The English Teacher (22 page)

E
HUD STOPP
ED AND WAITED FOR
J
O
E
to respond. They weren't intimate friends. Joe was his former commander, and Ehud wondered what he thought of him and the secrets he was revealing. Joe didn't share the details of his concealed life with Ehud and he wasn't expected to. This wasn't a friendly conversation. The purpose was different, but Ehud remembered from rumors circulating in the department that Joe too wasn't entirely innocent of mistakes driven by the heart.

Silence reigned, and the two of them listened to the sounds of reality, life on the other side of the fence. Far from there, in the Office, the war room was abuzz, and duty officers worked around the clock searching for a hint of her location. The war room chief had appealed for help from Army Intelligence, and consulates had been alerted. Someone in the higher echelons took the trouble to update colleagues overseas, and Ehud and Joe talked of an old love affair.

“This wasn't a passionate youthful fling. She was around the same age as my eldest son, and a few months later I was already a young grandfather. I loved her with all the tenderness and concern I had to offer. I wanted to hold her in my arms and feel she was mine. Of course I was jealous of Rashid, although I assumed she was sleeping with him only for our benefit. She was leading a double life. In the professional life of Rachel Brooks there was Rashid, and I wanted to be the love of her real life as Rachel Ravid. I wasn't thinking of more than that. I wasn't planning to leave home, I wasn't planning to pull
her out of the field and bring her back to me. Nothing like that. I just knew I loved her and I wanted her to love me.”

As the evening cooled they moved from the garden to Joe's study and sat on opposite sides of the bare table. There was only one picture on the wall behind Joe's chair. “That was on my watch,” said Joe, when he saw Ehud focusing on the portrait of Eli Cohen. “Tell me more, Ehud. I hope after all these years you know you can trust me to decide what has to be passed on and what stays between us.”

Ehud listened. Years later, when the pain was still excruciating, he knew why he trusted Joe, why he wanted his attention, the chance of unraveling his story—his and not Rachel's—and earning his understanding and forgiveness, so he could breathe freely again. He wanted Joe not to denounce him for his obvious failings, but to appreciate his restraint and his scale of priorities and thank him for snuffing out his love for the sake of the greater good. As if this were possible. As if it were possible to snuff out a true love, harness it, defer it for another time.

And now? What did he feel about her now? After fifteen years of enforced separation, of mumbled phone conversations once a year, at New Year.

“How are you, Rachel?”

“I'm well. And you?”

“Me too. Life goes on. The children are growing up.”

“Well, enjoy the holiday.”

“You too.”

And so through the years. And even when he retired he didn't tell her he was leaving. When his wife died he didn't say anything to her either. And Rachel didn't tell him what was happening in her life and why she never married, and what about the children she never had. Nothing.

Just, “Enjoy the holiday,” and, “You too.”

And then he dared to tell Joe how close he became to Rachel on the way to the big operation. And Joe—who had difficulty believing it possible that Ehud, an experienced case officer, the man who had seen it all, was capable of getting himself so embroiled on the way to the enemy country—listened and took notes, which could be sent on to the operations room at a moment's notice.

“‘W
E'LL TAKE IT,'
I
SAID,”—
E
HUD TOOK
up his story again, as Joe listened intently. “I saw the reception clerk smiling at me like a coconspirator and apparently ignoring her. Rachel stood beside me and said nothing. We had already decided between us when she would speak, which hotels would be booked in her name, and how her chosen route to the border might appear to anyone trying to track her movements. So far everything had gone smoothly. We left France in the Audi her aunt gave her and we didn't waste time lingering over a lot of tourist sites on the way. ‘This will be a short trip. I'm going to sell the Volvo, which is showing its age, and replace it with something else,' she told the school principal, who wondered where she was disappearing to again, and she promised to be back by the end of the month. I asked her what reasons she gave Rashid, and she said a good cover story is a story that suits everyone who hears it. I felt she was silencing me, and there was nothing I could do about it. She found it hard to explain to Barbara why she was taking this trip. ‘It's worth doing,' she told her.
‘I'm getting the car virtually free, and the cost of petrol will be about the same as shipping it.'

“‘And Rashid?' Barbara asked. ‘What's he going to say, now that you're back together?'

“‘I think he understands, and besides, he's very busy these days.'

“‘So you've taken care of that too?' Not a shred of suspicion in Barbara's voice, just secrets between two women.

“‘Yes,' Rachel replied, and she told me she shared her enthusiasm for this adventure with Barbara. ‘You want to put a romantic gloss on it? Well, I'm, seizing the opportunity to be alone for a bit. Two weeks on the road is something I've been looking forward to for ages.'

“What was she thinking when she saw there was only one room? Perhaps she was waiting for this as I was, for the chance to figure out just what was happening between us. And perhaps she too was yearning for arms embracing her in the night. I remembered what happened with Stefan, but I wasn't Stefan. Stefan and I had nothing in common, least of all the certainty that it would happen. And she was no longer the same Rachel. Three years in the field is like ten years in Israel. Out there, you're not just earning credits for your pension. And there was Rashid. The Rashid who came into the picture after Oren and after Stefan and after others I didn't know about. And alongside all of them there was me, the old man, with or without quotation marks, the case officer, the driver, the doctor, the listener. I think she knew how I felt about her. I think she was relaxed about the setup, taking from me and giving nothing in return.

“She folded her arms and waited while I paid for the room. The clerk, who seemed to be sure that he knew what was going on, didn't ask for her passport, which was precisely what we wanted. Earlier that afternoon we had stopped at a little seaside parking area. We sat in the car and looked out at the beach and the water, and waited. Then I got
out and walked around for a bit, holding a roll of toilet paper in case anyone was interested in what I was doing. When I was sure we were alone, I made a call with the cell phone that had been purchased specially for this assignment, to a number that I had memorized, and said I was enjoying the trip, and a moment later a camper-van with a couple of middle-aged tourists pulled up alongside the Audi. Rachel had opened the hood and was looking at the motor, so they asked if they could help. She explained that the battery was dead and they, with surprising generosity, offered their own spare battery, which apparently every responsible motorist carries in this part of the world. It took them only five minutes and this was no wonder. They had practiced the exchanging of the batteries plenty of times in Marseilles, until it ran like clockwork. The woman brewed coffee while her other half installed the battery and made sure it was working, despite the five kilos of explosives packed into it. We drank their coffee, thanked them, and set off for the hotel—not knowing that thanks to a glitch in the planning, only one room would be available. It had to be this hotel, since it was the only one with an underground parking lot, and we didn't want to leave the Audi outside.

“The clerk didn't offer to help with the luggage. Rachel followed me up the stairs, dragging her suitcase, the wheels bumping on every step. I unlocked the door and went in first. A small room without character: a double bed, a single chair, a little table with an old TV on it. In the bathroom, a small shower, a toilet, a chipped glass shelf. Rachel sat silently on the bed.

“‘I'm going down to find a restaurant. Get yourself organized and then we'll go get something to eat,' I said to her, instead of addressing the sleeping arrangements, how we would manage to use the bathroom and the shower, get into bed later and sleep without touching, like strangers to each other, now more than ever.

“Rachel came down wearing the clothes she had arrived in, but she had made the effort to put on a little makeup and had tidied her hair. She gave me a look of appraisal. The short man in the trousers that constantly needed hitching up, with the mustache he liked tending, the glasses he'd recently started wearing, and the shoes with crepe rubber soles. What did she think of me then? What does she think of me now, knowing I'm searching for her? Even then, sixteen years ago, I wasn't handsome, even as a well-preserved man in the prime of life. But I was her case officer, and I loved her. I was the only one she could trust, or so I thought.

“We went to a restaurant.

“We returned after the meal.

“We went out and came back in silence. We both knew what awaited us.

“As we walked back to the hotel, a light rain was falling and my shoes were wet. I needed to piss but I could think of only one thing. And why not? I asked myself. Why shouldn't she want me to hold her? Why shouldn't she want to sleep with me, fortifying herself for the two days awaiting her, a parting gift from heart to heart? There were many days behind us. Many hotels, many separate rooms, meals, long journeys in cars, on planes and trains. There were also handshakes on meeting, a clumsy hug now and then, turning away when she changed her clothes in the car, or in a room, before we set out. But not this. Not one bed, one blanket, and an unforgiving rain in a strange and alien city.

“I called the number I had. ‘Everything okay,' I told the duty officer, and added the obligatory code words. I knew the system was starting up, and the monitor in the operations room would be receiving the activation code. Not that we could do anything in the event of a slipup, but we wanted to think we could, and we set up the war
room for situations just like this. Sophisticated communications equipment and big maps with the traffic axes marked on them. Arrows and stickers to mark estimated progress, points at which status reports are expected. A sense of security that we wanted to radiate, showing we were in control.

“And I was in control, you see, still functioning even as I was trying to figure out what to do, what was going to happen. Rachel was quiet. Maybe she was thinking about the mission, about the kilometers she had to cover alone, the border crossing awaiting her on the other side of the hill. And I walked beside her in the rain and wondered if she wanted our bodies to touch. More than that I didn't dare think.

“I didn't take a shower. There was no hot water, and in a day I'd be going home. I saw her white nightgown on the side of the bed she had chosen, and for a moment we were like a married couple. I had nothing to prepare. I knew I'd have to sleep in my underwear. I went downstairs again so she could get herself organized in peace and use the bathroom without inhibition. The sidewalk was empty. I inhaled the night air and watched the trucks moving in an endless convoy on the highway. White lights approached and red lights receded.

“I opened the door to our room as quietly as I could, but it creaked. The lamp on my side was on. Rachel lay on her back, covered by the blanket. She opened her eyes, and smiled a thin smile at me, and her lips said, ‘Good night,' in English. Then she turned on her side, pulled the blanket over her, but then she freed some up and pushed it over to my side. I took off my pants and shirt, and got into bed in my underwear. The blanket covered us both. I touched her, she touched me, in that confined space it was inevitable. One bed, one blanket, two pillows, two people. I didn't sleep much that night.
Perhaps she didn't either. And that's all. When I woke up in the morning she was dressed and ready to go.

“You see? This time they were right, those who say it's impossible to want sex a moment before you need to drive a vehicle laden with explosives through an international border crossing. To think about something else and not about the slow drive to the border, the last bend in the road, the closed barrier with the scruffy sentry standing beside it, checking your papers and waving you on to a building resembling a shed, and beside it the dreaded ‘inspection pit.' The operations officer explained to her that if they put her on this, she's in big trouble. ‘She's in trouble, all right,' I said. ‘Are you going to tell her why?' He explained that if there's anything suspicious they put the car over the pit, wheels on either side, like a woman parting her legs (his expression, not mine!), and they go in underneath and probe around there like gynecologists (his expression), looking for something. ‘And sometimes,' he said, ‘they seize the opportunity to plant something there, a tracking device or a voice recorder, or something incriminating, a little item that will really fuck you over. And in any case, under no circumstances offer them a bribe. A fine, yes. You can pay a fine, but get a receipt. A bribe can in itself be a trap.' And he carried on in much the same vein, even suggesting she should lean forward for the benefit of the customs officer, with at least one of her blouse buttons undone, but he didn't say a word about the other possibility that became reality out there, which we only learned about after the event, and which for me is connected, for some reason, to that restless night that I spent with her, feeling and not feeling the warmth of her body beside me.”

“S
HE PASSED THE BEND AND STOP
PED
at the side of the road. Just as the operations officer had instructed. I remember that when he was briefing her I sat beside him and watched her, leaning over the map and tracing the route prescribed for her with a fingertip. I had doubts. ‘This border crossing is too dangerous,' I said to the ops officer when we went for a smoke break on the balcony. ‘Don't worry, remember how she conned her way into the missile base.' He spoke of her with admiration, but I had the feeling his compliments were aimed at persuading me. He knew I wouldn't expose my fears to her. When facing an operative you show a united front and leave the arguments in the Office. I wasn't giving up and I said we had a bad record with this place, not much traffic there, and the customs men check everything. ‘She'll be better off going to a big and busy crossing point where she'll be less conspicuous, swallowed up by convoys of trucks and buses,' I said. ‘The man's talking a load of crap,' the ops officer told the Unit commander. ‘A nice, quiet, relaxed place, that's what's needed. Bored soldiers. Old equipment. No one will suspect, and anyway they'll be too busy dancing around the foreign girl. They'll see her and cream themselves,' that's how he spoke. ‘I wouldn't be surprised if one of them takes out his dick and waves it at her'—I can't believe he said that. A vulgar man, but a good ops officer, and that's how it is when only men are sitting at a table. ‘But they'll let her pass. They'll be interested in her, in her travel plans, who she is, but they won't suspect.' The Unit commander was convinced, and he said the maximum she could expect would be a pinched bum, but there would be no trouble. The ops officer explained to Rachel that the crossing was small and lacked sophisticated surveillance gear, and that was why we chose it. And we agreed with her that she would stop after the bend, as if checking her position on the map, and wait a few minutes to see if anything would happen. It would always be possible, and she had the
option to turn around and go back before she reached the barrier. No shortage of excuses.”