Legends

Neither Martin nor Stella said a word in the communal taxi for fear the driver or one of the other passengers might be working for the Shabak; both worried also that emotions would get the upper hand if one of them broke the comforting silence. Fifty minutes after leaving the airport they found themselves standing on a street corner in downtown Jerusalem. Heavy morning traffic flowed around them. Squads of soldiers, some of them dark skinned Ethiopians wearing green flak jackets and green berets, patrolled the streets, checking the identity papers of young men who looked as if they could be Arabs. Martin let six taxis pass before hailing the seventh. They took it to the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, where a line of Palestinian taxis queued on the street outside the hotel. A young Russian, in Israel for a chess tournament, was leaning over a chess board set up on the hood of a car parked outside the hotel entrance as a television camera filmed him. He was playing against himself, slamming the pieces down on the board as he made a dozen rapid moves, muttering all the while about a flaw in black’s position or the ineptness of white’s attack. Spotting an opening, he gleefully thrust the white pieces forward for the kill, then looked up and announced in English that black had resigned in the face of white’s dazzling attack.

“How can he play against himself and remain sane?” Stella asked.

“The advantage of playing against yourself is, unlike real life, you know what your opponent’s next move will be,” Martin observed.

He waited until the first three Palestinian taxis had driven off with passengers before signaling to the fourth. “Mustaffah, at your beck and call,” announced the young Palestinian driver as he loaded their valises into the back of a yellow Mercedes that, judging from its appearance, had been around longer than the driver. “So to where?”

“Kiryat Arba,” Stella said.

The enthusiasm drained from Mustaffah’s eyes. “It will cost you a hundred twenty shekels or thirty dollars U.S.,” he said. “I only take you to the main gate. The Jews will not tolerate Arab taxis inside.”

“Main gate will be fine,” Martin said as he and Stella settled onto the cracking leather of the back seat.

Mustaffah’s plastic worry beads dangling from the rearview mirror tapped against the windshield as the taxi sped past fortress-like Israeli neighborhoods and bus stops swarming with religious Jews, and headed away from Jerusalem on a new highway that knifed south into the Judean Hills. On the rocky slopes on either side of the highway, knots of Palestinian men walked along dirt paths to avoid the Israeli checkpoints as they made their way into Jewish Jerusalem in the hope of finding a day’s work. In the wadis, boys who had climbed onto the high branches of trees could be seen picking olives and stuffing them under their open shirts.

“You were tempting fate back at the airport,” Martin remarked. “I’m talking about when you started to unbutton your shirt to show Asher the night moth under your breast. What would you have done if he hadn’t stopped you?”

Stella inched closer to Martin until her thigh was touching his; she badly wanted to be comforted. “I consider myself a pretty good judge of character,” she replied. “My instinct told me he would stop me, or at the very least avert his eyes.”

“What about me?” Martin asked. “Did you think I’d avert my eyes?”

Stella stared through the grime on the window, remembering how she had clung to Kastner when she had hugged him good-bye; he had wheeled his chair away abruptly but she had still caught sight of the tears welling in his eyes. She turned to Martin. “Sorry. I was somewhere else. What did you say?”

“I asked whether you thought I’d avert my eyes, too, if you started to show Asher the night moth supposedly tattooed under your breast.”

“Not sure,” she admitted. “Haven’t figured you out yet.”

“What’s to figure out?”

“There are parts of you my instinct can’t get to. The heart of the matter is hidden under too many moods—it’s almost as if you were several different people. For one thing, I can’t decide if you are interested in women. I can’t decide if you want to seduce me, or not. Females need to get this detail right before they can have a working relationship with a man.”

“Not,” Martin said without hesitation. “Trouble with women in general, and you in particular, is you’re incapable of being on the receiving end of courtesy without assuming seduction is behind it.” Martin thought of Minh coaxing erections out of his reluctant flesh during their occasional evenings together; he wondered if her death on the roof above the pool parlor had really been an accident. “Here’s the deal, Stella: I’m past seduction. When I’m backed up against a wall I make war, not love.”

“That’s pain speaking,” Stella whispered, thinking of her own pain. “You ought to consider the possibility that intimacy can be a painkiller.”