by Batya Gur
Michael maintained his poker face.
“Anatoly Ferber was Shaul’s discovery. He discovered many other poets too, in Israel, but he also liked ‘discovering’ unknown foreign poets and translating their poetry from German, or Czech, as he did in the case of the poet Hrabal.” Klein glanced at Michael questioningly as he pronounced the name.
Michael shook his head to confirm that he had never heard of the poet in question.
“But Anatoly Ferber was his discovery with a capital D,” said Klein, leaning forward. “I myself think, and have always thought, that it was part of the myth Shaul carefully constructed for himself. In my opinion, Ferber’s poetry lacks, um, the originality Shaul attributed to it. The truth is that the poems are quite mediocre, and if they possess any importance, it derives only from the historical context. But it was impossible to say this to Shaul without risking a long lecture on the history of the Hebrew language.”
The thick lips quivered in a kind of smile, and then, as if the events of recent days had been recalled, tightened again. Klein sat up in his chair. “Even before Iddo set out, the lawyer told him on the telephone that he had someone who knew Ferber staying at his house, someone who had been with him in prison and even knew how he had hidden his poems. He knew Hebrew and was familiar with the poetry, and this was quite a startling revelation, because Tirosh had said that he found the poems in Vienna, a fascinating tale in itself, and that no one in the camp where Ferber was incarcerated had understood Hebrew. In brief, Iddo was beside himself with excitement; I can still see the gleam in his eyes.” Ariyeh Klein sighed and took another sip of coffee.
“How did he discover the lawyer?”
“It was by chance, through one of the librarians at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he spent some time during his first week. I don’t remember the details, but Iddo told him over the phone that he was a Ph.D. candidate from Jerusalem, working on research, and the lawyer invited him to come and stay with him.”
Klein arched his eyebrows and looked at the large photograph hanging on the wall between two bookcases, a photograph of a bald man with a broad face, wearing a suit. The face looked familiar to Michael, but he couldn’t place it.
“Iddo went to Washington and called me from there once, and then traveled to North Carolina, to a university town called Chapel Hill. Have you ever been to America?”
Michael shook his head and said: “Only to Europe.” He asked if he could smoke.
“Certainly, certainly,” said Klein and, without looking, unearthed a glass ashtray from behind a pile of papers. It was clear that he knew exactly where everything was.
“Everything I’ve said is in the nature of an introduction to the essential problem, which is Iddo Dudai’s condition when he returned from North Carolina. You would have had to know him to perceive the immense change that had taken place within him.” Klein was silent for a moment, as if conjuring up the image of Dudai, and then he continued: “Perhaps you are asking yourself how we came to be so close even though he wasn’t my student—my doctoral student, that is. Naturally, he had taken classes with me and even participated in seminars, but our relations went beyond that. You couldn’t help admiring his seriousness as a scholar and his intellectual integrity. He was an honest, clever boy, though he lacked the lightheartedness appropriate to his age; there was no playfulness in him, but there were no depressive tendencies either. You could say that he was an uncomplicated person, psychologically speaking, although he was definitely sensitive. But not given to moods. Ofra, my wife, was very fond of him, and he came here often. Shaul didn’t like it. He was in the habit of making slighting remarks to me, and behind my back, about what he called my ‘family-mindedness.’ The fact that I invited people like Iddo or Yael Eisenstein to my home and introduced them to my wife and children, that they ate at my table, was in his eyes an ‘obvious residue of provincial life in the colony of Rosh Pinna.’ Naturally, when Iddo wrote to say that he was coming to the States and asked my help in finding somewhere to live, I invited him to stay with us. We were living in a spacious house with a separate wing for guests; we had a lot of people staying with us during the year. It was on the grounds of the Maritime College, where my uncle taught navigation. The Jews are a peculiar people,” interjected Klein, lacing his fingers together, leaning back in his chair with a sigh, and turning around to look out the window at the garden.
A silence typical of a Rehavia afternoon ensued, punctuated only by the chirping of birds and the strains of music. Klein went on looking at the window behind his desk, and Michael wondered why he didn’t get to the point. Then Klein turned around and said: “I need to explain the background, as an exposition, in order to stress how strange Iddo was when he returned from North Carolina. He arrived late, at about eleven o’clock at night; I remember because I was worried—his car might have broken down on the road, and Iddo had only his school English. I waited up for him. As soon as I opened the door, I asked him what was wrong, because his face was pale and there were dark rings under his eyes, and for a moment I thought he’d been mugged, although his clothes weren’t torn and there were no apparent bruises on him. He said that he was just tired, and I can vividly remember the strange, dull look in his eyes as he said it. But I accepted his explanation, that he was tired.” He then asked, “May I?” and pointed to the pack of cigarettes on the desk. Michael hurriedly gestured with his hand as if to say, “Please do,” lit a match, and leaned toward him to light the cigarette.
“I gave up smoking five years ago,” said Klein in embarrassment, and took up his story. “He didn’t come down to breakfast in the morning. I drove off to teach without seeing him. I naturally assumed that he was still sleeping. Ofra and the children were out of town; they didn’t see him that time. It’s all still sharp and vivid in my memory. When I came back I found him sitting in the dark living room. I don’t know if I’m explaining properly.” Klein sighed and exhaled white smoke. “You understand, there was nothing wild and romantic about Iddo, there was nothing extreme, and I’ve known him since his first year at the university; he was always pleasant and polite. Even when his daughter was born he didn’t act excited. He was a reserved person; next to him I sometimes felt loud; there was something restrained and balanced about him. And all of sudden he’s sitting in the dark. When I switched on the light, he started and said he hadn’t noticed the darkness. He looked tormented. I sat down opposite him and asked him what the matter was, several times: ‘Iddo, what’s wrong with you?’ and at last he blurted out: ‘Ariyeh, how many years have you known Tirosh?’ and I answered what everyone knew: that we were the same age, that we met during his first year in Jerusalem, and that we’d been close ever since. But Iddo wasn’t listening; he asked again if I really knew him. I tried to reply ironically, but he angrily brushed it aside. There was suddenly something frightening about him, as if he was in deadly earnest, like a character in a Hermann Hesse novel.
“I asked him about his impressions of Washington, about his meeting with the lawyer and with the man who knew Ferber from the camps, but he replied tersely, in a way uncharacteristic of him. ‘Fine, fine,’ he repeated several times, and then he asked me again if I really knew Shaul Tirosh, and again I tried to ask if it was ever possible ‘really’ to know someone, but he refused to accept this line and obstinately asked me again. In the end, I said—and this was the truth—that I thought I knew him as well as a man like me could know a man like him, that in my eyes he was the exemplar par excellence of nihilism, whereas I had tried all my life to be the complete opposite, which is one of the reasons I chose to specialize in medieval poetry.”
Again Klein glanced at the photograph of the man in the suit, and then he noticed Michael’s questioning look and said: “Shirman. It’s a photograph of my teacher Professor Shirman. Did you know him?” Michael shook his head vaguely, and Klein went on from where he had left off: “I chose medieval poetry—and I’m familiar with modern poetry too—because of its rigorous order, because there
we don’t have to dwell on the question ‘What did the poet mean?’ It was the pure classicism that appealed to me. I couldn’t stand the tedious drivel of the students of modern poetry, the interminable arguments, the shocking ignorance. After all, how many times in our lives do we have students like Iddo Dudai?
“I spoke to him, to Iddo, so frankly because I could sense that he was in great distress. And I spoke a lot about the differences between us, Shaul and me. But in the end I said that I could assure him that I knew Shaul Tirosh well, with all his weaknesses and virtues, and he looked at me with terrible bitterness and said: ‘I want to tell you that you don’t know him at all, you only think you do,’ and I tended to agree, mainly because I was dying of hunger, and when I saw that he was in no mood to go out to dine, I suggested that we move into the kitchen. And there, while I was making a salad, he stood behind me and asked me if I thought that Tirosh was a good poet. And I remember looking at him for a moment—I thought he had gone out of his mind—and telling him that Tirosh’s poetry was his justification for living, the thing that made it possible for him to live such a lonely life, and that in my opinion, as Iddo knew, he was a great poet.
“He burst out laughing, very uncharacteristically—Iddo didn’t laugh much, and this, moreover, was laughter of a different order, there was something demonic about it—and again I asked him: ‘What’s going on?’ and he said: ‘Nothing’s going on.’ I remember the words and the precise tone, because it was an answer so typical of Shaul, of the way he talked, and again I asked about the lawyer and the man from the camps, and he said: ‘One day I’ll tell you, but not now,’ and then he told me that he was going to try to put his flight forward. With a great effort but without much success, I tried to feed him and talk to him about other things, but he wasn’t there. I don’t know”—Klein ground out the stub of the cigarette—“where Iddo had been the night before, somewhere between North Carolina and New York. It was clear that he had been through some great crisis, something terrible had happened there, but I don’t know what it was, because in the two days before his return to Israel he would disappear from the house early in the morning and come back late at night. When I drove him to the airport I tried to make him talk, and he said: ‘First I have to talk to Tirosh,’ and those were the last words I heard him say.”
“And did you talk to the lawyer?” asked Michael.
“No; I don’t know him. But perhaps I should have. . . . Now I think . . . ” Klein looked at him in alarm.
“Have you got the lawyer’s name and address?” asked Michael urgently.
Klein nodded eagerly, then looked around him in despair. “I’ve got them, but I’ll have to look. Should I look now?”
“It can wait for a minute,” said Michael, and then he asked Klein to explain just how well he had known Tirosh, and he could sense the emotion that underlay the response: “As you know, you’re not the first person to ask me, and to tell the truth, lately I’ve been thinking about it constantly. Up to the past few days I thought that I did—that I knew Shaul, that is. I’ve known him since he arrived in the country. We studied together, when the university was still housed in the Terra Sancta Monastery. He used to come to our house at least once a week, until a few years ago.”
“What happened a few years ago?” asked Michael, and noticed again the tremor of the thick lips, which, he instantly decided, were Ariyeh Klein’s most expressive facial feature.
“It’s hard to define,” said Klein slowly, “but I think that our ways of life became increasingly different. He grew more extreme, and I too, in a sense, grew more extreme in my own way of life, and there were resentments accumulating over the years as well: students’ complaints about the grades he gave them when I was head of the department, obligations he failed to fulfill, arguments on questions of principle at department faculty meetings—arguments that ostensibly had nothing to do with our personal relations, but as you know, it’s difficult to sit at the same table and eat a friendly meal with a man when you’ve just attacked the articles of his faith and he’s defended them fanatically. There were very few things on which we agreed, and the truth is, I’m afraid that if you knew us both, you would have been surprised by the ties that once existed between us rather than by the fact that we drifted apart. You have to understand: there was no drama, no fight, no actual breaking off of the relationship; only a gradual weakening of the ties. His visits became less frequent, and when he did come there were islands of prolonged silence.” For a few seconds Klein was silent, as if seeing the picture before his eyes. “Ofra, my wife, claimed that he despised us for our bourgeois way of life, but I’m inclined to think that there were other things behind it. There’s no doubt that ever since he stopped writing, his life has become increasingly empty. There are many things you could have said about Shaul, but everyone would agree that he was a discriminating judge of poetry, and no one will persuade me that Shaul thought his latest, political poems were any good. He must have known their true value. And if he was unable to write, what justification did he have for his existence? His existence as it was, that is, lonely and pleasure-seeking, always unsatisfied. What could we offer him except a mirror in which to see his own barrenness?” he said softly.
Michael asked abruptly: “Perhaps he simply found other friends? Like the Shais, for example?”
Ariyeh Klein blushed and said nothing. Then he lowered his eyes and said: “Perhaps; I don’t know,” and raised them again. In his open eyes Michael read the intelligence and the sadness and also the disgust, and he didn’t know whether the latter was directed toward Shaul Tirosh, or toward Tirosh’s relations with Tuvia and Ruchama Shai, or perhaps, Michael feared, toward himself and his questions.
There was a persistent buzzing sound from the direction of the desk, and Klein dexterously moved a pile of papers aside and lifted the receiver of the telephone it had concealed. “Just a moment,” he said, handing the phone to Michael. Eli Bahar’s voice came over the line.
“Are you available?” asked Eli.
“I’m listening,” said Michael, and heard that the cylinder in Tirosh’s house was indeed an ordinary cylinder of domestic cooking gas.
Michael looked into Ariyeh Klein’s face, and for a second their eyes met, after which Klein resumed looking discreetly at the opposite wall, as if to demonstrate that he wasn’t listening to the conversation.
“Okay. What’s happening now?” said Michael.
“We’re going through the papers we brought down from Mount Scopus, Alfandari and me. I haven’t got a clue where Balilty is. Tzilla’s helping us with the papers. We asked Shai to come in for another polygraph; he didn’t answer. Are you coming back here from there?”
“I don’t know,” said Michael, “but I’ll be in touch. What’s it now, about half past two? So I’ll contact you at about five.”
Klein looked worn out by the passion with which he had spoken about Iddo Dudai. He smiled when asked about the poets Tirosh had offended.
“You want to know about his relations with unknown poets?”
“Yes, more or less. How did it work? Did people send him manuscripts?” asked Michael.
“By the dozen,” replied Klein. “He was always complaining about it, although of course he enjoyed it too. Sometimes he showed me manuscripts. He always handed the prose on to Dita Fuchs. During the past few years he himself read only poetry.”
“Yet we found on his desk a note about the last chapter of Shira.”
“Shira? You mean Agnon’s Shira?” Klein pursed his lips in surprise. “What did Shaul have to do with Agnon? He never worked on Agnon.” And then he added doubtfully: “As far as I know.”
Michael asked about procedures—how the manuscripts were sent and how they were returned.
“The senders attach an address or a telephone number, unless someone you know personally actually hands you a manuscript,” explained Klein. “And in contrast to seminar papers, Shaul responded quickly to manuscripts. He was always busy searching for gifted
young poets; he never hid the fact that he wanted to be what I called an arbiter poeticum, to influence the Zeitgeist.”
Michael referred to Tirosh’s role at the Café Rovall in Tel Aviv, and Klein smiled for a moment and then said firmly: “No, compassion wasn’t his outstanding quality; especially when it came to art, he could sometimes be cruel. But I never held it against him; I believe that people engaged in art risk exposure, and part of that exposure is to artistic judgment. And as far as that’s concerned, Shaul had no rivals; he was a first-rate critic.”
The telephone rang again, and Klein picked up the receiver and listened. His face softened, and then he sent a worried look in Michael’s direction and said: “Try to calm yourself. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I can.”
“That was Yael Eisenstein,” he said after replacing the receiver. “As you know, she’s a doctoral student of mine. She’s been questioned again, and the polygraph test had a bad effect on her; she’s very vulnerable.”
“Oh, yes?” Michael heard the hostility in his own voice. He was fed up with Ariyeh Klein’s protective, paternal attitude toward his students, and he wondered how much Yael Eisenstein’s beauty influenced the big man who sat opposite him, playing with a paper knife.
“Did you know that she was once married to Shaul Tirosh?” asked Michael. Again a faint blush appeared on Ariyeh Klein’s face. He looked at Michael cautiously and protested: “Years ago; that’s all past and forgotten,” and laid the paper knife down carefully on the desk.
“Was it generally known?”
“No,” said Klein, wiping his face with his big hands. “I don’t think so. Shaul never spoke of it, and Yael too preferred, um, not to remember.”
Michael was silent, and Klein looked around him uncomfortably, but finally he gave in and looked into the policeman’s eyes.