by Batya Gur
“Twelve weeks,” said Michael.
“In her third . . . no, fourth month?!” exclaimed Linda. “She even . . . As if . . . She wasn’t thinking of having an abortion?”
Michael said nothing.
“If she were intending to have an abortion, with whom would she have spoken?” insisted Netanel Bashari.
Linda shrugged her shoulders. “I thought with me, even if she didn’t . . . I didn’t even know that she . . .”
“You didn’t know she had someone?”
“It’s not my fault.” Linda sobbed again. “I didn’t . . . She didn’t say anything to me, and only a week ago I asked whether there was someone who . . . and she laughed. You know how she laughs instead of speaking.”
She looked at Netanel and suddenly covered her mouth with her hand as if she had suddenly remembered something that scared her, but Michael was already in the momentum of talking, and he said: “In all the years that you knew her—such a pretty and lively girl—didn’t you know about any romantic connection with anyone in particular?”
“She . . . She . . .” Linda O’Brian looked at the two of them. “She had . . .” She hesitated. “She had . . . How can I say this? She had problems with . . . I don’t want to talk about it,” she said suddenly.
“We’re done with discretion,” said Netanel angrily. “She’s dead. Do you understand?”
“Problems with her sexuality . . . I thought . . . Actually, I thought . . . She hinted that she had someone she was sort of waiting for, but she didn’t say more than that. At first I thought she had a married man, and then when I saw there was no progress . . . or any signs . . . I thought that either she was a lesbian, or frigid. I thought maybe she couldn’t be with a man.” She spoke the last words hurriedly.
“Lesbian?!” shouted Netanel. “How could you think . . . Lesbian?! There was nothing masculine about her and . . . all that beauty, and her femininity . . .”
Linda O’Brian said nothing.
Michael leaned toward Linda. “What did you want to say before? What did you remember?”
“It wasn’t anything imp . . . She . . . I . . . Lately she had a relationship . . . but not really . . . with someone who . . .”
“Who? With whom did she have a relationship?” demanded Netanel harshly.
“Not a relationship-relationship. I don’t think it was anything romantic, she just . . . saw him a few times. He isn’t for her at all, nothing serious. She just went out with . . . with Moshe Avital,” whispered Linda.
The sound that came out of Netanel Bashari’s mouth was somewhere between a growl and a snort: “He had something with her, too?” he asked scornfully, but his heavy breathing disclosed great anger.
“What do you mean ‘too’?’” answered Linda heatedly. “How many times have I told you that he’s nothing to me, that he’s just so . . . that it’s so hard for him with the story with his daughter . . . And actually he came to me to talk about Zahara. He’s very—”
Netanel interrupted her. “That man cannot take his hands off . . . He . . . Anything that moves—he just needs to see a skirt. You should see him,” he said to Michael. “What a . . . He looks like a cross between Kermit the Frog and Walter Matthau, that actor. He . . . His suits and his Rover . . . An ugly man, vain and full of himself—and he had something going with Zahara?”
“That’s not how it is,” said Linda quietly. “So maybe he’s not a handsome man, but he’s a charming man, and I feel sorry for him, and he developed a very special relationship with Zahara. Did you know he has a retarded daughter? And twice a week he goes to the institution where she—”
“What did he have with Zahara?” insisted Netanel. “That’s what I want to know. I want to know if he’s the one who . . . who got her pregnant, if he—”
“She didn’t say anything about the pregnancy, and if he . . . I don’t know. He really is a man who loves women and they . . . the women . . . they love him.”
“I can’t listen to this bullshit anymore.” Netanel Bashari stood up. “First a lesbian and frigid and now Moshe Avital. There’s a limit!” he shouted, and stuck his hands in his pockets and strode over to the window that looked out on the back garden and turned around and came back from there as if planning to walk up and down the small room.
“You’ll have to come in to make an official statement and tell us everything you know,” said Michael after a long moment.
“Okay,” Linda said, and turned her face away from Netanel. Michael left the room.
“Like wildfire,” said Sergeant Yair, looking out between the two panels of the curtain. “How long has it been since you went into the room with them? An hour? Two hours? Not longer, and now the whole world is outside here . . . Look at how many people there are, and how many reporters!”
“So what’s new? It’s always like that,” said Tzilla. “When we get called, they come too. Either they were listening to the frequency or one of the neighbors said something. Before you go out, you should know,” she said to Michael, who was about to open the front door. “The whole neighborhood is outside the house, masses of people. Just so you’ll know.”
“Get me all the material that’s been in the newspapers over the past two or three years about the Yemenites’ commissions,” said Michael, who was still mulling over things he had heard from the brothers, espe cially Netanel.
“What?” she wondered. “What material? About what? What does that have to do with . . .”
“Sorry. I meant that whole business with the hearings and the commissions about the kidnapped babies and also about Rabbi Meshullam, the one who . . .”
“Okay. I got it. I’m not retarded. You don’t have to explain to me who Rabbi Meshullam is,” bridled Tzilla.
“Sorry,” Michael said, and stared distractedly out the door at the front yard. It was the twilight hour before the beginning of the holiday, yet there were four mature women standing near the fence that separated the two parts of the house, almost right on top of one another and their heads bent low. One of them—in a housecoat and a faded kerchief, the one who had been beating the rug a few hours ago—was explaining something to the others in a low voice, and immediately they all stared at the door to the Basharis’ house again.
“You don’t say!” cried the most elderly of the woman, her back bent nearly double, her crooked fingers twisting a plastic bag from which milk or yogurt was dripping onto the stone path.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” answered the woman with the kerchief shrilly. “Just exactly what I’m saying.” Her voice rose. “You know me, Mrs. Sima, that I don’t lie,” and all four of them looked into the neighboring yard. “You just remember what I said,” the woman with the kerchief chided them, and glanced rapidly left and right, like a bird checking out its surroundings before it dives on a worm, until her eyes fell on Michael and Tzilla and Sergeant Yair, who was standing behind the other two. She stared at them a moment inquisitively and immediately made a decision.
“Excuse me, sir, excuse me,” she said quickly, and hurried over to them. “Is it true what they’re saying? Did they really strangle Zahara? Is it true that they broke her neck? It’s a pervert or an . . . Is it true that first they . . . ?” A blush suffused the pinkish birthmark at the corner of her lips, and her light eyes darted back and forth and her voice shrank to a whisper. “Is it true that they raped her? Those Arabs who were working in the building . . .”
Michael waved his arm and hurried down the path, ignoring the scores of people who were standing on the sidewalk in front of the house, whispering and exchanging bits of information. At a glance he took in the alarmed face of a blonde woman in her sixties; her yellow hair was twisted into a bun in a way that looked familiar to him, but he couldn’t remember from where. She stopped her Subaru in front of the house and got out, her left hand fingering her pearl necklace as if seeking something to hold on to there, and her right hand covering her mouth as if to hold back a scream. With slow steps, a young girl also got out o
f the car, and pulled the miniskirt she was wearing down over her exposed thighs. The older woman pulled her by the arm and hurried toward the gate. “What happened?” she asked in a trembling voice.
“Mrs. Beinisch,” the woman in the kerchief called out loudly. “Don’t ask, Mrs. Beinisch.” Michael did not linger to hear what came next, but hurried over to the white Toyota that had its motor running and the blue lamp flashing on its roof. Behind the wheel sat Eli Bachar, looking around and pursing his lips. His hand dangled out the window and his fingers drummed on the white metal. And Michael, as he hastened to the door on the other side, then noticed who was coming quickly down the street: a tall, thin man in a thin jacket and a faded peaked cap, and with him the awkward little girl in the blue sweat suit. With her right hand she was tugging at the dog, until she raised her head and stared hypnotized at the flashing blue light. The man’s face was wrinkled, but his blue eyes shone with a positive glint even when he squinted into the setting sun. As Eli Bachar noticed him, the expression on his face changed suddenly, and Michael tried to conciliate him for the prolonged wait.
“Hello, Eli,” said the man, who stepped into the street and came up to the driver’s window, and in English with a British accent said that he heard a tragedy had occurred and asked if they really, as Nessia said—he pointed to the girl—had murdered Zahara. Eli Bachar, who opened the car door and stepped out, grasped the man’s arm and pulled him back onto the sidewalk. “Careful, Peter,” Michael heard him say. “More people are killed in traffic accidents here than by anything else. Why are you walking in the street?”
“Nessia here,” said the man, touching the girl’s wiry hair as she shrank back momentarily from his touch, “tells me that they found Zahara dead. Is that so?”
“Yes,” answered Eli Bachar with a severe expression. “She was murdered. Why? Did you know her?”
Apologetically, Peter said that he wasn’t acquainted with everyone in the neighborhood—he knew a few faces and had heard a few stories he had heard from Yigal (“That’s his boyfriend. He lives in his apartment,” whispered Eli to Michael)—but he knew Zahara through his daughter, Linda. He met people mostly at the grocery store, he said, which to him was like a country club where you heard everything. Three young women, one in tight pants and a sweater and two in long dresses, also approached the car, and on the sidewalk near the house a few onlookers gathered and spoke softly. A tot with a runny nose pulled at his mother, who said something to her neighbor, and the two women stared at the police car and immediately crossed the street with the little boy.
“Excuse me,” said one of the women to Eli Bachar. “We think that something needs to be said to the residents of the neighborhood. We simply want to know what has happened here, because we have small children and if, like we’ve heard, there’s a serial murderer or a rapist wandering around here, we have to know, and it’s your job to inform us. Maybe you should assemble everyone at the Community Center and tell them officially, so that there won’t be this alienation between the public and the authorities.”
From the expression on Eli Bachar’s face, it was obvious that he was intending to say something sarcastic, but he looked at Peter and changed his mind. “We aren’t able to explain anything at this time,” he answered her politely. “For now, all that can be said is that a resident of the neighborhood has been murdered, and I don’t know who’s been talking here about serial murderers and rapists, and it’s a very good idea not to fan such rumors, which only frighten people unnecessarily.”
He glanced quickly at Michael, and without a smile he added: “Keeping a close eye on the children is always a good idea.”
“We,” said the second woman, smoothing her ponytail with her hand, “have been working very hard to make this neighborhood a pleasant place to live, to develop a community spirit and to organize all kinds of activities, both social and cultural, so as to foster a spirit of openness and acceptance of the Other. And now all of a sudden there are all kinds of rumors that there’s been a murder in the political context—”
“What do mean ‘political’?” asked Eli Bachar as if he didn’t understand, to gain time.
“No, not political, I mean in the security context,” the first woman clarified, and pulled the hem of her shirt down over a skirt that was so long it swept the ground. “People here are beginning to talk about Arabs and how they mustn’t be allowed into the neighborhood,” she explained, and Michael looked at her freckled face and at the ends of the long hair that flowed over her large, droopy breasts. He looked at the embroidered cloth shoulder bag with silver inlays that had lost their brightness and down to her heavy clogs and her woolen socks, and then he looked up at the sky, which was becoming gray, and asked himself whether it was going to rain soon. With half an ear he heard the other woman add to her friend’s bitterness: “Because if Palestinians are involved in this, then we really wouldn’t want an atmosphere of lynching to develop here. It isn’t clear yet who did it, right?”
Eli Bachar nodded. “Not yet,” he said with restrained aggression.
“At our house we have Palestinian workers and we’re renovating now, and also because of our political outlook we’re worried. I, for example, am a ceramicist by profession, and I hold a class in my studio, voluntarily, for children from the village of Oum Tubbeh. Are you familiar with it? It’s the village opposite Har Homah, and the class is for children from there and children from our neighborhood, a ceramics class, and we”—she indicated her companion and the group of people across the street—“we’re academics and artists and intellectuals and we have no interest in the rumor mill and the political incitement. It was exactly against this sort of thing that we founded the movement—we’re a secular and non-party movement,” she elucidated, “Citizens for the Other. We are for rapprochement with the Other. Probably you’ve heard of us, because we were fed up with Peace Now in this context and . . . Never mind. People come to our meetings from all sectors, all social classes and also from the Movement for Quality Government and—”
Eli Bachar gave Michael a long-suffering look. Michael sighed and reluctantly got out of the car and stood facing the women. “At the moment,” he interrupted the speaker, “we are pursuing the initial clarification, and we are unable to . . . Perhaps later on it’s a very good idea to organize a meeting. We’ll consider it. Did you know Zahara Bashari?”
“Only . . . Not personally. I heard her sing once,” the woman replied, and her friend, who was rolling strands of faded brown hair between her fingers, looked at her and took a long breath as if she was about to speak. But Michael had already held up his palms in a gesture of helplessness and said quietly, “That’s it for now,” and he waited until they turned away in demonstrable disappointment, then watched them as they crossed the street to rejoin the group of people.
“Look at those people. They have it too good in life,” said Eli Bachar. “They have no problems except uniting the neighborhood. It’s too bad Balilty isn’t here. He could have said: ‘Those people, they’re all of them leftists. You spit on them and they say ‘“rain,”’ he’d say, and ‘I thought because of this new intifada all those leftists had realized something, but I can see that they haven’t understood a damn thing.’”
The dog pulled at the leash and the girl was dragged after it to the apartment block. Next to the fence she stopped and looked at the shiny red Toyota that had just parked behind the dusty Ford. The little girl gazed at the driver with admiration and awe; he smoothed the sleeves of his blue blazer and with the fingernail of his pinky he flicked a crumb off the edge of his gray tie.
“I’d like to introduce you,” Eli Bachar said, and held out a hand toward the man in the peaked cap. “This is Peter O’Brian, whom I’ve told you about. You remember? I told you, I met him that evening he came to talk to our discussion group. He lives in the neighborhood, up there.” Eli indicated the other side of Bethlehem Street with his head.
“Oh yes, I remember you told me. Pleased to meet you,”
said Michael as he shook Peter O’Brian’s hand. Out of the corner of his eye he examined the driver of the Toyota, who dragged his legs as if after an effort of long driving and pressed the key ring he held. The car emitted a prolonged whistle, and only when it had stopped and he’d straightened his hair with his hand did he turn his attention to the bustle and cross the street at a run and push open the iron gate to the house next door.
“Me too. Eli has told me about you,” said Peter. “He wanted us to meet, right?”
“We’ll get together. Yes, we’ll get together. Maybe we’ll take him out for a hummus,” Eli said, looking at Michael expectantly.
“Delighted. When we finish with all this, then I’d be delighted,” Michael muttered, and looked at the house across the street.
“Of course, of course,” Peter apologized, and straightened up, then added that when he was on sabbatical, he wanted to spend three months straight here, and he would be pleased to host Michael, because cooking was one of his greatest loves and they always had guests at their place. Michael interrupted him to ask whether he had seen the murder victim recently, and Peter replied in an apologetic stammer that he’d only just arrived two days earlier and hadn’t had the chance. All this time he held the little girl’s hand in his right hand and looked at her dog, who was pulling on the leash.
“Will you permit me to ask you something?” said Michael to the girl in a low voice. He leaned over her until he was looking right into the yellow circles that surrounded her pupils. Her Adam’s apple bobbed up and down and her lips trembled.
“Maybe you can help us. Really.”
She shrugged, nodded limply and looked at him expectantly.
“Do you live here, on this street?” he asked.
She nodded and pointed to the adjacent apartment block.
“It’s right across the way, so you certainly talked to Zahara on a number of occasions.”
“Not so much,” she said in a cloudy voice.