“I can cite several examples,” replied Prof. Shimoni, “but again, let us bear in mind, by way of caution, that these are generalizations rather than compelling formulae we can live by. For instance, personal attributes such as an aggressive nature or the tendency to take risks are inherently genetic rather than environmental. It is true that even a person with a calm disposition can on occasion ‘lose it,’ as they say, but this is extraordinary rather than the norm. Even a hesitant person may come to a decision that comprises a major element of risk. Nevertheless, this decision is unusual. It does not contradict the fact that, essentially, this person tends to avoid risks on a regular basis.”
“How interesting. Do you have any more examples for me?”
“My lectures usually take three hours, whereas I realize I only have fifteen minutes, so let me cite one other example to illustrate my point. Let’s take fear. Being a coward is a consequence of genetics. But that said, this does not mean that environment cannot cause any person, even someone who is not a coward, to fear something. We have to make the distinction between this person’s psychological element, which comprises, among other aspects, fear, and this person’s conduct, which is driven by impacts from the environment.”
“You’ve been most helpful, my dear professor. Thank you for your assistance. The driver is waiting for you at the entrance.”
Chapter Eighteen
Bonnie, or “Minister Pladot”, as the prime minister’s secretaries called him, though they also snickered that ‘his excellency the minister’ was younger than some of them, felt encouraged as he left the prime minister. ‘At least the powers that be now know that Avram Fiddlemann was not my real father and that I put those details in that questionnaire upon taking office quite innocently,’ he thought to himself as he left.
Minister Pladot informed the government secretary he was leaving on a three-month leave and proceeded to the formal apartment issued him by the government and took a few necessary items. Then, he was driven to his own house, where he told his chauffeur that he might leave, and he would call him if and when he would have need of him.
‘What shall I do next?’
Bonnie sat in his comfy chair on the veranda, overlooking the Gilboa Mountains and tried to figure out his next move. ‘Well, one option is for sure out of the question. I will not be left hanging. I cannot abide the doubts and lingering questions. That’s not even an option. Besides, that’s not what mother’s will was all about,’ he told himself. ‘Had she wanted me to keep living a lie, she would not have written me that letter. No doubt about it, she wanted me to have the freedom to decide for myself.’
He then thought to himself, ‘even when I was four, when my mother Estée showed me that triangle in our respective eyes, she planned on writing that letter. Even then, she wanted me to know the full truth and to be sure this concerned my biological father, and that I would not doubt she was my biological mother. How do I begin my search?’
The first name that popped up in his mind was Ofer Ben Ari. They were friends since elementary school. He recently had made headlines as the attorney who had devoted himself to the much debated affair from the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, when, allegedly, babies and very young children of Yemenite descent were forcibly, sometimes secretly, taken by the authorities and given to families of European descent, without the biological parents’ knowledge or consent.
Prior to what has come to be known as ‘the Yemenite Children Affair,’ in 1949, the government of Israel decided to have as many Jews as possible brought over from Yemen. Israel had just been founded in May 1948. Thanks to a truly heroic feat, some fifty thousand Yemenite Jews immigrated to the newly formed state. Prior to their immigration, they were concentrated in transit camps from which they were flown over to Israel; sometimes, over one thousand were flown in one night.
Among the immigrants were numerous sickly babies and children. They were admitted to hospital on arrival, where some did die without any proper documentation. Years later, a great deal of effort went into locating records and the surviving children, who in the meantime had grown up and disappeared without a trace. Many individuals and organizations made it their mission to get to the bottom of what happened to the children. One of them was Attorney Ofer Ben Ari. Bonnie decided he was the man to turn to, all the more so as they were boyhood friends.
Once they got through the courtesy of exchanging pleasantries, as befitting longtime friends who hadn’t met for many years, and after Bonnie had reminded his attorney and friend of his commitment to attorney-client privilege, which was unnecessary as Attorney Ben Ari was a professional, he decided to tell him the full, highly provocative story.
“So, what is it you want from me?” Attorney Ben Ari got right down to business.
“I have a personal matter that weighs on me very heavily. I am trying to cope with it. I could have received assistance from various authorities, which I am sure would gladly come to my aid. Nevertheless, since this matter is highly sensitive, and since I wish to resolve it as discreetly as possible, I decided to come to you both as a friend and as a lawyer bound by attorney-client privilege.
“I am glad you trust me so deeply,” the attorney replied, “and I hope to justify your trust. Now, tell me what this is about, and we’ll see how we may proceed from there.”
Attorney Ben Ari was sitting in his luxurious offices on the nineteenth floor of an office tower in Ramat Gan, just outside Tel Aviv. He was looking, part amused, part puzzled, at his boyhood friend, the esteemed minister, as Bonnie, obviously made anxious by his situation, was choosing his words very carefully. This excited the attorney’s curiosity, as well. ‘How did it come about that of all the capable students in our class, it was he who had become an esteemed minister, Bonnie here, a real celebrity?’ he wondered to himself.
“So, what’s this all about, Bonnie?”
“You gained a real expertise in locating missing persons and getting families back together, so I’m asking your help in finding my biological father,” Bonnie replied and told him the gist of it.
“So, what do we have here?” Attorney Ben Ari did his best to recover from the minister’s surprising story. “In fact, we have got practically nothing to go on. Aside from your mother’s letter, which, for the sake of the matter we shall regard as a credible source, we have nothing. Do you have any thread we can use to pursue this further and conduct an inquiry?”
“I haven’t got anything else, but I do remember that in the Yemenite Children Affair, you succeeded in establishing a biological connection between people using a DNA test.”
“That’s true. We used an app developed here in Israel to find a match between one of the deceased children and one of the families that was looking for their missing child. But this case is nothing like yours. They produced a DNA sample from the remains they found in a certain grave and found a match with a living family member who was one of the persons who sought my help. But in your case, we’ve got one DNA-donor, whereas we require two donors in order to establish a genetic connection between two people.”
“So, what do we do? Doesn’t Israel have a genetic bank with which I can run a test to compare a sample with my own DNA?”
“Well, in Israel, as opposed to certain other countries, a commercial company is prohibited from being in possession of a DNA bank, as important as such a bank indeed is. Israeli Police and several hospitals do have a DNA bank, but I am not sure they’ll give us access.”
“So, what’s our next step?”
“Give me two weeks, Bonnie, and then I’ll be able to report to you whether we can use the police bank or the hospitals’ DNA banks.”
***
Two weeks went by, and the minister and the attorney had another meeting.
“What news do you have for me?”
“None, I’m afraid. The police turned my request down, claiming their DNA bank is strictly for police investi
gations, so access cannot be allowed outside the police. The hospitals simply gave me the runaround and rambled something about medical confidentiality.”
“Thank you so much for your assistance, my dear attorney. I must thank you for waving your fee as well. I’ll get back to you as soon as I have something new.”
***
At the meeting held at the headquarters of Israeli police in Jerusalem, the general manager of Israel’s Internal Security ministry pulled all the stops in honor of the Minister of Science. No doubt being approached directly by the Minister of Internal Security had its desired impact. Moreover, it was hinted to the general manager that this was concerning a security matter.
“The Department of Forensics is at our basement floor. They have their instructions concerning your request.”
The head of the Forensics Branch was waiting for the minister in person and led him to the lab, where a young lab attendant gave him a cotton swab akin to a Q-tip. She asked him to leave an ample amount of saliva on the swab, which she then inserted into a hermetically closed plastic-wrap right after she wrote his donor ID number and other personal details. The lab attendant then told Bonnie the results of the test would arrive within a few days and promised to call the moment they did.
The head of Forensics called the minister several days later.
“Hello, minister. I wanted to call you and tell you in person. I actually do not know how to put it, as I am in the dark as to what you might expect, but the results of your DNA test came out negative.”
“What does that mean?” The honorable minister asked, nervously.
“It means there’s no match between the sample you’ve given us and the samples on record in the police’s DNA bank.”
***
The Director General of the Ministry of Health was more reserved. “Look, minister, in Israel, the hospitals operate independently of the Health Ministry. They don’t like it when we bureaucrats meddle in medical matters.”
“But this is not a medical matter,” Bonnie replied. “This is an administrative issue, a procedural matter. Besides, let’s not forget they do depend on the Ministry as far as budgets are concerned.”
The director general grimaced. “First of all, access to biodata banks is a strictly medical matter. Secondly, if you are alluding to pressuring them for assistance by bringing up the matter of budgets, forget it. One Deputy Minister already went that road and it did not end well. Anyway, let me see what I can do to help you.”
Ten days later, the Director General of the Ministry of Health was on the phone again.
“Just as I thought, the hospitals are not too keen to collaborate. Apart from that, we have a practical issue. Turns out the hospitals have a tissue bank rather than a DNA bank. Producing DNA out of these tissue samples is an expensive process, and it serves no medical purpose. In certain sporadic cases, when there is a specific requirement for DNA, they do derive the DNA from the relevant sample. The bottom line is this: the hospitals do not have the technical capacity to draw the comparison you’ve requested.”
***
The minister sat on the veranda in his comfortable chair and wondered what to do next. ‘At least my father never got into trouble with the police.’ He tried to calm himself, realizing this was the first time he had referred to the mysterious figure as ‘my father.’ ‘But that’s hardly comforting,’ he told himself. ‘The police’s DNA has hundreds of thousands of individual samples, but there are millions more worldwide.’
Bonnie went back to his parents’ bedroom, where he has not been since he had completed going over his mother’s papers. He combed her school-day diaries. ‘That’s a dead end,’ he told himself. ‘Nothing but memorabilia from her youth.’ He found the office envelope bearing his mother’s familiar handwriting. It said, “Personal letters.” That was the envelope he and Michal had found in the dresser’s bottom drawer. The disappointment he and his sister felt when they discovered the envelope was empty had gotten more intense since. ‘What did it contain? Why did she keep those letters? And if she did keep them, why did she hide them? And when? So, what did she do with them?’ It was clear to Bonnie the letters held the solution to the questions that were engulfing him, but they were gone.
He went over to the dresser, picked it up and laid it on the sofa, in search of secret compartments. He pulled the drawers out and took the bottom apart. Nothing. He removed the back panel and checked the sides. Still nothing. Bonnie returned to his favorite chair, disappointed and exhausted. Right before he dozed off, he had this dim, flickering memory. He got up, went over to his own house, entered the laundry room, which was adjacent to the bathroom, where he found a pile of dirty clothes. He pulled his plaid shirt, which had been waiting a long time to go in the washer, out of the pile and looked through his pocket. ‘Got it.’
It was that same used envelope he had picked up from his mother’s bedroom floor when he had put the papers together. Absent-minded as he had been at the time, he had inadvertently put a few papers in it without fully grasping their contents. He pulled out a few documents. The top paper had a copy of the following telegram:
“Please be so kind as to provide the details of the young man who was hospitalized in your ward on October 17th after a car accident on the road from Sithonia to Thessaloniki. I would like to pass on to him a personal item he forgot with me.”
The letter, which was addressed to Hypocratio Hospital, Thessaloniki, bore the date 22 October 1979.
It was as though Bonnie was struck by lightning. He was covered in cold sweat and on the verge of fainting. He picked up the telephone in a trembling hand and called Michal, his sister.
“I am coming to see you!”
“Is something the matter?” Michal wasn’t accustomed to spontaneous visits from Bonnie, let alone on a regular weekday afternoon.
“Yes! I’ll tell you when I get there.”
“But I am in the middle of my errands. Besides, I hear on the radio there are huge traffic jams. I was thinking of coming to see you anyway tomorrow evening. Can we put it off until then?”
“No. We have to meet,” he slammed the receiver and hung up.
Just as his sister had warned him, Bonnie reached her house, usually a drive of about half an hour from his home, only after an hour and twenty minutes. He was all hot and bothered coming in. Before he even sat down on the chair Michal offered him, he exclaimed, “I’m sure Mom had an affair in Thessaloniki.”
“Are you trying to be funny? What will you tell me next? That Mom was the world champion in the women’s 100-metre dash?”
“Here. Read this,” he tossed the letter at her.
Michal read it. “I don’t see what this means...”
“What don’t you get? I was borne in June 1980.”
“Wow!” That was the only word Michal was able to utter.
“I just don’t see what Mom has to do with Thessaloniki,” he said.
Michal was wrapped in thought. “Listen, many years ago, I got a letter from some woman in Thessaloniki. She asked about Mom and told me she was a distant cousin of hers. She also wrote that she was one of the guests at Mom and Dad’s wedding, but unfortunately, Mom cut off all ties with her and never answered any of her letters. When I told Mom about the letter I had received from this woman, Mom told me she was a pest. That was the precise word Mom used, ‘pest.’”
“Do you happen to have this letter?” Bonnie asked nervously.
“Why would I? I’m not in the habit of hanging on to letters that aren’t important. But hang on.”
Michal went over to her study and came back a few minutes later with an envelope marked ‘Condolence telegrams – Dad.’ She produced several of them from the envelope.
“Here. Got it!”
The telegram was brief:
“So sorry for your loss, may Avram rest in peace.” The telegram had the sender’s name: Cl
audia Panov, 46 Demetrius St., Thessaloniki.
“She didn’t send a letter of condolence about Mom. I don’t even think she knows Mom’s dead.”
Bonnie snatched the letter.
“What are you going to do with it?” she asked him.
“What do you think? I’m going to see her!”
“But Bonnie, you have to bear in mind that Mom treated her unkindly. Moreover, you mustn’t forget that this Claudia person is no longer a young woman...”
Bonnie’s drive back to his home in the village took precisely thirty minutes.
Chapter Nineteen
Claudia was waiting for Bonnie in her beautiful apartment overlooking Hagios Demetrios (the Church of Saint Demetrius) in the center of Thessaloniki. She was both expectant and wary ahead of the meeting, which Bonnie had established a few days earlier. He had called her, explained who he was and told her he had received her phone number from the Greek consulate in Jerusalem.
“How is Esther doing?” she asked Bonnie on the phone.
“She died about a month ago,” he replied. He felt she was taken aback at this. He could almost feel the tears running down her cheeks.
“Yes, we’re all in tears,” he added. “I would very much like to see you.”
She was excited to invite him over to her home and set the meeting for the following week.
He was now standing at her doorstep, and after the customary greeting and hello kiss, he handed her the gift he had brought over from Israel, a decorated wooden box with a bottle of oil from the Galilee, a wine bottle from the Golan and a box of the choicest medjool dates from Israel’s Arava district, south of the Dead Sea.
“Tell me how she died.” Claudia asked Bonnie. “She was so young... Oh, how I’ve missed her,”
“That terrible illness. Fortunately, it was only a short time from the moment the discovered she had it until she died. Mother didn’t suffer a whole lot and she did die with her family at her bedside. She died three years after burying her husband.”
Deadly Ties Page 12