Ozzie drove me back to the beach house. I took a rare shower and dropped into bed. I didn’t know anything until I was awakened the next morning by knocking on my door. Deet and Tony were nowhere to be seen so I told whoever it was to wait. I slipped into yesterday’s shorts and a slightly stained t-shirt and, after brushing my hair back with my hand, opened the door. It took several seconds for me to recognize Major Ahud. He was dressed in the Israeli manner—casual trousers and a short-sleeved shirt open at the collar. He was clean shaven and his hair was immaculately styled. He was carrying a larger than usual attaché case. I figured that this was it. He had come to teach me a permanent lesson about sleeping with another man’s wife.
“Can I come in?” he said.
I opened the door and stood back.
“Look,” I said. “If this is about—”
“We can talk about that later. For now, I’ve come to offer you a deal.”
“There’s nothing like getting to the point. What kind of deal?”
With that, he opened the attaché case and pulled out a shiny new Uzi submachine gun. I felt a stone-like paralysis sweep through my body. The first controllable thought I had after that was I would not live to see my next birthday. The second one was that it had been a mistake to sleep with his wife.
“Nine millimeter, twenty-five round magazine, blowback operated six hundred rounds per minute, muzzle velocity of four hundred meters per second, two hundred meter effective range, weighs 3.5 kilograms and has a 10.2 inch barrel.”
“That’s nice,” I said, “but . . .”
“Let’s go outside. I’ll show you how it works. Bring something you don’t need or want.”
Someone had given me a hardback copy of a Graham Greene novel that I was not able to finish. It seemed appropriate to put it to better use.
I followed the major out to the beach.
“Put it over there,” he said, pointing to a small mound of sand. I slowly did as he said. I had the feeling that at any moment he was going to start firing. I forced myself to walk back to where he was standing, holding the Uzi down by his right side. I thought I detected a half smile, as though he might be thinking that this would be a good opportunity to even the score. Every fiber of my being yelled for me to run, but I didn’t.
He held the Uzi out so that I could see it. It was a knobby, angular, ugly looking thing that seemed to be more the result of a nightmare than of rational design.
“It was designed by Major Uziel Gal about the same time as the Kalashnikov. Like the Kalashnikov, it was supposed to be durable, capable of rough handling and dirt. To fire it you snap the magazine in place, then make sure the safety lever is pushed to automatic, like this.”
He moved the small lever from its position on “S” past the middle click to the “A” position, slid the bolt back to the stop, and then let it go.
“It feeds one in the chamber and is ready to fire. Have you ever fired an automatic weapon before?” the major asked.
I shook my head.
“Well,” he continued, “you can pull the stock out or use it as a pistol grip. I think it would be better if you put the stock against your shoulder. Here, let me show you.”
He pulled out the metal stock with a snap and I heard it lock into place. Then he held the butt of the stock against his shoulder and fired. Mr. Greene’s book disappeared in an eruption of sand and bits of flying paper. The noise deafened me for a moment and caused a ringing in my ears.
“Here, you try it. See how you like it,” he said, handing the gun to me.
I put the butt snugly against my shoulder the way I had seen them do it in the movies and touched the trigger. There was a rattle of explosions and the butt hammered rapidly against my shoulder. I didn’t hit Mr. Greene’s book or what was left of it. I handed the gun back to the major. He very quickly switched the selector lever back to the safe position. Then we walked over to our target.
The book looked like it had been torn apart by a pack of angry dogs.
“This,” the major said, holding the gun out to me, “could really ruin someone’s day. It’s yours. Go on, take it.”
The major noticed my hesitation.
“What do you want for it?” I asked.
“Nothing really, but I hear that you’re working for Beizell. He is of some interest to us.” The major looked directly at me—the look of a predator before it strikes.
“I’m only working for Stumpy, I mean Beizell, part time,” I said. “I’m also working for Monrovia Airlines.”
“We know that too, but it’s Beizell we’re interested in.”
“What do you want to know about him?”
“We want to know who he talks to, who he meets with, and where he goes. We think he’s helping get German war criminals out of Liberia and into Brazil.”
“If he is, he isn’t doing it for love of the fatherland,” I said. “I’ve learned enough about Beizell to know that he doesn’t do anything unless he gets paid.”
“If he is getting paid, we would like to know that too, and who is paying him.”
“Let me see the gun again,” I said.
The major handed it to me.
“Sorry, Major. I won’t spy for you, not even on Beizell. But you will know if he’s doing something illegal.”
“I’ll quit. I don’t spy and I don’t work for crooks—at least crooks that I know about.”
“Suppose I said we could make it worth your while.”
“Money?” I asked.
“Possibly.”
I slid the firing selector from safety to automatic. “Are we talking about your wife?”
His lips tightened then he smiled. “Nouga is not part of this. We have an understanding. She is free to pursue her interests just as I am mine, but in the end we are partners. We are a team.”
“Major, I don’t need a weapon like this. I’m not expecting to be attacked by an army. I have no place to keep it. And I’ll bet that the moment word’s out that I have something like this, it’ll be stolen within twenty-four hours.”
I knew that the Germans in Liberia tended to support one another, and I had heard that informers were dealt with in traditional ways. However, I suspected that the major had other ways of finding out what he wanted to know.
I pressed the magazine release and removed the half empty clip. Then, after I fired the chambered bullet at the remaining portion of Mr. Green’s book, I handed the gun back to him. The major’s face looked as hard and as angular as a cut diamond. He wasn’t the kind of man who accepted failure gracefully. Though he refrained from threatening me, I had the feeling that he hadn’t given up. He took the gun, looked at it, and started to speak, but hesitated. He handed it back to me.
“Take it. No strings attached. Think of it as a gift from Israel to all of those who love freedom. And then too, you may have to fight off an army one day.”
He waved his hand in more of a military salute than a friendly African gesture. Then he turned and walked away.
I watched him walk up the beach, toward the house where his car was parked and for just a moment felt a sting of pity for him and for all of those caught up in the cesspool of history—wanting more but unable to free themselves completely.
The major’s surprise visit had left me a little shaken, and I didn’t know why. I couldn’t get over the feeling that maybe he was right. Maybe I did have a moral responsibility, however small, to help punish war criminals. I looked at the Uzi and felt for a moment that I was holding a deadly snake. I looked around to see if anyone was watching but I could see no one. I folded the stock back into the gun and decided to hide it where my free-wheeling friends might not find it.
I put it in my duffle bag along with wads of newspaper to disguise its bulk. Deet and Tony knew that I sometimes kept dirty clothes in the duffle bag, so I knew that no matter how curious they became, they would not look in there.
Unlike most literature, which thrives on conflict, sketching and painting can and often does portray happy, tranquil occasions. Many of the master works of John Constable, Pierre-August Renoir, Mary Cassatt, and Édouarde Manet capture scenes of pure serenity and pleasure, free of conflict.
I took my sketch pad out onto the porch and started sketching the view of the beach with surf. There were several people walking along the beach and I included them. It reminded me of the day we put Arthur’s ashes in the Atlantic Ocean just off the beach at Ocracoke Island on the coast of North Carolina.
Every August since I was a child, we rented a cottage there on the beach for a couple of weeks. Arthur liked to swim late in the afternoon when the quality of light turned the surf into a soft, warm, golden color. After swimming he would often sit on the sand, arms folded over his knees, and look out over the ocean until almost dark. It was a day like that, late in the afternoon in August, that we put his cremated remains in the ocean. My mother stood in the water amid the swirl of his ashes. It was her last embrace of him.
There was no religious ceremony. It was strictly a family affair except that Jenny was there. Everyone said something describing how they felt about Arthur except my mother. She could not speak, and did not speak about it for several months after. When she did finally speak, she would not look at me. Summers after that she would often wade barefooted in the surf late in the afternoon. I suppose she was hoping that perhaps an atom or molecule that had been part of Arthur would brush against her feet.
I began to wonder whether something of Arthur might have traveled to this remote beach in Liberia. It was an absurd idea, and I pushed it out of my mind. Instead, I thought of a scene I wanted to paint—an elderly man and woman that I had seen, only for a moment, while I was returning from work, sitting together outside their ramshackle, one-room house. They were smiling broadly, even laughing together, while they held each other’s hand. Maybe they were remembering some long ago happy event or the pleasure of having a successful child. Whatever the reason, remembering it was for them deep, pure, undiluted joy.