by Sarah Blau
“Then explain to them how urgent this is, and they’ll make it a priority.”
He keeps his eyes on his phone while I’m talking, inert but for his thumb sliding across the screen, a model of indifference. I’m trying to understand what caused this shift, we were so intimate, we were almost… flashes of me sitting on the toilet, dripping red, float before me; for an hour and a half I was almost… we were almost… maybe in some subconscious way he sensed the threat and his instincts screamed, run, man, run!
Sitting on the edge of the couch with his gaze still on his phone, he doesn’t bother to hide his boredom.
I look down at my own phone and see the drowned witch looking back at me with a sympathetic smile, and I wonder why I’m not afraid of her, wasn’t afraid of her even for a moment, when this picture is supposed to be an explicit threat.
No threats, girlfriend, I’m your sister-in-arms! Now get this man on your couch off his arse.
I nip into the kitchen and return with a meat cleaver. Unused, it’s spotless and shiny. For a moment his eyes grow wide with panic, and that moment is all I needed. He doesn’t trust me, never did.
“I want you to teach me how to defend myself in case the murderer shows up here,” I say, trying to imbue my voice with genuine distress.
“Sheila, you don’t actually think someone’s going to show up.” Again with that dismissive tone of his.
“You piece of shit,” my voice nearly booms, “what gives you the right to be so blasé about this?”
What gives you the right to be so blasé about me?
He gets up, lunges at me and snatches the knife with zero effort, just plucks it from my fingers like a ripe piece of fruit. Turns out whatever sexual power he had over me is still there, but that’s all he has.
“You shouldn’t play with knives,” he says, “because if someone does come after you, he’ll just use it against you.”
“Then teach me how to use it.”
“There’s not much to teach,” he replies.
“Don’t you remember how in Face/Off, John Travolta teaches his daughter how to stab her boyfriend in the thigh and twist the knife so the wound won’t close?” Almost involuntarily, I recall our first conversation with all the flirty banter, and for a moment I think I can see a tiny sparkle in his eyes; but it’s just my imagination, because the next thing I know he’s glancing at his watch and “suddenly remembers” he has to go. Obviously, he’ll update me about any new developments, if there are any.
Poof! Micha’s gone.
Only after the door shuts behind him, I remember that the father in the movie, the one who taught his daughter how to twist the knife, wasn’t even her real father – it was the impostor.
That’s life. You never get the useful information from the people closest to you.
With Gali’s face inches from mine, I can see the blonde peach fuzz on her upper lip. Does she bleach it, or is it naturally fair like it usually is with redheads? I take a step back.
“But I’m going to need a close-up of you later,” she says, while fiddling with the tripod. She’s going on and on about her poor camera and everything that’s wrong with it and how long it took her to find a decent repair shop and how the technician reminded her of a neighbour they once had. She’s rambling so badly that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was nothing wrong with the camera, not even for a moment.
“You seem kind of down,” she offers gently, and I, sick of all the pretending, decide to tell her why.
“Can you show me the picture?” The eagerness in her voice – snuffing out any trace of its former gentleness – makes me flinch, but it’s too late to back out. “I absolutely love witches,” she adds.
Yes, they all love them when they’re young.
I study her while her eyes devour the picture, and once again I get that niggling feeling that I know this witch, that I’ve seen her before. Remember!
“Micha isn’t helping you find out who sent it?” She utters his name so casually, but it doesn’t bother me any more. I mean, it almost doesn’t.
“No, not really.”
“Well, he’s kind of a douchebag,” she says. “I hope you know that.”
I consider her as she tinkers with the aperture, but there’s something flickering behind that quiet tone, and when she looks up and our eyes meet, pupil to pupil, I realize that I do know that. Micha is a douchebag.
“Can I make coffee?” She hasn’t finished asking and already she’s on her way to the kitchen. I’m surprised to find that I feel rather comfortable with it, that I don’t mind her seeing the stained floor and the sticky mess on the counter, the grimy dishes lying in the sink. Two little dollies, taking it on the chin… two little dollies, comfortable in their own skin.
I hear her opening the high cupboard, and know which mugs she’s going to choose. The pretty special-occasion mugs I never (ever) use. They’re white bone china with a thin gold trim that means you should never put them in the microwave, unless you want them to explode. Let them explode! Let it all explode!
When she hands me a mug, I feel the heat permeating my palms and recall an article I read about how men who were served a cup of hot coffee by a pretty woman would rate her more attractive than the men to whom she served a cold cup.
No surprises there, huh? Warmth, nourishment, love, home, they all speak the same language, all of them, always. Let them explode! Let it all explode!
Above the mug’s gilded rim, Gali’s face looks soft and flushed. The rosy cheeks lend her a childish vulnerability, but something about the slow, measured way she stirs her spoon keeps me from taking a sip. Her small hand swirls the spoon clockwise, then counter-clockwise, while my own hands clutching my mug are still and sweaty, the gilded edge glistening menacingly.
“Where did you come from all of a sudden?” My teeth clink against the china, and I wonder whether they’ll scratch the enamel.
“What do you mean?” While there’s genuine surprise in her voice, I get the feeling she knows perfectly well what I mean.
“You know that in books, when someone suddenly appears after a wave of murders, that person’s usually the murderer.”
I can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth, words I didn’t believe I could think, What’s going on with you? This is your little munchkin!
But this grown-up munchkin in front of me isn’t flinching. “I came precisely because of the murders,” she says. “Once Dina was killed, I realized I had to make this video now, because who knows what’s going to happen.” Her voice trails off. We both know what’s going to happen.
“What do you remember about my mum?” Her voice suddenly sounds childish, but then again, everyone sounds like a child when they say “my mum.” That’s just how it is, you never stop being mummy’s baby.
What can I possibly tell her? I hang my head low, and my eyes land on the painting of the dead witch, and all at once, it hits me.
Frida Gotteskind’s Witches throughout History course! The four of us took that course together first semester, and the lecturer was a fat and chipper Belgian who got divorced two months into the course, and then wasn’t so chipper or chubby any more. In fact, she lost so much weight she went from chubby to scrawny and sunken, and ended up looking, well, not unlike a witch.
She used to show us slides of witches who had been tortured and dragged and burned and drowned, and those drawings looked a lot like this one, with the same elusive, dreamlike quality.
This is it, Sheila, the past has come knocking. It’ll always haunt you, even if you thought you left it all behind. Got that, Witchiepoo?
I eye Gali. If the person who sent me the picture was in Frida Gotteskind’s course, it couldn’t have been her. Think! Remember!
I’m so caught up in my thoughts that Gali has to repeat the question, and unfortunately, I blurt out the first thing that pops into my mind.
“I guess my most vivid memory of Naama is from that last night.”
Stupid, stupid
woman! Why do you always have to open your big mouth? Gali baulks and backs into the tripod, and the camera crashes to the floor with a loud thud. There’s a strange, faint cracking sound, followed by a series of tiny crackles. Clink! Clang! Crack! Thrump! Thrump! Thrump!
Okay, this time the camera is unmistakably broken. Gali looks like a little girl standing in the middle of the living room after breaking a bowl of candy, just standing there with her knees shaking, blinking into the light.
“What happened then, Sheila?” she asks with the same babyish voice. “What really happened that night? I want to know.”
And even though I want to tell her, yearn to tell her!, I know the moment I do, she’ll turn against me and hate me forever, because with all due respect to special relationships and the whole “friends are the family we choose” modern hogwash, friends are not family, and friends of your mother’s are certainly not family – only your family is family, only your family is forever, and if for some reason you choose not to have one, there’s a good chance you’ll end up alone. Got that, Witchiepoo?
Gali’s eyes bore into my face, and her expression turns icy.
“I understand you’re not going to tell me,” she says.
“Not yet.”
“Then when? When it’s too late?” Her words linger in the air.
Don’t you get it? It’s already too late.
“I have a friend who knows someone in the Mossad; he can probably help you with the picture,” she says, her voice surprisingly stringent. “I’ll help you, but just remember that you won’t help me.”
She bends over and starts picking up the camera pieces. She does this slowly, shard after shard, like a little girl trying to put a broken doll back together, then turns and leaves without looking back or saying goodbye.
Sitting at the computer, I’m focusing so hard on googling the painting, who knew there were so many dead witches under the water?, that I don’t hear my phone ringing, and only upon the caller’s second attempt, do I notice it and answer impatiently.
It takes some time to realize that the blurry, bizarre déjà vu is from the gravelly, matter-of-fact female voice asking my name and requesting I come to the police station – exactly the voice I imagined hearing before that first phone call from Micha.
“When do you want me to come?” I ask.
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Then why didn’t Micha say anything to me? I already saw him today.” While the words pour out of me, I wonder whether the reason Micha didn’t say anything is because he is no longer on my side, and maybe never was.
“Who?” the gravelly voice asks, bewildered.
“Micha, Micha—” It takes me a moment to recall his last name, and the dense silence on the end of the line doesn’t help. “Yarden. Micha Yarden.”
“Amiram Yarden?” she asks.
“No. Micha, your detective,” I reply. Very slowly.
“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
The words reach me as if through thick fog, and not as a poetic expression of mystery, but actual fog, the kind that fills your skull and chest and makes it hard to breathe.
I sit down in my stained armchair, and from within this fog that continues to billow inside me, I hear the gravelly voice repeat and insist, “I don’t know who you’re talking about, we don’t have a detective named Micha Yarden here.”
She repeats it one last time, and this time her voice is tinted with sorrow, as if apologizing for being the bearer of this answer.
23
THE PERSON LOOKING BACK at me in the mirror at the police station is pale and dishevelled. The village fool! The village idiot!
The police officer sent to escort me is regarding me with a suspicious leer, but I can’t pull myself away from the mirror. The face reflected in it is that of a magic-less witch. Little witch, little witch cheated and tricked!
“Shall we?” the officer asks, her tiny mouth working a piece of gum. “They’re waiting for us upstairs.”
But I can’t move. On each side of the mirror stands a large glass cabinet crammed with golden trophies. I wonder how and why they were awarded all these trophies, for all the mounting corpses? For impersonation?
Since that phone call I’ve been walking inside a thick cloud, a thousand drowned witches floating inside me, a thousand questions screaming in my head. Who is he? Who is he? Who is this man? Who’s this baby? Who?
Dina’s voice is panting in my ear, I told you you’re an idiot, a vindicated voice, but there’s something else lurking inside it, something I should have recognized a long time ago.
Micha’s face flits before me, a face that has undergone multiple changes in a surprisingly short period of time: the boyish, trusting face, dimple appearing through delicate stubble; the face of the man who leaned in for a kiss; the indifferent, uncaring face from our last meeting; and hovering above those faces, the one that stared at me at night. A stony face with empty eyes.
But he knew! Knew everything, every detail of the investigation, don’t think about it!, he knew about events that were to take place, even knew about Debby and Saul, knew what no one could have known unless he was a police detective, but maybe… don’t think about it!
For one wild moment I wonder whether I imagined it all, whether Micha was just a figment of my imagination, someone who existed only within the walls of my apartment, and your bedroom. This is what it feels like when the rug is pulled out from under you. A river is running below me, and my pockets are heavy with rocks.
You failed the test. Next witch! And she better not be a sucker like you!
I shuffle down the narrow corridor with the bubblegum-smacking officer bouncing behind me, talking on the phone in a high-pitched squeak. She definitely isn’t the gravel-voiced cop who called me. I have no idea who you’re talking about. Who is he? Who? Beware of that man-child, that’s exactly the type who ends up taking a chainsaw to their mummy.
I remember that look, a scrutinizing, waiting-in-the-shadows look, a look that shouldn’t have been there. But was it the look of a killer? Come on, Sheila, don’t give that baby so much credit. Micha the killer? The thought almost makes me smile. It’s so ridiculous it never even crossed my mind, not even during that long, black night that went on and on and that felt like it was never going to end. Not him! Because let’s face it, he doesn’t have it in him, doesn’t have a sliver of what it takes. Never did. He’s too boring to be the killer. Maor, Micha. They were really quite similar in the end.
The narrow corridor widens and I can hear the echo of my footsteps; and not for the first time since this all began, I wonder why I’m not afraid. How could it be that throughout this whole episode, I never felt as scared as I should?
Because you’re smart, that’s why. You always were.
It’s Dina again, but this time the voice is encouraging, almost seductive. I know she’s right. It’s time I go back to being smart.
Unlike during our last encounter, this time Debby seems nicer, and not as short. She’s sitting behind a giant computer in a small room with bare walls. I remember having read somewhere that investigation rooms are never decorated with anything that might distract the suspect. Emptiness as a solution.
“Coffee?” Debby offers, looking at me almost affectionately, and I wonder why. None of the possibilities I can think of is encouraging.
“Yes, please,” I say, hoping I’ll be able to swallow and keep it down. I haven’t had even a tiny sip of anything since yesterday. Trap’s finally shut.
“By the way, who’s that Micha you asked about?” Debby casually enquires, and I freeze.
“Just a guy. Friend on the force,” I say with a voice that even I can tell sounds strained and unnatural, and I think of Neria Grossman. I have a friend on the police force.
Debby looks at me, narrowing her eyes with scrutiny. Too much scrutiny. “Jeez, you look awful,” she says, somehow suffusing the words with genuine concern. “Are you sure you feel well enough to help us?”
“So you took me off your suspect list?” God, Sheila, now you decide to open your trap?
“You?” she asks, with a look I can’t read. “You were never on it. We had your ER discharge letter.”
Now I can make out the look. She’s telling me the truth. I’d gotten so used to Micha’s lies and bullying that I forgot what the truth looks like. You silly goose!
“We wanted to show you something interesting we found on Dina Kaminer’s computer,” Debby says, and I try to listen. To listen very carefully. “Maybe you could give us more information, shed some light on this.”
At first I wonder whether they’re going to show me another picture of Frida Gotteskind’s drowned witches, but when Debby turns the computer screen in my direction, there’s no picture, only words.
“We found this in her Gmail drafts,” she says. “Dina wrote it shortly after you left her apartment. She probably meant to send it to you but didn’t make it.”
No, she didn’t make it. But I recall everything she did manage to do, including at our last meeting, and alongside the usual bitterness and rage that bubble to the surface is another, unidentified feeling in the mix. Focus! Focus!
I feel Debby’s pinprick eyes resting on me, but her gaze isn’t piercing; it’s soft when she says, “And I feel I should tell you before you read the letter, that Dina Kaminer was pregnant.”
Dina was pregnant. Dina was pregnant. Dina was pregnant. No, the words don’t go together.
I stare at Debby, who doesn’t take her eyes off me. Dina was pregnant. Dina was pregnant. The young Dina, sprawled on the grass, her voice humming the familiar tune, “No one wants kids, and no one needs kids, and we’ll never ever have them, n-e-v-e-r!”
But apparently she did want one, need one, she, of all women. Or maybe it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise? Maybe the thing that scares you most is the thing you secretly crave? Maybe it was the same tenacious vitality that always drove her forward, the forceful energy that pushed her to get up and take action, that eventually made her yearn for a child of her own?