by Batya Gur
“I don’t understand what these additions are,” Eli Bachar said. “Does it mean he’s shooting the same scenes over again, or new ones?”
“Both, really, along with changes in the screenplay that require reshooting the scene.”
“I’ve heard he’s a perfectionist, Benny Meyuhas. Is that right?” Eli Bachar asked him.
“And how,” Matty Cohen said, then immediately felt he had said too much. The way Benny Meyuhas worked was nobody’s business outside of Israel Television.
“How much have you people invested in this production?” Balilty asked. “What’s the budget for a film like this?”
Matty Cohen hated answering that kind of question and especially disliked discussing the budget with people who had no need to know. “I don’t recall exactly,” he said at last. “A drama like this costs a lot to produce, believe me. But this isn’t connected to Tirzah’s accident…” He could feel his shirt growing damp with sweat. It was cold, and rain was falling outside, but inside this room it was too hot, he felt he was suffocating even though he had removed his necktie, folded it neatly, and stuck it inside his jacket pocket. He felt as though he were being choked, as if something had tightly encircled his neck. He did not say a word about how Benny Meyuhas had been shunted aside over the years, how he was only given the unimportant directing jobs: children’s programming and shows about religion, that sort of thing. He said nothing about the charitable foundation that had suddenly popped up from overseas, some anonymous benefactor with a fund for adapting the masterpieces of Hebrew literature to the screen. Were it not for that fund, Benny Meyuhas would never have been given the go-ahead to start with Agnon. But nothing was good enough for Meyuhas. He had used up all the foundation money as well as the entire budget for original drama.
Balilty was persistent. “How much is ‘a lot’? How much are we talking, a million? Two?” His eyes were twinkling, and it was clear he would never give up.
“I don’t exactly recall,” Matty Cohen answered. No one would force him to give out such information to no end. He was not the type to air dirty laundry in public.
Balilty would not let it go. “I’m asking ballpark, I’m not looking to quote you.”
It was clear this would never end. He had to tell him something. “Around two million.”
“Dollars or shekels?”
“Dollars, dollars, with productions we talk in dollars, but we write the budget in shekels.”
Balilty whistled.
“That’s not a large budget for a film,” Matty Cohen said defensively. “Overseas that’s small change, but here in Israel…”
But Balilty looked at Eli Bachar and said quietly, as though Matty Cohen could not hear, “Look what kind of money we’re talking about here. Did you hear that? This is no laughing matter: with sums like that, anything’s possible.”
“That’s not money that someone receives,” Matty Cohen explained. “That’s money for the film’s budget; no one gets his hands on it. Everyone’s on salary.”
Balilty did not respond, merely scribbled something on the paper he was holding, folded it, and said, “I’m asking you again: you don’t remember anything about what you saw down below? Who was with Tirzah? Anyway, correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t you agree that at that hour not just anybody could be standing there?”
Matty Cohen explained once again that when he had seen her, he was in a hurry, that he had been on his way out to the roof, and then afterwards, making his way back across the catwalk, he had peered down but could not stop to look because he was rushing home to take his son to the emergency room. All to no avail; nothing helped his cause.
“Don’t worry about it,” Balilty had said as he rose from his chair, “we’ll help you remember. Come with me, I’m taking you to someone who knows how to make you remember. We’ve got this guy, it’s like he fishes out your memories, he’s an expert in pulling them out from way down deep.”
Now this tall, thin man sitting across from him, whose angular knees were almost touching his own, was fingering his blond, wispy beard and tugging on his pointy nose. “Now just tell me, without giving it any thought: you must have seen his head. Was he wearing a hat? A skullcap?”
“I don’t think so,” Matty Cohen said as he wiped his face. A wave of cold passed through him, then the shivers, like symptoms of a high fever. His shirt was now completely wet with sweat, but he was cold, and slightly nauseous. His left shoulder was in pain and he had chest pains and he could feel the food rising in his stomach. But what had he eaten? A few cold bourekas and all that coffee. Still, he felt as if he had eaten something rotten.
“So he wasn’t wearing a hat. Was he bald, or did he have a head of hair?” Ilan Katz touched his own high forehead, readjusted his skullcap, tugged at his nose again. He reminded Matty Cohen of a picture of Pinocchio in a book he had had as a child.
“No, he wasn’t bald,” Matty Cohen said, feeling as though any minute he would vomit on the white paper attached to the clipboard perched on the jutting knees of the man sitting across from him.
“How about a skullcap?” Ilan Katz asked while penciling in hair on the taller of the two figures he had drawn. “Straight hair? Curly? Don’t think, just say whatever comes to mind. Quickly.”
“No skullcap,” Matty Cohen told him, mopping his sweaty face again. “Can we take a break? I’m not feeling so well.”
“We’re almost finished, we’re making great progress,” Ilan Katz assured him. The contours of Katz’s arm, which was moving rapidly across the page, dimmed, and suddenly Matty Cohen could see several arms in a blur moving up and down, and heard the voice, filled with excitement, as if from a great distance and behind a glass partition asking, “Curly hair or straight?”
“Straight, I think,” Matty Cohen said, forcing himself to sit up straight, grasping the sides of the wooden chair for support and breathing deeply, as if a deep breath might drive away the pain he was feeling in his chest. This was a pain he had come to recognize, not just from several years ago but from these past nights, a paralyzing pain, as if someone had clamped an enormous vise on the left side of his chest and was crushing and bending him; a pain that took his breath away, but which he hoped would pass quickly by itself, without anyone knowing what was happening to him.
“Good job, Matty. You’re doing great. Here we go, straight hair. What do you think? Dark or light?”
Matty Cohen did not respond. Because of the pain he was unable to speak, but the artist was oblivious. “Did you notice his legs? His shoes? Let’s try the legs. Were they long? Thin? What kind of shoes was he wearing?” Ilan Katz was ecstatic, completely unaware of the man’s labored breathing. Matty Cohen had placed his right hand on his chest.
Ilan Katz drummed his fingers, the pencil tightly pressed to the page in front of him. Suddenly he jumped up from his chair with a start, knocking it backward, and stood in front of Matty Cohen. “You’ve got to tell me quickly, we’ve got to strike while the iron’s hot, it only gets tougher over time. Memory doesn’t get better, only worse. Believe me, every hour we remember less.” He waved one long, slender, yellowed finger in front of Matty Cohen’s nose. “Something about his clothes. Was he wearing a coat? A suit jacket? A sweater? What?”
Matty could hear his own voice; it too sounded as though it were coming from far away. The words were flowing out of him: “No, no coat, I don’t…don’t…” Suddenly everything was spinning around him and the pain in his arm grew stronger and the one in his chest, too. Not a stabbing pain, but a prolonged one, as though someone were trampling him with a large foot…worse…as if…he were being smashed, something was smashing his chest, something huge, something of enormous strength—another minute, and he’d be hearing the snap of his own bones. He could hear mumbled voices, people were touching him, opening the buttons on his shirt. He was cold, cold and in pain. It became impossible to breathe anymore. Suddenly everything was a fog.
“Well, well, well, this is truly a surprise,” Zadik
said without a hint of joy at the sight of Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon in his doorway. “I never expected to see you here.” He rose from his chair, hastening to the door to greet him and blocking the way into his room. He cast an expectant look at Eli Bachar, but Eli Bachar, who had no intention of explaining why he had brought his commander along with him, returned his gaze with a blank look.
“I knew the police would get in here to ask questions,” Zadik sputtered, passing his hand over his stubbled gray chin. “But I never thought they’d sent their big star over.”
Michael Ohayon spread his arms as if to say, Look what’s been happening around here, what do you expect? “We’re here in the matter of the…accident involving Tirzah Rubin,” he said, casting a sidelong glance at Zadik’s clouded face. “And about another matter—”
“What matter?” Zadik asked. “Something that justifies your presence at Israel Television?”
Michael paused. They had not notified Zadik of Matty Cohen’s heart attack, and at the emergency meeting convened by the district commander and the commissioner of police—after they had summoned an ambulance and after it appeared that Matty Cohen’s heartbeat had stabilized, though he was still unconscious—Emmanuel Shorer had warned Balilty and Ilan Katz about what might be in store for them with regard to the family; he even mentioned the possibility of a lawsuit, and asked how it was that they had not discerned Matty Cohen’s condition. “Believe me, sir,” Balilty said, his hand on his heart, “there were no signs whatsoever. He was breathing with difficulty, but with the kind of weight that guy had on him…” Michael was well aware that Matty Cohen had complained about feeling unwell, but he remained silent. Eventually the commissioner of police cut the meeting short, reminding them all that this was not the time for investigating the matter, expressing hope that Matty Cohen would return to normal, and promising that they would engage in a proper discussion “when things settled down a bit.” He departed, leaving a whiff of threat behind him, which Emmanuel Shorer reinforced when he turned to Michael and instructed him to inform Zadik—with sensitivity and gentleness—what had happened to Matty Cohen “before we conduct our own internal inquiry into the matter.”
Eli Bachar, who was standing behind Michael, watched how Aviva moistened her lips until they were glossy, and left her pink tongue fluttering at their edges without once taking her large eyes, outlined in blue eye shadow, off Michael. Here again was proof of what Michael had always told him: No matter what situation people find themselves in, their true personality will always burst through and overcome the circumstances. Aviva would barely admit that she was searching for love, and would never acknowledge that she was looking for a husband. Some people think those are one and the same, but Eli Bachar knew better. There was no fooling him, he knew how to recognize the difference: a woman looking for love was less active about it than Aviva. Until Michael had shown up, she had been considering Eli Bachar for the role, but now he had suddenly been cast aside. If he looked at Michael through Aviva’s eyes, as if seeing him for the first time, like we look afresh sometimes at people close to us, people we’ve stopped really noticing, then he saw how impressive his height was, saw his youthful profile, how his short graying hair gave him a look of restrained austerity, how the dark eyes under the heavy brows gave him an air of mystery. Eli Bachar stole a glance at the arc of his aquiline nose—Eli’s wife Tzilla, who worked with them on one of the Special Investigations teams and did not care if she was a secretary or a coordinator as long as Michael was in charge, would call his nose “manly”—at his pronounced cheekbones, and at his slightly crooked chin. Tzilla had once remarked that “if it had had a cleft in it, he’d be a darker version of Kirk Douglas,” and Eli had never forgotten this remark, which even now, for a split second when he recalled his wife’s voice as she said it, awakened in him a spark of jealousy that he hastened to extinguish. He was incapable of jealousy toward Michael, the godfather of his children, after so many years in close proximity. After all, he, too, loved Michael, not only Tzilla. But there was no doubt about it, the man was what, forty-six, forty-seven? but he seemed ageless, and with just one look at him you knew he was a free agent, not tied down to anyone, that there was no woman in his life. You could tell by…well, Eli did not know just how. Maybe it was his gaze—lonely, severe—the way sometimes he would stare at a point just over the shoulder of the person he was talking to, the gaze that was now causing Aviva to take stock of herself in the compact mirror she kept in her drawer. Or maybe it was because of his smile, even though he wasn’t smiling just then, that special attention he gave to women, the way you could tell he wasn’t afraid of them. Eli noticed, too, the look Michael gave Aviva when he entered her office; he saw Michael’s eyes narrow for just an instant and knew that he was aware she was checking him out. Eli knew, too, that Michael had not remained indifferent to it.
“Why don’t we step inside your office?” Michael suggested to Zadik in a soothing tone. “I understand that you haven’t been having an easy time around here. We’re going to have to—” He caught sight of Aviva, her chin propped in her hand, her large, moist green eyes fixed unabashedly on him. She made no attempt to hide the fact that she was listening to their conversation.
“All right,” Zadik said with a sigh, and with heavy footsteps he turned around and walked to his large desk, behind which he sat down. “I’m still in shock,” he said as Michael and Eli Bachar seated themselves across from him. “I’m talking to you as if everything’s just fine, but don’t think it is. I’m still in shock. Anyway, what exactly is there to investigate here? This wasn’t some murder, it was an accident. And I’ve been thinking: the entire police force is dealing with the strikers today…never mind, I’m getting off the track…what…what are you doing here?”
Michael nodded toward Eli Bachar. “I’ve been called in to help.”
“Just like that government minister, who shall remain nameless: when your friends call, you come,” Zadik muttered. “Not that I’m not glad to see you,” he hastened to add wryly, “but believe me, we’re talking about a woman who…a person that worked with me like this,” he said, holding up two crossed fingers. “I still can’t, I still can’t…don’t you have anything better to do today?”
“The striking workers from the Hulit factory have already been arrested,” Eli Bachar said. “They’re all taken care of.” In a slightly bitter tone, he added, “Believe me, they’ll get what’s coming to them. But the truly guilty parties won’t be punished at all.”
“That’s the way it is in this country,” Zadik agreed under his breath. He pressed the telephone intercom. “What would you like to drink?” he asked them.
“Coffee,” Eli Bachar answered. He turned to Michael with a questioning look on his face. Michael shrugged in halfhearted agreement.
“Cream? Sugar?”
“Whatever,” Eli Bachar responded.
They waited for Zadik to instruct Aviva to bring them coffee.
Eli Bachar glanced at Michael, who nodded. “We would…we’d like to request that the funeral be postponed.”