NOTE: This scene was originally written as the origin scene for a character from another short story. I never finished the story, although I might work on it again in the future. However, I think that this scene is quite interesting enough to form a small story on its own. Let me know what you think in the comments!
NOTE II: pater tacitorum means “father of secrets”
Most of the secrets I kept in my life can be traced back to my father. Which is actually strange, since Dad was one of the least secretive people I ever met. He believed, very much, in honesty. Being straightforward was such a habit for him that I doubt he even thought about doing it. “Don’t ask Akiva for an honest opinion,” our neighbors used to joke. “You might just get it!” You knew when Dad was happy, when he was angry, when he was frightened.
Nevertheless, the secrets started with him.
I woke one night, steaming a little in the summer heat. My hair was cold and wet against my scalp as I sat up. The damp feeling against my back was horrible, and I blindly waddled over to my dresser to get a new t-shirt. I wasn’t wearing pyjamas, that particular night, since Mother wasn’t home. She had lots of proper ideas, Mother had. Dad and I used to agree that she was the loveliest person in the world, but also that we sometimes needed a little break to be unsophisticated and muddy while Mother went off to do dignified things for her family’s business in Boston. Mother had laughed when Dad told her that.
Slipping the dry t-shirt over my head, I used one foot to crack open my bedroom door. The hallway was quiet, but I had the impression of muffled voices, wafting up the staircase.
It was 3am, and I wondered if Dad was watching TV without me. He often did, because he had never once slept through the night in all the years I knew him, but last night we had agreed that we would watch the new episode of NCIS together. I lifted my sweaty hair away from my head and slipped downstairs.
The ground floor was dark, except for a yellow block of light falling from the kitchen door. Dad wasn’t watching TV then. The voices were clearer now. I could hear Dad, and another, deeper voice. Both talking in angry voices, but in a hushed way that made it sound like someone was strangling them.
My throat was dry and I was thinking about the cold water in the fridge, but just outside the door I caught sight of Dad. He was standing on the opposite side of the kitchen table, leaning on his hands with a tired slouch that I had never seen before. His face was white and drawn. And his eyes looked like he really was being strangled.
I would have ran to him, but something about the tightness in his shoulders made me pause. I kept myself carefully in the darkness next to the door, inching closer so that I could see the other man as well.
He sat where the lamp on the counter couldn’t quite reach, and I only had an impression of broad shoulders and a square, stubbly chin.
“I trusted you,” Dad hissed, his voice breaking a little.
White teeth glinted in the shadows.
“And what a fool you were for doing that, little brother.” He had the same throaty accent my father had, perhaps a little heavier because Dad had been in America for a long time.
“No.” Dad’s eyes blazed suddenly, and I could see that he was angry as well as frightened. “You were a fool for breaking that trust, Gidon.”
For a long moment the tension flared in the silence.
“Is that a threat?”
Dad ran a hand over his cropped hair, giving a shaky laugh.
“No, Gidon, of course not. What have I to threaten you with? You never confided in me the way I did in you.”
“You were always the greater fool. I had hoped to break you of your stupid naïveté when we were younger, but it seems you need a harder lesson.”
“You did not come here because you wanted to teach me a lesson. What do you want from me, Gidon?”
The man spoke quickly in Hebrew then, too fast for me to understand properly. I only heard ‘job’ and ‘Japan’ and then my father slammed his fist on the table.
“No! Always no, Gidon! Find someone else. I will not do it!”
“Nobody is as good as you are, Akiva.” The man leant forward earnestly, casting some of the shadows from his face. I somehow expected him to be extraordinary, but he was a quite normal man in a grey sports jacket. His long nose was slightly skewed and his dark eyes had the same shape as Dad’s.
Dad said something to him in Hebrew, shortly, and I doubted that it was words that Mother would have approved of.
“You can swear at me all you like,” said the man called Gidon. “But you really don’t have a choice here. And you know it. You will come with me to Japan and you will forget this silly charade.”
“I would kill for the sake of this silly charade, as you call it.”
There was something intensely dark in my father’s face that I had not seen before.
“I think,” Gidon said after a long silence. “That you would kill mostly for it. To protect it, yes? So let me make myself clear, once again. If you do not do what I ask of you, I will do some killing of my own. Perhaps a little kidnapping, to keep things interesting. I have a few friends in Saudi that will pay handsomely for a pretty little girl like your Jaina. And especially, if I don’t come back in time, Daniel will want something to do to keep his mind of my disappearance. You remember Daniel, Akiva.”
Dad’s nostrils flared, and I could hear him breathing. I myself was turning cold with fear. I wanted Gidon to leave, and I wanted Mother to be here, much more than I had wanted that glass of water.
“I trusted you,” Dad said again. “You gave me your word, brother.”
“And that makes you doubly a fool, for taking me on my word. Come, I think it is time for us to leave.”
“I cannot.”
“You must.”
Gidon got up, and for a moment they faced each other next to the table. Then Dad’s hands stared shaking and his head dropped and I knew that Gidon had won.
“At least let me say goodbye.”
“No,” Gidon opened the door to the porch, and I could see stars twinkling beyond it. “It is better to go without, I think. Your wife, if I remembered correctly, was a woman of many talents. I would hate for her to be killed while trying to get you back. Better for them not to know anything, especially not why you had left.”
I should have run to Dad then. But I was frozen against the wall, and I knew somehow that Dad bargained on me being safely in my bed, upstairs.
He cast a glance around the kitchen, and when he turned to go I saw tears glistening on his face.
“I will not ask for a promise that my family will be left alone.”
“You’re learning, finally.” Gidon clapped him on the shoulder. “But I will give you a bit of hope. If you do what I tell you, if you come with me, there will be no reason for me to ever see your wife and daughter again.”
Then the door clicked shut. Moments later I heard a powerful engine starting to life. The quiet growl disappeared into the night.
I did not dare go into the light. The cold fear that the man called Gidon had brought with him was somehow still thick in the air, and I crouched against the wall hugging my knees to my chest. I should call Mother. Tell her what happened. But she would try to get Dad back, and I could not bear the thought of losing my mother as well.
So I sobbed into my knees and tried to pretend that I never got out of bed. I had not heard anything, and I did not know why my father had left. I had not heard anything, and I did not know why my father had left. I had not heard anything…
