The Plot Thickens

By Larry Lefkowitz

It all began with a phone call.

“Hello,” he answered it.

“Ahalan , welcome,” the voice at the other end of the line said.

He waited for the caller, whose voice was unknown to him, to continue.

Silence.

“Who’s this?” he asked.

Silence.

He was about to cut off the conversation when the voice asked softly, “Have you looked for your automobile, my brother?” 

“My car? No. why?”

“Look.”

With a feeling that did not augur well, he walked rapidly to the window. The odd thought came to him that someone (a miffed ex-girlfriend?) out of revenge or (the caller?) as a joke had spray-painted his car. But worse awaited him: there was no car where he had parked it. 

“It’s gone,” he said into the phone.

“Yes,” the voice agreed. “You want it back?”

He did. Negotiations between the thief and owner commenced. Hastily on his part, leisurely on the part of the thief. A price for the car’s return was agreed on. A location for doing so specified: “The Rockefeller Museum – you will see your vehicle – you can’t miss it.” 

He received his car back after forking over the requisite quid pro quo.

End of story. Not quite. Only when he returned home and was sitting with a not-so-calming cup of Turkish coffee which he had laced with arrack, a combination he would have normally eschewed -- did he remember. He had got back his automobile but not the sole existing copy of his novel manuscript which he had left on the back seat in order to take to the publisher. He had reentered his apartment to decide about whether to bring a dedication (“To my Pomegranate”) to add to his about to be published novel. He sat with it in his hands while debating the pros and cons of doing so, before deciding in favor.  A quarter hour of deliberation that was to prove the cause of his undoing because before he could take the dedication back to the car, he had received the telephone call. So quickly do contemporary car thieves work abetted by the latest electronic gadgets and the proximity of East Jerusalem. 

He jumped up, spilling the arracked coffee, to look for the thief’s phone number before remembering that it was the thief who had called him. At that moment he would gladly have traded the car for the manuscript. An understandable sentiment on the part of a first novel writer.

Suddenly, there insinuated itself in his head a leitmotiv that was to dog him for some days – in the Levantine nuanced voice of the thief, no less:

Ho ha ma kara

Hasefer shelcha ochal ota

A product of his self-accusatory subconscious, which had taken a chant Betar Jerusalem football team fans direct at rival teams and conscripted it to the higher calling of his literary trauma.

He tried to find consolation in the fact that I.B. Singer’s first novel manuscript had been accidentally destroyed in a fire, or was it in a room flooded by a burst pipe? The important thing was that it had not prevented him from going on to become a famous writer.

Gradually he forgot about the novel and went back to writing short stories. If a short story was stolen, he told himself, it would constitute less of a painful loss. Who knows? Maybe De Maupassant reached the apogee of his career as a short story writer after a similar initially traumatic occurrence.

One Friday morning he read in the literary supplement of the Haaretz newspaper that the Israel Lottery First Novel Prize had been awarded to a book he had never heard of, understandably enough as it was a first novel. A book, in the words of the Prize Committee: “worthy of A.B. Yeshua in its description of the nuanced relations between the Jewish and Arab lovers. The Committee was surprised and delighted to discover such an authentic portrayal in a first novel.”   

The plot of the prize-winning novel sounded curiously similar to that of his lost manuscript. An Israeli man and an Arab woman fall in love. They hide their love—he from fear of his family’s reaction to it; she from fear of her family’s reaction, especially that of an uncle living in a small village who might go so far as to murder her to preserve the family’s honor should he discover the romance between them.  

His novel had described a similar relationship: an actual one that existed between him and Fahima (the "Pomegranate" of his novel dedication) after they met at an Arab-Jewish cultural exchange club. The brief plot description of the prize-winning novel uncannily paralleled that of his manuscript and his relationship with Fahima upon which it was based. Fittingly, his and Fahima’s relationship had been nurtured on their common love of literature. And their practice of it: she wrote poetry, much of it imitative of pre-Islamic poetry - the qasida - which traditionally began, as she explained, with a lament at a deserted campsite about lost love followed by detailing a journey by camel or horse through the desert. An example of Fahima’s turning her hand to the genre:

Where has my beloved gone?

Where have his camels followed?

I remain alone

My tears one with the waters of the oasis

Fahima felt a special kinship to the qasida’s sensual descriptions of young girls and of desert oases. A “brilliant juxtaposition” in Fahima’s words.  He wasn’t so sure; he thought her poetry overly lush, but avoided criticism in the higher service of love, in whose service he had helped her translate one of her poems from Arabic into Hebrew. She, in turn (unbeknown to him) suffered his short stories read to her, withholding her criticism that they were too cynical and also derivative of the stories of Edgar Karet. Indeed, he had once he confessed to her that his stories were not yet “mature”, but promised that his almost finished novel would be something completely different. He was keeping it as a surprise for her. He did vouchsafe that its plot centered about the romance between an Israeli man and an Arab woman. She had raised her eyebrows at this disclosure. “A ‘confession novel’?” she jested, and both exploded in uncontrollable laughter followed by an exchange of whispered pet named endearments: “My pomegranate”, “My sabra” accompanied by – Nu . . .

    Yet their relationship demanded discretion, especially because of her fear of her uncle. Yes, this aspect of his novel had been borrowed from real life because the author thought it added an additional layer of tension, desirable since the trend nowadays was not the rather humdrum ‘pure novel’ approach but an infusion of detective or fantasy or what have you; namely, the mixed genre novel. As a first novel, his work needed all the help it could get. When Pahima first raised the possibility of her cousin’s murdering for the sake of family honor, he had been amazed. ”Doesn’t he know that a third of the Jews who lived between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – at least prior to 1967 – were previously Arabs, and that one third of the Arabs were previously Jews?” (A claim which he had read written in a book by an Englishman and one which, when he mentioned it at the cultural exchange club, discomfited some members from both ethnic groups and delighted others.) “It wouldn’t make a difference to my uncle,” she commented, “he isn’t impressed by statistics, least of all the sort that you mention.  Not only is he with a keffiyeh, he goes around in a jalabiya instead of pants.” At the same time, both were aware that the “forbidden” or “dangerous” nature of their relationship added a certain erotic impetus or catalyst to it.  

Inevitably, the low-profile form of their love was put in jeopardy by events set in motion by awarding of the First Novel Prize. The reader will remember that our hero had learned that the plot of the prize-winning novel and that of his own stolen manuscript were almost identical in content. ‘Almost’ because whoever had used his novel as a model had actually improved it, including finding a brilliant solution to a certain plot hitch which he had been unsuccessful in resolving. Also improved was the authenticity of the description of the Arab characters and settings, a lack of which our author had considered a weak point of the novel. (Ironically, his writing the novel as a surprise for Fahima had deprived him of her assistance in writing just such authentic descriptions). His ‘collaborator’ had topped off his efforts by improving the style of the novel and generously sprinkling appropriate Arabic sayings. The true author was forced to admit to himself that without the pseudo-author’s contributions, his novel would never have won the Israel Lottery First Novel Prize.

Had the thief himself rewritten the novel? Had he turned it over to someone who had? Somebody had submitted the (improved) novel to the prize committee. The listed author of the winning novel bore a name which seemed a synergy of an Arabic first name and his -- the true author’s – Jewish family name, the latter taken, apparently, from the stolen manuscript. The prize committee, unsuccessful in attempting to find the prize winner, had published a newspaper message urging the prize winner to come forth and identify himself. This struck him as an amusing mirroring of the Israel Lottery’s urging football lottery prize winners who hadn’t yet come forward to claim their prize money. Perhaps, he joked, he could wear a mask like the winners did to shield their identities from schnorrers. 

His elation at winning the First Novel Prize was diluted by his awareness that he hadn’t won it alone. How could he come forward and claim it when he might be exposed as co-author only? And what if his co-author showed up? He would gladly share the prize with him were it not for his ancillary profession of car thief. He could hardly demand from him return of the car pay-off money as a condition for sharing the considerable monetary prize or subtracting it from the co-author’s share. And what if the co-author was not the thief but the receiver of stolen goods from the thief? Subtext complications which would have tried the patience of the patriarch of writer-thieves: Francois Villon, and would likely try the patience of the prize committee, even in our more liberal era of post-modernism. He almost wished that the First Novel Prize was not monetary, but a trophy cup like the one the Israel Lottery awarded to the Football League championship team, but the cost of self-publishing a second novel, if he wrote one and couldn’t find a publisher for it, could hardly be financed from sale of a cup.

And what if, as a result of all the Prize brouhaha, his romance with his Arab girlfriend were discovered? Right-wingers, including any among the prize committee, might very well demand rescinding of the prize, such life-imitating-art too much for them to swallow. Moreover, the revealing of his and Fahima’s relationship risked her life, at worst, or her family’s opprobrium, at best, as well as not making his life any easier with his family. He could, of course, forgo identifying himself and forfeit the prize. 

            He consulted Fahima on what he should do. He was not surprised when she trotted out an elaborate Arab saying (she was prone to problem-solving via the help of Arab sayings), the gist of which was: you lose whatever you do. He pressed her for a more concrete suggestion. “You lose the prize or you lose me since if you accept the prize our relationship will be forced to end.” 

              Before he could come to a decision between the course of his literary career and the course of his love, all the cards were shuffled when the literary supplement of the Haaretz newspaper received an anonymous ‘letter to the editor”. It opened with the attention-grabbing, if accurate, words: “The recipient of the Israel Lottery First Novel Prize wrote it with a car thief.”  

The newspaper published the letter only because the sender had also provided a photograph of the car complete to number plate as well as the name of the victim of the theft. His correct name. The letter claimed that the name listed as prize winner was a fabrication. (One member of the prize committee of a detective bent – his detective novel, according to rumor, had never been accepted for publication – claimed that he discerned under the word “fabrication” the  almost erased words “brilliant juxtaposition.”) The letter added that the family name of the fabricated name was accurate. Armed with this information, the newspaper located him, with the prize committee hot on its heels. The committee demanded from him an explanation. He admitted that the novel was a “collaborative work”, that his car had been stolen with his manuscript, etc., etc. He took pains to clarify that the description “wrote it with a car thief” was inaccurate; it suggested collaboration, whereas the car thief, or his collaborator, had made but “minor additions” to the manuscript. The salient disclosure in the eyes of the committee was that someone else had submitted the manuscript as a candidate for the prize. He was adamant that he had written “the lion’s share” of the novel.

The committee informed him that it would decide if “the lion’s share” was sufficient -- one member grumbling that “the head of the fox might be better than the tail of the lion” – but that the whole manuscript theft “element” (not to speak of the thief possibly waiting in the wings) didn’t increase his chances of his keeping the prize. 

In the end they took it from him, allowing him a part of the prize money as an honorarium (“for pain and suffering” as the committee put it). It was the same sum he had paid to get his car back, raising suspicions that the committee knew more about the whole affair than it revealed.

The author of the anonymous whistle-blowing letter sent to the newspaper turned out to be -- Fahima! The words “brilliant juxtaposition” had tipped him off. She confessed that if his fame were lessened, he would be out of the headlines and they could pursue their love undisturbed. He did not treat her gesture as a token of love, but as a betrayal – of his literary career. He broke off with her, returning her Bedouin-inspired poems. One of which he discovered a short time later published in a poetry magazine in Arabic and in Hebrew. The translation to Hebrew looked familiar. No credit given. Some months later he learned after bumping into a member of the Arab-Jewish cultural club whose meetings he had ceased attending, that Fahima had married. To a known car thief from the territories. Perhaps  those fatalistic Arabic sayings that the thief had added to the novel had captured Fahima’s heart. And as epilogue to this denouement, one of Fahima’s Arabic sayings epitomizing his situation hovered on the fringes of his consciousness, but, alas, he couldn’t quite capture it.

Despite all, he could not efface from his thoughts the words of a qasida (not hers) she had once read to him and one he would always associate with memories of her:

With even front teeth      

Like camomile blossoms,

White and gleaming, her side teeth

Glistening with cool saliva 

No matter that Fahima's white and gleaming teeth had left their mark on his flesh. 

*

The stories, poetry, and humor of Larry Lefkowitz have been widely published. His story collection "Enigmatic Tales" is published by Fomite Press.