The Zigzag Kid (28 page)

I pulled the covers over my head, over both ears, contrary to Dad's regulations. I left just a crack open to peep through. I examined the shadows. The wardrobe, various objects, the little soldiers on the shelf, the scenic postcards from all over the world. I began to feel cramped. The room was crowding in on me. I rolled over onto my back. No good. I rolled back onto my stomach. Took a whiff of the pillow. It smelled familiar. I knew that smell. What was the matter with me? Everything in the room spoke to me. Breakfast congealed in my stomach. I reached out listlessly and touched the wall, and my finger found a scratch there, shaped like a bolt of lightning, deeper by far than the one I had at home, so I guess whoever had slept in that bed must have tried very hard to keep from crying, and as I touched it I felt my finger turn pale. I quickly slipped my hand between the bed frame and the mattress. There I found what I had been looking for, what I'd been afraid to find, petrified gobs of chewing gum. It couldn't be, I thought, everything's the same as it is in my room. I poked around the mattress and found the hole in the cover, just where I knew it would be. Whoever had slept here before liked to dig his finger into the mattress right where I did. Please, I thought stupidly, don't let me find any raspberry candies in there.

I sat up in alarm. This couldn't be happening, I thought, it's too weird. Suddenly I stopped sniffling. I realized that this was exactly like the story Chaim Stauber had told me once about an Indian girl remembering who she'd been in her previous incarnation, and then taking her parents to a village she had never seen in her life and showing them exactly where she'd hidden a favorite toy one hundred years before she was born. But things like that could happen only in India. Not here. Not to me. What's wrong with me? I asked myself. Who am I? Frozen
with fear, I unwrapped the candy and put it in my mouth. It was all dried up. Like a rock crystal. Even the mildew had solidified. I licked it and sucked it and rolled it around in my mouth until it got wet and remembered what it was. A fine thread of flavor, the memory of raspberry, melted on my tongue and spread through my brain. I sat up in bed and licked that candy, all mouth and tongue and memory. Everything vanished, except for the taste of raspberry melting in my mouth. Maybe that's how a baby feels, suckling its mother's milk.

I woke up from this sweet reverie, no longer tired. The room was calling me, emanating sound waves the way a hand transmits the sensation of pins and needles when it's fallen asleep and is trying to wake up. I quietly got out of bed, walked over to the wardrobe, and opened it.

It was a child's wardrobe. Nothing unusual here, I thought, trying to keep cool: from top to bottom, children's clothes. But I couldn't keep cool. Just the opposite, in fact; I had goose bumps all over. Children's clothes. A boy's or a girl's? I couldn't tell. Maybe both: there were dresses and skirts, and girl's underwear. But also a boy's shirts and trousers. Wide leather belts. Thick sweat socks. A boy's or a girl's? And the doll collection on the shelf—a boy's or a girl's? Dolls, yes, but they were soldiers. Or maybe a lot of boys and girls had come through this room, like me, lured here by means of tricks and excuses? And what happened to them? Where were they now? I ran my hand over a dress hanging in the wardrobe. It was cool to the touch, like the skirt Felix had given me today. The colors, too, were like the colors of the clothes he gave me, reds and purples and greens. Something's wrong here, I thought. Why had they put me in this particular room? Gabi never told me about a little boy or girl living with Lola. So to whom did the clothes in the wardrobe belong? And what was the connection between Lola and Felix? And why had Felix brought me here? I wanted to call home. I had to talk to Dad. Right away.

I heard footsteps approaching and jumped back into bed. I managed to cover myself just in time. Lola and Felix tiptoed into the room. I closed my eyes. I was cold with fear, fear that flitted batlike out of the darkness of translated fairy tales and unconfirmed police reports about
kidnappers and what they do to children. With my last bit of strength I wrestled with that fear. It simply wasn't in their character. No? Why not? Maybe all kidnappers seem like perfectly nice people. They have to lure kids into following them, don't they? Maybe the two of them always worked as a team, and it was Felix's job to bring the victims here. And what did Lola mean about his crazy games, when she asked whether he had permission to bring me here? And where did they get all the children's clothes?

I peeked out and saw them standing over me. She was leaning against his shoulder, and he had his arm around her. They watched me in silence.

Lola sighed.

Then she pushed Felix out of the room and closed the door behind him. She sat down on a little chair near my bed and gazed at me, barely breathing.

I was so confused. I didn't have the strength to figure out what was happening around me. Felix had been a criminal at one time, maybe he still was, but I was the one who'd brought him here. I chose to come! And Lola? What was her connection to all this? If she was involved in a crime against me, then I wouldn't mind dying, because nothing would mean anything. I sighed with anguish.

Lola stood up and hurried to my side. She stroked my brow and wiped away the perspiration.

“Go to sleep now, I'll watch over you,” she whispered. Her gentle hands tucked the blanket around me and fluffed the pillow. Of course, I knew all long that she could never be involved in wickedness.

Her eyes enveloped me with wistfulness, longing. I turned toward her. We gazed at each other in the dark.

“Don't be afraid, Nonny,” she said in her haimish voice. “It's only me. Would you like me to go?”

“No, that's okay,” I answered. But what did she want from me?

“Felix tells me you used to wait outside my house and that I never even noticed you,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

“It doesn't matter. I got to see you in your plays, too.”

“So he told me. And what do you think of my acting?”

“It's wonderful. I thought … I think you're a really great actress, only …”

“Only what?” She leaned forward. Why did I have to open my big mouth?

“It's just that, well, here in your house, you seem, you know, more real.”

I heard her chuckle in the darkness.

“Well, Felix thinks so, too. He says I'm only good at playing queens, but in the role of an ordinary woman, I'm quite a flop. He's been saying that to me for years. Maybe he's right.”

I wanted to protest, to rush to her defense, the way I do when Gabi makes fun of herself for being fat. But I was just too weak.

“Tell me about yourself, Nonny.”

“I'm a little tired now.”

“How silly of me. I so enjoy being with you, having a little boy around, but here I am torturing you, poor darling. Never mind, I'll leave now. Go to sleep.”

“No, stay! Please don't leave.” Maybe I was afraid to be alone in that mysterious room, or maybe it was the wonderful feeling I had with her, like being with a grandmother.

Of course I already had Grandma Tsitka. A complicated relationship. She was the mother of Uncle Samuel and Dad and their three brothers, a tall, thin woman who wore her hair in a top knot, had a cataract over one eye, and bony yellow fingers. I'm sorry if this sounds like a police description of a missing witch, but that's just how she looked. Nor did she care for me very much, in general or in particular. No matter what I said or did, she always criticized me. The moment she saw me, she would fix me with her one good eye and start circling around, carping at me till I just couldn't take any more, and then I would burst out crying or throw a tantrum. I believe she detested me from the moment I was born, and I, for my part, stopped calling her Grandma at the age of three and insisted on using her first name instead. I had a special way of pronouncing it, “Tsitka,” making sure she would hear exactly how I felt about her. Then, at the age of four—after Gabi read me “Little Red Riding-Hood”—I began having serious suspicions
about Tsitka, and I told Dad I didn't want to visit her anymore, at least not until the hunter arrived and clarified a few points concerning her identity.

Dad never tried to intervene. He simply went along with whatever she said about me and tried to keep us apart. Sometimes I wondered at her readiness to cut off relations. But then Dad wasn't much of a family man. Nor was he particularly eager for me to make friends with Tsitka's other grandchildren, my seven cousins, all of them, without exception, typical Feuerberg-Shilhavs, who didn't seem to have much trouble suppressing their friendliness toward someone like me. We never met except at weddings and other family occasions, when they would sit with their parents all evening and eat with a knife and fork and speak only when spoken to. And because they were always giving me dirty looks and I didn't want to spoil their bad impression, I used to stand at the bar and pretend to gulp down one drink after another, until the waiter would call one of my uncles over to take care of the little shikker. Then, looking out of the corner of my eye to make sure Grandma Tsitka had a good view, I would march away with my head held high and pick a fight with the drummer.

Yet with Lola, a stranger, I felt good. Her gentleness, her unaccountable fondness for me—

“Tell me about you,” I said, half dozing. “Not as an actress. About you.”

“Finally, someone who understands.” Lola smiled. She sat with her feet tucked under her, the way she liked, and reflected a moment.

“You're right, Nonny. The person I am and the actress are no longer one and the same. For years now I've been aware of the difference, and to tell the truth”—she moved closer and whispered—“I don't really enjoy standing in front of an audience anymore.”

I was flabbergasted. What a scoop! “Lola Ciperola Hates Theater!” But she could count on me not to leak it to the press. This was private and confidential.

“How strange.” She smiled. “I never said it quite that way before. So firmly. Being with you makes everything clearer somehow: what's important and what's not. And what to do with my remaining years.”

I smiled a crooked smile. She was being polite with me.

“I feel like telling you about myself.” She giggled. “So you'll get to know me better. I don't want to tire you, but I can't seem to hold myself back. Aren't I awful? Go on, say you're tired and that you've had enough.”

“Tell me what you were like as a girl.”

“Shall I really?” She was so delighted, I immediately saw how she'd been as a girl.

“But don't tell me—” I hesitated. I didn't know how to say it without hurting her feelings. “Don't tell me the things you say in your interviews. Tell me new stories.”

She gazed at me and slowly nodded. “For that you deserve a great big kiss, Nonny, but I'll try to control myself. Suddenly I don't feel like talking anymore. Would you mind if I sang you a song?”

“ ‘Your Eyes Shine'?”

“No. A different song. One my mother used to sing to me when I was about your age, living in a faraway land where I was known as Lola Katz. I hadn't taken on my ridiculous stage name yet. But I had a dog named Victor. And two friends named Elka and Katya.”

“Lola Katz? Is that your real name?”

“Fancy that. Are you disappointed?”

“No—I just—I mean, it's strange—because Lola Ciperola is a pretty nice name, actually …”

She smiled to herself, closed her eyes, and sang a sweet song in a strange language.

A few hours, or minutes, later I heard her murmur, “Sleep, my darling. There's still time.”

But by the time I woke up it was evening. Everything was topsyturvy. I lay in bed dreaming a little while longer. If I were home now, Dad would still be out and I would have the house to myself. I would play soccer or go through Dad's gun catalogues or trot the globe with my fingertips, trying different routes to different places, or do nothing at all.

Sometimes it seemed as though a whole hour had gone by and that Dad would be home any minute, but the clock maintained that only a
minute had passed, so what to do now? I didn't feel like staying in the house. I didn't feel like doing homework without Gabi. I would go to Micah's as a last resort and hang around with him, and when my lies started gushing out, he would stare at me, his mouth agape, his heavy earlobes like sinkers, waiting for me to get caught up in my own lies, which would irritate me into provoking a fight out of sheer boredom, and eventually I would leave him, feeling hollow inside. Our friendship had long ago stopped being real; it was just that we had nothing better to do. After my bar mitzvah I planned to inform him that we were no longer friends. Enough is enough already.

If only I enjoyed reading—but I didn't, I preferred it if Gabi read to me. If only I played a musical instrument, like the drums—you don't need a good ear to be a drummer, just a sense of rhythm and plenty of energy, and I definitely had that. But Dad refused to buy me a drum set.

So where did those thousands of hours go? Those interminable afternoons of my childhood? How did I fill my life? For one thing, I remember, I used to try to identify the neighbors' cars by the noises their motors made. Or I would spend hours leafing through my missing-persons notices, wondering where they were now, and how I could organize them into my own secret service, since they had no connections anymore, they were lost, so why couldn't they join up with me and be my guards? Or I would roller-skate over to Memorial Park and see if I could remember the names of the forty fallen on the plaque. Or I would hang around, doing nothing, just existing and waiting for life to begin.

But it didn't begin. And when it did, with one genuine friendship, I blew it.

If today were a Wednesday, I would be creeping through the bushes about now, seeing Chaim's mother safely home from the shopping center. At six-thirty in the evening she would make her way back from the beauty parlor, and though I was in disgrace as far as she was concerned, I didn't like to leave her without protection. As her bodyguard, I would check for possible trouble sources in the vicinity, and plan escape routes in case anything came up, like a protest demonstration. Sometimes she
would stop to talk to a neighbor in the street. I would stand alert, ready to leap into the fire if the neighbor attacked. Inside my head I would hear a voice blaring, “Draw! Fire! Shoot!” and steal a glance out of the bushes at her softly fluttering eyelashes. And sometimes when I hid close by, it seemed to me that I could hear her words.