Murder in Jerusalem

by Batya Gur

  “It didn’t work,” Rubin declared. “People want to survive in the system, they can’t push for a production that uses up the Drama Department’s entire budget. They told him to do something less…less bombastic; that was one of the terms they used to describe it. They told him, ‘Adapt a short novel, some contemporary short story, something like what Uri Zohar did with Three Days and a Child by A. B. Yehoshua, or Ram Levi’s Khirbet Khaza’a. A short film for television, thirty, forty minutes tops.’”

  “That didn’t suit him?”

  “Actually, it did, and he made a few attempts: a story by Yaacov Shabtai, an independent screenplay. I can show you. But his dream was—” Rubin opened a side drawer in his desk and removed three cassettes held together with a rubber band. “This is the unfinished material, I’m keeping several copies of it.”

  “Iddo and Eynam,” Michael pondered aloud. “Ultimately, it’s the story of a love triangle. One woman and two men who compete with one another in every sphere.”

  “You’re familiar with the text?” Rubin asked, dubious. Michael nodded. “It’s probably been a while since you read it,” Rubin said. “If you read it now, you would read it differently. In any event, Benny saw it in a completely different way, in his eyes it was a story of…you know? He wrote something about it, let’s see if I can find it—” He emptied the drawer. “I’ll find it,” he assured Michael. “He sees it as a story of Eastern Jewish heritage and how civilization—the power of the intellectuals, the academics—has suppressed the originality, the spontaneity, the spirit and the sentiment of the people. That sort of thing. He thinks that Zionism made a huge mistake by aligning itself with Western civilization. But if you ask me what I really think, I’ll tell you it was the mystery, the conundrum, the depth of the story that caught his eye from a visual standpoint. He simply wanted to deal with the greatness of it….” Rubin’s voice slowly faded. He shrugged instead of attempting to explain.

  “Allow me, for a moment,” Michael said slowly, “to be conventional.”

  “Be my guest,” Rubin said. “Would you like some water?” Without waiting for an answer, he rose from his chair and pulled a bottle of water from under his desk, along with two Styrofoam cups. “It could be refreshing,” he said, then chuckled softly. “I don’t mean the water, I mean that if you don’t ask me some kind of conventional question, you’ll totally ruin my stereotypes about the police.”

  “We’re talking about a man who for the past few years lived with a woman you loved your entire life, a woman who was once your wife but who abandoned you. That didn’t affect your relationship with Benny Meyuhas?”

  “No,” Rubin said. “I keep hearing that question over and over these past few days, ever since Tirzah…is no longer with us. There hasn’t been a policeman or a doctor or a colleague who hasn’t asked it, either directly or indirectly, it’s really amazing how…how unimaginative people can be. Truly, people can only imagine themselves, their own lives. They can’t fathom that human beings are varied, different, that they think or feel in ways different from their own.”

  “There were no strains in your relationship at all?”

  “I can’t explain it,” Rubin said, fatigued. “I have no explanation. Do I need one? I loved them both, Benny and Tirzah. My marriage to Tirzah ended because of things between the two of us, which I have no desire to discuss right now, and in any event you’ve undoubtedly heard…I saw you talking with Niva, and she doesn’t exactly keep the matter a secret,” he added bitterly.

  “You’re referring to the boy?” Michael asked.

  “Tirzah didn’t know about that, I hope she didn’t know about it, I only wanted…I wanted to save her the grief.” It seemed as though Rubin’s cheeks suddenly sank, that his face had caved inward in pain. “But there were other matters. You stand there facing your wife, time after time she wants to know. She’s heard rumors, she’s seen things, she’s felt things. You answer. You lie, of course you lie, what else are you going to do? In the end you get to the point where even when you haven’t done anything…She asks you where you’ve been, with whom, when…in a line of work like mine, try explaining that you weren’t…After all, I’m a man with a past, and Tirzah, I can understand…being in the position of the suspicious wife who spies on her cheating husband, well, there’s something humiliating about all that, that role didn’t suit her. In the end we split up, we couldn’t find another way. So then…Benny had always loved her. I prefer…I preferred that she be with someone who really loved her. He’d remained faithful to her all through the years, without hope or expectations, he simply never married, even though he had plenty of opportunities.” Rubin’s voice faded to nothing, but Michael remained silent until he resumed. “He had girlfriends, women, but nothing ever worked out. He waited and waited, and in the end he got Tirzah. I’ve already told you, he’s not a flexible person. He can’t compromise. On anything. He prefers having nothing at all to compromising in order to survive. This isn’t something he’ll tell you himself, but I know what I’m telling you is true. I know the man. Believe me, he hasn’t harmed anyone.”

  “What about Sroul?” Michael asked.

  “What about him? If he’s in Israel, I don’t know anything about it. He hasn’t made contact with me.”

  “According to our records,” Michael said on a hunch, pretending to read from the spiral notebook, but in fact watching Rubin tense up from the corner of his eye, “he entered Israel two days ago, the day after Tirzah was killed.”

  “Maybe he wanted to come to the funeral,” Rubin said. “I have no idea how he would have known about it, maybe from the newspaper—but I didn’t see him there, at the funeral. You can check the video, since the funeral was filmed—”

  “Did you inform him about Tirzah?”

  “The truth? No, I didn’t,” Rubin said, looking very guilty. “I didn’t have time. I didn’t manage it—”

  “But somehow it seems he heard about it.”

  “Maybe from Benny,” Rubin said, openly doubtful. “I don’t see how…Benny wasn’t in touch…but maybe if Tirzah was in touch with Sroul, then Benny might have phoned him.”

  “Why, in fact, was she in contact with Sroul?” Michael asked.

  “No idea,” Rubin responded. “I swear. Maybe to get money from him to finish the film up. Don’t forget, she was in effect Benny’s wife. I think she loved him, too.”

  “Did she know that the funding for the film had come from Sroul?”

  “No way,” Rubin answered emphatically. “No chance, she didn’t know a thing. But maybe she got it into her head. Wait a minute,” he said as he looked at his watch and turned up the volume on the monitor. “I’d like to see this, not on the screen but live. Come with me downstairs to the studio if you want to or if you have to. They’re making the announcement about Zadik, and Hefetz will speak. I want to watch it in the studio. Why not join me if you’re planning to stick around?”

  They stood waiting for the elevator, but Rubin quickly grew impatient and was about to take the stairs when the elevator arrived, and Rubin flung open the narrow door. Inside stood Hefetz, bare from the waist up, just shoving his arm into the sleeve of a dark blue shirt. Next to him stood a wild-haired, blushing young woman, a man’s dark suit jacket flung over her shoulder and a makeup kit in her hand. “First put your shirt on,” they heard her saying before Rubin waved the elevator on and closed the door.

  “Let’s take the stairs, that thing’s only got room for two people anyway,” he said to Michael as they ran down the stairs. Out of breath, he added, “That wasn’t what you think, if you thought Hefetz was fooling around. He’s going on air, he was getting dressed, she was putting his makeup on, that’s the way it happens sometimes in an emergency, you get dressed on the way.” When they reached the ground floor Rubin turned toward the canteen, stopped at the doorway, and watched the monitor hanging there. The canteen was nearly empty except for two tables in opposite corners: at one sat a group of workers in blue overalls eating quie
tly, and at the other, Natasha and Schreiber watching a soundless monitor broadcasting the five o’clock Channel Two news. As the broadcaster mouthed his lines, a picture of Benny Meyuhas appeared with the caption: BENNY MEYUHAS, DIRECTOR. THE POLICE REQUEST PUBLIC ASSISTANCE IN LOCATING HIM. When she spied Rubin, Natasha let her small hand drop from her chin and rose from her chair, but he signaled her to wait. “Later,” he called to her quietly. She returned to her chair and sat down and only then nodded hello to Michael.

  “If the canteen is that empty, and there are still doughnuts to be had, then the situation really is awful,” Rubin said as he walked slowly toward the stairs. “This is where you really get the feel for what’s going on—the canteen is the heart, the very center, of this place. Everything happens here. Everything. Since Israel Television began. See that wall over there? It was built while we sat here eating. I remember it like it was yesterday, Zadik—” Suddenly he coughed as though choking, and his eyes filled with tears. He slowed his steps, and Michael followed him to the studio.

  Rubin instructed Michael to take up a position in the lighting technicians’ room, where he stood sandwiched between the computer and the desk and watched through the glass partition. The communications minister sat in the studio, having her face made up; Hefetz sat to her right, nervously tightening his dark blue necktie. Karen, the anchorwoman, sat to the left of the minister, who was now answering a question: “Israel Radio and Israel Television do not stop broadcasting except on Yom Kippur,” she responded fervently. “Shutting down Israel’s official television station in the event of a disaster—and murder is certainly a form of disaster—would only be giving in to…”

  Michael had left the lighting technicians’ room and gone to stand in a corner of the control room just as the director was saying, first to himself and then into a microphone, “Come on, get her out of there already, we’re done with her, Karen, tell her, ‘Thank you very much, now shut your face.’” That was why Michael failed to hear the end of the communications minister’s sentence. “Ready with camera two,” Tzippi the assistant producer said, her hand on her huge belly, rubbing. “Someone turn on the upper monitor! Ready with camera one, Danny,” the director shouted. Erez, the editor, stood silently in the back. He shot an openly critical look at Danny Benizri, who had come racing into the control room, torn off his sweater, shoved his arms into a black shirt he removed from a hanger, and turned his face to the makeup artist, who was on her way out of the room. She frowned—“You’ve already been made up,” she said—but powdered his forehead nonetheless. “He thinks he’s some American movie star,” Erez muttered to himself. “Runs around all day, shows up at the very last minute, does his little striptease, undress and dress, undress and dress.” “Are we finished with the videocassette?” asked a young man sitting at the video machine as he switched cassettes. No one answered him.

  “Ready camera two, Hefetz,” the director said. Hefetz felt for the transmitter behind his ear through which he could hear the instructions and took a sip from his cup. The atmosphere in the studio reminded Michael of an operating room or a command room in wartime. It’s easy to forget that no lives depend on what happens here, he thought to himself as his eyes carefully scanned the people in the room, all of whom were tense and nervous and wasted no words. “Thirty seconds…final words ‘can continue…cannot continue,’ ten seconds on the word,” said the producer to Karen. “Can I have a profile over the window?” the director shouted. “I told you, get her out of there already,” he repeated, angry that the interview with the communications minister had not yet ended.

  Three television cameras were pointed at Hefetz, and in spite of the fact that the makeup artist had applied more powder to his forehead and chin just before the lights went on, his face was shiny with perspiration. On one side of the monitor Michael watched still photos of Zadik flash one after the other from a prepared videocassette, pictures from his childhood and his youth, pictures of him in the white dress uniform of the Israel Navy, a picture of him in the news studio. In the background Hefetz’s shaky voice could be heard: “Today we have suffered a great loss. A terrible loss. For me, this is a personal loss. I have been together with Shimshon Zadik from the beginning of his career as a junior reporter through his job as editor of the News Department”—on the screen appeared a photograph of Zadik leafing through papers and talking on the telephone at the head of the conference table in the newsroom—“all the way up to the position he held for the past three years as director of Israel Television. Shimshon Zadik was a man of vision who enjoyed everyone’s trust and confidence.” Behind Hefetz there appeared a photograph of Zadik shaking hands with two men in jeans and polo shirts, underneath which ran the caption, SHIMSHON ZADIK, DIRECTOR OF ISRAEL TELEVISION. One of the men had a false smile, as though he was making an effort not to let the cigarette between his lips fall to the ground; the other had removed a video camera from his shoulder and the caption changed: SIGNING OF AGREEMENT WITH TECHNICIANS’ UNION. At that moment Michael’s attention was caught by the entrance of Elmaliah the cameraman into the studio. He noticed with astonishment the huge tray of doughnuts Elmaliah carried in one hand, and the single doughnut he was shoving into his mouth with the other, oblivious to the anxiety and shock of everyone else in the room. “I have taken it upon myself to replace Zadik temporarily, until an official appointment can be made,” Hefetz was saying, Zadik’s face framed in black behind him. “I pledge to continue his path and his creed…” Elmaliah nodded and, with a full mouth, said, “Got his wish, didn’t he, this is what the guy’s always wanted.”

  “Shut up, fool,” Niva whispered from the doorway of the control room, wiping her eyes. “Don’t you have any respect for—”

  “What’s the problem?” Elmaliah protested. “Like I said something so terrible?” He looked around, wiped his lips on the back of his hand, and set the tray on the counter behind which Erez the editor was sitting. “Okay, I didn’t notice,” he said after stealing a glance at Michael. “But it doesn’t mean anything, does it?”

  Erez seemed about to say something, but just then Eli Bachar entered the control room and scanned it until his eyes met those of Michael, who made his way over to him. “We found Benny Meyuhas,” Eli Bachar said quietly. “They’re waiting for you upstairs.” All eyes followed them out of the room as they left, and no one said a word.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  On the stairs, on their way to the entrance of the building, Eli Bachar managed to recount to Michael how he had been standing there by chance (“I let Sasson go home, his wife was home alone with the flu and he’s been here since this morning, he promised her he’d be home by eight to light the Hanukkah candles with the kids, and it was already a quarter to eight. So I let him go and I was standing there explaining to Bublil who was allowed to enter the building and who was allowed to leave, you wouldn’t believe what a pressure cooker it was around there—we’re holding all these people here, the staff of Israel Television, from eleven o’clock this morning, just like you said, nobody coming or going, and even though we’ve brought them sandwiches and stuff, well, they’ve got plans, they want to get out of here”); and how the taxi had stopped in front of the door and a short man in a heavy khaki army jacket and beret had stepped out of it. “I was just, like, glancing outside, not really thinking about anything, not really paying attention, just watching how he paid the driver and looked toward the front door of the building. Then he caught sight of the death notice about Zadik and turned completely white, really frightened, you would think he hadn’t known a thing about it,” Eli Bachar whispered to Michael as they stood near the security officers’ station in the foyer. “You should’ve seen his face when he saw the picture of the religious guy,” Eli Bachar said, referring to the drawing that police artist Ilan Katz had composed according to Aviva’s muddled description, which they had hastened to post everywhere, including next to the death notice at the entrance to Israel Television. “He walked up close and touched it; he looked lik
e someone had whacked him on the head with a club. And I’m looking at him through the glass window, and it’s not registering who I’m looking at until suddenly it dawns on me. I figured out who he was even before the security officer, who had his back to the entrance and hadn’t even noticed him. So this Benny Meyuhas just strolls in like, like he hasn’t done a thing wrong, like he hasn’t been missing or anything and nobody’s been searching for him. What can I tell you, I think the guy’s a bit of a wacko, totally out of it.”

  While Eli Bachar continued talking quietly, Michael contemplated the expression on Benny Meyuhas’s face from a distance. Meyuhas was standing just inside the building, near the entrance, handcuffed and surrounded by policemen and security guards; he was staring straight ahead as though looking at nothing. Just then Arye Rubin dashed in from the control room, nearly knocking them over as he pushed into the throng toward Benny. “Are you crazy? Take these things off him!” he shouted, grabbing the handcuffs. “What’s going on here? He’s no criminal!” Rubin placed his hands on Benny’s shoulders. “Benny,” he said, “what’s happened to you? Why didn’t you…Where have you been?” He peered into Benny’s face as if able to gauge what he had been through. Benny Meyuhas was leaning against the wall next to the security guards’ station, his face averted; he did not answer, and avoided looking at his good friend. In fact, he looked at no one, his eyes half closed and the expression on his face one of extreme fatigue. If he had not been leaning against the wall, or if the guards had not been holding him up, it seemed he would simply collapse.

  “Are these handcuffs absolutely necessary?” Arye Rubin protested. No one paid him any attention, partly because at that very moment Hagar came racing down the stairs. It seemed that the rumor that Benny Meyuhas had been found had spread through the building, and she had rushed to see him. She spread her arms to embrace him, but the look on his face caused her to hang back. She did not touch him but said, “Benny, Benny, where have you been? Where did you disappear to? Are you okay? Why didn’t you—”