Murder Duet: A Musical Case

by Batya Gur

  “Do you like it when Theo interrupts you?”

  “Sometimes we learn from it. Theo knows a lot,” she said in a childish voice.

  It seemed to Michael that all these expressions were familiar to him, but now they seemed grotesquely exaggerated.

  The doctor glanced at Michael. “Do you want to ask her something?” he asked in his normal voice, and Michael wondered why he wasn’t whispering. But he nodded and came closer.

  “You’re taking a break,” said Dr. Schumer.

  Nita laid the nonexistent cello at her feet and looked around. “Is the case backstage?” she wondered, and she rose lightfootedly from the armchair. “Ido’s here,” she said happily. “Michael brought him. And Noa, too. She’s wearing orange overalls. They used to be Ido’s. And there’s a music box on the carrier, Ido’s biting Matilda, his rabbit.”

  “It’s after the Teddy Kollek break. What happens after that break?” asked Michael.

  “Ido’s gone,” she said, surprised. “He was here, and now he’s gone. Michael took the children away.”

  “And everyone’s returning to the stage,” Michael reminded her.

  “Everyone’s coming back on,” she agreed, and she bent down as if to pick up the cello.

  “Do you rehearse the whole concerto?”

  “The second movement,” she said as if in a dream. “There’s only time enough for the second movement. Theo doesn’t yell much.” She smiled again, gently. “He’s pleased, but he doesn’t say so. That’s how he is. He thinks it’s good. He says: “So far, so good.’ He doesn’t look at Gabi. Gabi plays wonderfully! Really beautifully!” She dropped her eyes and raised them again, looking straight into Michael’s eyes. Yet he felt that she wasn’t seeing him at all. “And I play well, too. Yes, I play really well,” she said clearly and without any affectation, as if she were stating a fact, but a blush spread over her cheeks.

  “Theo says that the rehearsal is over. Then what? Do you put away your instrument?”

  “Yes, everybody does. There’s a lot of noise. Mrs. Agmon is standing in the hall. Near the stage.”

  “And who is on the stage? Can you see them leaving the stage?”

  Michael watched her shaking her head as if with an effort.

  “Is Gabi on the stage?”

  “Gabi leaves. He has to do something.” Her eyes narrowed. A dark shadow invaded the lakes. “He goes offstage.”

  “Who else leaves the stage now?” asked Michael, and he listened to the heavy breathing of the doctor, whose eyes never left Nita’s face.

  “I don’t remember. . . .” Her face twisted, her eyes closed, her mouth opened, she wrung her hands, her legs writhed, her face was white. “Gabriel leaves,” she said, gasping for breath. “He has to . . .” Her head fell back.

  “She’s losing consciousness,” said the doctor, “we have to stop. She’s showing clear signs of distress.”

  “Just one more question,” pleaded Michael. “Just one.”

  The doctor raised his hand in a determined gesture. “Don’t answer that!” he said authoritatively. “Forget that question. You’re at the end of the rehearsal again,” he said soothingly, and Nita’s body suddenly relaxed. “Open your eyes and don’t remember the question.” She raised her head and opened her eyes.

  “Is she awake or asleep now?” asked Michael.

  “She’s back under deep hypnosis,” said the doctor after a few seconds of silence. “I’m not prepared to put her through that again.”

  “But we don’t know anything we didn’t know before,” said Michael in despair. “Nothing! I have to try. . . .”

  The doctor looked at him doubtfully.

  “For her sake. We have to give her an answer to the question of whether she did it.”

  “I’m prepared to give it one more try. But not in the same way. We have to ask the question differently,” said the doctor, glancing again at the sheet of paper on the desk. “Maybe it would be better if I asked it now.”

  “But ask her first how many spare strings she had at home before the rehearsal,” said Michael, breathing fast.

  “How many spare strings did you have at home before the rehearsal?” asked Dr. Schumer mechanically.

  She frowned. “Three,” she said. “The A snapped and I replaced it.”

  “Three before you replaced the string or afterward?” whispered Michael.

  Schumer repeated the question. “Before,” she said hesitantly. “Three before I replaced it.”

  “Again, which string did she replace?” asked Michael with a pounding heart, and he listened to Schumer repeating the question.

  “The A,” she said a matter-of-factly.

  “Does she have another one at home?” whispered Michael, and Schumer repeated the question.

  “I might have,” she replied reflectively. “In the wardrobe, at the top, where I keep my old cello. But it’s been years since I played it. There are four strings in an unopened envelope up there.”

  Michael swallowed hard and suppressed an urge to run back to the apartment and check then and there. “Now ask her about after the rehearsal,” he said sternly.

  The doctor hesitated, and then he said calmly: “The rehearsal is over.”

  Nita nodded.

  “What do you do now?” he asked;

  She opened her eyes wider. “I put the cello down. I want to put it away. The case isn’t there. I have to look for it. I ask Avigdor. The case . . . they put it in back.”

  “You go backstage?”

  She nodded.

  “With the cello in your hand?”

  Again she nodded.

  “Do you find the case?”

  “It’s behind the wall. I have to put the cello in Theo’s office. I can’t just leave it lying around. It’s my cello. My Amati.”

  “Do you go into Theo’s office?”

  “I go into Theo’s office,” she said firmly. “The door is open. It isn’t locked.”

  “Is Theo in the room?”

  “He’s on the phone. He’s talking on the phone. He says, ‘It’s absolutely out of the question.’ He sees me and stops talking. He waits for me to leave the room. I put the cello in the big cabinet. As before. As always.” Her dark eyebrows frowned with perplexity, with the effort.

  “Do you leave the room?”

  “Theo says, “I’ll call later,’ and he hangs up.”

  “Do you leave the room together?”

  “I have to pee,” she said suddenly.

  “Right then?”

  “Right then. At the door I notice that I have to pee. I want to use Theo’s bathroom.”

  “There’s a bathroom in Theo’s office?”

  “Next door. It’s clean.”

  “And Theo?”

  “He locks the office. I tell him to wait for me. But when I come out he isn’t there,” she says, surprised. “I call out, ‘Theo! Theo!’ but he doesn’t hear me. He doesn’t answer. I go to the end of the corridor.”

  “Back to the stage?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “No. To the other end.”

  “What other end?” asked Michael, astonished, ignoring the doctor’s warning look.

  “To the far door. Because maybe Theo went in that direction.” She suddenly shivered.

  The doctor resumed questioning her. “Is he there?”

  “No. There’s nobody there,” she said like a disappointed child.

  “Do you see Gabi?”

  “No. Gabi isn’t there either. And the light isn’t working.”

  “What do you mean, the light isn’t working? Is it dark?”

  “It’s dark. You can’t see anything. The curtains are closed. So I go back.”

  “Do you go back to Theo’s office?”

  “No. Theo locked it,” she said like a child explaining something self-evident. “I went toward the light.”

  “Are you afraid of the dark?” the doctor asked gently.

  “Everything’s so strange,” she said, beginning to s
quirm.

  “You go back to the stage the usual way,” said the doctor. She suddenly relaxed.

  “I go back.”

  “Do you see Gabi?” asked Michael.

  “Gabi’s leaning against the pillar, as always,” she said, smiling. “He’s talking to someone. I hear Gabi’s voice.”

  “What’s he saying?” asked Michael, and he felt his body tensing and stiffening, the blood pounding in his temples.

  “He says: ‘Vivaldi is my field. Vivaldi is my field.’ He’s angry.”

  “Who is he talking to?” asked the doctor.

  Again her face twisted and turned white. Her eyebrows knotted. “I can’t see,” she said in a whisper. “I can’t see clearly. They’re behind the pillar.” And suddenly a terrible scream broke out of her.

  “Don’t answer! You’re not to answer!” said the doctor quickly. But she was trembling all over. “You don’t remember who you saw. It doesn’t matter who was standing there,” said Dr. Schumer in a firm, calm voice. Michael saw her legs relaxing and the color coming back to her face. He was overwhelmed by a terrible feeling of frustration. And by a violent wish to shake her. And by guilt about this wish.

  “You’re standing in the corridor,” said the doctor after her breathing had calmed and her eyes were wide open. “Do you have a string in your hand?”

  She shook her head. “There’s no string,” she said apathetically. “The strings are with the cello.”

  “After you hear Gabi talking, leaning against the pillar, do you stay there?”

  “I mustn’t listen,” she said. “I mustn’t listen.”

  “You don’t stay there?”

  “I walk away quickly. On tiptoe, so they won’t see that I heard something . . .” Nita writhed in the armchair. She tossed her head from side to side.

  “You walk away quickly. Where to?”

  “To the stage. Everyone’s still onstage,” she said, surprised. She was still frowning, but her body had stopped writhing, “They’re packing up and talking, and Mrs. Agmon, the violinist, is shouting.”

  “What is she shouting?”

  Nita smiled. A small, joyless smile. Without dimples. “She’s shouting: ‘It’s not right! This is no way to behave! He won’t escape me today!”’

  “Who’s left on the stage?” asked Michael, and he looked at her straining to remember. He listened to her name one after the other, the concertmaster, the woman oboe and clarinet players, the bass and viola players. “A lot of people,” she finally said wearily.

  “Where’s Gabi?” the doctor resumed.

  “Not there, he’s not there,” she said sorrowfully, and she clenched her fists.

  “And Theo?”

  “He’s not there,” she said with the same inflection, and her fingers went limp.

  “But you’re there?” the doctor said quickly.

  “I’m there. In the corner.”

  “And you see Gabi alive?”

  “Leaning against the pillar,” she said rebukingly.

  “Talking. Gabi is talking,” the doctor reminded her.

  She blinked rapidly.

  “Are you standing behind him with a string?”

  “No, of course not,” said Nita, surprised. “He’s there and I’m here.”

  There it is! the doctor seemed to say with a gesture of his arm. “That’s enough for today,” he said aloud. “I’m going to wake her up.”

  “But . . . Just once more ask her who he’s talking to . . . At least whether it’s a man or a woman!” pleaded Michael.

  “I thought we agreed that her welfare was our chief concern. Can’t you see how cruel that question is for her? We’ve gone on too long as it is. And what you wanted to know, you know now. What she herself wanted to know, we also know. This isn’t a case of split personality. She didn’t kill anybody. That’s enough for now,” he pronounced and turned to Nita.

  Michael listened with half an ear to the instructions issued in a reassuring, authoritative voice by Dr. Schumer. “You’ll remember everything, but not the question about who Gabi was talking to,” he said twice. “I’m going to wake you up now. You’ll be calmer. You’ll feel well. Rested. You know now that you didn’t do anything bad. You didn’t kill anyone. You didn’t do anything with a string. Those were only your fantasies.”

  Michael listened to the countdown, and he tensed as the sound of Dr. Schumer’s clapping hand echoed in the room. Slowly, as if reluctantly, Nita returned to the world. She closed her eyes and opened them, and felt the arms of the chair.

  “How do you feel?” asked the doctor, and she looked at him with sad, quiet eyes.

  “All right,” she said wonderingly. “Better, I think.” She spoke in her normal voice.

  “What do you remember?” asked the doctor.

  She looked at Michael, and her mouth relaxed. “I didn’t do it,” she said, and she rubbed her forehead with a gesture like Ruth Mashiah’s. “I only put the cello in Theo’s office, went to the bathroom, looked for Theo at the other end of the corridor, and because the light wasn’t working, I went back onstage.”

  10

  You Don’t Find Babies in the Street

  I don’t understand the question,” said Theo, pushing his hands into the pockets of his pale trousers. “Do you mean, did I talk to him after the rehearsal?”

  “The question seems quite clear to me: After the rehearsal was over, after you went with Nita to your office, after you locked the door and were going back to the stage, did you speak to Gabi?”

  “Do you think that if something like that had happened I wouldn’t have told you? Or him?” Theo said, nodding toward Balilty, who was sitting next to Michael, studiously examining his bitten fingernails. “Or even the young lady? I would have told her. She was with me for hours!”

  “I don’t think anything,” said Michael in the cold, almost indifferent tone he had used since the beginning of the interrogation. “I have to ask these questions. And so I do.”

  And I’m answering.” Theo took his hands out of his pockets and sat down heavily. “I didn’t speak a single word to Gabi after the rehearsal. I didn’t see him at all until . . . until I saw him lying dead.”

  “How come Nita saw him and you didn’t?”

  “How should I know?” cried Theo angrily. “How can I possibly answer a question like that? She saw him and I didn’t.” He rubbed his cheeks with the palms of his hands. Like his sister, he had dark circles under his eyes. His look was haunted and careworn.

  “She saw him leaning against the pillar and talking to you.”

  “She couldn’t have seen me,” said Theo with irritation. “Maybe she said that she saw me! There’s a difference between seeing and saying she saw. I don’t believe my sister said anything of the kind. She’s my sister! And, as you know very well, she’s in a terrible state at the moment. Besides, why should she tell such a meaningless lie about me?”

  “Meaningless? It’s hardly meaningless/’ said Michael.

  “Why? Why isn’t it meaningless? What are you trying to say, that I . . . that I was the last person to see him? That I killed him? Where is she, anyway?” Theo demanded as if he were fed up with the waste of time. “I want to see for myself if she said that. Let her tell me herself! Why haven’t you brought her here? What is this, divide and conquer?”

  “One thing at a time,” said Michael calmly, covering up for the vein he felt pulsating in his neck. It seemed to him that the pulsation was visible through the skin to everyone. He couldn’t rid his mind of the hypnotist’s words: “She’s not lying, and it’s not an act,” Dr. Schumer had said after the session in his consulting room. “There’s something that frightens her in what she saw. Frightens her to such an extent that the very memory of it endangers her. She isn’t ready to remember exactly what she saw. It’s hard to believe how much we’re able to repress in order to protect ourselves. Sometimes you really can’t believe it, and this is true for everyone, no matter how well educated or intelligent. She must have s
een someone or something whose very presence there is dangerous for her. I mean dangerous in the psychological sense.”

  “All in all,” protested Theo, “I don’t understand any of this. Why we’re talking here about this. One would think that you suspect me. Why are you interrogating me here?”

  “You haven’t been officially warned yet.” Balilty intervened for the first time, crossing his arms on his chest. “Let’s simply call it a conversation. Do you object to cooperating with us to help us find the person who murdered your father and brother?”

  “Do you think it’s the same person?” asked Theo, astonishment in his voice. “Do you think there’s a connection between the two murders?”

  “What do you think?” asked Balilty. “What’s your opinion?”

  Theo fell silent and dropped his eyes to his hands. He examined his fingers, long like Nita’s, and passed his hand over his face. Once more Michael was surprised, when Theo removed his hand from his eyes, how much brother and sister resembled each other. The eyes, sunk deep in their sockets, were particularly striking now in this regard. Michael’s heart skipped a beat when Theo stuck his fingers into his silver mane and raked his hair back from his forehead with the same movement as Nita’s when she sometimes dug her fingers into her curls. “Is that why there’s a policeman outside Nita’s house? Do you think that there’s something we don’t know? That our lives are in danger, as they say?”

  “You were arguing about Vivaldi,” said Michael, rolling the cigarette he refrained from lighting between his fingers. He had no intention of telling Theo, let alone Nita, about the new dread that had seized him since the hypnosis. If she had seen something, and if someone knew that she had seen it—he looked now at Theo—he had to make sure that she was never going to be alone from now on.

  “Who was?” Theo’s eyes darted nervously between the window and the door.

  “You and Gabi. About Vivaldi. He said . . .” Michael looked at the notes in front of him as if the few words Nita had overheard were drawn from among many others: “ . . . Vivaldi is my field.”