The Emoticon Generation (12 page)

I nod and wait.

He looks at me. “Did you stop it? Go on! Go on!”

I press ‘PLAY’.

“But that goes against every principle the British claim they believe in.” Shamgar’s young voice booms. He was agitated and appalled.

“Yes, I would have said that!” the older Shamgar in front of me is riveted.

“Churchill would never approve!” The young Shamgar half shouts, sounding like a teenager whose voice was still changing.

“Yes,” Nathan Shmuelevitch says. “These were my sentiments. But we have evidence, irrefutable evidence, that Churchill has sent word that Tanner’s initiative is to be followed.”

“What!” shouts the young Aryeh Shamgar.

The old Aryeh Shamgar nods. “That’s right.”

“Calm down, soldier.”

“Yes, sir.”

There is noise of a wooden chair moving on a stone surface. Shamgar had apparently jumped out of his chair and was now getting back into it.

“Churchill is busy with the Germans and has no patience for us anymore. Are you following me?”

“Yes, sir!”

I look at Shamgar’s eyes. It is as if he is having an epiphany.

“Churchill’s message is so sensitive, and he is so afraid that it will find its way to us, that it has been entrusted to one man alone, a confidante. In spite of Churchill’s attempts, we have intercepted that message and have received it before Colonel Tanner. The confidante will deliver the message personally to Tanner. In fact, it will be delivered later today.” There is a slight pause. I always assumed Shmuelevitch was letting Shamgar absorb the news. “We can stop this. It is up to you, Shamgar, to stop this. Colonel Tanner must be assassinated tonight. By you. Alone. Immediately after he receives the message. We will be sending a message to Churchill that the Jews can be even more trouble than they have been so far, and that this new policy is unacceptable.

“I need a brave, fearless soldier. I need someone who can walk into the King David Hotel, into a party filled with British soldiers, cool enough to appear as one of the help, cool enough not to be intimated by the soldiers. I need someone brave enough to walk up to Colonel Tanner when he walks to the bathroom, put a bullet through his chest, then walk out calmly through a room filled with enemies. Are you that man, Shamgar?”

“Yes, sir!”

Every time I listen to this part of the recording, I keep thinking that the main difference between Shamgar’s voice today and his voice then is that today you can hear the past, you can hear the battles, the decisions, and the decades with which he had to live with those decisions. But back then, you couldn’t hear any of that in his voice. His past was a child’s past, a teenager’s past, devoid of scars.

Shmuelevitch continues. “Am I making the right choice by letting you go on this mission on which the fate of our independence hangs?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Good man. Go to your house, then. Prepare. In an hour, a man will drop by with plans. Open them when you’re alone. Read them, memorize them, then burn them.”

“Yes, sir!”

“An hour later, another man will drop off your escape plans. Open them when you’re alone. Read them, memorize them, know them by heart, then burn them. This mission will be just you... alone.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Dismissed, soldier.”

“Yes, sir!”

I press ‘PAUSE’.

“Basically,” I say. “That ends this part of the recording. There’s some noises, and you leave the room.”

Shamgar is looking at me. He can hardly breathe.

“That’s it!” he says, his voice filled with air. “That’s the proof right there! You have incontrovertible truth right there! That’s just the way it happened!”

“Yes, sir.”

He’s looking around himself, trying to get a hold over his excitement, maybe even looking for more witnesses. “Every time I’ve claimed this was the reason we killed Tanner, the liberals and the British would say that that couldn’t have been the case, that the British would never behave like that, that there was no such order. But there was and they did! They did! That’s proof of everything I’ve been saying for decades!”

“Yes, sir.” I want to add my ‘but’, but he continues...

“Oh... Oh... That is unbelievable. I can’t believe... I was there again... I was there inside the room... This technology... I’m never going to have to need to prove the justice of my deeds again. I can go to my grave without a scandal hanging over me.”

“Sir, I just—”

“You said I have recordings of all of this?”

“Yes, sir. This, and all other stages of the assassination and escape. Of you and your wife meeting. Of—”

“Amazing!” He is ecstatic. Suddenly, his entire life seems vindicated.

It hurts me that much more to bring him down from such a high to total abjection. “Sir, there is one more recording I need you to listen to.”

“Yes, yes!” He is too excited. He is too happy. His guard is down.

“The following is a recording of events that took place thirty hours earlier, in Nathan Shmuelevitch’s office. In this recording...” I am losing nerve. I phrase it as delicately as I can, letting the recording bear the brunt of the blame, “In this recording, we can hear Shmuelevitch make the decision to assassinate Colonel Tanner.”

“All right,” Shamgar is energized. “Play it!”

“Yes, sir.” I switch to the next track on the DVD, and it begins to play.

The street noises are different. They’re quieter. There is no hustle. A muezzin is heard in the background – a morning prayer from sixty-eight years ago. There is scuffling of a chair.

“Sit.” It is Shmuelevitch’s voice. His tone is friendly, not at all the commander-like tone used on Shamgar.

Another wooden chair moves on stone. The muezzin’s prayer grows softer. A man is beginning to set up shop right underneath the window and call out orders to his lackeys.

“What have you found out?” Shmuelevitch asks.

“I followed the subject from yesterday afternoon until she went to sleep.” This is another voice. Young – everyone was young in the Lehi – and serious and idealistic sounding.

Shamgar straightens at the sound of that voice. “I know him! Who’s that?”

I don’t press ‘PAUSE’. The recording continues, “What did you find out?”

“The subject spent a routine day—”

“Yochi!” Shamgar shouts. I press ‘PAUSE’. “Yochanan Sfard!”

That’s right. Yochanan Sfard was tasked a year earlier with creating the Lehi’s intelligence system out of nothing, a task he had done magnificently well, and would soon become one of the Lehi’s legendary leaders. Sfard and Shamgar would be friends, though not close friends, for most of the fifties, until Sfard develops cancer and dies in 1962.

“Go on,” Shamgar orders me. “This is unbelievable. Go on, go on!”

I rewind a bit, and press ‘PLAY’.

“The subject spent a routine day in her home—” Sfard is saying.

“Don’t call her ‘the subject’,” Shmuelevitch interrupts. “She’s got a name, and this isn’t about the resistance.”

“Elizabeth,” the young Sfard amends his statement, “was at her friend’s house all day and all the previous night.”

“‘Elizabeth’?” Shamgar whispers to himself. It sounds familiar, but he hasn’t put the pieces together yet.

“At six she began to dress for an auspicious occasion,” Sfard continues to report.

“Yes?” Shmuelevitch said.

“What are they talking about?” Shamgar whispers to me.

“Listen!” I say.

“At seven she met with Colonel Tanner at Chaled’s fish restaurant at the Jaffa pier.”

“She met with him?” Shmuelevitch’s voice is wound tight.

“They ate for an hour,” Sfard continues the report. “They seemed... amicable. Smiling a lot. Intimate in nature.”

“Yes?” It is as if Shmuelevitch was gritting his teeth.

“They left together, and took a long walk on the beach to his house.”

“Colonel Tanner’s house?”

“Right.”

Shamgar squints and looks at me. “There were two Elizabeths?”

I shake my head and raise a finger, indicating there was only one.

“She stayed the night at his place... At their place.”

Shamgar touches his cheek. “Tanner’s wife was living at her friend’s house? Why were they following her?”

“Listen,” I say.

“At eight twenty seven p.m. I took a risk and looked through the window. They were in the middle of a... sexual act. Then I—”

“All right, all right,” the young Shmuelevitch interrupts him. “Thank you. We got the data we wanted.”

“We certainly did.”

There is silence for a long time, then a chair is pushed back on the floor quickly: Shmuelevitch had gotten up suddenly, no longer able to sit down, “She told me she was never coming back to him. She told me it was over. She said she felt revulsion when he was near her. I felt she was...”

Shamgar looks at me, horrified. “Are you saying they had an affair?”

“I’m not saying anything. What we’re hearing is what happened.”

Shamgar listens. “Why am I not hearing anything?”

“There’s quiet,” I said. “Listen.”

All we can hear is more and more vendors setting up shop in the street. The muezzin had finished his prayer. The silence lasts for more than a minute, in which I could see Shamgar’s impatience grow.

Then, finally, we heard Shmuelevitch’s voice. “Yochi, Yochi... I can’t let this happen. I can’t lose her. I can’t lose her to him. I can’t let her do that. I can’t think when she’s... I would die if she was...” And as if we could hear the wheels turning, one thought of death becomes another thought of death, “I’m going to kill him! He’s not going to take my woman from me!”

“No,” Shamgar says.

“You know I’ve always thought we should kill high-profile British soldiers,” Sfard says. “And who’s more high-profile than Colonel Tanner? You’re too fearful of killing the British.”

“No no no,” Shamgar shakes his head.

“Yes... Yes...” Shmuelevitch says. “We
should
kill them. You’re right. It will send a message to the Brits!”

“It will.”

“That we’re powerful.”

“Yes.”

“No!” Shamgar shouts. His eyes were screaming.

The recording continues, “That we’re not ones to be messed with.”

“Yes.”

“All right. All right. Let me think. I need a devoted soldier, one willing to die for the cause. A brave soldier.”

“No! False! No! False!” Shamgar is shaking his head almost uncontrollably.

“I’ve got just the man for you. Aryeh Shamgar.”

“He’s young, isn’t he?”

“Not as much as the others. He’s been around. He has nerves of steel. And he’s been begging me for some real action. And... he’s disposable.”

“Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies!” Shamgar slams his open hands on the table, and then buries his face in them.

“Yes... Yes...” Shmuelevitch is excited. “All right. I’ll start planning. I want Colonel Tanner’s complete itinerary for the next few days. I need to know where and when would be the best place to strike.”

“I’ll have it for you in two hours.”

“Excellent.”

“We are not going to rest until that man is dead.”

“No, we’re not.”

“No, we’re not. Now go. You have a job to do.”

There are noises of people walking on stone, and then a door closing. Shamgar is looking at me. I look down. The recording isn’t over.

Without warning, we hear Shmuelevitch scream, “Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore!”

Shamgar’s mouth opens in horror. “No! No! No!” And then Shamgar shouts at the screen, “What are you doing?!”

“Whore! Whore! Whore!” the screen shouts back, joined by the clear sound of furniture being thrown against the walls then kicked around. “Whore! Whore! Whore!”

I press ‘PAUSE’. “That goes on for a while. Then there’s a long silence. And then he begins to plan the pieces to allow for the assassination.”

Shamgar’s mouth is puckered tight, and he is shaking his head. He looks to the right. He looks to the left. His fingers begin to drum on the table. “It’s a lie. It’s a lie. It must be a lie. There is no way... You forged their voices somehow. You..”

“I assure you—”

He raises his hand to silence me. “I want to hear it again,” he says.

His cheeks are red and puffy. I keep my calm. “All right.”

I press a few buttons, and the recording is played again.

As he listens to it again, his eyes seem to sear through whatever they are focused at. I follow their gaze, but they are not focused on anything in the room. They are focused on the past. They are searing through to the past, just as our technology does.

“Again. I want to hear it again,” he says once the recording has played through.

He listens again. And he listens again. And he listens again.

The more he listens, the more awake he seems. The more he listens, the shorter his breathing. The more he listens, the redder his cheeks. A vein in his neck I hadn’t noticed before is making its presence known: His heartbeat is rising. I try to time it, in my head. Around 130 a minute. Not good. Not for a ninety-year-old man.

After five times, in the middle of the recording, he raises his hand and says, “That’s enough.”

Immediately, I fumble with the remote, find the button, and press ‘PAUSE’.

He looks at me. His eyes are shaking. His body is shaking. His fingers are shaking.

He looks away from me, and at the table. He looks at his trembling hands. He reaches for his pocket. For a second, I think he’s reaching for a gun. But of course he isn’t. He takes out his cell phone, opens it, is about to push a button – probably to call his wife – when he hesitates. Then he throws the cell phone at the wall. “Traitors! Fucking traitors!” he yells.

He looks down, gathering his breath.

Then he looks up, straight at me. His eyes are clear, not trembling, sharp – even sharper than when he had come in. Without moving his eyes, I can see that he is no longer looking at me but at the mirror behind me. “You’ve had your fun. You took your shot, got your blood, and now you have your victory. Do you really need to keep filming this?”

I look behind me, at the mirror, and get a chill. It’s true. Why do we need to film an old man lose his life purpose? What historical purpose does that serve?

“Cut the feed,” I say. “Stop the camera.”