The Literary Murder

by Batya Gur

  Klein proposed a break, “to have something to drink,” and they went into the big, white-painted kitchen. Klein stuck his hand through the window to the branches of a large lemon tree and plucked a leaf, rubbed it between his fingers, and noisily. smelled them. Then he picked a few lemons and opened a drawer. “You need a special knife for these lemons,” he said, beginning to describe the lemonade he was about to make. And then he looked inside the drawer and burst into loud, uninhibited laughter, waving a red notebook the size of a small book in his hand. “You see? Would you believe it?” he asked in amazement and began paging through the address book. “All my connections in America,” he said.

  Michael wrote down the telephone number on a piece of paper that Klein gave him and put it carefully into his shirt pocket.

  “Now we’re entitled to a glass of fresh lemonade,” and Klein placed a tall glass, in which slices of lemon and mint leaves were floating, on the large wooden table in front of Michael.

  Without knowing why, Michael suddenly asked: “How could you tell right away that the poems were no good?”

  “And you yourself, couldn’t you tell right away?” asked Klein, cutting thick slices from a loaf of dark bread.

  “Yes, but what must they have in order to be good?” Michael persisted, and he knew that he wanted to hear the teacher’s voice of long ago. He wanted to relax his vigilant, policeman’s attention to the subtle nuances of the conversation. He wanted to rest.

  “Under other circumstances, I could explain the criteria to you,” said Klein, stirring three eggs with a practiced hand in a small white bowl, “but that’s not what interests you at the moment.”

  “No,” admitted Michael, “that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about today. But now that we’re on the subject . . . I’ve always wanted to understand what a poem must have in order to be good.”

  “You want a lecture on poetry? Now?” Klein glanced at him and placed a dab of margarine in a pan. Michael couldn’t see the expression on his face. Klein poured the eggs into the pan, and strewed them with crumbs of cheese, and bent over the stove to lower the flame. “Will you spread the butter?” he asked, and without waiting for a reply, he put the sliced bread, a knife, and a dish of butter on the table and began to cut up vegetables.

  “How would you feel if I asked you whether man makes history or history makes man? Which, by the way, is a question I often think about. In other words, I’m prepared to say a few things on condition that you remember they’re likely to be superficial. This is a subject for a long seminar, one that has been addressed by the greatest aestheticians,” he warned as he peeled an onion, wiping his eyes.

  Michael nodded, but Klein had already begun to talk: “First of all, you have to understand that whatever I say is susceptible, in the last analysis, to a certain subjective bias, which is not to say that every reader is free to interpret a poem as he sees fit but refers to the relativity of universal standards of judgment.” His voice became didactic, even authoritative. Cutting cucumbers into thin slices, he said: “The criteria are context-dependent; they rely on readers sharing the same cultural and political environment, more or less, as the poem.”

  Michael nodded again, but Klein was standing with his back to him and did not notice his assent.

  “The poems Yael wrote are bad because they lack certain things.” He moved to the stove, turned the omelet over, set a large empty plate before his guest, slid half the omelet onto it, and sat down opposite him at the big wooden table, which had seen better days. Between them stood the salad bowl, with onion rings and Greek olives decorating the tomato cubes and slices of cucumber.

  Klein chewed a piece of bread and continued. “First of all,” he said, “understanding a good poem requires a process similar to that of detection, which is referred to by various academics as hermeneutic: in other words, a good poem enables the reader to experience the discovery and deciphering of hidden meanings, which become clearer the more deeply he penetrates into the text. This process is made possible by the presence of certain basic elements in the poem—which exist not only in literature, by the way, but in all works of art. The first of these is symbolization—in other words, the use of an idea or an image that intersects with, or is contiguous with, or incorporates, another idea or image. Do you want coffee?” asked Klein, dipping his bread into the salad dressing. Then he stood up and filled the electric kettle at the end of the marble counter. “You understand,” he said when he resumed his seat, “when Alterman writes: ‘Your earrings dead inside a box,’ the reader hears other things in this expression: he hears the joie de vivre that is no longer, the femininity that was once alive and is now stiff and frozen. It’s about loneliness, about waiting for years in a house that is perceived as a prison. . . . It’s about dozens of things!”

  He looked at his interlocutor as if seeing him for the first time. “And there’s another component,” he continued, “which is called condensation. A great work of art can contain several ideas, several universal experiences, in one idea. Leah Goldberg defined a poem as a ‘dense utterance,’” he said, grinding black pepper onto the omelet on his plate. “And the two things, the symbolization and the condensation, are interconnected.” Now he cut himself a block of salty cheese and bit into it. “A sentence like ‘Death came to the rocking-horse Michael’ in Natan Zach’s poem contains within it the personification of death, associations of childhood by way of the rocking horse, and condensation too, because of the allusion to the well-known children’s song about the little boy called Michael. The symbolization and the condensation permit abstraction and openness in other areas.”

  Klein took a deep breath. “Now listen. The third basic element existing in every good work of art is called displacement, the transference of emotion from one area to another. This enables the artist to achieve generalization. A marvelous example of a poem based on displacement is Ibn Gabirol’s ‘See the Sun.’ Do you know it?” Michael made haste to swallow a piece of tomato drenched in green olive oil and then nodded. A gratified expression appeared on the face of the teacher of medieval Hebrew poetry as his erstwhile student quoted the poem in full:

  “See the sun at evening time: red

  as though it clothed itself in scarlet.

  It disrobes the north and south,

  it covers the west with purple.

  And the earth, now left naked,

  seeks refuge in the shadow of the night, and sleeps.

  Then the skies darken, as if covered with sackcloth,

  mourning the death of Jekuthiel.”

  “I even remember what a ‘girdle’ rhyme is,” said Michael in an amused voice.

  “You understand,” said Klein, “that to describe the sunset as a process in which the earth is orphaned by the sun, and then, at the end, in a few in words, to make the connection between the bereavement of the world and the grief of the speaker—that’s displacement! And it’s this that gives the experience of the speaker in the poem colossal dimensions.”

  He finished his omelet greedily and piled salad on his plate. “So you see,” he said finally, leaning forward after putting his fork down next to his plate, “they’re all interwoven. In every good metaphor you’ll find these three factors somewhere, but there has to be a delicate balance among them. A metaphor, or a symbol, should never be too far removed from the object it represents, like”—he coughed deeply—“ahem . . . ‘The butter’s cheeks are red, winter is lusty.’ There may be symbolization here, but I can’t follow it because the metaphor’s too open, it allows for an almost unlimited associative field.” He stood up and went to make the coffee.

  The little coffee grinder made a terrible noise, and he went on talking only after examining the ground beans. “Although a metaphor, or symbol, should also be original and innovative, making the reader see familiar things in a new, different light. After all”—he brandished a copper finjan—“the subjects that concern the artist are always the same; they never change. Have you ever asked yourself
what works of art revolve around? Around love, sex, death, and the meaning of life; the struggle of man against his fate, against society; man’s relations with nature and with God. What else?” Now he held a small coffee cup in his hand and poured water from it into the finjan, carefully spooned in coffee and sugar, stirred, placed the finjan on the gas. He stood with his back to Michael again, stirring busily. “The greatness of art lies in the possibility of dealing yet again, but from a different point of view, with the subjects that are common to all mankind. If an artist produces symbols that are too far removed from the subject, with metaphors that are too ‘open,’ the processes I have described won’t be able to take place. And the same holds if they’re the opposite, if they’re banal. I’m talking about the banality of metaphors, but I’m also referring to analogies, rhymes, syntax, grammatical structure, the sequence of the lines, everything that goes into building a poem. Poetic ‘talent’ is the ability to achieve the delicate balance, which is so rare, between the original and the familiar, the hidden and the revealed, the symbol and the object to be symbolized.”

  With a rapid movement, Klein removed the finjan, from the flame and set it on the counter, and, his hand steady, poured the coffee into tiny cups of white china, rimmed with a gold band. “The metaphors Yael used were incredibly banal, ‘closed,’ as Shaul commented, which means that they leave no room for the imagination, for associations. Not only because they’re trite but because they lack the necessary dialogue between the concrete and the abstract. Amichai’s poems, for example, are based on precisely this kind of play. Take a line like: ‘In the place where we’re right, flowers will never bloom in spring,’ or, if you want a particularly subtle example of the counterpoint between the concrete and the abstract, look at Dan Pagis’s poetry, in a line like: ‘And He in his mercy left nothing in me to die.’ The interplay between the concrete and the abstract isn’t made explicit here, but it’s inherent in the text, making the impact more powerful, in one of the most shocking poetic statements I’ve ever read.”

  Klein gulped down the steaming coffee and licked his lips. “There’s no evidence of any of the things I’ve mentioned in her poems, and I’m sorry to say that apparently there never will be.”

  At five o’clock Michael Ohayon left Klein’s house, and Klein accompanied him to his car, humming a familiar tune. It was only at the Terra Sancta junction, at the intersection of Agron, Aza, and King George streets, waiting for the traffic lights to change, that Michael identified what Klein had been humming as some of Sarastro’s aria from The Magic Flute, an opera of which Maya was particularly fond.

  It was still hot, and the streets were full of people who were looking neither for corpses nor for murderers.

  “Your son left a message for you. He was here and said that if you came back in time, you could meet him at the Society for the Protection of Nature. It’s next to the Mortgage and Loan Bank, you know.” Avraham from the control center pitched his voice low. Michael did know, but what was “in time” supposed to mean? Until when would Yuval be there? “Until six, he said. He left here only a minute ago,” explained Avraham, who concluded by assuring Michael that there were “no problems.” Michael returned to his car and drove off to the Nature Protection Society.

  He parked next to the bank and entered the large courtyard of another of the palaces built by Prince Sergei. A passerby unfamiliar with Jerusalem could never imagine what lay hidden behind these big buildings, thought Michael. A huge gate was set into the wall facing the street, and when you passed through it you stepped into another world, bemused in the inner courtyard, as if the ghosts were beckoning you to enter the splendid edifice.

  At first Michael sat on a tree stump at the entrance to the palace and waited for Yuval to conclude his business in the bungalow in the courtyard, where the Society for the Protection of Nature had its office. Then he began wandering around the yard, kicking the dry soil. One wing of the building housed the Agriculture Ministry, but Michael was drawn into the other, the derelict wing of the palace, where he found himself contemplating the boarded-up windows covered by cobwebs. It was dark inside the rooms, but nevertheless he was able to make out the fresco, patterned like a Russian carpet, that covered the ceiling of the big salon. There was an old bathroom, with the remains of Armenian tiles and a bathtub standing on four clawed legs, as if it were borne on the back of an iron tiger. The soles of his sandals creaked on the big floor tiles. He went into another room and gazed in wonder at the papers scattered over the floor. He picked up a yellowing sheet and studied the Cyrillic letters penned there. He had often regretted the fact that he had not continued his study of the Russian language, but the Latin he needed then for medieval history had left him no time for other languages. He dropped the paper, and it fell onto the carpet of derelict pages.

  He emerged from the palace into daylight. It was almost six, and the light was softer and paler now. Yuval was standing at the door of the Society for the Protection of Nature and looking around him. When Michael approached, the worried expression left the boy’s face. “I didn’t know if I’d manage to catch you. I need money for the hike I told you about, to the Judean Hills.”

  “Is that all?” asked Michael, placing his hand on a shoulder that was growing broader by the day.

  They went into the office together. A young man in shorts was holding forth enthusiastically about a rare type of bird he had recently spotted. Michael thought of his friend Uzi Rimon from the diving club as he made out the check and handed it to a girl in jeans. She smiled at him sweetly and gave the receipt to Yuval. The boy folded it and put it into his back pocket, and an expression of relief spread over his tense face.

  Michael felt bad. It had been days since he had seen his son.

  “Let’s park the car in the Compound,” he said when they stepped out of the office, “and go and sit down somewhere.”

  Opposite the Mortgage and Loan Bank, next to the rear gate of the Russian Compound, stood the policeman on guard, who opened the gate obediently.

  When they stepped out of Michael’s dusty Ford Escort, Yuval said: “Get a load of the kind of car that’s being parked here nowadays!” He laid his hand gingerly on the fender of the elegant white vehicle. “What is it? Look, even the seats have class.”

  Michael bent over the car. “Alfa Romeo GTV; there are only two of them in the country. It doesn’t belong to any of us.”

  “So who does it belong to?” asked Yuval eagerly.

  “To somebody who isn’t going to be using it anymore.” Michael sighed and turned the door handle. The car wasn’t locked. “I don’t believe it,” he muttered. “They’ve left the car open and the key inside. Yuval looked at him imploringly and opened the door on the driver’s side. Michael got in next to him and lit a cigarette. Yuval half turned the single key in the ignition and examined the dashboard, pressed the glove compartment button, peeped inside, and said in a disappointed voice: “It’s empty.”

  Michael smiled. The boy had always been a car nut. Even as a small child he would diligently cut pictures of cars out of the illustrated magazines in his grandparents’ house. Michael’s former mother-in-law, Fela, had made a point of reading the German and English press. She always had the latest copies of Time and Newsweek, as well as Burda and other fashion magazines, in the colored straw basket next to the grand piano. Yuval would hang on to her dressing gown and ask: “Can I cut this one now, Granny, can I now?”

  Yuval pressed the radio button, and the sound of piano music was heard. “Listen to that tone!” he said, and pressed another button. “Why waste it on classical music!” But by then Michael had thrown his cigarette out the window and pounced on the radio.

  “They didn’t check the tape,” he said to Yuval, who looked at him uncomprehendingly. Michael pressed the appropriate button, and the tape ran forward and then backward. There was no sound.

  “Stay here a minute, don’t touch,” he said to Yuval, and he ran to his own car, where he activated the radio transmi
tter. And then he returned, panting, to the Alfa Romeo.

  Yuval said nothing, but the gleeful expression had faded from his face, giving way to sober concern.

  “Who does the car belong to, Dad?” he finally asked, but Eli Bahar was already standing at the window, pulling a thin glove from his pocket and saying to Yuval: “Excuse me for a second.”

  The boy got out, and Eli, with a gloved hand, removed the cassette and put it carefully into the nylon bag in his hand.

  “You can come with me, if you like,” said Michael. “We’re going to National HQ.”

  “For how long?” asked Yuval suspiciously. “How long will it take?”

  “Not long,” promised Michael. “And after that maybe we’ll do something.”

  “I haven’t got much time,” said Yuval. “I promised someone I’d help her with something.”

  Michael looked at the serious face, noted the downy cheeks, and smiled. He wondered what Yuval had to help her with so urgently—the long vacation had just begun—but he said nothing. “By eight we’ll have finished twice over,” he promised solemnly. Eli Bahar took Yuval by the elbow and led him gently to the Ford.

  “It’s pure chance I’m still here,” said Shaul from Forensics, carefully dusting the tape with powder. He left the room and returned several long moments later. “There isn’t a single print on it. As if no one’s ever touched it. What do you say to that?”

  “I’d like to know how they removed the label without leaving any sign,” said Michael. “Someone put a lot of work into it. And I can tell you at a glance that it’s a perfect match with the cassettes Iddo Dudai brought back from the U.S.”

  “In other words, you think it’s the missing tape?”