by Batya Gur
“You see,” Natasha said. “Take a look and stop telling me I’m making things up.”
The windows of the large black car were also covered by curtains. They could just barely make out the thickly bearded man in the black cap driving the car. No one sat in the passenger’s seat, but when the car came to a stop, two men emerged from the backseat. They looked around and hurried into the building.
“Schreiber,” Natasha shouted, her voice choked with emotion. “Film them walking into the building. Did you, did you get them?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Schreiber said, hoping to calm her down. “What are you so nervous about? I shot the whole thing, but how’s this footage going to help you? So what if two people came to Rabbi Elharizi’s apartment? Who cares?”
“What are you talking about, ‘two people’?” she whispered. “Those weren’t just any two people. Didn’t you recognize them? Don’t you know who they are?”
“Sure I do.” Schreiber sighed. “So you’ll tell people that Rabbi Yitzhak Bashi and Rabbi Elyashiv Benami, Elharizi’s two close advisers, came to visit. So what? Of course his two close advisers would come to his home, that’s the most natural thing in the world, isn’t it?”
“They’re not just his close advisers,” Natasha pressed him. “One, Yitzhak Bashi, is known to be the treasurer of the movement, he’s always in the news. The other, Benami, handles their international relations, no?”
“All right,” Schreiber said as he peered into the lens. “So you’ve got a meeting here, a gathering, a conference of the heads of this religious movement of Eastern Jews. So what? What’s so significant about that? They’re allowed to meet, aren’t they? What have you proven? I filmed them…. What are you so worked up about?” As if to prove she was right, three bearded men in dark clothing appeared and unloaded two black leather suitcases and a heavy trunk from the large sedan. Suddenly the skies cleared and a ray of sunlight, reflecting from a puddle in the street near the car, shone on a single gold lock that secured the trunk.
“Schreiber,” Natasha whispered, “Look! The trunk…suitcases…don’t stop shooting—”
“I heard you, I’m not deaf, I heard you,” Schreiber said impatiently. “But who’s going to care about a bunch of suitcases? What do you think they put in them? I’m telling you, it’s got to be holy documents or books written by their rabbis or the latest volume by Rabbi Elharizi. What do you think’s in there, gold? Maybe a stash of guns? Hey, how about a dead body? You’ve been watching too many movies.”
“What I wouldn’t give…,” Natasha said as her eyes followed the three men as they entered the stairwell of the building. Suddenly she grew tense again. “Schreiber,” she said anxiously, “you’ve got to go see, you’ve got to get in there, go knock on the door as if—”
“Natasha,” Schreiber said, shutting her up, his voice a warning. “That’s enough. “I’m not going in anywhere.”
Still, she heard in his voice the slightest crack, something that enabled her to lay her hand on his arm and plead. “Schreiber, please, Schreiber, we’ve come this far. Don’t you think it would be a shame—”
He did not need that much convincing.
“Just don’t try telling me how to go about this, okay?” he said as she adjusted the skullcap on his head and straightened the ritual fringes he had brought along and was now wearing. “All you have to take care of now is the camera and the microphone.” He patted the front of his black coat. “I’ve known these guys since before you were born,” he said in a rush on his way out of the van, shooting glances up and down the street.
While Schreiber was making his way up three flights of stairs to Rabbi Elharizi’s apartment, Danny Benizri stood facing the information desk at Hadassah Hospital. “She’s probably in the respiratory intensive care unit,” he told the receptionist in his final attempt at convincing her to reveal to which ward the minister had been admitted, and he scolded himself for being so stupid as to ask for the minister of labor and social affairs, and not simply Timnah Ben-Zvi, as though he were a childhood friend or member of the family; otherwise, the receptionist may not even have noticed. Then again, it was likely she would have noticed no matter what he had done. “Why won’t you tell me?” he asked malevolently, hoping to trip her up. “For security reasons?”
“Sir,” she said, without looking up, “you’ll have to talk to the hospital spokesman. I’m not giving you any information.”
Benizri was just turning to leave when a doctor passing by caught sight of him and smiled. “You’re on television, aren’t you?” he asked. “The news. Education reporter, right? No! Of course, the tunnel, the laid-off workers. Great job, we watched you—”
Benizri approached the doctor, smiled pleasantly, and nonchalantly told him he was hoping to find the minister of labor and social affairs.
“Come with me, I’ll lead you there!” the doctor said exuberantly. “How do you like that? You’re looking for her, and here she is, right in my ward. Would you call that coincidence or fate?”
Benizri followed obediently. The doctor told him to wait in the outer hallway for a few minutes before entering the ward itself, which he did. Once inside, he encountered no one. A prime minister’s been murdered in this country, he thought, and yet a government minister gets no protection. With no protection, kidnapping them or trapping them in a tunnel or sneaking into the hospital and snapping their pictures is no trouble at all. But he did not have a camera. Light blue curtains covered the windows of the three private rooms along the hallway. The minister was in the last of them, at the end of the hall, which was where the doctor had entered and from where he was due to emerge. Benizri progressed to the end of the hall; the curtain did not entirely cover the window, so that he could glimpse the minister as she sat on her bed. Her back was exposed, white, and the doctor was leaning over her, his eyes fixed on a point far in the distance as he listened through his stethoscope. When he finished, she straightened up, asked him something, her face fearful, anxious; she listened to his response, then smiled. She had a wonderful smile, childish and innocent, her arms folded over the small, pert breasts he had already seen once; it took his breath away for a moment. Thinking about the color of her hidden nipples caused a slight current to pass through him, exciting him suddenly: the peeping sleuth always on the make for information. There was something about the narrow back of this woman—a woman thought to be so aggressive and influential, and whom he himself had mocked more than once in his own reports—that stirred his heart. Now she seemed even more vulnerable, aroused his sympathy even more than in the tunnel. The doctor helped her find the sleeve of her robe; Benizri stepped back, thinking to return to the outer hallway, but suddenly he changed his mind and approached the doorway to her room. The doctor was saying, “I’ll prepare your discharge letter,” without lifting his eyes from the chart on which he was writing something. “It’ll just take a few minutes, and then you’re free to go.”
“Today? Already?” Danny Benizri could hear the shock and dismay in her voice.
“I thought you’d be glad,” the doctor said, surprised at her reaction. He tucked his stethoscope into the wide pocket of his green smock, which set off his reddish hair and his pale, freckled cheeks. “The professor said, when he made his rounds…I thought…we can’t hear anything wrong with your breathing, there’s no reason to keep you here. We simply recommend a few days of rest at home.” He closed the file with a tap of his hand. “Why?” he asked, flirtatiously. “Would you prefer to stay a little while longer with us?”
“No,” the minister answered. “It’s just that I thought, well, I sent my driver home, I gave him off until tomorrow, and my parliamentary assistant isn’t available, and my husband…oh never mind, I’ll manage.”
Just then Benizri entered the room with bold steps, confidently, and with false exuberance said, “Perhaps I can be of service?”
“I totally forgot,” the doctor said, “I brought you a visitor,” and he rushed off.
“You
,” Timnah Ben-Zvi said, her face clouding. “Who let a reporter in here?” But the doctor was already out of the room and did not hear her protest.
“He knows what’s been going on,” Danny Benizri said. “He thought you would be glad—”
As if she had suddenly remembered who he was and what he had done for her, her face softened. “Actually, I haven’t yet had the opportunity…I haven’t thanked you properly,” she said, averting her eyes as if embarrassed. Her face was small, guileless; a pair of thick-lensed glasses sat atop an overturned leather notebook on her bed near a large oblong box of chocolates, two cardboard cartons, and a few newspaper clippings. “Please,” she said, offering him the box of chocolates, “help yourself.”
“That’s not why I’m here,” Danny Benizri muttered, his eyes on the chair sitting in the corner, under the window. “May I?” he asked. He had not gotten where he had in life by being overly sensitive or hesitant. Without waiting for an answer, he dragged the chair close to her bed, ignoring the frightened way she moved her legs as if to edge away from him. Something about the anxious look she had cast his way, her pouting lips that gave her a pampered look, made him want to touch her. He could have brushed her hand as one would a friend’s, or placed it warmly, intimately, on her knee, on her shoulder, on her arm, but instead he trusted his intuition and laid it on the edge of the bed. “Please,” he said obsequiously, “I’m at your service. I understand you have no way of getting home, so here I am.”
“No, that’s not necessary,” she said, taken aback. “I’ll have them call me a cab.”
“A government minister does not ride in taxicabs,” Benizri said aggressively, never lifting his eyes from her face. “Hasn’t enough happened to you already?”
“I can’t accept a ride from you,” she said. He watched as her fingers toyed nervously with the edge of the sheet. There was no evidence at all of the power people associated with her; he himself had always thought of her as the essence of aggression, precisely because, he claimed, she was a woman and felt the need to prove herself. It was strange to think that this woman in the pale blue flannel robe with a white flower embroidered on the collar, the woman who was now holding her robe closed with one hand and sweeping up her unruly curls with the other, was the same woman who aroused such animosity in the Hulit factory workers; even at police headquarters that morning one of Shimshi’s friends had spat when someone mentioned her name, and she had, on more than one occasion, raised his own ire by what he perceived as her indifference, her arrogance, her smugness. He was tempted to tell her that in person she seemed completely different, but instead he asked why she could not accept a ride from him.
“You’ve already—”
“I understand there’s no one available to take you home,” he said, touching his knee to hers.
“No, not at the moment. My husband is only due back in the country tomorrow.”
“How can that be?” Benizri asked with calculated sanctimoniousness. “You’re in the hospital, and he’s…abroad? Didn’t someone let him know?”
She winced with displeasure. “He’s a businessman, he’s got business overseas, things that were set up way in advance. He left the day before yesterday, before this…”
Benizri wanted to ask about children, or how it was that no friends were at her bedside, but something held him back. “Why won’t you take a ride with me?” he asked, cocking his head. “That way, you’ll be safe: if you get kidnapped, I’ll already be there.”
She smiled wanly, but he took it as acquiescence.
“I’ll wait outside until you’re dressed, okay?”
She gave a vague nod, and Benizri went out into the hallway. This time he did not dare stand near the curtain at the window to her room. Fifteen minutes later, as he stood waiting, a nurse appeared walking briskly and carrying a bag. She entered the minister’s room while Benizri positioned himself close enough to hear her explaining about the inhaler and what the minister should do in case of emergency, if she should have trouble breathing. He was anxious for the nurse to depart.
“May I?” he asked, nearly running into her.
The nurse glanced at him, a look of recognition in her eyes. “Aren’t you—”
“Yes, I am,” he confirmed quickly. “May I come in?”
“She’s ready to check out,” the nurse said, a wrinkle of surprise forming between her brows. “Is she expecting you?”
Benizri nodded and knocked on the door, heard the feeble affirmation, and entered.
Everything went smoothly until they got stuck in a traffic jam on the road leading up from Ein Kerem. A long row of cars stretched out in front of them, and the road was blocked by a police van, an ambulance, and curious onlookers who had stopped at the bend in the narrow road to peer at the overturned truck, which looked like the carcass of a large animal, and the car that lay crushed next to it. Benizri shut the engine off, and the minister sighed. He paid only partial attention to the comment she was making about the number of traffic casualties in the state of Israel and the aggressiveness of Israeli drivers, their vulgarity, their impatience, their lack of manners, and all the rest. Until then they had spoken with pleasant reserve. He still had not dared to raise the matter he had come to discuss with her. Now he pointed at the road ahead, noting that it was not fit for car travel, could in no way support all the traffic. “The problem is not the personality of the drivers,” he said, igniting the engine, “it’s that the government does not take care of infrastructure, the state of the roads, which is something you know about only too well from your cabinet meetings: no Israeli government is prepared to invest in programs that will only come to fruition after its term. No government is going to improve roads that the next government will reap the praises for. That’s the guiding principle of Israeli politics: politicians take care of their own egos, they take care to get reelected, but they won’t go out of their way to bring about real change because then their successors will get the credit.” The minister’s lips curled in displeasure as Benizri spoke. When he paused, he noticed that she was about to say something but had decided against it. “What?” he asked defiantly. “Isn’t everything I just said true?”
“Of course not,” she answered angrily. “What do you think? That I don’t care what happens in this country?” Now she was enraged. “Do I look like someone who spends all her time looking out for the hypocritical interests of politicians? Do you think I’m a cynic?”
Benizri licked his lips and looked sideways at her profile, noting the beautiful line of her lips and the light blush that had risen in her cheeks, breaching her pallor. “No,” he answered slyly, weighing his next move. “No, you don’t seem like a cynic to me. On the contrary, you come across as a person of principle. Someone whose humanity is accessible,” he added, falling silent for a moment, hoping his words would sink in, go to work on her. Watching her hands lying idly in her lap he said, “That’s why I want to speak to you about Shimshi and his friends.”
“What is there to say?” she sputtered, her hands now clasped. “Those hooligans are going to sit in jail.”
“They’re not hooligans,” Benizri said, turning the wheel to allow an ambulance to pass on its way to the emergency room. The police van moved off to the side of the road, and the cars in front of them and facing them began to move. “They’re just a bunch of desperate men, and you know that.”
“What?!” she exclaimed, alert. “Desperate? Very nice! Then every desperate person should kidnap a government minister and threaten his life, and people will say he’s just an unfortunate guy!”
“Listen, Timnah,” he said, daring to use her first name. “Do you mind if I call you Timnah?” Without waiting for a response he hastened to add, “When everything’s said and done, you and I…we have…I thought that because of what happened to us, together, I could approach you and tell you…ask you…ask you to withdraw your charges against them, because I know you’re not one of those people who…Look, in the end it all worked out, and you’
re not a vengeful person, so I was thinking…I’m asking—”
The snort that escaped her lips contained surprise and anger and astonishment. Then she fell silent, the windshield wipers squeaking on the glass due to the light rain, and they made their way slowly along the narrow, pitted road, the car lurching forward, then speeding as traffic cleared and the minister, frightened, wrapped her hand around her neck, her thin gold wedding band glittering. After a while, she said dryly, “You are absolutely nuts,” adding in an even voice that there was no way of withdrawing the charges. “It’s in the hands of the prosecutor’s office now, not mine,” she concluded. “Kidnapping and the intent to kill are criminal offenses, there is no arguing that.” She added that even if the matter were hers to decide (which it was not), she would not retract her claim against the Hulit workers because that would encourage the anarchy already rampant everywhere, where might makes right; it was inconceivable that if people wanted to achieve something, they had to resort to physical strength.
As they passed the enormous monster-sculpture in a playground on the road leading to Kiryat Yovel, Benizri said, “You haven’t considered the fact that they’ve been trying to reach you for a while, but each time you gave them the bureaucratic runaround. These guys are desperate, and…”
She sat up straight in her seat, folded her arms dramatically, and looked at him at length before asking coolly what special interest he had in this affair, aside from his interest as a journalist, which, in her opinion, he had long since exceeded. Perhaps, she suggested, he had a relative among the workers.
He wove carefully between the potholes, making slow progress.
“Well, what’s your connection to those workers?” she demanded.
Danny Benizri turned his head so that she would not see how worked up he was. He had no intention of telling her about his relationship with Shimshi. “It’s complicated,” he said reticently, his tone indifferent. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re incapable of understanding such things,” he told her, “because it’s not part of your world. You’re from a totally different place.”