A Dove of the East Read Free Page B

rich, and so spread stories such as the one asserting that he sold avocados from his wagon for two weeks day and night and never seemed to run out.
    A hundred men threw themselves at his feet and begged to buy this wagon. He picked the richest of them all and told him to run and get his daughter. When the man returned with the beautiful young girl she went wild with desire for the hideous old man and asked for his wrinkled hand in marriage. With tears in his eyes, the father gave consent. They were married the next day. Twenty-five minutes after the wedding feast the father died suddenly of what an autopsy later revealed as starvation.
    The stranger then moved into the family house, sold it that evening at a great profit even though everyone knew the city was about to tear it down to build a melon exchange, and pooled his considerable assets to buy up all the salt in Tel Aviv. This was considered a foolish move, until several days later when news came from the south that the country’s salt mines had become filled with hot poisonous gas from fissures in the earth. The salt merchants got together and put all their capital into a large order of Turkish salt to be brought on a ship they purchased as a consortium. News came that the ship had been sunk by the Lebanese. The stranger bought what remained of their businesses for practically nothing, and went to the docks to meet the ship, which had not been sunk, but had doubled in size.
    From this point, his dealings became unknown to the people of Ha Tikva, except that it was known that he had somehow gained control of the area’s crime. Every robbery, every drug transaction, every prostitute, fell ultimately under his direction. He caused otherwise friendly murderers to fight among themselves, shoot, miss, and kill innocent bystanders. Dancers pulled their muscles. Hats would not fit on old men who had worn them for thirty years. Honest citizens would suddenly kick a police officer, and when brought to trial full of regret and shame, find themselves able to speak only Japanese.
    Something was wrong in Ha Tikva. It became the topic of conversation at all the tables and in all the cafes. A man suggested to his friends that the strange things which happened were only a concealment and distraction in the case of the stranger who had arrived and done so well so suddenly. “You know, you may have a point there,” said one of them just before the house collapsed, from termites said the newspaper, even though the house was made of stone.
    The stranger was not to be seen, except on Friday nights, when a uniformed Cossack drove him through the streets in a lacquered red car. They invariably stopped in front of the house of Najime the Persian, the old sawyer, where the stranger sat from eight-thirty to nine-fifteen turning his feet to the front and then to the back again and again, and laughing a very ugly laugh that made children run to their mothers and rats race into their darkest tunnels—only to crash headlong against one another.
    Najime stood slightly bent in back of the closed wood louvres, looking calmly at big brother from the mountain pass of a quarter of a century before. Yacov begged to be allowed to shoot him. “That is not the way,” said Najime, “either the gun would explode, or you would miss and kill a friend. You see, he has undoubtedly grown in powers, but so have I. Like you, I probably would have wanted just to go and shoot him, and maybe then, when he and I were younger, I would have had a fair chance. But a young man is no match for him now. Look at all he has done and can do. He can kill effortlessly, but he must kill me as he said he would because I would not fear otherwise. And because he must kill me that way, he will not allow himself to be killed beforehand. So put your gun away. Either he will come here, or 1 will go to him. But I must think about this, because if I am right he has become so skillful in evil that we may even be