The Zigzag Kid (10 page)

My lips were dry. Maybe there's a special prayer you recite the first time you ride in a Bugatti. Too bad no one in my class could see me now. Too bad there had been no photographer following me around all day. Because I knew that even if they believed me about driving the locomotive all by myself, and blowing the whistle and stopping a train, no one, not even Micah, would believe that the automobile of a real king had been sent from overseas just for me! A convertible, yet! Who cares if they don't believe me, I thought angrily. Why should I have to impress them? Does a king have to impress anyone? He's the king, that's all.

“He sure was scared, that engineer …” I said with a forced laugh, because every time I thought about what happened in the locomotive I'd get this wave of anxiety again.

Felix shrugged his shoulders. “And gun was only toy,” he said.

I was relieved. “Only toy?”

He shrugged his shoulders, took the gun out of his pocket, and handed it to me. It was a small gun, fairly heavy, as heavy as a real gun, its handle inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I'd seen a real one like this once in a display of impounded weapons. Dad took a long time inspecting it, caressing it, peering through the sight. When I asked him what it was, he quickly put it back in the case and sneered, “It's only a woman's gun.” But I didn't tell Felix that.

In this pleasantly expansive mood, I ran my fingers over Felix's toy. It was the second gun I had held in my hands that day, the first being the one the fake policeman carried. Ho-hum, what a boring life this was.

We were still driving over back roads. I raised myself up on the seat and stuck my head out through the open top. I waved to an oncoming truck, and the driver waved back, staring at our big black car with admiration. Too bad I didn't have a cowboy hat. That would really have completed the picture. I said so to Felix, who threw his head back and laughed. Again, for an instant, he looked ferocious to me, like a panther: an elderly one with droopy jowls, that still had a glint in his eyes, and I began to imitate his changing expressions, and the fierce blue of his flashing smile … or have I already mentioned my silly habit of trying on a person's expression in order to feel it inside out? I can't decide whether that means I have a flair for drama, or a flexible nature, but at any rate, Felix noticed it. He could see right through me. He sized up my character in a matter of seconds, and I didn't mind a bit, because I saw by his smile how much he enjoyed my mimicry. He, too, was something of an actor, as was clear to me from his scene with the engineer, and I felt a special rapport with him, an instinctive warmth; what pros we'd shown ourselves to be in that locomotive, with me sensing what Felix wanted and improvising accordingly, and how about the way my arm started twitching, nice touch, huh?

Felix stepped on the gas and winked at me conspiratorially. We knew—we both felt it—that this was the start of a special friendship between two adventurers, and he grabbed the toy gun from my hand,
aimed it at the blue sky above us, shouted, “Hi-deh!” and pulled the trigger.

The shot reverberated through the air. I was aghast. Suddenly I felt miserable and cold. A wispy trail of smoke rose up from the gun barrel. I slid back on the luxurious seat. All the air in my lungs escaped with a whistle, blowing out the fun of the adventure and the joy of our new friendship.

“But you said … a toy …” I mumbled.

Felix held the steering wheel with one hand and sniffed the gun barrel. He looked at me with his baby-blue eyes, shrugged his shoulders, and smiled. “So what you think, young Mr. Feuerberg—someone in toy department was playing michievous trick on me?”

Gunsmoke wafted over my head through the open roof of the Bugatti and up to the sky. I could smell it, scorched and heavy.

“Maybe we should go home now, back to Jerusalem,” I whispered.

There was a look of disappointment in Felix's eyes.
“Pardon”
he said. “Forgive me, please, that I frighten you when I want just to make you laugh.” His triangular eyebrows peaked in distress. “I am perhaps too old to make children laugh, yes?”

I said nothing. What a team we made: an old man who can't make children laugh and a child who can't make grownups laugh.

Sulkily I asked whether he had any children.

Again he hesitated, weighing the answer in his mind, as though there were no such thing in this world as “reality” or “truth” and you could give several different answers to any question, depending on what the person asking it had in mind at a given moment.

Then he decided. The familiar smile spread over his face. “One child,” he answered, “grown up now. She could be your mother.”

I said nothing, out of pure courtesy. I mean, really, how could anyone be my mother, except Gabi, that is.

“I did not know her so well in childhood,” said Felix, “because I was traveling always, for work and such. This is great pity, no? So much I miss, no?”

I didn't feel like answering. The truth is, he didn't strike me as capable of raising a child. He seemed more the type who could be nice and have fun with a kid for an hour or two. I was sure, for example,
that he knew how to make shadow puppets with his fingers and do three or four simple magic tricks, or tell the kind of story that would grab a child's attention. But actually to be there for the child, giving discipline and care and comfort, the way Gabi is for me—that's something else again.

“Why—why you looking at me like that?” stammered Felix with an awkward smile. I stared at him unswervingly, to let him see that I was angry.

“I do love children …” he mumbled uneasily, apologetically. “Everyone says always—Felix is great hit with children! Children adore him …”

Uh-huh. Just as I thought.

Cruelly I held my tongue.

“What's this?” murmured Felix. “Cat has got our tongue, Mr. Feuerberg?”

I could see that my silent scowl was troubling him, shaking his confidence. I had a feeling he could read my mind. Fine, then, I thought, go ahead, read on, here's what I think of you, Mr. Felix: you are a vain and self-indulgent man who delights in raising himself as his only eternal child!

It worked. Maybe it was mean of me, but that's how I got even with him for the gun. Though I must confess, I am not the author of the wonderfully cutting line about the man who delights in raising himself as his only eternal child, et cetera. Gabi had said that once about her favorite actress, Lola Ciperola, and it was engraved in my mind forever. How strangely appropriate to Felix the words seemed now: his eyelids fluttered, his cheeks blushed red. He grasped the steering wheel with both hands and stared out the window, speechless.

The silence lasted several seconds, and when Felix looked at me again, his eyes were utterly changed. Gone was the glint I had noticed in them earlier. I knew that something had passed between us, that we had fought a kind of duel, which I, for reasons unknown, had won.

“You are clever boy, young Mr. Feuerberg,” said Felix quietly. “But now we see if you are brave enough to continue on journey.”

So we drifted along in the big black car. I had to decide whether to
say “Enough,” in which case it would be over, like some pleasantly confusing dream, an eerie dream which had just begun and would lead who knows where. I closed my eyes and tried to decide, but there were too many thoughts running around my head. In my heart lurked a nameless fear, a cold and heavy fear about what I was doing here with this Felix person, though I realized maybe I shouldn't try too hard to get to the bottom of it, in case the solution turned out to be more frightening than the riddle itself.

“Let's continue,” I blurted.

“Very well.” He sat upright behind the wheel. I could tell he was relieved, overjoyed in fact, that I was willing to continue our journey, despite what I had learned about him. I, too, sat up and looked him straight in the face. I was feeling rather proud of myself, though I didn't fully understand what I had done to bring about this change both in him and in me.

“But first we must to switch over to Beetle, yes?” he said.

This was a surprising turn in the conversation. And in the trip. I asked no questions. I literally bit my tongue and waited to see what would happen. We parked the massive car near an orange grove. We got out. I didn't know where I was, or where he was leading me. He opened the trunk and took out the brown leather suitcase. He closed the car door and began to walk away. I followed him into the orange grove. I was still forcing myself not to ask where we were going. With Felix, I now realized, there was no predicting. Everything could change from one minute to the next: situations, plans, the future …

We stepped through the trees and into the orange grove. On and on we traipsed, past the muddy watering ditches. There were red rags tied around the tree trunks here and there. When I turned to look, I couldn't see the Bugatti anymore. Or the road either. We were surrounded by the trees and the silence. Him and me.

And then, between two rows of orange trees, I saw a huge frog: that is, a green Volkswagen, called a Beetle, though it looks more like a frog. I could hardly speak. I was amazed again at the magnitude of the operation they had planned, and yet one little thought kept nagging me:
Couldn't they have chosen a simpler present? Like maybe a regulation soccer ball? More and more I felt as if I were floating downstream. I followed Felix. He walked at a quick but easy pace. It was beneath his dignity to rush ahead. He moved to a special rhythm, which naturally infected me as well. He opened his door, I opened mine. He got into his side, I got into mine. He started the car. I cleared my throat. We were silent. I liked that manly silence. The car went up and down the ditches, found the dirt road, and away we drove.

“It was important for me to start our trip with black Bugatti,” he explained. “Special car gives style, no?”

He pronounced the word “style” as though tasting something sweet. But what would happen to the luxurious car he had shipped all the way to Israel for a half-hour drive? He had left it just as he had left his expensive watch with the silver chain. He never even bothered to lock it. Apparently Felix was the richest man in the world.

“But black is eye-catching, and with yellow doors, would take no more than few minutes for police to find it. This is why I arrange for us this Beetle car. There are so many in Israel, no one will notice. If we drive past police station, policemen will only tip their caps and say, ‘Good day, thank you, and shalom.' ”

I maintained my stern, professional silence. What Felix had said about the police began to sink in, and gradually, through the fog, an interesting thought occurred to me.

“You mean we're running away from someone?”

“From police, I believe, who may not care for what we did on train,” said Felix with a shrug, clicking his tongue three times like a witness to police impropriety. “Sometimes they are old-fashioned this way.” And he added with a chuckle, “Not your father, of course, oh no no no!. Your father is true champion, but the rest are not. You listen to me, your father is best detective in all of Israel!”

And then two things happened:

1. My young soul positively crackled with joy that someone else thought as much of Dad as I did.

2. I suddenly understood the true meaning of Dad's plan.

That is, I almost dared to understand it.

“You mean, the two of us, you and I, are now …” I asked hesitantly, afraid of his answer, “fugi… fugitives from justice?”

“Ah, this is lovely way to put it.” Felix smiled. “Yes, yes, we are fugitives from justice.” And he murmured the words to himself again.

“What about … tomorrow? Will we also be … fugitives from justice then?”

“And also day before yesterday … I mean day after tomorrow. It is up to you until when. What you wish is my command, like Aladdin and his jinni, yes sir!”

And he gave a salute.

Just then, the ringmaster of my inner circus raised his whip and I heard a deafening crack in my ears. The band struck up a lively march while inside me, thirty-two acrobats, three fire-eaters, two magicians, a knife thrower, clowns, monkeys, lions, elephants, and five Bengal tigers all leaped into the spotlight and circled round and round … Yes, it was one of those incredible moments when an entire circus runs away with a child, and the euphoric voice of the ringmaster resounded in my shell-like ears: Ladies and gentlemen, beloved audience, let's hear it for me!

I sank back in my seat and closed my eyes, hoping these shenanigans would drown out the cool warning whisper that tried to tell me I was wrong and that I didn't understand what was going on, but I didn't want to hear any more: Shut up, quit spoiling everything. Felix drove unhurriedly, humming a comical tune syncopated with little clicks of the tongue like a one-man band. I rolled down the window and let the breeze wash over my face. Very refreshing. I sat up straight again. There. That's better. Everything will be all right now. Everything will return to being clear and simple. At last, after so much confusion and resentment toward Dad and Gabi, the whole plan was coming into focus, the angle, the method, and the audacity of it all: so this was my bar mitzvah present! And this was the man Dad had chosen for the role! Again I gasped at Dad's ingeniousness. You'd never guess from his outward appearance who and what he is, and how brilliant he is when he wants to be. Sure he keeps a low profile when he's out on a
case; so low, in fact, Gabi claimed it was becoming his second nature, but even I hadn't guessed he could be so bold and reckless. How I wished I could have heard what Gabi said when he told her his idea.

She would never leave him now, not after an idea like that.

I looked at Felix in a new light, too: for Dad to have entrusted him with such a mission, he had to be someone pretty special. The honorable Mr. Special, meanwhile, had put on a pair of simple black sunglasses, without a trace of monocular elegance. He drove with self-assurance, his eyes narrowing behind the shades, though I could tell he never missed a thing. More and more he reminded me of Dad. They were so different, yet so alike. I swallowed hard, trying to control what I would say from now on, but I could scarcely control the trembling of my fingers.