And out of the fog descending on his senses he stares with frightened, astonished eyes at the hairy man bending over him and loosening the straps holding the sheath of the dagger to the calf of his right leg. And his eyes suddenly clear when he sees him draw the dagger from its sheath and examine its blade. Is he about to plunge it into his heart?
Hanina lays the dagger on the ground, a little distance from the dying man. He opens the buttons of his safari shirt,
and pulls it out from under his body without touching him. His abdomen is exposed, full of scars. Hanina inspects them from close up. He counts three the size of a plum, and five smaller ones, the size of an olive. Scars typical of wounds from the shrapnel of a hunting gun, he says to himself.
Antonaus? He says out loud.
The dying man opens his eyes again.
Tino? Hanina tries the man’s nickname.
Something stirs in the dying man’s eyes, which focus on Hanina’s eyes.
You deserve to die, Hanina says to him, and you know why, but I won’t be your executor. I won’t touch you with the tip of my finger and I won’t help you to die. You’ll do all the work of dying yourself. And I’ll stay here by your side to make sure you finish the job.
In the meantime Hanina undoes the straps of the holster of the pistol hugging Tino’s thigh, and then he unbuttons his trousers and pulls them of him. He sits up and examines the label and laughs.
Armani! he says. Who were you trying to impress here?
He pulls the trousers onto him, and they fit him as if they were made for him. He puts on the safari jacket and buttons it up at his leisure, button after button. He rummages in the pockets, takes out the cell phone, all kinds of papers which he inspects and puts back, and a pistol magazine. He examines it. It’s loaded. On the side of the magazine there are two apertures. Next to the upper aperture the number 10 is engraved, and next to the lower one the number 15. The gilt body of a cartridge is visible through the lower aperture. So there are fifteen cartridges in the magazine. He waves it in front of the dying man’s eyes and smiles at him sympathetically.
You were too eager, he says. When you set out to kill a man you shouldn’t be too eager.
Now he notices that the trousers are a little too long for him. He bends down and makes two folds. He regards himself in his new safari suit and remembers the red book that found its way into his hands on some transatlantic flight. A German book, by some contemporary philosopher, who wrote something strange about jumping through a hoop of fire and the moment when some change of costume, pregnant with meaning, takes place. The obscure sentence comes back to him now, and he understands it in his own way.
The dying man stripped of his shirt and trousers is still twitching on the ground, the intervals between one gasping breath and the next growing longer all the time, and the thought crosses Hanina’s mind that now he looks like someone dressed for running. If they find the body, dressed in fashionable boxer shorts and brand-name sport shoes, the pathological examination will confirm the assumption that the innocent-looking man set on a desert run and died of a massive heart attack, accompanied by a collapse of all the systems of his body. Which is actually the truth, he sums up to himself.
The screech of a bird makes him raise his eyes to the sky. High above them a black bird with a huge wing span and a bald neck circles. Some kind of black hawk. When the living man leaves the dead man lying on the ground the bird will land close to the body, inspect it carefully to make sure it isn’t a trap, and go to work. Other raptors seeing him land will come down after him, and even before the corpse begins to go cold, there will be six or seven birds of prey here, tearing the flesh which was pampered and nourished by the choicest foods and wines, and is presumably as sweet and tender as the calves fed on beer in the Japanese city of Kobe famous for its meat—and while the vultures are still busy tearing off strips of flesh the
wolves and coyotes and buzzards and all the other sanitary workers of nature will appear and wait their turn, and one after the other they will pick clean the leavings of those who went before, and in two or three days’ time the bare bones will gleam in the sun, and only the expensive boxer shorts by Hugo Boss and the fine shoes by Gucci will bear witness to the fact that what was once a man of superior taste is lying here in the desert.
He turns to go back, dressed in the man’s expensive clothes. The wind, carrying grains of sand like a fine fur over the surface of the desert, increases in strength and brings heavy clouds from beyond the horizon. The first flash of lightning splits the darkening distance, and seconds later there is an explosion of dull, heavy thunder. Hanina reaches the car just as the first big, heavy drops begin to fall, and suddenly a deluge pours down from the sky.
In the trouser pocket he finds a bunch of keys and recognizes the head of an ignition immobilizer. He places it in its housing next to the steering wheel, starts the clumsy, powerful car and drives into the curtains of rain. He drives for about an hour on empty godforsaken roads and arrives at a roadside inn, the lower half of whose walls are made of stone, and the upper half of wood. He drives into a big, deserted parking lot in front of the inn, which at first glance seems to be abandoned. He goes up to the door and tries the handle. The door opens, and he enters a deserted hall. He sits down at a table and stretches his limbs. The sound of clogs comes from behind the door next to the bar, and a buxom, sloppily dressed young woman appears.
Hello, she drawls in a lazy voice, can I help you?
I need a drink, he says.
You can get a drink, she says, but the kitchen’s closed.
What kind of whiskey do you have, he asks.
I don’t know, she apologizes, I’m not a professional bartender. I’m a student. I came here on my vacation, to make a bit of money. If you’re in luck there may be a bottle left—if the cook hasn’t polished it all off.
Bring me what you’ve got, he says.
She goes to the bar at the end of the hall, bends under the counter, and while she’s busy opening and shutting cupboard doors, he takes the cell phone and makes a call.
I don’t like talking to answering machines either, Bridget’s recorded voice says, so make it short.
Hi, bye, he says and hangs up.
He dials another number. Six rings, and the answering machine comes on.
I’m at sea till the end of the week. If there’s no alternative, leave a message.
There’s an alternative, he says and hangs up.
He punches in another number, and is answered by a recorded message again:
I’m in Eilat. Everything’s great, he hears the happiness in Yadanuga’s recorded voice.
Friend, he says, the Belgian pathologist was a double agent. You can wipe your ass with his report.
He punches in a final number.
Hi, this is Winnie. Leave your number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
You’re a free person, he says. Do what you want with it.
When he raises his eyes, she’s standing in front of him with a bottle of nine-year-old Knob Creek Kentucky Straight Bourbon in her hand. She puts the bottle and a glass down on the table and apologizes:
I hope this is good enough for you. Our cook had an accident. That’s why the kitchen’s closed. But if you like I can make you an omelet.
Thanks, he says, whiskey’s fine.
April, 2004
Translated by Dalya Bilu