The Rainy Day Man: Contemporary Romance (Suspense and Political Mystery Book 1) (10 page)

             
They bounded forward with the soft padding of a great many paws.  Their hoarse barking preceded them, surrounding me with a chain of harsh sounds.  A light came on in the window of the house next door.  I heard a whistle.  The beam of a torch drew circles in the air.  The dogs' eyes returned a yellowish glitter, burning around me in a close, vaporous circle.  There was no way out.  Another whistle.  The beam focused.  I hid my face with my arm.  Mercifully, the light went out.

A soft, gentle voice spoke to the dogs.  Some of them turned in their tracks and vanished.  Others lost interest and turned to lick themselves, dig themselves in or drowse. 

"You can go now.  They won't bother you."

I remained where I was.

"Everything's all right."  The half-open window creaked as she leaned against it.  "Nothing will happen to you now."

             
The dogs, still surrounding me, lay down in the mud, growling.  I turned round.  For a moment I imagined a fleeting whiff of body heat from the window.  The jar of antibiotics I had intended to take was in a collection of unattainable objects, and I was ready to forego them all.  But one of the dogs, a small one, suddenly darted forward and sank his fangs deep into my calf.

Stunned, I sat down on the soft earth.  There was a buzzing in my ears.  The dog struggled frantically, his jaws embedded in my flesh.

The torch shone again, this time from very close.  A brown hand with long fingers pressed a spot at the base of the dog's skull.  His jaw opened with a snap, as if it was a mechanical toy.  I put out my hand to turn the torch upwards.  How many faces did this woman have?  In the light that came from below, her cheeks were furrowed by dark grooves and the hollows in the areas of devastation beneath her eyes were emphasized.  Her lips were puffed out in that expression of vexation she had worn when she placed the wooden plank at my feet as a way of escape from the radish bed.  As my fingers touched the torch I felt her pulse pound and her anxious thought: 'That's all I need.  A moonstruck Israeli bleeding in my vegetable garden...'  I tried to stand.

"The wound will have to be dressed," she said reluctantly.

              With the relief of acceptance, of submitting to ignominy, I sank back on my behind into the warm mud.  Inside I exulted: instead of stealing into the clinic I would go in as a casualty.  She stretched out her hand.  I tried to get up, to steady myself, to walk.  Quite naturally she found her place beneath my armpit, supporting me.  I leaned on her, embracing a solid, perfectly-curved shoulder, treading deliberately on the bitten leg - checking once more to feel it really hurt.

             
But she led me toward the house and not the clinic.  At the entrance she allowed me in first to hobble to a heavy chair, one of four around a dining table as big as an airfield.  I was left on my own in a room in which the smell of spicy food still lingered.  She did not turn on the light but left her lit torch on the table so that it cast a ring of brightness onto the ceiling.  In the glow which it sent back a fireplace of red bricks smiled at me.  Some photographs in metal frames were lined up along the mantelpiece.  They were all of the doctor.  In one photo he was smiling, in another he was waving, or riding a horse, holding aloft a large Palestinian flag, looking serious in a photographer's studio.  Where was the bookcase I had seen through the window?  In the room on my right, or perhaps in the room behind me?

             
The sound of water came from somewhere in the house. And then she came back carrying a china jug and washbowl.  Her hair fell forward and covered her face, which was both beautiful and ugly.  Her backbone protruded beneath her blouse as she bent forward and rolled up my torn trouser leg.  I was ashamed of the paleness of my exposed skin and the pathetic clumps of hair along it.  Her hand was cool against my flesh.  The water was warm.

             
"The dog.  I hope it isn't infected."

             
Her lips were compressed.  I could see an island of gray spreading from the parting in her hair.  With her teeth she tore the wrapping off a military bandage.  I picked the ripped paper up:  "MADE IN IRAQ."  Which of the armies passing through here had lost it?

             
She sprayed some disinfectant on my wound and pressed the bandage onto it.  I turned the bottle round in my fingers.  The contents were not printed on the label. 

             
"We're short of some medicines..." I tried cautiously.

             
She took back the bottle with a swift movement and put it in the dresser drawer, bent over my bandaged leg and tightened the knot once more.  I blurted out an impersonal, "Thanks," and watched the light of the torch, which she carried to the mantelpiece, near the photos of the doctor. 

             
"I'm dealing with that matter," I remembered to say.

             
A flicker of interest lit her eyes, modifying their gravity slightly.  I added immediately:  "After we met I sent a telegram."

             
"Well..." she said at length.

             
"There was something unclear about his name.  They haven't yet found..."  If only I had something to tell her...  Outside the line of shadow cast by the half-open door breathed the loneliness of the night.  "I'll know everything by tomorrow."

             
She stood by the door, waiting for me to leave.

             
"Do you want me to come and tell you?"

             
The expression on her face was one of an animal toying with the bait in a trap.

             
Suddenly I had an idea.  "There's a house on the mountain, I'll be there..."  It had better be after dark, but not too late, "…at eight."

             
The torch illuminated the outside.  I could not see her face any more.  The dogs stood facing us, waiting, a guard of honor - or a punishment squad - at her command. 

             
"At eight," I repeated and began walking between the wet, sniffing noses.  The beam of light accompanied me.  "I'll be seeing you," I cast back from the shadow of the radish bed.  The light disappeared.  The door banged.

              I was no longer afraid of the road, of the dark, or an assailant.  A routine had been born.  I thought, limping home keeps repeating itself like a cartoon.  The wicked cat gets hurt each time he goads the clever mice...

***

"You know," Scheckler said the next day, sorting out a pile of telegrams, "I envy you a bit.  When I was a kid I read lots of spy books.  When I was mobilized I asked to be posted to Intelligence, but they laughed at me and sent me to Maintenance."

             
"You didn't miss much, just lots of sleepless nights, meetings you half hope no one will come to, rooms in third-rate hotels and five or six aliases to swap around."

             
"That alias business sounds alright.  You could open a few bank accounts..."

             
"You're very quick..."

             
"Quicker than you think.  I eat quickly, think quickly, even fuck quickly, before the woman under me can change her mind..." - I laughed - "...and I understand quickly too."

             
If there was some hidden meaning it evaporated when the duty officer knocked at the door and placed a fresh pile of mail on the desk.  Scheckler began sorting that out too.

"Another one for you."
  For a moment his hand lingered on the folded page, which had been stapled together, then gave up.  He could look at the copies in the communications room later anyway.

             
I spread the page out on the desk.  This time the tone was abrupt and final. "KAMIS, HAMIS, KOMIS, KHOMIS; ANTIN, ANATOLE, ANTOINE; TURA, DORA, DAURA - NO RECORD."

             
With a heavy heart I took a form and wrote: "KHAMIS, ANTON, DOCTOR, ARRESTED ON 1 AUGUST, TRANSFERRED TO DETENTION CAMP..."

             
Scheckler watched me with narrowed eyes.  "I can help you.  I've got a few ideas about that arrest..."

             
"I don't want to deal with it too much," I concentrated deliberately on what I was writing:  "DETAILS REQUIRED FOR IMPORTANT INTELLIGENCE WORK."

             
"So why are you sending telegrams?"

             
I remembered the oil can in my cupboard.  How long would it take before he found that too?  A ray of sunlight came straight through the window, emphasizing his scraggy figure and mean look as he crossed the distance between our desks with three steps and touched the edge of the form I was holding. 

             
"I can deal with your telegram too..."

             
"I can still do that myself," I said with annoyance. 

             
"I'm going down to HQ in Nabatiya..."

             
The temptation was irresistible.  A direct letter to HQ, bypassing the man who was sending me those terse, laconic telegrams.  I gave him the form. 

             
"I need a reply today.  Can you contact me from there?"

             
"Trust Scheckler!"

             
Despite my feelings about him, there was something encouraging in his intervention. But before I let myself feel good I remembered the detonator I had not yet begun to make.  For a moment I wondered if he might be able to steal past the dogs to the clinic and pick out a phial from the medicine cabinet.  Next, as if to cover the insult I was beginning to feel, I thought of at least three products containing Butyllithium which I could buy even here, in Dura.

             
"If there's anything else I can arrange for you..." Scheckler rattled on.

             
"No," I murmured.  "No."  I gathered my things from the desk and put them in the drawer, which I locked, then hurried outside.  Even before I reached the end of the corridor I could hear the jingling of his keys as he made for my desk.

***

There were no cars in the petrol station at the top of the road.  A bony donkey stubbornly tugged remnants of grass from between the cracks in the asphalt.  On top of the petrol pumps the mountain breeze spun rusty notices around.  The garage attendant was poking around in the entrails of an old car.  I greeted him and he replied by nodding his head.  I reviewed the shelves behind him: lubricants, gear-oil, coolants, batteries.  He watched me as he continued to screw something deep inside the engine.  On the floor, beneath the shelf of oils, was a roll of tar paper. 

"One meter," I requested, putting my hand into my pocket to feel the folded bills.  "Actually, two meters."

              "Ahlan wasahlan, welcome," he said and smiled, revealing two large white teeth.  He continued turning the screwdriver.  I waited politely for him to finish, but he merely bent over and transferred the screwdriver to another screw.

             
"Two meters of tar-paper," I said again.

             
"Ahlan wasahlan."  The willing expression on his face was constant and his hands continued to turn the screwdriver.  "Ahlan wasahlan."

             
A car arrived and hooted noisily.  He put his tools down and went over to the pumps.  I began to leave.  The garage attendant exchanged a few words with the driver of the car in a low voice.  They both watched me.  The donkey escorted me part of the way, leaving a trail of dung in his wake.

             
Beneath the arched gateway of a house I drove a nail between the sole and the upper of my shoe and undid the stitches one by one.  A little further on three women were standing by a shoemaker's stand.  I stood behind him, the shoe in my hand.  They moved aside uncomfortably.  The shoemaker looked up from the bag he was mending.  I held the shoe out to him.  "Do you have some glue?"

             
"I only stitch," he said into his mustache. I pointed at the boxes of glue beside him. 

             
"I'll buy a box."

             
"I only stitch," he said again.  Behind his back the women shuffled. "Where can I buy glue?" I asked them.  The older one shrugged her shoulders, took the younger ones by their arms and dragged them away.

             
I put my shoe back on and walked cautiously to the sound of the flip-flap of the open toe.  At the Athenaeum I would mend them with tire glue from the garage.  Plastic glue suited to the army's requirements - completely barren and non-flammable.  Provided, of course, Scheckler had not sold it in exchange for something looted from somewhere else.

             
How did he get the Arabs to cooperate?  To what part of their minds did he appeal that they crawled at his feet?  Three teenagers were coming towards me, their arms linked, in a united front.  I moved to the left, to the middle of the road.  After they had passed me one of them shot a curse over his shoulder.  The others replied with laughter which echoed through the openings of the alleys and was taken up by the occupants of a nearby café.  I stopped.  There were only two alternatives: to be humiliated or to endanger myself.  With a sudden impulse I chose the latter.