by Batya Gur
But Niva remained unflappable. She smiled slightly and said, “Oh, yeah? And a man would have pulled it off better?”
In the meantime, Hannah Cohen could be seen and heard on the factory roof; at the bottom of the screen ran the caption, FROM OUR ARCHIVES, an overlay to an earlier caption: HANNAH COHEN, HULIT BOTTLE FACTORY, SOUTHERN ISRAEL. “Every morning for six months I’ve been coming to his office like a dog, I say, ‘Pay us our wages, this isn’t charity, it’s for the work we’ve done,’ and he, he says, ‘Come back tomorrow, come back tomorrow.’ Well, that’s it, there are no more tomorrows! They sit in their villas, they drive Volvos, and we don’t have food for our kids. No more tomorrows—what am I supposed to give my kids to eat?” People could be seen at the foot of the building, gazing up at the roof. Next, the screen showed policemen knocking at the door to the roof and threatening to break it down if the protesters tried to block it with their bodies, until finally the policemen did break the door down and the protesters were pushed backward. Some were shouting, “Don’t you dare come closer,” and others were hollering, “We’ll burn down the factory,” and in the ensuing tumult Hannah Cohen could be seen being shoved backward with the rest of the protesters, trying to maintain her balance as two policemen pressed toward her; in the next frame she was shown falling from the roof.
“Sir, would you like to comment on what we have just seen here?” Nehemia asked the Finance Ministry’s director general, whose eyes were downcast.
There was silence in the newsroom for a moment until Elmaliah the cameraman, who was standing next to the water dispenser pouring sugar into a Styrofoam cup of coffee, said, “What are they showing this stuff now for? Always trying to stir up a scandal!”
“What do you want?” Niva said. “I think it’s actually good that they’re showing it!” She glanced at the large clock on the wall, stuck her hand into her black leather bag, and thrashed around inside it, without looking, until she succeeded in fishing out her mobile phone. “Mother,” she chided after a quick automatic dial, “why didn’t you call me? When did you get home?”
“As if it’s going to have some effect on someone,” Tzippi said from her post in the doorway. “No one gives a damn.”
“So don’t go out anymore,” Niva chastised her mother loudly, “do you hear me? Mother, I am asking you: do not leave the house.” She returned her phone to her bag, sighed, looked around to see whether there had been witnesses to this conversation, shook her head, and raised her eyes to the monitor.
“Hey, hey, look what’s happening there!” Erez shouted, pointing at the Channel Two monitor. A policeman standing at the entrance to the tunnel was shouting into a megaphone. “Shimshi, I’m coming in alone, just me. Look at me.” In the background stood an older, bearded man peering from behind the trucks parked near the tunnel entrance. The Channel Two correspondent was broadcasting in a whisper, as if he were filling a few dead moments in a soccer game, since the strikers had just explained that they had nothing more to lose and if the police entered they would blow themselves up along with the labor minister, her driver, and her car. “To quote him precisely,” the correspondent reported, “strike leader Moshe Shimshi told police that if they enter the tunnel, ‘the only thing they’ll find is dead bodies,’ and, uh, just a minute,” he said, his voice rising. “It appears there are new developments.” Suddenly the studio interview on Channel One was interrupted, and Zohar appeared on the screen, shivering in a military parka, a scarf wrapped around his neck. He was standing at the entrance to the tunnel, pillars of black smoke in the background, and speaking into the microphone. “As you can see, the strikers are burning tires at the opening of the tunnel. They are demanding to meet with Danny Benizri, the Channel One correspondent, whom they wish to make their representative during negotiations. They are burning tires and threatening to blow themselves up. The life of the minister for labor and social affairs is still endangered.”
“What was that? What was that? What did he say?” Hefetz shouted, astonished. “What is it they want?”
“Exactly what you heard: they want Danny Benizri to represent them in negotiations with the government,” Erez said.
“I’m going down to the recording studio,” Hefetz said as he dashed out of the newsroom. Zadik opened his mouth to say something, but in the end merely followed suit after Hefetz.
Hefetz stood behind the control panel, looking into the studio through the large glass partition, Zadik at his side. Both saw the look of astonishment on Nehemia’s face as the three men watched and listened to Zohar. “Did you hear what he said?” Nehemia called out to the partition. At the same instant Danny Benizri rose to his feet, quickly disconnected the microphone from his shirt collar, and stood at the doorway of the studio.
“Danny,” Nehemia said, alarmed, “where are you going?” Benizri did not respond as he removed his jacket from a hanger at the door to the studio. “Danny,” Nehemia called out to him, “you can’t just pick up and leave in the middle of a broadcast!” On-screen the policeman with the megaphone was calling Shimshi. “Don’t break contact with us. If we bring Benizri, will you let him come in?”
Danny Benizri left the studio and passed through to the control room.
“Where exactly do you think you’re going?” Hefetz asked him, but—unbeknownst to Hefetz—Zadik had already confirmed it with a nod of his head and Dalit, the editor, had left her chair and was running after him with a monitor and lighting. “You’re not going anywhere!” Hefetz bellowed, but Danny Benizri was already on his way out. Just then the phone rang with a request that Zadik return to his office, since the department heads were already waiting to begin their meeting with him.
At the entrance to his office, Rubin was waiting for him, an accusatory look on his face; Natasha stood behind him in the hallway as if she were his shadow. “No way,” Zadik said, “I don’t have time now. You saw what’s going on,” he said, scolding Rubin. “Matty,” he called to Matty Cohen, who had just entered the secretary’s office.
Matty Cohen cast a look of misery at Aviva. “I didn’t hear about Tirzah until now, when I came into the building and saw the death notices. I didn’t know anything about it. Zadik, I’ve got to have a word with you—”
“Take a number,” Zadik said with a sigh. “I don’t know what’s with all you people today. We’ve got a meeting.”
“Zadik,” Matty Cohen said, breathing heavily and wiping the sweat from his ruddy jowls with his hand, “I’ve got to talk to you for a minute.” He looked around suspiciously, grabbed Zadik by the arm, and whispered, “Or with someone from the Police Department, it’s about something…I…last night…” Zadik, too, looked around, taking in the department heads standing in the doorway; the head of Maintenance was already in the office making himself a cup of coffee, while Max Levin and Inspector Eli Bachar were on their way to a side office that Aviva had requisitioned for them.
“Okay,” Zadik said to Matty Cohen. “But just for one short minute, and then we’ve got to get this meeting started. Come, step outside.”
They stood in the hallway. Matty Cohen peered toward the stairway and to the far end of the hallway, as if to verify that no one could hear them. “Listen,” he said, a note of urgency in his voice. “Last night I came to the String Building, I was on my way up to the roof to put a stop to the filming, Benny Meyuhas’s project, but in the end I didn’t get there because my kid, the little one, you know, I’ve told you, he’s got spastic bronchitis, my wife didn’t know what to do and I had to get him to the emergency room. That’s why I didn’t hear anything about Tirzah until I came in this morning and saw the death notices.”
Zadik looked at him, impatient. “But what’s this got to do with Tirzah? And what have you got to tell the police?”
“That’s just it, I…” Matty Cohen hesitated, passing his hand over his huge belly. For a moment they could hear only the voices that burst forth from the television screens in every room, sentence fragments from which they could discern c
ertain words, like “Hulit factory”; Zadik caught wind of Danny Benizri’s name alongside Matty Cohen’s noisy, quickened breaths. Cohen whispered, “I think I saw Tirzah there, next to the scenery flats. I was walking up above, you know, on the catwalk toward the roof, I was holding on to the railing, and I looked down,…I saw her with someone, I’m almost certain it was Tirzah, not completely sure but almost, and there was someone there with her, a man or a woman, I only heard Tirzah saying, ‘No, no, no.’”
“What time was this?” Zadik asked.
“I can tell you exactly, since I told you that because of my kid…my wife called just then…a minute later she phoned, and that was at ten minutes to twelve. She’d said right from the start that I was crazy for going out in such bad weather in the middle of the night to catch them filming, as if…”
Zadik suddenly felt weak, and leaned against the wall. In a shaky voice he said, “Ten minutes to twelve? Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. I told you, my wife phoned just then.”
“But they say that she apparently died at around twelve,” Zadik said, thinking aloud. “You understand, that means that…it’s as though…but you’re not certain it was Tirzah you saw?”
“No, not completely,” Matty Cohen admitted. “Fairly certain, but I don’t know who…”
“So let’s forget about it for a little while,” Zadik advised. “Later, after the meeting, we’ll talk about it, maybe we need to…but then the police will be all over the place here and…let’s wait a bit…”
“Zadik,” Aviva called out to the hallway, clearly displeased, from her desk just outside his office. “Everyone’s waiting in there. What should I tell them?”
CHAPTER THREE
If you don’t pull your head out of your own heap of garbage, you’ll never know what’s happening on your own street—even if you are a smart guy like Shimshi,” Rachel Shimshi announced. “When he’s stuck in his own shit he can’t see nothing.” She tightened her grip on Esty’s arm and pulled her down next to her at the edge of the sofa. Of the five women gathered in front of the television in her living room silently watching black clouds of smoke encircle Danny Benizri as he stood at the entrance to the tunnel, Rachel was most worried about Esty—not only because she was pregnant after a string of troubles that had made them think she would never be able to give birth, but because of the promise she had made to Adele. During Adele’s last days, when she was barely able to utter a word, Rachel had promised to watch over her daughter.
Esty shook off Rachel Shimshi’s grip, stood up from the sofa, and, pointing at the television, shouted, “Let go of me! Do you see what’s going on here?”
“No one here’s blind, we all see what’s going on,” Rachel Shimshi said, her eyes on the black smoke pouring from the tunnel that had completely engulfed Danny Benizri. Years earlier, Danny Benizri had visited their home, had eaten with them, and because of that Shimshi thought he was on their side and had specially requested his presence, alone. When Rachel had awoken at two a.m. and found Shimshi dressing in the dark like a thief, she had tried to stop him. She told him there was no point to it. She still couldn’t calm down when she thought about how he had tried to get out of the house without her noticing, how he had taken his clothes into the kitchen and dressed there; he had even placed his shoes in the hall, thinking he would manage to leave without waking her. Shimshi didn’t want trouble. But a woman, even if she’s only given birth to one baby, is never able to get a decent night’s sleep again. And if you’ve raised six children, well, forget it, one ear is always open, listening for their cries. Ever since they were born, she’s heard every little noise. Noise? Even when there’s no noise at all, it’s enough that somebody just shifts in his bed. On tiptoe, barefoot, Shimshi went to the kitchen. He didn’t even drink coffee or turn on the light. How many times had she told him there was no point to waging war, that the owners of the factory would win out, as always: the rich get richer from every little thing, it’s only the poor that get screwed. How many times had she told him that it was a waste of time, that they’d already lost everything anyway, that they were better off getting their severance pay and taking their chances. But Shimshi, he couldn’t give in, especially not him: he was the local union leader; he had to set a good example. But why did he have to take Avram with him, with Esty here, pregnant, after so many troubles? And not just Avram: he’d taken four trucks from the factory.
Ever since Shimshi had left home that night—with the expression he’d had on his face when she caught him, she would have thought he was headed for some other woman if she didn’t know him so well—she’d had this movie in her head, something starring Clint Eastwood she’d seen a while back. She couldn’t remember the name of the film, but these scenes kept playing again and again where this guy does things his own way, even if it means he’ll die for it, die fighting the scoundrels. That’s what they certainly were, scoundrels, she knew it for sure, all those politicians in the government, and that labor minister—it’s clear the woman would never lift a finger to help anybody. Rachel had told Shimshi “over my dead body” and had tried lying in front of the door, and if he’d tried to fight with her, she would have managed to stop him for sure with her fingernails. But Shimshi was no fool. He knew her too well. He refused to fight; instead, he got down on his knees next to the door and said, in his quietest voice, “Rachel, do me a favor, I don’t have a choice. If I don’t do this I won’t even have my honor left. Try to understand, this is bigger than everything, bigger than paying the electricity bill.” She could not stop him. He did not want to tell her what exactly they were planning; she thought they were going to shut themselves up inside the factory. But now, what she was watching on television, well, she’d had no idea they were talking about dynamite and blowing up the tunnel and kidnapping the minister. Not a clue. Nothing, either, about wanting Danny Benizri there. But Shimshi had looked at her in that particular way he had, and she no longer had the heart to give him more trouble than he already had—and anyway, she understood it wouldn’t do her any good.
It was high time to empty the ashtrays and make some more tea. Rachel Shimshi narrowed her eyes to slits: the television people were stalling for time, while here, all the girls were waiting for her, like she was their leader or something. As if it wasn’t enough already that her husband headed the union. Fanny, tugging at the ends of her yellow hair and patting her baby’s back even though he had already quieted down, smoked cigarette after cigarette. Esty, too, with that big belly; even after she’d finally gotten pregnant she didn’t stop smoking. And Rosie, with her legs swollen from diabetes. If you looked at them, all you would see was—there was no denying it—a sorry bunch of women. And the children, what would be with them? Better not to say a word about what she thought about that, what would happen to their children. She already knew what would become of their men, whether Danny Benizri managed to help them or not: they would wind up in jail, every last one of them. Her Shimshi and Fanny’s Gerard and Simi’s Meir and Esty’s Avram. To leave behind a woman in her first pregnancy after all those troubles and run off in the middle of the night with a bunch of old men who have nothing to lose; that’s what she herself said to Shimshi when she caught him trying to slip out of the house at two in the morning without her noticing, thinking she’s some old lady who doesn’t hear well anymore. You’re an old man, she’d told him, you don’t have the strength for these kinds of wars anymore. That’s exactly why, he’d answered: because I’m old I have nothing to lose. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand him: and how she understood him. But when a guy like him, with his intelligence, someone who cared about his kids and grandkids, about little Dudy just one month away from his bar mitzvah; how could he have planned all that—fire and smoke, kidnapping the labor minister—without breathing a word of it to her? Only someone bent on self-destruction would kidnap the minister of labor and social affairs and set an ultimatum for blowing himself and everything else up. Here in her living room the girls are shout
ing. What are they shouting about? she wonders. Only God can help them now, only He knows what will happen.
In the backseat of the mobile communications van speeding toward the Jerusalem–Etzion Bloc bypass road, Danny Benizri changed out of his blue shirt and into a black turtleneck he had in his bag, calculating that he had twenty minutes until he would be on the air again, twenty minutes until they would reach the tunnel. In those twenty minutes he would have to have a word with Tikvah, and calm his mother down. He knew he could not appear too elegant or self-satisfied; that would come off very badly on-screen if he were reporting from the field or even inside the tunnel, with all those explosives and everything. He was glad he had his khaki windbreaker along; it looked good, as though in the hustle-bustle of an emergency he had not had time to get it all together. Before he had even finished shoving his arm into his sleeve, his cell phone rang and he knew exactly what to expect. “What is it, Tikvah? What’s wrong?” he asked, feigning ignorance, because perhaps she had not heard the news yet and did not know what was happening. For a long moment he listened to the cries of Danny-I’m-so-frightened she managed to slip in between sobs, and then said, “Tikvah, calm down. First of all, calm down. Pretty soon the baby will start crying too. Oh, there, she’s started up, see what you’ve done? There’s nothing to be frightened about, you know Shimshi and his whole family, they won’t do a thing to me. Not to me or anybody else.”
For a moment she stopped wailing, but she reminded him what Shimshi had said on television, how he had threatened to blow himself up with everyone.