert soil strewn with pebbles of Nubian sandstone in a North African enemy country—everywhere that you are hated, persecuted, pursued, you’re at home, Shylock my friend, leg-man. Let your legs carry you in the wind, let them tell the earth the story of your father’s run for life, your father who looked at your hand one morning and said that it had reached the required size, and took you to the hills above the young little village in the forests of the Jerusalem corridor, and gave you your first lesson on the big Parabellum, which he called ‘Par’ for short, a lesson that opened with words that issued heavily from the tongue in the gray head of the iron man:
A pistol is not a cannon. Not a weapon to aim from a distance and kill. A pistol is a weapon to save life. It is the continuation of your hand, of your finger. Use it only to save your life, or the life of another person who somebody is going to kill.
And if I see someone who wants to kill me from a distance?
Run, said the iron man. For that you have legs. If somebody attacks you, run.
And what about honor, Daddy?
Leave honor to fools. If somebody attacks you, cast off everything, including honor which will only get in your way, and run. If you can, leave all the honor to your pursuer, and he won’t catch you easily. But if he does catch up with you, stop, turn to face him, and point your finger at him. How long does it take you? Less than a second. We said that the pistol is a continuation of your finger. Here, take the ‘Par’ and point at that tree trunk. Don’t say to yourself, now I’m going to shoot it, because then you won’t shoot in time and you’ll miss. Just think about your left hand holding your right hand on the handle, and say to yourself, ‘Left, left, left’, and let your finger pull the trigger lightly. Let the shot surprise you, and then it will also surprise the person who wants to kill you. Now cock the pistol. You’re running. You hear his footsteps behind you. He’s coming closer. Stop and …
The stopwatch vibrates on his wrist. Thirty seconds of running and survival.
He stops and looks behind him. The guy is still out of sight. Has he given up and gone back? So soon? Impossible. Wait. Be patient. A little longer. Give him a few more seconds. His head appears behind the rise. He peers suspiciously right and left, he’s careful, the cur. Because he’s so busy looking around him, and perhaps because of the weariness that is beginning to show its signs, he fails to notice a little pothole and he stumbles and falls and the rifle slips from his grasp. But it isn’t over yet. He rises quickly to his feet, wipes the dirt off his hands, rubs them on his trousers like a big fly wiping its feet. He picks up his gun, brushes the
sand off it and holds it ready to shoot. He looks at the rock behind which three minutes ago you arranged your clothes stuffed with alfalfa. He approaches it at a crouch. Apparently he’s afraid that you’re waiting for him there with a pistol in your hand. Now he stops at a distance of fifty paces from the rock. He hesitates. Raises the field glasses to his eyes. Presumably sees the trousers smeared with blood. He appears to be making up his mind. Then he begins to move again, very cautiously. He flanks the rock from the south, approaches his prey with feline steps. Despite the distance, you can sense his excitement. He never imagined it would be so easy.
Mister Adonis, you can’t imagine yet how hard it’s going to be, you whisper to the desert air, and your legs break into a limping run. The distance between you is now more than a thousand meters. Soon he’ll realize that his prey has escaped him, and then he’ll raise his eyes and look around him and discover you limping away from him into the desert. He has to see that you’re limping. You have to entice him to go on pursuing you. There is nothing that tempts a pursuer to continue his pursuit more than the weakness of his victim.
A burst of rifle fire pierces the silence, but you don’t hear the whistle of the bullets. You stop and look back. The guy, who discovered his wounded enemy hidden behind the rock, is standing at a distance of twenty or thirty meters shooting at him mercilessly. Riddling the local wild alfalfa with one burst after the other. Then he gets up the courage to approach the rock, and shoots the stuffed clothes again from a distance of a few meters. Now he goes up and stands over them. Pokes them with his shoe. Picks up the bloodstained and bullet-riddled trousers, looks at them disbelievingly and throws them furiously to the ground. Kicks the shirt and cap in a rage, and immediately bends down and holds his foot as if he has been wounded. The stone skull hidden inside the
baseball cap has done its work. Two and half seconds later a roar of pain reaches your ears. Because of the distance everything happens as in a movie whose soundtrack is lagging behind the picture. Now a curse uttered two seconds before in a foreign language reaches your ears. Something that sounds like
‘sakashanya-khashanya’
. He goes on hopping round on one foot. He must have really hurt himself. You can’t help yourself. You press 9 again, and wait. The guy raises his cell phone to his ear.
Sorry, you say, I didn’t plan for you to kick the stone.
Get fucked!
There’s no one to do it with.
Wait till I catch up with you, Shylock.
You’re not my cup of tea, you say apologetically.
You’ll rot in the desert, the guy promises.
One of us will, you correct him.
During the entire conversation he tries to locate you, but for some reason he’s looking in the wrong direction.
Look in the direction of the sun, idiot, you suggest.
He turns towards the sun. Shades his eyes with his hand and discovers the naked figure hobbling at a distance of a thousand two hundred meters. He raises the field glasses to inspect his opponent, and sees the blood on his shoulder and thigh. He overcomes the pain in his foot and breaks into a rapid run, hoping to catch up quickly with the wounded Shylock, who goes on running away from him like a duck with a broken wing.
Excellent, whispers Shakespeare, everything is happening almost exactly according to the script by Tyrell the Third.
Run, son of a horse, run as fast as you can, and you’ll run out of air faster than we thought.
Keep up the appearance of limping, Tyrell Shlush instructs the hero of his movie, but quicken your pace a little. Maintain a distance of a thousand meters between you.
After five minutes running, the guy appears to be losing control of his breathing. He goes from running to walking and back to running again. A good sign. He’s getting tired. Timber was right: from time to time he raised his left hand and felt his stomach. The heartburn must be burning his throat, the smell of dead meat rising from his upset stomach and filling his mouth. Now is the time to narrow the distance, in order to give him the illusion that he can come within effective range of you. You’re entering the dangerous stage of the game. Narrowing the distance will give him hope, but it will also increase his chances of hitting you. If you start being afraid, your legs will start running faster than they should, and he will understand that he’s lost and give up the chase. Despite the danger you have to let him come closer to you. This is a nerve-racking stage. You won’t be able to stand it if you don’t get out of yourself, says Tyrell. We’ll shoot the next scene from a helicopter. Imagine that you’re seeing the arena now from above.
Go higher. Higher, Tyrell instructs the pilot of the helicopter. That’s it. Take the picture, he instructs the cameraman. Two people are moving over the ground below. Pursuer and pursued. Look at everything from this angle. Forget that he’s the pursuer. And above all—forget that you’re the pursued.
After another five minutes Shylock allows Adonis to narrow the distance to eight hundred meters, in the hope that he’ll be tempted to shoot again. The chance he’s taking justifies itself. The pursuer stops and aims. The pursued turns his head and discovers that his pursuer is unhappy with his position. He drops to one knee. The pursued lurches to the right and left, to make it difficult for the shooter to get him in his crosshairs. The shot doesn’t come. He looks back and discovers the reason: his pursuer is wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. Apparently the sweat is dripping into
his eyes and blinding him. The pursued goes on staggering from side to side like a drunk and advancing at a limp. He knows that at this distance only a crack sharpshooter has a chance of hitting a practiced runner like him, and this is the time to start running in a rapid zigzag, he tells himself, exactly half a second before another two bursts split the air a meter or two above his head. He turns to face the shooter and goes on running backwards. The guy aims his rifle from a completely ineffective range. The whistle of a single bullet pierces the air close to his right ear. The pursued falls to the ground. The shooter stands up. He busies himself with his weapon. He ejects the magazine and looks at it. The minute he changes the magazine, get up and start running, the script girl reads Tyrell’s instructions.