Free Limassol by Yishai Sarid Page B

was now covered with sand.
    In the territories, we have a method of getting people out of their holes, there are dogs and there are neighbors and there’s tear gas, but here my means were limited and I had come alone. A person has to come out sometime to buy food, or drugs, or to get a breath of air, after all the guy isn’t Anne Frank. But I didn’t have the patience to wait for him all day. I walked behind the cottage and peeped through the screened window. He wasn’t on the ground floor. I stepped up onto a board and it made a loud creak. I hoisted myself a little more, up to the windowsill on the second floor, I knew I’d regret it when I felt a twinge in my back; when I was about to roll inside, I heard a window open above my head. A few centimeters from me was a pale, very thin face, covered with a scraggly beard, the eyes laughing strangely. The hand was holding a big kitchen knife. “Stop!” I yelled, and he retreated a little. His torso was naked. “I won’t hurt you,” I said, and he withdrew a little more.
    â€œGet out of here,” he said in a childish voice, brandishing the knife in an unstable hand.
    â€œI’m getting down now,” I said. “Open the door.”
    â€œI’ll cut you,” he said from above.
    â€œYou won’t cut anybody here. Daphna sent me. I’m a friend,” I said from below, as in some kind of perverse serenade.
    The door opened slowly, I heard him shuffle back, and he was no longer holding the knife. Inside, as expected, all kinds of things; dozens of books, and dishes had been tossed about, and the place reeked of sour milk.
    â€œWho are you?” he stood in my way. His body was beautiful and long and very thin, and up close I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t healthy.
    I said I was a friend of Daphna’s, that she sent a little money with me, and she wanted me to find out how he was. I gave him the five hundred I had taken out of the agents’ petty cash. In Gaza, that sum could have supported a family for a month. Here it would barely be enough to buy him cocaine for one day. Nevertheless, the money softened him. He put it into his shorts’ pocket and moved out of my way.
    â€œLet’s go outside,” I suggested. “There’s a nice wind from the sea. It’s a little musty here.”
    â€œYou can go out,” he said. “I’m not.” His eyes were red. He didn’t look at me. His arms were full of holes and scars from shooting up. He noticed my look and pulled a dirty sweatshirt from some chair, and the long sleeves covered his arms.
    â€œYou’re not a cop, are you?” he asked. “I saw you in the distance, when you came. You made a lot of noise. Except for mice, nobody comes here. It’s just like a cop to be so clumsy.” He had a childish laugh, and when he laughed his eyes squinted and you could like him.
    I promised him I wasn’t a cop. I asked what he needed.
    â€œI need money,” he said. “What you brought me is a joke.”
    I cleared off a pile of clothes and God knows what else to sit on an old wooden chair. “That’s enough for a nice shopping trip to the supermarket,” I said. “There are families who could live on that for a week.”
    Yotam Ignats laughed until he almost choked. “Mother always finds strange people,” he said. “She’s great at that. Creatures from the moon. You don’t look like a cop, I know cops. I’ll bet you’re some lousy actor mother sleeps with, who comes to put on an act for me. She’s got no money for private investigators so she sends me fakes. I know because I took everything she had, my poor mother. You passed my audition, congratulations.” He clapped his hands and stamped his feet and split his sides laughing.
    â€œYou’re in a good mood,” I said.
    â€œI bought some good stuff.” He crossed his legs and folded up in