Free A Late Divorce by A. B. Yehoshua

too. My mood is shot now. Suddenly I’m all jelly inside. My father went and left me with this nosy venomous woman and I have to carry her on my back. An only child. Everybody’s favorite target. They were too busy sleeping at night to have time to make me a brother. I’ll show that little darkie yet. When the right moment comes I’ll turn off that heater and fire her. My mood’s shot to hell. And outside it’s cloudy again and everyone’s beeping their horns the traffic’s moving at a crawl the whole world’s in a rush maybe I’ll find some peace there in the prison.
    Thank God that Haifa is at least a pretty town they haven’t managed to ruin it yet. Screened by pine trees that help filter out the general filth. I drive along the ridge of the Carmel into the forest ocean down below on either side bathing my eyes in the green air eddying over the lush wadis.
    Everyone knows me here at the prison I’m not even asked for my papers. These past few months I’ve spent whole days here if ever I’m imprisoned myself I can ask the judge for time off retroactively from my sentence.
    What bedlam. Every other door is unlocked the jailers just jingle their keys for form’s sake and then wonder why prisoners escape. Escape isn’t the word they just have to open the door and walk out.
    An old Druse jailer brings me to a dark cubbyhole it’s a good thing there are still Druse and Cherkesses to keep order in this country my young murderer sits waiting by a bare wooden table short slender and sullen but very muscular when he was still in handcuffs the first time I met him I noticed how easily he stretched them. I shake his hand. God is my witness that I’ve tried to like him but he’s an unfriendly fantasizing type to top it all off they found some marijuana in his house.
    â€œWhat’s doing?” He looks at me with his mousy eyes.
    â€œIs everything all right?”
    He nods.
    I toss my attaché case on the table I sit across from him I leaf through the file that I practically know by heart. The forty thousand pounds that I’ve gotten so far from his family have barely covered the ink and paper that I’ve wasted on him.
    â€œHave you heard anything from that uncle of yours ... that diamond dealer in Belgium?”
    â€œHe’s supposed to arrive any day.”
    â€œHe’s been supposed to arrive for three months now. Apparently he’s decided to come from Belgium on foot.”
    He gives me a hard sullen stare. I should know by now that I have to be careful with my jokes here.
    I begin to ask a few questions going over once more details of his testimony about the great day in his life that I’ve lived every minute of and know better by now than any day in my own. That’s my secret strategy for his defense I’ll break time down under the legal microscope into its tiniest particles I’ll wage war over each second. The prosecution has no idea what’s in store for it. I’ve catalogued the minutes one by one and I’ll prove that he couldn’t have done it. This trial will yet be a textbook case to be studied with astonishment and awe. It was Kedmi who first taught us to think in milliseconds...
    I interrogate him and he answers briefly and to the point. He’s a lone wolf all that damn day he hardly talked to anyone but stupid he’s not. I already know all his answers I simply have to polish them here and there to put him through his paces once again. I want this trial in the worst possible way. Just the look of him is suspicious at least let him be clear and precise. But what’s the truth? I’m still groping in the dark for it. It’s enough to make me despair. The truth is hiding inside his skull like some wriggly slimy gray worm let’s hope the prosecution can’t get at it either.
    The old jailer comes into the room with a note.
    â€œAdvocate Yisra’el Degmi? Your secretary