The Land Agent Read Online Free PDF Page A

Casino coffee house in Tel Aviv. ‘A knock-out. From Kiev. Because the girls from Kiev are the most beautiful in the world. Just like you. You are from Kiev, aren’t you? No? Really? Hard to believe. Well, anyway. Walk down a street in Kiev, and you will fall in love a hundred times. And instead… what did I end up with?’ And here Mickey would point to Lev. ‘I was strolling down a Haifa street looking for my Kiev girl, when I stopped this stranger here to ask for a cigarette. Five years we are together now. A married couple couldn’t be happier. Who would’ve thought a Polish immigrant possessed a pouch of such fine tobacco? Eh, Lev?’
    Lev would smile shyly, stare down at his glass of lemon tea. He had heard the story many times before. The part about Mickey asking for tobacco was true, for he never bought his own, not because he couldn’t afford it but because he didn’t want to admit he was a smoker, that there was an element of his life he could not control. But Lev also knew that Mickey had never walked down a Kiev street in his life. For Mickey was Michael Rosenblatt. From Manchester, England. Mickey had lied about his age to join the British Army which had then shipped him to Palestine to fight the Turks. Mickey told Lev he had drunk mint tea in the desert with T.E. Lawrence, that he had helped Allenby liberate Jerusalem. ‘Look, that’s methere. Right beside the General’s horse at Jaffa Gate. With my hand on the pommel. I know you can’t see my face, but those are my fingers, Lev. Those are my fucking fingers.’ Mickey liked to swear. Mickey liked Palestine. He liked the opportunities it afforded him. He liked the sun. He liked the light. He liked the girls from Kiev.
    Mickey eventually confessed to the Army he had signed up as a minor, making his enlistment null and void. So they had to let him go. Mickey Rosenblatt became Mickey Vered, ‘vered’ meaning ‘rose’, he thought he’d forget about the ‘nblatt’ part. And here Mickey stayed. In a spacious house in the Jewish area of Haifa known as Hadar Hacarmel. Or ‘Glory of the Carmel’ in Mickey’s English, Carmel being the mountain around which the town was built. After their fortuitous meeting in the street, Lev moved out of his hostel dormitory and into a rented room in the same house. The property was owned by a Madame Blum, a widow with no children. Husbandless, childless Madame Blum was the opposite of Mickey. She hated Palestine.
    ‘I curse the day my husband ever brought me here,’ she told Lev at least once a day. Herr Blum, a dealer in raw cotton, was killed when he was run over by the Haifa to Damascus train. No-one knew how the accident happened. Whether he was drunk, his foot got caught in the track, or even if he were pushed. It was a strange demise. Especially as the train didn’t run that often. Madame Blum was left to hate the dust and the sun and the heat and the noise and the sweet coffee and the pitta bread and the olives and the
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and the dates and the almonds and the British and the Jews and the French and the Arabs and the bad manners and the lack of efficiency and the bad time-keeping and the young harlot who steals your husband when your back is turned. Mickey had a remarkable patience for Madame Blum. He would listen to her constant complaints with interest, he would light her Russian cigarettes, make her tea, massage her shoulders.
    ‘She is a childless widow. I am like a son to her,’ Mickey explained to Lev.
    ‘Even so. Your compassion surprises me.’
    ‘This is a nice house. Bright, well-proportioned rooms. A European-style toilet. Conveniently close to the harbour. Close to my office.’
    Lev was never sure what exactly Mickey did for a living. Mickey told him he traded in this and that, wheeled and dealed, imported and exported, called himself an entrepreneur. Sometimes there would be an excess of grapefruit on the table at Madame Blum’s, or almonds, or bananas or grapes. In the kitchen, there