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lawyer. But now Boaz has left his school and he has been working for several days in the central market in Tel Aviv with a wholesale greengrocer who is married to one of Michel’s cousins. It was Michel who fixed him up with the job, at Boaz’s request.
This is how it happened: After the headmistress told Boaz the news that he was not going to be expelled, but only cautioned, the boy simply picked up his kit bag and disappeared. Michel got in touch with the police (he has some relations there), and they informed us that they were holding the kid in custody in Abu Kabir for possession of stolen goods. A friend of Michel’s brother, who has a senior position in the Tel Aviv police, had a word with Boaz’s probation officer on our behalf. After some complications we got him out on bail.
We used part of your money for this. I know that was not what you had in mind when you gave it to us, but we simply don’t have any other money: Michel is merely a nonqualified French teacher in a religious state school, and his salary after deduction of our mortgage payments is barely enough to feed us. And there is also our little girl (Madeleine Yifat, almost three).
I must tell you that Boaz hasn’t the faintest idea where the money for his bail came from. If he had been told, I think he would have spat on the money, the probation officer, and Michel. As it was, to start with he flatly refused to be released and asked to be “left alone.”
Michel went to Abu Kabir without me. His brother’s friend (the police officer) arranged for him and Boaz to be alone together in the office at the police station, so they could talk privately. Michel said to him, Look, maybe you’ve somehow forgotten who I am. I’m Michael Sommo and I’m told that behind my back you call me your mother’s pimp. You can say it right to my face if it’ll help you let off steam. And then I could come back at you and tell you you’re off your rocker. And we could stand here swearing at each other all day, and you wouldn’t win, because I can curse you in French and in Arabic and you can barely manage Hebrew. So when you run out of swearwords, what then? Maybe better you should get your breath back, calm down, and make me a list, what exactly it is you want from life. And then I’ll tell you what your mother and I can give. And then we’ll see—perhaps we can strike a deal.
Boaz replied that he didn’t want anything at all from life, and the last thing he wanted was to have all sorts of people coming along asking him what he wanted from life.
At this point Michel, who has never had it easy, did just the right thing. He simply got up to go and said to Boaz, Well, if that’s the way it is, the best of luck, chum. As far as I’m concerned, they can put you in an institution for the mentally retarded or the educationally subnormal, and that’s that. I’m off.
Boaz tried to argue; he said to Michel, So what? I’ll murder someone and run away. But Michel just turned around in the doorway and answered quietly: Look here, honey child. I’m not your mother and I’m not your father and I’m not your anything, so don’t go putting on a show for me, ’cause what do I care about you? Just make your mind up in the next sixty seconds if you want to leave here on bail, yes or no. For all I care, you can murder whoever you like. Only, if you can, just try to miss. Good-bye.
And when Boaz said, Hang on, Michel knew at once that the boy blinked first. Michel knows this game better than any of us, because he has seen life most of the time from the underneath, and suffering has made him into a human diamond—hard and fascinating (yes, in bed too, if you must know). Boaz said to him: If you really don’t care about me, why did you come all the way from Jerusalem to bail me out? And Michel laughed from the doorway and said, Okay, two points to you. The fact is I actually came to see close up what sort of a genius your mother had; maybe there’s some potential in the