by Batya Gur
“It’s the title of a poem I loved,” Rubin said.
“Which?” Michael asked.
“It’s by Dan Pagis, and it’s about wasps. But the wasps are really only a parable,” Arye Rubin muttered, looking out the window. “Never mind how it’s connected, but it does connect to the program.”
“It’s a program with balls,” Eli Bachar dared to say from the back seat. Even as they reached Benny Meyuhas’s house and Rubin was saying in his deep, unique voice, “Maybe I should go in alone first and then you can come in in another minute, what do you think?” Eli was thinking how he would tell Tzilla about meeting him. He wanted to remember every detail.
“Sounds like a good idea, you’re his good friend,” Michael said. “That’s what I understand, right? Zadik told us you’re very close.”
“From the age of ten, from grade school,” Rubin said. “We did everything together. Benny is…like my own flesh and blood.” He got out of the car. “I’ll call you in a few minutes,” he promised.
CHAPTER FIVE
After about a quarter of an hour waiting, Eli Bachar lifted the brass knocker under the ceramic nameplate decorated with birds and flowers, in the middle of which was written RUBIN-MEYUHAS, and knocked on the wooden door. A gaunt young woman whose long black hair enveloped half her pale face opened the door. For a moment she stood there, silent, blinking her eyes and rubbing one black-stockinged foot against the other. She glanced over her shoulder seeking confirmation, and when this did not come she shrugged as if to say, “I’ve done all I could,” and, eyes lowered, whispered, “you can come in, it’s very cold outside.” She stepped aside to let them pass.
“We’ve been waiting out in the rain for nearly half an hour,” Eli Bachar said by way of reproach when they were inside the apartment. “Rubin said he would call us after a few minutes, but it’s already been more than twenty.”
“I’m just…,” the young woman began, clearly embarrassed, “this isn’t my house, I can’t—”
“Who are you?” Eli Bachar asked sharply.
“I…my name’s Sarah,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “I…I’m an actress, I’m in Benny’s film. I play Gemullah, but my real name’s Sarah.”
Pale light that filtered into the foyer through a large arched window lit up the dark wall painted in deep blue, as well as the model house built of wood that stood on a sheet of plywood with a small sign affixed to it: THE HOUSE OF GREIFENBACH. Michael looked at the wooden house, at the windows and grilles and doorways and hallways that connected one wing to another, at the lighted rooms between the wings, at the darkened rooms. Painted sheets of plywood covered the open spaces on the upper level of the house, creating surfaces—roofs of different heights that were, at certain spots, bordered by dark railings. Between one railing and the next or one wing and the next there were ramps without railings. On a bookstand next to the model house a video monitor stood lit, the screen filled with blue light and no picture.
“What is this?” Eli Bachar whispered to Michael, “a doll house? I didn’t know they had any little kids. Look, it’s got real working lights and everything.”
“This,” Michael said, “is a maquette, a model of the house in Iddo and Eynam. That’s the way it looks, or is supposed to look, in the film they’re shooting.”
“How do you know that?” Eli Bachar asked, his expression one of annoyance and awe all at once.
“I remember it from my studies. In my first year at university I took Introduction to Agnon, I’ve told you this, don’t you remember? It was an elective course. I studied this story, Iddo and Eynam.” He looked at Eli’s face and hastened to add, “To this very day I don’t understand it. It’s a beautiful story, but dense, unclear. A very strange story full of symbols. I remember the lecturer explaining them, and even then I didn’t completely understand, or really, I didn’t want to understand what the man thought Agnon was saying. But I remember the name of the house,” he said, pointing at the sign. “Greifenbach. And there’s this young woman who walks around at night on the roofs and sings the hymns of Iddo and Eynam.” He did not mention Dr. Gamzu and Dr. Ginat, the book collector and the folklore researcher, whom he remembered well, or the description of Gemullah’s meeting with Ginat. More than anything he recalled the frightening ending; he could still hear the echo of the professor’s murky voice calling out with great emotion: “What is it that caused Ginat to sabotage his own handiwork, destroying in a short period of time things that he had toiled over for a great many years?” Occasionally over the years that question would return to him, bubbling up when he witnessed, with his own eyes, the destruction that human beings were capable of bringing about in a single action against what was most dear to them.
From the kitchen a woman in her forties dressed in shabby jeans suddenly appeared. It was clear from the disheveled locks of silver hair, the terribly lined face, and the narrow gray eyes that regarded the visitors with suspicion that she was the exact opposite of the other, younger woman. “It’s because of me, it’s my fault,” she told them, unabashed. “Arye Rubin asked me to call you, but I wanted to wait until—” she gestured with her head toward the closed door at the end of the wide hallway. “Benny isn’t up to—I thought it could wait,” she concluded.
“Are you a family member? His sister or something?” Eli Bachar asked.
“My name’s Hagar,” she said as she shook out her hair and placed a hand on her neck.
“Hagar what?” Eli Bachar persisted, while Michael looked around and noticed, close by, a row of framed photographs, all of them black and white, hanging on the wall opposite the front door. One in particular stood out, a large photograph of three young men dressed in hiking boots and kaffiyehs and khaki shorts and shirts, their sleeves rolled sloppily up their tanned arms. Between them stood a girl, thin and tan, in dark shorts and a white shirt, who was fingering the fringes of a white kaffiyeh wrapped around her neck. Her long, fair hair was blowing in the breeze, one lock of it touching the tallest of the three boys, whose arm was resting on the girl’s shoulders. Michael narrowed his eyes; he could only recognize the tallest, whose forelock cast a shadow over his brow and his broad smile. As for the other two and the girl, he had never seen them before. The photograph gave him a pang; something about it made him think of a time that would never return, and that what had been lost was not only the look of youthful exuberance shining from their faces in black and white on a background of white sand. Even today Arye Rubin was a handsome man, but his face did not retain the slightest hint of that joie de vivre so evident in the photograph taken more than thirty years earlier. They looked the part of a joyous band of kids on the annual trip of a youth movement. He himself had photos like these, with larger and smaller groups of friends, from annual treks and journeys in the Negev and the Galilee. They seemed to be his age, or at least of the same generation. And the girl: how much charm there was in her thin silhouette, in her long leg extended forward! Her upper lip was stretched over prominent front teeth, and the little guy with freckles to the right had curly hair and a broken front tooth.
“You’re Benny Meyuhas’s producer,” Eli Bachar said in a tone that indicated he knew everything there was to know about Benny Meyuhas.
“His producer, assistant, and close friend, too. I’m everything wrapped up in one,” she said dryly, as if clarifying that she was the one who wore the pants in the family.
Michael turned to her. “Who are the people in this picture? This is Arye Rubin, isn’t it?” he asked, pointing to the tallest of the three boys.
“Yes, that’s Rubin on the right. The girl standing next to him is Tirzah, and this,” she said, coming close to the photo and touching the face of the short guy with the freckles, “is Benny. They were together in the army. This photo was taken during a trek in the Negev after they finished high school, before their enlistment. And here they are in the army,” she said, pointing to a different photograph in which the three young men appeared in uniform and dusty paratroopers�
�� boots, berets tucked into their shoulder straps, their arms slung around one another’s necks. Rubin was standing in the middle. To his right was Benny Meyuhas, and to his left the third youth from the Negev trek.
“And who is this?” Michael asked, returning to the previous photograph. The young man he was pointing to was thin and dark and smiling from ear to ear, his arms spread wide in a clownish gesture of someone wishing to embrace it all.
“I don’t really know him,” she said reticently. “I’ve never met him. His name is Sroul, they were a group, a clique, together all the time. They were like the Three Musketeers, never separated. They grew up in Haifa, went through the new immigrant camps and Reali High School, and joined the paratroopers. Everyone knew them.”
“Where is he now?” Michael asked. “Where’s Sroul?”
“In the United States. He left right after the Yom Kippur War. He was seriously wounded—burned—so they sent him there, at first for plastic surgery and treatments, and then he just stayed on. I’ve heard that he’s become quite ultra-Orthodox, a genuine religious fanatic.”
“And they’ve stayed in touch all through the years?” Michael inquired. Hagar intended to answer him, but just then the door at the end of the hallway opened and suddenly the gray floors lit up, and only then did he notice that they were painted green and gold, the wooden doors in turquoise. Rubin stood in the doorway. “You can come in,” he said to Michael, and then to Hagar added, “Could you make him a cup of tea? He’s getting dehydrated. Put three teaspoons of sugar in to give him some energy.”
“Since yesterday he hasn’t touched a thing, only a few drops of water,” Hagar complained. “Has he stopped the business with the wall? I can’t stand it, I was afraid he would split his head open.”
“He’s stopped,” Rubin said. “Now he’s quiet.”
Rubin returned to the room and left the door open. Michael followed him inside. The bedroom was spacious, high-ceilinged. A double bed stood next to the wall, and atop the disheveled sheets sat a thin man, his head leaning against the wall. He did not direct his gaze at Michael, who was standing in the doorway, nor did he relate to Rubin, who was sitting at the edge of the bed. Michael took in his small, wrinkled face and his bleary blue eyes, which were fixed on the opposite wall. Not only was there no trace of that chubby, freckled youth of the photograph in this man, but it was completely incomprehensible that he and Rubin could be the same age. Behind the bed stood two arched windows, and beyond them, past the raised blinds, were two large planters filled with pansies. It had stopped raining. Michael pulled up a chair from the corner of the room and sat not far from the bed. Eli Bachar stood hesitantly in the doorway. Muffled voices could be heard from another room, then someone apparently opened a door and the voices grew louder and clearer. Only then did Michael realize they were coming from a television or radio. Distractedly he heard the beginning of a news broadcast: “The hospital spokesman has informed us that the condition of the minister of labor and social affairs is stable and that she is expected to be released within the next few days.”
Michael introduced himself to Benny Meyuhas, who blinked, stared, and grimaced, his lips parched and cracked. “Arye tells me,” he murmured quietly, “that you want to postpone the funeral, that you want to perform an autopsy…. I don’t…it’s not my decision, we were not officially married. Arye Rubin will have to give his consent. Officially, he’s still her husband.”
“We’ll get to that,” Michael said as he threw Eli Bachar a questioning look. Eli shrugged his shoulders to say that he had no idea whose consent was needed. “But you have no objection as such, do you?” Michael asked.
“What does it matter?” Benny Meyuhas responded finally with a frown. “Tirzah is no longer with us. She has left us.”
“You’ll have to clarify whose signature is necessary,” Michael said quietly to Eli Bachar.
Eli Bachar nodded. “I’ll take care of it,” he said on his way out of the room. To Rubin he said, “Why don’t you step out with me, we’ll leave them alone.”
Rubin straightened in his chair. “Why should I step out?” he asked, astonished. “I’m here to be with Benny.”
Benny Meyuhas pounded the wall with his fist. His knuckles were ruddy and raw. “He doesn’t need to go anywhere,” he said in a parched voice. “I keep no secrets from him.”
Eli Bachar walked out of the room quickly, in the direction of the foyer. Michael shut the door. The only sound in the room was Benny Meyuhas’s noisy breathing. He sounded as though he might choke.
“I also wanted to ask you,” Michael said, “if you knew that Tirzah was there, in the middle of the night. We’re trying to understand what she was doing there so late. Did you know she was there?”
Benny Meyuhas shook his head and passed his hands over his cheeks and his thinning hair. “I didn’t know,” he said at last.
“How could that be?” Michael said. “You were filming on the roof of that same building. How was it that you didn’t know?”
“She didn’t tell me,” he said dismissively and turned his head toward the wall.
Michael asked whether he had any idea why she would have been there so late at night.
Benny Meyuhas had no explanation. She had not told him that she would be at work, and he did not know of any unfinished scenery that demanded her presence.
Michael asked whether it was possible she had made an appointment with someone in her office.
“Anything is possible, how can I know?”
“No, I’m asking whether it was normal, whether there were precedents for such a thing,” Michael explained.
Benny Meyuhas grimaced as if to deny the possibility. She was always meeting with people in the office or the canteen, but never in the middle of the night.
“I’m trying to understand,” Michael said slowly, emphasizing each word. “What did you mean when you shouted, ‘It’s my fault, it’s because of me’? What did you mean when you saw Tirzah—when she was no longer alive?”
The look Benny Meyuhas gave him was one of confusion.
“You do remember that you said those things.”
“I remember,” Benny said, perplexed. He pursed his lips into an expression of loathing. “But what is there to explain?”
“Perhaps you meant that because of you she was at work at that hour?”
“No, not that.”
“What then? Did you do something that caused her death?”
Benny Meyuhas flashed him a furious look. “The marble,” he said at last, smothering his face in his hands. “They say it was the marble pillar that crushed her.”
“Don’t think about that, Benny, you don’t need to be thinking about that,” Arye Rubin interjected, a look of worry on his face. He leaned on the bed, hooking his arm around Benny Meyuhas’s shoulder. “It’s not because of you. Nobody could tell Tirzah what to do. You could have told her a thousand times to move the pillar and she wouldn’t have, she wouldn’t have given a damn about your opinion or anyone else’s.”
“Did she generally tell you where she was going?” Michael said, feeling his way.
“Sometimes, not always. It depended,” Benny answered reluctantly.
“On what? On where she was going? On the time of day? What?”
Benny Meyuhas did not look at him. He was staring at his fingers, which were pleating the edges of a page of the Haaretz newspaper lying on the bed next to him. Between the small advertisement at the corner of the page in which LIAR was printed in bold black letters, just as it had been every day for the past two months, and an item about the Jerusalem hairstylist and his girlfriend the model who had been found shot to death, there was a small notice about the head of the Scenery Department at Israel Television, who had been killed in an accident.
Benny Meyuhas remained silent.
“How is it that she didn’t say anything to you? You were both in the same place, you worked together. You yourself were there, up on the roof.”
Benny Meyuhas
frowned. “Yes, I was.”
“From what time? Approximately.”
“A little after six, after it got dark. We were waiting for the moon; we were hoping it would poke through the clouds.”
“Who knew that you were up there?” Michael asked.
Benny Meyuhas shrugged. “I don’t know, I don’t have a clue,” he said without looking up. “Whoever needed to know.”
“Were you aware that Matty Cohen was on his way?” Michael asked, aware that Rubin was tensing up.
“The tea will be here in a minute,” Rubin said to Benny Meyuhas. “It’s hard for you to speak because your mouth is so dry.” Rubin cast a glance at Michael that contained a measure of warning, but Michael ignored it.
“Matty Cohen was on his way to the roof,” Michael said to Benny Meyuhas, “to put a stop to your production. Did you know that?”
Benny looked up from his fingers. “No,” he said in his parched voice, “no, I didn’t. There were rumors…. I had heard they weren’t going to let me complete the missing bits, Zadik had already hinted…but I didn’t know that he was—” A note of astonishment had crept into his voice. “But he didn’t come, I didn’t see him.”
“He was on his way, and he saw Tirzah at around midnight, before—” Michael waved his hand instead of completing his thought. “She was still alive at the time.”
Benny Meyuhas regarded him; unlike his voice and the rest of his body, his round blue eyes were now filled with expression, his pain alive and writhing. They were bloodshot, the eyes of a man haunted.
“She was not standing there alone; she was with someone else,” Michael said carefully. “Someone was arguing with her.”
Benny Meyuhas did not speak.
“We thought that perhaps you might have some idea who she could have been speaking with in the middle of the night,” Michael said.
“I don’t,” Benny Meyuhas said. “I didn’t even know she was there. If I had known, I would have—” He fell silent and covered his face with his hands.