Black Box (9 page)

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Mr. Manfred Zakheim, Lawyer
Messrs. Zakheim & di Modena
King George 36
Jerusalem

14.5.76

Dear Mr. Zakheim,

My ex-husband has informed us by cable that he has asked you to help me to find my son, who has apparently run away to sea. Please do whatever you can, and do let me know the moment you discover anything. My ex-husband mentioned in his cable a tissue test for Boaz for the purpose of establishing paternity. As I told you on the telephone this morning (and you asked to have it from me in writing) I withdraw my opposition of seven years ago to such a test. The only problem now is to find the boy and convince him to agree to have the test that his father is asking for. And that won’t be easy. Please, Mr. Zakheim, explain to my ex-husband that I am withdrawing my opposition to the test without any connection to the sum of money he mentioned in his cable. In plain words, he doesn’t have to give us a penny more. On the contrary, I am delighted that the request for a test came from him this time. At the time of our court case, as you will recall, Mr. Zakheim, I opposed a test—but he did not agree to be tested, either.

If he would like to make a donation to the cause my present husband mentioned, let him do so without any reference to the question of the test. Simply tell him that as far as I’m concerned it’s perfectly all right now. The main thing is, Mr. Zakheim, I beg of you, if you have any information about where the boy is, let us know, even if it’s in the middle of the night.

Yours gratefully,
Ilana Sommo (Gideon)

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To Mrs. Sommo

Hampstead, London
15.5.76

PRIVATE

To be delivered personally by Mr. M. Zakheim

Dear Mrs. Sommo,

Zakheim is exerting himself to recover your lost property. Even though I imagine it is not easy for him to compete single-handed with the hordes of Sommos who have doubtless already been summoned to the hunt by the tribal drums. One way or another, I imagine that before this letter has reached its destination there will be a sign from Boaz. Incidentally, it almost makes me feel sad: which of us has never dreamed of disappearing without trace?

Yesterday I received a letter from your husband. It seems he has experienced some sort of a theophany; a heavenly voice has ordered him to rebuild the walls of Jericho, and at my expense moreover. And as part of his master plan to build the heavenly Jerusalem he commands me to repent at once, starting with apologies and explanations to you. Followed, apparently, by breast-beating and self-mortification.

And I thought naively that our relations had already been amply explained in two rabbinical lawsuits and before the District Court, and that any further expatiation would be invidious. As a matter of fact, I was under the impression that you were the one who owed me an explanation. And indeed there can be vaguely discerned in your letters a veiled attempt to expound your present condition, including details about the bedtime exploits of Mr. Sommo. I have no interest in this matter (although your description is quite well written; perhaps a trifle too literary for my taste). Moreover, the feelings that my person does or does not continue to arouse in you do not affect me one way or the other. I should be glad if both of you would stop bidding so energetically for my contributions: I am neither the Bank of England nor a sperm bank. On the other hand, you have not touched on the only question that exercises me: Why did you choose at the time to resist the tissue test so violently? If it had transpired that I was the biological father, it would obviously have been much harder, if not impossible, for me to win the case. To this day I have not succeeded in comprehending this. Did you suspect that I would be shown not to be his father? Did you suspect that I would be shown to be his father? Is there the slightest doubt who his father is, Ilana?

And what has made you suddenly change your mind now and agree to the test after all? That is, if you really have changed your mind. And if you haven’t changed it again since.

Is it really only the money? But there was money then too. And you fought for the money then too. And lost. And rightly so.

I repeat my suggestion: You can have another fifty thousand dollars (and I don’t care what good cause it’s for—it could be for the conversion of the Pope for all I care) once the test has been done, and irrespective of its outcome. Even though Zakheim maintains that I have gone clean out of my mind. According to his decisive logic, from the moment I promised you in the cable that you would receive the money irrespective of the outcome of the test, you held all the cards, and I handed you my head on a gold platter with my own hands. Thus spake Zakheim.

Is he right?

Are you prepared to explain to me now why you let yourself and Boaz down in court by opposing the test instead of demanding it? What more did you have to lose that you had not already lost, one way or another? Did you have any doubt about the outcome of the test? Or did you deliberately and maliciously prefer to lose everything and be thrown out on the street with the child, just to inject a doubt into me?

And now you have the gall to write to me that I do not trample to death, I sting. Is this some kind of sick joke? You have another offer on the table now from the retired dragon: If you give me a straight answer to the question why you opposed a test of paternity in 1968 and why you agree to one now, I undertake to name Boaz my heir. And also to send you another fifty thousand by return mail. In point of fact, if you give me an answer, the test will be unnecessary. I renounce it in exchange for a convincing answer to my one and only question.

If, on the other hand, you choose to go on weaving your tissue of lies, we might as well break off all contact again. And this time it’ll be forever. You have already fed me enough lies for a whole regiment of cuckolds. You won’t manage to lie to me again. And by the way, what sort of explanations does your husband expect me to give you when you have admitted yourself in the presence of three rabbis that you managed while we were married to each other to sleep with a whole army?

Either way it might be better for us to break off contact. What more do you want from me? What have I got to give apart from money? Have you got a sudden craving to gorge yourself on dragon steak and fries? Why have you come along to disturb our cemetery suddenly after seven years?

Let it be. I am living alone. Quietly. I go to bed every night at ten o’clock and slip into a dreamless sleep. I get up at four every morning to work on an article or a lecture. All passion is spent. I even have a walking stick, which I bought in an antique shop in Brussels. Men and women, money, power, and fame—they all leave me cold. From time to time I take a little stroll among ideas and concepts. I read a couple of hundred pages every day. I bend down and pluck a quotation or a footnote here or there. That’s the way it is, Ilana. And while we are on the subject of my life, although your poetic descriptions with the spacecraft and the snow and so forth are actually quite pretty (that was always your forte), it so happens, for your information, that in fact I have central heating, not a fireplace. And outside the window there is no snow (it is May, after all), but just a little garden, a neat English lawn with a forsaken wooden bench, a weeping willow, and a grey sky. And anyway I’ll be back in Chicago soon. As for my pipe and my whisky, I’ve been forbidden to drink or smoke for more than a year now. If you really care about my changing my will, if your husband is hankering after a few more tens of thousands, all you have to do is give me a straight answer to the one and only question I am putting to you. Just remember this: One more lie and you two will get nothing more out of me. Not a word and not a penny. Ever. Now I shall sign off with the new name you have given me:

Alec, the solitary rogue

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Dr. A. Gideon
c/o Mr. M. Zakheim

Jerusalem
24.5.76

Dear solitary rogue,

Today we had a postcard from Boaz. He is somewhere in the Sinai, he won’t say where, but according to the card he is “working and earning good money.” For the time being we have not managed to locate him. Apparently even your omnipotent Zakheim has failed. On the other hand, you managed in your letter to hurt me and even to alarm me. And not in the poisonous bits, but when you said that you are not allowed to smoke or drink. Please write and tell me what happened. What operations did you have? Write and tell me the whole truth.

You put two questions to me: Why did I not agree when I brought the lawsuit against you that the three of us should undergo a tissue test? And am I still opposed to such a test? The answer to the second question is that I am not. Only that now it’s really a matter for you and Boaz. If it’s truly important to you, try to persuade him to have the test. But first of all go and find him. Go yourself; don’t send Zakheim and his detectives.

I am wasting my words. You are hiding in your lair and you won’t come out.

The answer to your first question is that seven years ago I did very much want to get some maintenance money out of you and also some of the property, but not at the cost of handing Boaz over to you. I am astonished that you, with your international brains, couldn’t understand that at the time.

As a matter of fact, I am not astonished.

The reason I opposed the tissue test was that my lawyer explained to me that if the test showed that you were the father, and after you had forced me to admit to adultery, the Rabbinical Court, and any court of law, would give you custody of the child. I was convinced that you hated us so much that you would not hesitate to take Boaz away from me and leave me a little money in his place. And Boaz was only eight years old at the time.

That is the whole secret, sir.

The simple truth is that I did not want to win the case and lose the child. I was hoping to get some maintenance out of you, because I didn’t have a cent, but not at the cost of giving up Boaz. That was the reason I exercised my right to oppose the test, which would have shown that your son was your son.

The truth is, we both lost. Boaz belongs only to himself, and perhaps he is a stranger to himself as well. Just like you. My heart gasps when I think of the tragic similarity between you and your son.

And if only you had given me then even a tenth of the money you have started to shower on us now, I could have brought Boaz up at home with me. And things would have been somewhat less bad for both of us. But that was precisely the motive that made you take everything away from me. Even now you wouldn’t have given us a cent if you hadn’t been shaken to death when I told you how Michel is winning his way into the child’s affections and how Boaz, in his undemonstrative way, apparently likes Michel. Incidentally, I don’t give a hoot if Michel goes on believing naively that you have suddenly turned penitent and begun, as he would put it, to mend your ways. But you can’t fool me, Alec: you didn’t give us the money to make amends, but to destroy. Poor Alec, it was all for nothing that you tried to run away. That you acted the remote deity. Hiding in your cloud and trying to open a new chapter. You were even less successful than I was. It was all for nothing that we kept silence for seven years, the two of us. Did you put on the black robe? The cowl over your head? Let’s go on. I’m ready.

But write me the whole truth about your health. The weeping willow and the grey sky at your window have suddenly started to disturb me.

Wait just a minute, Alec. After all, this is a game for two. Now it’s my turn to ask you a question: Why did you accept my refusal? And in fact why did you also refuse a tissue test? Why didn’t you fight at least as hard for Boaz as you fought to defeat me in the lawsuit? Why didn’t you fight for him so as to be able to annihilate me? And why have you only now thought of offering us a fortune so that the test should take place? It’s your turn not to lie. I’m waiting for an answer.

Ilana

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To Ilana Sommo

London
2.6.76

PRIVATE

By hand of M. Zakheim

Because I couldn’t, I didn’t want to, take Boaz away with me. I didn’t know what to do with him. If I had agreed to a test, they would have attached the boy to me by a court order. What would he have become if he had grown up with me?

That is the answer to your question.

What does it say at the end of our decree? “Henceforth they have no further demands on each other.”

And meanwhile Zakheim and the detectives have managed to find Boaz. That is to say, I did and Sommo didn’t. How does your saint put it? “Kindly make a note.” It turns out he’s working on a glass-bottomed tourist boat at Sharm al-Sheikh and really is doing quite well for himself. I gave Zakheim instructions on the phone to leave him alone. I am relying on your husband to have enough sense to do likewise and not try to interfere. Perhaps you could suggest to him that he put Boaz down as my contribution to the redemption of the liberated territories and send me a stamped receipt?

Have you let him read my letters? I presume he insists on his right to read them before you and perhaps even to censor them here and there. Yet it is equally possible that he honorably refrains from peeping at his wife’s mail and secretly prodding around in her drawers. A third possibility would be that he reads every word furtively while you are out of the house, and afterward swears on the Bible that he trusts his wife not to have any sinful thoughts, Heaven forbid, and that he considers her correspondence sacrosanct. A fourth possibility is that you will swear that he doesn’t read my letters even though you really do let him read them. Or that you’ll tell me he does and actually not let him. Cheat him with me, cheat me with him, cheat us both with each other, or cheat us both with the milkman. With you, anything is possible. Everything, Ilana, except for one thing: for me to know who you really are. I would give all I have to know. But all I have is money, and money, as you wrote to me, will not help. Checkmate.