Hostage Read Free Page A

“You’re crying for the unfortunate Joseph, that’s good. This shows you have a good heart—not like all those idlers sitting here.”
    And so the other students glared at Shaltiel, as though it were his fault that Joseph’s brothers had behaved contemptibly. He felt their annoyance. He himself was surprised by the words he blurted out: “No, I’m not crying for Joseph. I’m crying for my father. He’s unwell, and there’s no one at home to take care of him.”
    The students stared at him, some with astonishment, others with compassion.
    “What’s wrong with your father?” asked the tutor, fondling his beard.
    “I don’t know,” Shaltiel replied. “He’s sick. So sick that he stayed home.”
    A silence fell over the children as if to punish them.
    “Go home,” said the tutor, in a tone that was now charitable. “Your father needs you more than we do. Tell him it’s my decision, not yours. You’ll come back tomorrow.”
    Shaltiel went home. Haskel didn’t hide his joy. As Malka was at work, he asked his son to make him tea. Then he fell asleep.
    The next day, at school, Shaltiel was given a seat at the table. When it was his turn to read the text, Shaltiel had good diction and knowledge that no one suspected. The tutor and the schoolboys were all taken aback.
    “Where did you learn to read the text and the commentaries of Rashi and the Tosafists?” the tutor asked.
    “Right here,” Shaltiel answered.
    “No one at home helped you?”
    “No one. When my father isn’t ill, he’s away all week.”
    “How did you do it?”
    “Well, I have a good memory. It comes in handy when you play chess too.”
    The tutor looked at him for a long time before smiling.
    “It takes a lot to astonish me. But you did. And I’m grateful to you.”
    Nathanael, the top student in the class, drew close to Shaltiel. And so the friendship was born.
    This was such a long time ago.
    Did I live, did I survive, for this? Shaltiel wondered. To lose my freedom, my right to happiness? I know the power of the irrational on the course of events, but why does it so often turn out to be harmful? From one minute to the next, everything changes. You breathe in another way. You hope for something different. One minute of respite is a blessing. Memories become a great help.
    His world had shrunk to the size of a basement.
    When I was freed, I found out that at home, when the sun went down, my family didn’t know what to make of my disappearance.Usually I liked to watch the spectacle of the sunset with children and old people, and invent stories for them. “Enter here,” I said to them, “enter into my story, the one we may be living through and that I bring to life,” incantatory words like stifled cries responding to men’s heartbeats, to the wounds of the earth. As they listened, the children became sadder, the old men did not; they simply hoped for the sun’s return.
    Why my unexpected absence? I will recall the facts. All this took place three years after the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, one year before the Israeli Entebbe rescue operation, and well before the abductions and suicide murders that are so common nowadays. In those days, when someone disappeared in the United States, one didn’t assume the worst. But my family was worried. Where could I possibly be? With whom? My wife, Blanca, and our two nieces, Koli and Ahuva, who lived more often with us than at Malka’s sister’s house, first thought it was due to my absentmindedness. They presumed I had gotten lost, because I always have had problems with schedules and geography. Whenever we set off to see friends or went to the supermarket, they poked gentle fun at me: If I said “Right,” then it had to be to the left. Whenever we made an appointment to meet at the theater, I always made the appointment early, for fear of arriving late. Koli thought I was merely late. Ahuva, a redhead, replied: “No, he probably got lost.” Koli said,