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Death in an Olive Grove英语美文
Death in an Olive Grove
By Orly Castel-Bloom
“I’ve got someone for you,” said Ronny. “An Arab.”
“Bring him,” said Glue.
They called him “Glue” because he glued people to the wall until they told him the truth; because what he had in his head was what was going to happen; and because one day he caught his girlfriend with another guy and he glued her to the table and stuck a tattoo to her arm: I’m Glue’s girl, and anyone who sticks it to me will get stuck with syphyllis.
They set up a meeting with the Arab. He was a real Arab, from the territories, and even though Glue didn’t like dealing with Arabs even from Jaffa or Lydda, sometimes you didn’t have a choice. As far as he was concerned, Arabs from the territories were worse than working with the dirties Jews, the kind of Jew who all of a sudden after eating and drinking off your plate for half a year pulls a copper’s ID out of his pocket.
They fixed it to meet the Arab in a grove of trees next to Glue’s house. The trees were olive trees, but it was years since anyone had come to pick the olives, and the olives fell on the ground and wrinkled up slowly, and the ground was covered all over with olive pits. Glue had closed a lot of deals in this olive grove, and there was already some nostalgia.
He always arrived for the deals dressed up in white, with white shoes and a white baseball cap that hid half his face. First he would hear what the other party had to say, and then he would have his say. If the distance between him and the other party was too great, he would walk away. If he reached the edge of the olive grove and the other guy didn’t call him back, he would go on walking without turning round. After that the other party could shout as much as he liked, Glue wouldn’t turn around.
He had a superstition connected with one of the olive trees, that if he passed it and they didn’t call him back, it was a sign that the whole deal stank, and he should make tracks fast. If they called him before he reached the border line, he was ready to re-open negotiations.
“Okay, okay,” he would say and retrace his steps, and listen to the other party. Then he would think a bit, consider his options, and after that he would stick his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. “I’m prepared to talk about it,” he would grunt in the end.
With Glue, if you had any brains you made a deal with on the spot. Say he said fifty thousand, the other party said forty, they closed on forty five and went home.
On every corner of the olive grove he posted a guard to watch out for cops or junkies, coming to beg for a bit of the action or else he’d screw them, because a junkie would sell his mother for a tenth of a gramophone. The bodyguards were armed. When you’re talking about so much money, it’s better to die than be buried alive in jail.
Glue had never been caught. This was a known fact. He bribed policemen, that’s true. He would let them have ten percent of the stolen goods deals, and fifteen, even twenty, of the dope deals.
The Arab arrived on time and said he had merchandise from Turkey, he had a sample on him. Glue began to examine the merchandise. He put it on the tip of his finger and sniffed and tasted. Suddenly the Arab took out a knife, pressed a button and began to stab Glue. He stabbed him once and said:
“That’s for my brother Yusuf.”
He stabbed him a second time and said:”
“That’s for my cousin Ibrahim.”
Glue couldn’t shout for help to his four goons who were standing at the four corners of the olive grove, because the second stab, the one for Faiza, was on his throat and he would only gurgle and die quietly. The four goons were all busy looking at the area allocated to them.
“And that’s for my sister Samira,” the Arab went on attacking and stabbing, “and that’s for my cousin Mohammed, and that’s for my father and my mother,” and he stabbed Glue with all his might in the stomach, and Glue gave up the ghost. Like a dry branch he lay among the olive trees, and the Arab stood over him with the bloody knife, panting and looking at the body.
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