The English Teacher (13 page)

And Barbara carried on talking about their weekend recreations and the little traditions they had invented. Rachel agreed with her. Routine is a curse, and in training they taught her not to slip into the fixed habits that will make life easier for those who want to follow her and intercept her. But no one can do without routine. There have to be some regular patterns, like getting up in the morning, going to work, resting on the weekend. “I can't go out there in the middle of the week,” she told Ehud. “I'm a working girl, don't forget.” And in the evening when her friends went out to have a good time, she sat in her room and watched the lights in the Defense Ministry building that were never extinguished, and the cars constantly moving. I have no strength left, she thought, and she explained to Barbara that pills wouldn't help and she just needed to rest. “A pity we came,” said Barbara, and that wasn't what she meant.

B
ARBARA WAS SHORTER, AND PLUMP AND
cheerful, and she claimed to be absolutely without morals. “Morality won't get me anywhere. Morality has no part in what I'm doing.”

“And what are you doing?” Rachel asked after getting to know her.

“I'm looking for a rich Arab. I want a big house, cars, servants, the whole lot.”

“And for this you're prepared to marry someone you don't love?”

“If there's no other choice, that's what I'll do. There are other things besides love.”

Maybe she was right, Rachel reflected.

“I want economic security,” Barbara said emphatically. “Life doesn't revolve around a partner. You need to know what you can do without, and I can do without love.”

They became friends from the first day. Rachel was early arriving at the school and went to the bathroom to freshen up. After closing the door she heard a voice from one of the cubicles and thought for a moment she'd gone to the men's room by mistake.

“Fucking hell,” said the voice. “Someone's used up all the paper again and I'm stuck in here with my pants down.” And then: “Hey, SOS, Houston, Houston, we have a problem.” Rachel pushed a roll of toilet paper under the door.

“You'll see, “Barbara said to her after she'd helped her with the registration procedure and sorted her out with discount coupons for the local supermarket, “to them we're strangers, the kind of creatures who can be used and exploited. This is a Middle Eastern state in all the worst senses. Not like in Israel. Things are different there.”

“You've been to Israel?”

“Yes, certainly, I taught there for a year. And you?”

“No, I haven't had the chance yet,” said Rachel, thoroughly alarmed and wondering how Ehud would react to this.

Barbara showed her around the city, took her to the market, helped her to learn to shop, familiarized her with the strange names, and took her into her heart. Rachel loved walking the streets with
Barbara, going with her to the few tourist attractions that they were both bored with after one visit, and spending time with her in cafés. Rachel invited her to her apartment and went to parties organized by Barbara. It wasn't hard rejecting Barbara's idea that they should live together and save on the rent, on the grounds that with a bit of luck she might find herself a boyfriend soon, although she didn't respond to the discreet advances of one of the teachers, or to the unsubtle hints dropped by Barbara whenever some foreign tourist met them on one of their strolls. And so she went on lying to her and using her and enjoying her company, and she wondered what would happen if all this suddenly came to an end, and Barbara found out who she was and how she had been deceived.

B
ARBARA CAME BACK
FROM THE BATHROOM
and Rachel saw how she'd adjusted her makeup and added eye shadow.

“Somebody new?” Rachel asked.

“You won't believe it. Blind date with a rich Arab. Exactly what I wanted.” Barbara put a hand in her blouse and adjusted her bra, and asked Rachel to inspect her cleavage and advise on buttons. “You think I should leave one button closed? At least for the first meeting?” she asked. She told Rachel that Mustafa would be arriving soon and she had no idea what he looked like. She asked her to stay with her at least for a few minutes.

“Exploiting me a bit, aren't you?”

Barbara didn't hide her smile and said she had no choice.

“You wanted backup for your assignation and you sold me a cover story. That's why you suddenly started taking an interest in dried flowers,” Rachel said, and realized how the professional jargon suited this situation too.

“You wouldn't have come if I'd told you.”

Rachel felt relieved. Everyone lies a little or a lot in the subjects most important to them, she reflected, and wondered what Barbara would say if she told her about Rashid, and what Ehud will say when she finally reports to him about what she should have for quite some time by now.

“I
N HINDSIGHT
I
U
NDERSTAND HER,” SAID
Ehud, as if to himself. “She wanted to camouflage the story of Rashid in the report. That's the rule. Every contact has to be logged.

“‘I've made another friend at school,' she told me.

“‘He or she?' ‘He,' she answered, and I noticed a slight tension in her voice.

“‘Foreign or local?' I asked, and I hadn't started taking an interest yet.

“‘Local,' she said, as if he were one of many.

“‘Student?' I asked, and when she said yes I just advised her to be careful. Obviously she couldn't be expected to live there without making some friends, and I already knew about Barbara.

“She looked at me as if she hoped this would be the end of the conversation—she'd done what was required of her, and the subject was closed. And then I felt that something strange was happening to her. Even her posture, her body language, was different. Usually she
sat forward, on the edge of the chair, like someone needing to make an impression, and she had the manners of an upper-crust boarding-school girl in a British movie. I remember asking her where she got that; as far as I knew she came from a simple home.

“‘My father made me do it, the way he learned from his parents,' she said, and I heard the pain in her voice when she explained that he never ceased to remind her there was nothing to be learned from her mother's parents. ‘They were primitive, from a neighborhood on the periphery of Berlin, he repeated even in front of my mother, and the only good thing her parents had done was to send her away at the last moment, before they and all the others went to the incinerators.'

“I just listened to her. This was another subject I didn't want to get into. I hoped the departmental shrink had dealt with this when the time was right and that the wound had healed. Sometimes scar tissue is stronger than the original skin.

“‘So I owe these manners to him and they help me to think calmly,' she told me, and I thought that perhaps in spite of everything she was saying something good about her father, and of course I agreed with her that he'd presented her with an efficient and effective skill. Manners were like armor, a defense mechanism. Anyone trying to make contact with her had to get through the
don't-touch-me
force field that she radiated; she could listen calmly and politely to the other person, indulge in a short silence, take a deep breath, and only then come up with a suitably equivocal answer. This was her standard procedure, and I feared the day she would use it against us.

“We were in the safe apartment that was leased for her, and we went over the usual things. Accounts, reports to be completed, introduction to the new communications system. She was on “family leave,” which was easily explained in her workplace. The school agreed she could take a vacation, and Barbara volunteered to come
into the apartment now and then and water the plants. Of course we had a problem with this, because the old communications system would still be there. But clearly she had no choice, she couldn't explain why the apartment was locked up and the plants had been left to die. I remember it was during this vacation that I raised the issue of the dog. I thought it would be useful if she had an excuse to go for walks up the road and get close to the gate of the Defense Ministry. ‘Spies don't have dogs!' was her immediate response. ‘It's completely impractical. Who would take care of it when I travel, and what if I fall in love with it?' ‘That's the very reason you should have one. A dog will add to your domestic image, allow you to do things only those in love can get away with.' She smiled, not convinced, but I was pleased that I could finally allude to this subject. I carried on processing the fresh information, and we discussed the pros and cons of keeping a dog in a house, in a Muslim society where dogs are considered impure. I asked her where she knows him from. She chuckled and said she still did not know the dog, and it was clear she was being evasive. I again asked her about the man. ‘He's a student in our school. Rather a good one,' she said.

“‘And what's his line of work?'

“She didn't answer right away. ‘I'm not sure I understood, but as far as I can tell from the business English he's trying to learn it's something to do with importing chemicals. He purchases them for the Defense Ministry. At least that's what he says when he practices with me. I play the vendor and he comes to me and says Ministry of Defense and names several other government departments.'

“You can imagine my surprise, and the adrenaline that started to flow. I admit I was thinking of myself. At once I started fantasizing over penetrating chemical weapons projects, and the plaudits that would accompany that success. And the fears started kicking in too. All this in those few seconds before I responded. What's going to
happen to her? What is she capable of? I looked at her, sprawled comfortably in the armchair, wearing a simple skirt that covered her knees, and looking back at me as if we were discussing a shopping list in the supermarket. You've seen her face in the picture. Pleasant, pretty perhaps, but not sexy. A regular girl. Not one of those temptresses you see in films who could seduce the Pope.”

“We had some like that,” said Joe. “All of them a great disappointment. When we were just starting out we thought we needed men who knew how to lie, including some petty criminals, and women capable of playing honey-trap schemes.”

Ehud had heard all this before from Joe but he had no intention of interrupting the flow of memories.

“It didn't succeed. Someone who's good at lying will end up deceiving you, and a queen among temptresses will end up being tempted herself. We tried several times and failed, and then we constructed a different template for our operatives.”

“Like Rachel,” said Ehud, not sure that Joe would agree with him.

“Exactly. That's why your combatant has been so successful. A woman healthy in mind and body, a talented and loyal Zionist.” Joe added that in his opinion getting a woman operative into a man's bed would be too dangerous. “Of course, I warned her to be careful, that it was not worth exposing herself and in any case she shouldn't do anything out of the ordinary. She nodded and I tried to visualize for myself the plans she was devising while listening to my lecture. I found myself explaining the security protocols again, and thinking at the same time about the potential of this new friend, and thus in my excitement I did not notice she was telling me only part of the truth. That she was testing me, listening to me, assessing me with all the means we had supplied her with in training, and thinking perhaps she had found the cure for loneliness.

“Think of her loneliness, Joe, loneliness in the middle of a crowd. The loneliness of someone leading a double life, hiding her objectives and her motives and the things most important to her. Think of the longing for warmth, love, someone to listen to you, to want you. I could see Rachel leaving the school at the end of the working day. I saw her in my mind's eye passing by cafés and being ogled by the men sitting there, and I thought of her refusing offers of friendship from other teachers, knowing it would be hard to disengage from them. I asked her once what she's eating, where she sends her clothes for dry-cleaning and when she cleans the apartment. She gave me a dismissive look and told me I could figure out those things, because there was nothing surprising. She goes shopping in the market, carries the plastic bags to the car like anyone else, generally cooks for herself, and keeps the apartment tidy even when she has no visitors. She lived as if she were a normal person. As if. And she told me she reads, listens to music, does her job, and I knew she was yearning for something but she didn't know what.

“I think that's why I got it wrong. I veered between sympathy for her and happiness that she might have found a friend, and the firm conviction that she mustn't fall in love with anyone. And I wanted to get some operational advantage from the connection with him, and I admit that I found it hard to suppress the jealousy that was welling up in me, simple and spiteful—that she had chosen him and not me. It may have already been too late, the bud had opened, and the only way to stop it was to pull the stalk out by the root, but what could I do? The temptation to go on was overwhelming.”

“Stop there,” said Joe. “Tell me again, from the beginning.”

“H
OW DID SHE MEET HIM, AND
what did she see in their first encounter? I'll try to repeat her words, but you know how memory works, it
chooses what to erase and what to retain. And even when you remember and you try to share the words and pictures, you find yourself telling a different story from the one you intended. That is certainly my experience.

“I didn't record her, and I didn't take notes. I knew she was choosing and creating the picture she wanted to present. Her true feelings she kept to herself, and even if she'd written a diary, I don't suppose she would have been entirely honest.

“‘I met Rashid in the school,' she said, and I saw she was making an effort to play down the importance of the relationship. As if, when an operative in the field meets someone and goes out with him, it's a small detail that can be overlooked. She could tell straightaway how tense I was, and asked, ‘Why are you so uptight about this? Is it against the rules? I'm not allowed to drink coffee with someone? Not allowed to talk to a man? I can't go out with him?'

“And what could I say to her? That I didn't want to hear about him? That what she does with her free time is her business? She and I knew that wasn't correct. An undercover operative has no free time, and there's nothing that's of no significance. With male operatives we already had a convention: Ask no questions and hear no lies. We knew they were fucking, they were finding relief that way. But we don't ask, don't want to know. Because the moment you know, you have to do something. Start worrying about the prostitutes they're going to, about the amount of alcohol they're consuming in solitude. So we don't ask and only want to know how things are going, and we're glad when we're told everything is in order. And we wait for the periodic polygraph test and hide behind it instead of having a heart-to-heart talk. If you're having an open conversation you have to reveal something of yourself too. You have to show your operative there are other sides to you, the humane side, the good friend side, to let him feel that
he is sitting with someone who is taking care of him, someone he can trust. And then he'll talk, because he knows you're listening and he can rely on you. You might criticize him, but you're doing your job as a handler, as the one responsible for his safety and the success of the mission, and you're his friend too. But I couldn't be Rachel's friend. I simply couldn't.

“I kept quiet and let her go on. She looked at me, tugged the hem of her skirt down, and shifted her gaze to a corner of the room. I closed the notebook, put it aside, and waited. She wiped her face with a handkerchief that she held in a clenched fist. After a few moments of silence, she turned to me. ‘You want to know what we did together?' I could tell she wanted to be angry, she knew she had done something wrong. Everyone makes connections. It's almost inhuman to forbid them, unnecessary too. So what if you tell a child to be careful? Maybe the very declaration that something is forbidden is an important way to emphasize it. So it will be in their head all the time. Who doesn't lie? Who doesn't sin?

“When she started I was hoping for something light, a cup of coffee in the school canteen, something that would enable us to continue to manage the situation until we decided what to do. As if it would make any difference, as if we could force her to do something with him on our behalf. ‘What is there to tell?' she said, and described the school to me, the unprepossessing lobby and the Arab receptionist whose main asset was her ability to order take-away meals from restaurants where there were no English speakers. I imagine how this receptionist looked at him when he came in. A good-looking man in a smart European suit, accompanied by a burly driver jangling a bundle of keys, right out of a gangster film. Mafia or secret service, she was probably thinking, and she stood up to meet him, smoothing down her dress and adjusting the scarf on her head.