I didn't know that Nat was in Israel, until I found him on the street, right in the middle of Dizengoff, on a Sunday. I was delivering, had brought to Schneideman a dozen of pants he had ordered urgently.

            Schneideman. You see how long ago that was. It's been years since he closed the store, and I think they moved to the United States. But don't let me go off on digressions that have nothing to do with the case I want to tell you. This is a defect I have, as Lichi (Alicia, my wife) often reminds me: Going off on a tangent. Pardonnez-moi. This is another of my defects, though less frequent than the others, boasting to show how many languages I know. A veritable polygamous, I always tell Lichi.

            Well, as I was saying (remember the story of the Spanish professor, after twenty years in prison? All right, I continue), I met Nat all of a sudden. Quite older looking, but I recognized him at once. He too, although now I also have a beard, not only moustache, as when we were like brothers in Philly. We hugged and laughed as crazy.

            "So, the SOB is in Israel and cannot raise the phone," I said warmly. "What, came to see the natives?"

            It turned out that he was living in Kibbutz Mafligim, near Ashkelon. I left him waiting on the sidewalk while I delivered the package to Schneideman. It took only a moment, yet I felt some fear that he might run away, not wanting to talk to me.

            No, he was there when I came out. For the first time I paid attention to his worn clothes. Not threadbare, but worn, shiny, if you know what I mean.
            We sat to have a cup of coffee in a café nearby. Nat also asked for a slice of apple-pie and I, not to leave him alone, asked my favorite, Black Forest. It reminded me of the coffee-shop in Wanamakers. I commented this to Nat, but he wasn't one to visit coffee-shops, he preferred bars, and of those he knew quite a few.

            Nat had arrived almost a year ago, with his two children, a boy of seven and a girl of three. "I don't know you wife," I said, "against whom did you marry?"

            He laughed, like this, sadly. "You won't know her, Jimmy" he said, looking down into his cup. "She left me a year ago." He looked up and stared me in the face, like challenging me. "She went off with a guy from the party, a young man. She said she couldn't stand me anymore."

            I said nothing. What can you say in a case like this?

            He drank his coffee and laid down the cup, centering it on the saucer. "We had problems, you know. When I realized she wasn't coming back, I decided to come to Israel, for the kinds, you know. In the kibbutz they take good care of them. I alone couldn't cope. Besides, I lost my job in the bank, and had no alternative."

            "Yes, I head the job situation wasn't any good," I said, to say something.

            "The point is, I don't know if I told you, Gabby, Gabriel, is not an ordinary child. He has problems. Don't think he's retarded or anything, but he has difficulty speaking. In the kibbutz he gests special treatment; there is a haverah who specializes in treating these children. There are several, did you know?"

            He stopped, realizing he had been talking all the time about himself. "Sorry, Jimmy, I didn't ask you about your life. I knew you were in Israel, but in these circumstances, you know, I didn’t want you to think I was going to ask for something, who knows, exploiting old friendships."

            He took a gulp of water.

            "Look, Nat," I said, "first of all, don't be a fucking idiot; if you need something, call me whenever." I took my card, Ventura Fashions, and wrote my home phone number on the back.

            "I am also married. Four children, three boys and a baby girl who has all of us twisted around her little finger. I married Lichi, You remember Lichi Rosenblum, the elder daughter of the owner of Rosenblum Pharmacy?"

            He smiled, this time a real smile. "The Rosenblum redhead?" he said with appreciation." All of us were in love with her."

            'Yes, well, when I came back from Korea, we started going out, and in the end got married. She studied law, has the title and everything, but she can't practice here, would have to take some courses, revalidate, and with the children, you know…"

            He nodded assent. "It's not easy. You remember fatty Green? They went back to the States after three months. Now he lives in California. His wife, Naomi, is a distant relative of mine.

            They came, rented a beautiful apartment in Ramat Aviv, beautiful sight of the sea, but he got tired of the bureaucracy. Wanted to set up a factory to make shirts, near home, in Kfar Saba or Netanya, but they gave him the runaround until he gave up.

           Textile factories were approved only in the south, far from Tel Aviv, He tried to fight it, but couldn't, so one day came back home, told Naomi to pack the bags, and they left two days later. He left me a TV as a gift, and I was left in charge of disposing of the furniture and things.

            I sold everything and returned the apartment. I deposited the money in an account he had opened here.
            "Too bad," I said. "Three months is not enough. They should have staid longer."

            It is difficult to explain our friendship. My parents came from Lithuania before the big war.

 

           My father was very learned, a melamed, he knew Hebrew, German, Russian. In Philadephia he worked as a moreh, a teacher in a Hebrew school. He spoke perfect English, but with an accent.

           Once he told me they had discussed, Mom and him, going to Israel, but he was tired of wars, my parents did not like the idea of their only son being a soldier.

           Mom died of cancer and Dad had a heart attack, nine years later the second one and it was all over.

            Nat's parent, on the other hand, were quite simple folks. I mean, his dad worked as a butcher. He could barely speak English, and his mom, nothing, only Yiddish and some Polish.

            She was fat and always wore a handkerchief tied around her hair.

           Sometimes I saw her discussing the price of the fruit.

           She always found everything was too expensive and haggled until she got a discount. Funny she had such a different son. Nat was a hustler, go-getter, always looking for the odd chance, the percentage, what was in it for him.

           Nothing mattered for him, not bad marks in school, or the whacks he got from his father. He was always full of smiles and ready to dance.

           We became friends by chance. One day we both were buying something at the corner dime store, and Nat accidentally dropped a painted glass he was examining and it broke in a hundred fragments.

           The owner, a fat Polish immigrant, came around the counter yelling "you stupid yid!" and tried to slap Nat, but Nat was agile like a rabbit, he easily evaded the fat's hand and to make a point he also toppled a rack of postcards.

           I also didn't like the yid insult, so I joined Nat and scattered on the floor a handful of costume jewelry.

           Then we both danced out of the store while the Pole came after us, but we ran faster and went around the corner and into the nearby park, where we waited until the Pole retreated to his store.                   After that we went to my home, and there, while drinking tea, we discovered that we liked each other, and started a friendship that lasted until graduation.

           We went to movies, to museums – Nat liked the pictures, to the ballpark.         

            Another thing Nat did, and I didn't, was to become active in politics.

           Even before finishing high-school he joined a leftist group, I don't know if they were communists or anarchists, went to the meetings, delivered messages, ran errands, stood in the street handing out leaflets.

            He was in their meeting room almost every day. Later, when Stalin began liquidating the Jewish intellectuals and writers, our friendship suffered, and we came apart.

           The last I saw of him was when I gave him "Animal Farm" by Orwell as a birthday present. 

            He never called me again.

            So now you can understand how I felt, looking at the wrinkled face of my old friend, his worn-out jacket, and the shirt with the frayed collar.

            "I have to go," said Nat, after eating the last crumbs of the pie. I came to Tel Aviv to see if I can find a good place for Gabby."

            I offered to drive him to wherever he wanted to go, but he refused. Luckily, I had in the van some samples, so I told Nat a story that these were samples that had been shown in a shop window and couldn't be sold, and had to be thrown out.

           He accepted a pair of jeans and a couple of shirts.

            I planned going to visit him in the kibbutz, but you know how it is.

           First, Lichi had to be operated of the appendix, and then Neta's Bat Mitzvah, and then who knows what.

           I never went to see him. A couple of years later somebody told me he had to leave the kibbutz, because of a story with a volunteer girl, but the daughter Berta had been adopted by a member of the kibbutz and had remained there.

            The next time I saw him, almost couldn't recognize him so aged he was. We had gone out, a group from the office, to celebrate the appointment of Haim as head of the department, and after a pizza we all went to the Pub at the end of Ben Yehuda street, near the old port, and there he was, with black sleeve covers, tending the bar.

            We could not talk much, of course, but between one customer and the next, he told me that he lived in Jaffa and that he would have liked to put Gabby in a special institution for cases like his, but it was too expensive, so he was saving, worked cleaning lobbies and staircases during the day, and as a barman at night, and if everything worked out, he thought that in some eight to ten months more he could have enough money.

            His daughter, Berta, the one in the kibbutz, he didn't see much. Perhaps once a year. She was fine, had no complaints.

           He though she was going to marry soon, but was sure he wouldn't get an invitation. Some javerim were unforgiving and didn't want to see him.

            I lost contact again. Two weeks later I passed by the pub looking for him and they told me he had left without giving notice.

            Well, life being what it is, I did nothing. I could have called the kibbutz, could have made an effort, but I did nothing. I can't explain it myself. After all that we had done together.

            A year ago, more or less, I finally visited the kibbutz. I had to do something with a factory of synthetic blankets and pillows, in Ashkelon, and I decided to take the opportunity to see Mafligim, not far away, a little past Yad Mordechai.

            I found Nat was back in the kibbutz, despite everything. It was lunchtime, I saw him seated at one of the window tables. White hair.

           He was happy to see me and invited me to stay for lunch. His daughter had married the grandson of one of the kibbutz founders, and with her influence he had been admitted back.

            He told me that he worked only mornings, in the laundry, folding clothes, things like that, "Easier than serving drinks," he said

            I answered with some inanity, like "all work is honest work" or something like that, but I was sorry for him.

           I asked about Gabby and I should have kept my mouth shut.

           He started to cry, right there, in the dining room, holding his head with both hands. I felt like an idiot. I assumed the boy had passed away, and when he calmed down I changed the subject, remembrances of Philly in the 50's, the time we went to the Franklin Institute and tried to get a drawing from the automaton without paying, the picture we took at the entrance to the Art Museum, me holding the thigh of a statute, or when he passed himself as Mexican and got a job teaching Spanish at Berlitz.

            Nat heard my stories and became calmer. I didn't stay very long.

            Before leaving, he asked me if I could get him a camera and a tripod. Used, no matter. He, of course, didn't have much saved, but perhaps I had a friend who would sell a used camera cheap. I promised I would take care of it.

            What I did, of course, was to but a tripod and sent him a camera I had at home, which I didn't use any more. He didn't call me to thank me, but I didn't care. I just mention it to show that he wasn't altogether well.

            No wonder.

            I later found out that the son, Gabby, the retarded, had somehow managed to go out of the institution and was lost, or somebody picked him up, that wasn't cleared, and he was found the next day dead on the sand, on some dunes. He had been sexually molested.

           I do not know how I missed the story; it must have been published in the papers.
          As I was told, some Arabs from Gaza were arrested, but no evidence was obtained and they were released. Who killed the boy was never found.

 

           Nat went out of his mind for a while. He blamed himself for not keeping the boy together with him. When I saw him in the kibbutz, almost a year had passed, and he still couldn't reconcile himself to the loss.

            I didn't let so much time pass before returning to the kibbutz, about a month after sending him the camera.

            He was sitting on a small chair on a dune, close to the sea, about half a mile from the kibbutz. He told me that he came to this spot every day, staying several hours. At his side he had the tripod with the camera, pointing to the sea.

            This time he received me for affection, and thanked me for the camera.

            He even offered to pay, but of course I told him not to be so dumb, it was a gift.

            I wondered what he was doing, sitting there with the camera pointing to nowhere, and then he explained his theory.

            "There are things going on," he stated with conviction. "People then cannot prove them, so they hide and don't tell what they see. Angels, for instance."

            "Angels?" I asked. "What kind of angels?"

            "Angels exist. The problem is, people see them, but nobody has been able to photograph them.

            If I take the picture of one, people will then believe that angels exist, right?

            "I guess so. But, how do you know where the angel will come, to take his picture?"

            He shrugged. "There are angels everywhere. You have to be ready, that's all. This is a good spot, wide open, nothing interferes. One of these days an angel will come by and I'll take his picture."

            He remained there, happy with his camera, waiting for the angel to come.

            I had nothing to say, so I left and returned to Tel Aviv.

            A week ago was the funeral. They found him lying on the sand, at the side of the tripod. Heart attack, said the doctor. No examination was required, since there was no sign of violence. The camera was there, as well.

            A member of the kibbutz who knew the story of the camera sent it back to me. The tripod was lost somewhere. No matter, I stopped taking photographs.

            The camera was still loaded with film so I took it to the photo shop to develop it; just out of curiosity, because one picture had been taken.

            This is why I am writing this story, because perhaps somebody can explain this. When I came to Herzl's photo shop, he took me aside.

            "There is something strange," he said. "One picture was taken."

            "I know," I said. "I looked at the little window that shows the numbers."

            "This is really strange, take a look."

            He passed me the print. It was a face, distorted by the proximity, very close to the lens. It was Nat's face, of course. No doubt about it.

            "Poor Nat," I exclaimed, "he must had photographed himself while adjusting the camera on the tripod."

            "Yes," said Herzl. "This is what I thought, but, how can you explain a double exposure? Because the clouds can be seen though the head."

            I looked again and it was true. The head was transparent. Both the clouds and the sea could be seen through.

            "You know, all these cameras have a device to prevent double exposure. If you don't advance the film, the shutter is blocked. I checked, this camera has the device, and it works fine."

            He shook his head in wonder. "How did it happen, I can't understand."