by Batya Gur
Michael followed Benny Meyuhas’s gaze as it rose to the monitor. Hefetz’s face was being broadcast in close-up, a photo of Zadik bordered in black in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Hefetz was saying, “…the decision not to suspend Israel Television broadcasts is due in part to the devotion and courage of employees at all levels, who have decided to honor and acknowledge Shimshon Zadik—may his memory be a blessing—by following his example, by continuing along the course he charted, by upholding his motto: You cannot stop the news.”
Benny Meyuhas’s eyes blinked rapidly. He lowered them from the screen, then shut them. He grimaced, a look of disgust on his face. The picture on the screen had changed, and under the caption WANTED was a police composite sketch of a man in ultra-Orthodox garb, while a broadcaster droned in the background: “The Israel Police request assistance in locating the whereabouts of the man shown in this picture. He is approximately feet five nine inches tall, medium build, with brown eyes. His hands and arms show burn marks…” Someone lowered the volume.
Eli Bachar was standing quite close to Benny Meyuhas, and he gently led Arye Rubin and Hagar away from him, ignoring their pleas to remove the handcuffs. Rubin appealed directly to Michael. “What is he, some criminal you have to detain?”
Distracted, Michael ignored him by turning his head as if he had not been spoken to.
Rubin’s face was confused, as though he had lost his confidence in the secret covenant he had imagined existed between Benny Meyuhas and himself. He fell silent and stopped protesting against the policemen who were pushing him away from his friend.
“Where are you taking him?” Hagar cried out as she ran after Eli Bachar and Sergeant Bublil on the stairs. They were quickly ushering Benny Meyuhas to the second floor; Hagar ran past them, bursting into the newsroom and shouting, “Benny’s here, he’s fine, they’re taking him to Hefetz’s office for questioning.” At once people sprang to their feet and raced to the doorway: Zohar, the military correspondent; David Shalit, the correspondent for police affairs; Niva the newsroom secretary; and Erez, the editor.
“Benny!” David Shalit managed to shout before they led Benny Meyuhas into the office of the newsroom department head, which had been temporarily commandeered for interrogations. The newsroom staff that had gathered stared at the policemen in silence. Hagar and Arye Rubin stood by the office door. “Should we wait here?” Rubin asked.
Michael shrugged his shoulders. “No need,” he said. “This could take quite a while.”
“If that’s the case, I’m going up to the editing rooms,” Rubin stated. “If you need me, I’m in the vicinity.” He hesitated for a moment, then added obstinately: “In any event, you can give me a call.”
Michael nodded vaguely and entered Hefetz’s office. Sergeant Bublil looked at him and asked, “Would you like a cup of coffee, sir? Three teaspoons of sugar, right?”
“No, no, not for me, thanks,” Michael said; coffee suddenly had no taste without a cigarette. Then after glancing at Benny Meyuhas’s face, he said, “On second thought, bring in a nice big cup of coffee with milk,” to which Bublil nodded as he left the room, returning from the newsroom a minute later with a large, steaming mug. Bublil set it on the desk, removed three packets of sugar from his pants pocket, and placed them alongside the mug. From his jacket pocket he extracted a spoon and laid that, too, on the desk before going out to the hallway to deter curious onlookers from besieging the office.
Eli Bachar seated Benny Meyuhas in the chair facing the desk and without saying a word pointed to the mug of coffee and removed the handcuffs. He went to stand in the corner of the room, near the door. Michael sat across from Benny Meyuhas, who tore open each packet of sugar, one by one, spilling the contents of each into the mug, stirring slowly, without raising his eyes.
“Where have you been?” Michael asked. Benny did not so much as glance at him.
After a long silence, Michael asked, in the grave, quiet voice one would use for a terminally ill patient who had disobeyed his doctors’ instructions, “Don’t you have anything to tell us?” Benny Meyuhas stared at his coffee mug and said nothing.
“You know, in the end you’ll talk,” Michael said, struggling to maintain his composure in spite of the anger that Benny Meyuhas’s passivity provoked in him. “Don’t you think this is a waste of time?”
It appeared as if Benny Meyuhas had not even heard the question. His hands were wrapped around the mug of coffee, and he leaned over it, inhaling the vapor without raising it to his lips.
“For thirty-six hours you’ve had the whole world concerned,” Michael said, as Benny moved the mug to his mouth slowly and sipped. “Quite a few people were worrying about you. At the very least, we want to know where you were.”
Benny fixed his gaze on the darkened window behind Michael’s back and remained silent.
“You don’t want to tell us where you’ve been?” Michael asked, adding, “We want to know, for example, whether you were in the building this morning, or next door at the String Building, or anywhere in the vicinity, for that matter.”
Benny Meyuhas did not remove his gaze from the blackened window. Aside from rapid blinking, there was no sign that he had heard what had been said.
“Are you aware that Zadik was murdered?”
Silence.
“Didn’t you hear about that?” Michael asked.
Benny Meyuhas said nothing, but the twitch in his eye and the sudden shiver that passed through him made it clear that he knew. It was impossible to know whether he had only learned about it upon seeing the death notices.
“Do you know where and how he was murdered?”
Benny Meyuhas covered his face with his hands, rubbed his pale cheeks, closed his eyes, then opened them and stared once again at the window. Lightning illuminated the darkened skies, followed by a single burst of thunder, and for a moment the bluish light given off by the round neon lamp was blurred, imparting a jaundiced hue to his pale face.
To Michael it was clear that Meyuhas was aware of his surroundings, perhaps even more intensively so than everyone else. He understood from the strange dichotomy between the frequent changes in Meyuhas’s expression and his slow hand movements that this highly sensitive man was gripped by great turmoil or extreme anxiety. “All right,” Michael said with a sigh, “for the time being I am going to have to put you under arrest. We’re going to bring you in for questioning under oath. You have the right to request legal representation.” He paused for a moment, waiting to see Meyuhas’s reaction. Benny Meyuhas seemed completely at ease, and Michael added, gently, “I’m sorry. If you were willing to talk, to cooperate, we could…” Again he looked into the face of this man who looked as though his soul had taken up residence elsewhere, far away.
Eli Bachar waited for Benny Meyuhas to return his mug to the table, then handcuffed his wrists and led him downstairs to the police van. Michael accompanied them to the ground floor, where Hagar placed herself in front of Eli Bachar and said in a shaky voice that rose suddenly to a hysterical shriek, “If you take him, I’m coming with you, I don’t care what you—”
“You are welcome to come along,” Michael said, cutting her off. “Your turn would come up sooner or later anyway. But just take into consideration the fact that you’ll be interrogated now, too.”
“You people don’t scare me,” Hagar grumbled, frustrated at being denied a good excuse for an outburst. She rushed over to Benny, nearly grabbing his arm, but one look at the somber expression on his face caused her to lower her hand. The van was already waiting outside; Bublil escorted Benny Meyuhas into it. Hagar bent over as if to enter the van as well, but Bublil stopped her, casting a questioning look in Eli Bachar’s direction. Eli waved his arm to say it was all right, and Bublil, with a shrug, climbed into the van and sat in the driver’s seat.
In the hallway, on his way to the canteen, Michael saw Hefetz and Natasha, deep in conversation. Hefetz extended his hand to touch Natasha’s cheek, as if trying to remove
a mark or a crumb in a familiar, friendly manner. Natasha brushed his hand away. As he drew near, Michael could see the anger in the burnished blue of her eyes, could hear the venom in her words: “Ah, I get it. You’re taking care of me, is that it? Looking out for me? Who else would take care of me, if not for—” At that moment she caught sight of Michael and fell silent.
Hefetz, whose back was turned to the hallway, turned his face to Michael, casting him a look of utter helplessness. “I don’t know what to do with her,” he complained, as if speaking about a child who was their mutual responsibility.
Natasha grabbed a lock of her hair and gave it her full attention. “You get it?” she said to Michael. “He’s taking care of me, looking after my well-being, making sure nothing bad happens to me. You get that?” Then she added, without looking at Hefetz, “Well, if that’s the way it is, why doesn’t he just bring me home with him? How would that be? At least there, nobody would lay a hand on me, and he’d be looking after me, right?”
“That’s not funny,” Hefetz said in protest. “I really am concerned with your welfare. Why don’t you believe that? Why do you treat me like I’m some kind of…of criminal?” He appealed to Michael: “She doesn’t believe me, she thinks I just want to clear my conscience or that I only act in my own self-interest. But really, like I told you before, I just want to know what I can do…. I hear about this slaughtered sheep hanging in front of her door, at night, twenty-four hours later, and even then only by chance, thanks to a couple of policemen I overheard talking. Nobody thinks to tell me these things, and she? She treats me like a stranger. When all is said and done, what do I want? I know her so well, like…we’re so close…we’re…”
“Hefetz,” Natasha said quietly, emphasizing each syllable. “I’ve told you a thousand times, Hefetz, there’s no more ‘we.’ There’s me and there’s you, each of us completely separate. You know that expression, Two of us together, each of us apart? Well, that’s us to a tee. Believe me, not just us. And if you, if you think that—” She turned to Michael. “He says he loves me,” she said with wonder mixed with open desperation. “So what does that mean? What does it mean to love somebody?”
Hefetz shifted his startled gaze from Natasha to Michael. “Natasha…,” he said in warning, “Natasha—”
“Don’t you…I’m asking you what it means to love someone. Answer me.” To Michael she said, “I’m asking you, too. Two men, older and smarter than I am, I’m asking you what it means to love somebody.”
Michael said nothing, but looked at Hefetz, who was shifting his weight from foot to foot and wiping his brow. It seemed he was about to answer, but instead he merely said, “Natasha, do me a favor—”
“Does loving someone mean wanting the best for him?” she said, persistent. “Yes or no?”
Hefetz cleared his throat but said nothing.
“So you can help me. You can give me permission, you can help me…. I want to get that report on the air, that’s the only thing—”
“Do you hear her?” Hefetz said to Michael, deeply disturbed. He took hold of Natasha’s arm. “Don’t you understand how dangerous it is right now?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “After everything that’s happened, can’t you give up on that story about the ultra-Orthodox? Why are you hanging on to it? Do you really want to get involved with those people?”
“What?” Natasha said, shaking off his arm, her lips in a pout. “Because of a sheep’s head? That’s what’s got you so uptight?”
“No, not only that,” Hefetz said. “I mean, that too, that’s pretty scary, at night, no? It’s not frightening to come home and find that thing swinging over your front door? Of course that’s scary, isn’t it? But not just because of that sheep’s head. It’s because of Zadik, too. I saw him after he was murdered. Believe me, Natasha—” Hefetz’s voice cracked.
“There’s nothing to fear now,” Michael said quietly, “since you’re all being taken over to police headquarters. Nothing will happen to you between now and the time we take your testimonies.”
“You’re taking us now?” Hefetz exploded. “We have to go to police headquarters now? We’re in the middle of—we have—” He nodded in the direction of the canteen, where the newsroom staff sat talking excitedly around three Formica tables that had been pushed together. “We have an urgent staff meeting, there’s nowhere for us to meet since the police have—so this is the only place for us to sit and there are a few matters we have to—I haven’t even decided who’s going to run the News Department, I’m all alone now—Rubin isn’t willing to fill in for me even temporarily, says he doesn’t want any administrative jobs and there’s nobody—” Michael shrugged, and extended his arm to invite Hefetz to enter the canteen. He followed Hefetz inside just as Niva was shouting, “We can’t very well announce on the news that one of our colleagues has been arrested as a murder suspect, can we?”
“Calm down already,” Erez grumbled. “Why are you shrieking like a little girl, don’t you know anything? We won’t use the word ‘arrested,’ we’ll just say he’s been detained. But we have to report it; do you think Channel Two is going to behave in a polite and friendly manner and just leave it out of their broadcast entirely?”
When they noticed Michael among them, they fell silent. For several long seconds they stared at him until Niva, shaken and hostile, dared to speak up. “Is it true that you’ve arrested Benny Meyuhas and that he’s your main suspect?” Without waiting for an answer, she added, “I can’t believe it! You’ve got to be completely blind to see that Benny Meyuhas—he wasn’t even here, how could you?”
“We’ve got to get a few things wrapped up quickly,” Hefetz said. “They want to take us to police headquarters to give testimony.”
“Now?!” Erez protested. “After they’ve been driving us nuts all day? As if this trauma, this disaster with Zadik, wasn’t bad enough—what have we been doing here all day if not giving testimony?”
“What, are we suspects too?” Niva demanded to know. “Is everyone at Israel Television considered a suspect?”
Michael regarded her silently, then glanced at pregnant Tzippi, who sighed, spread her arms out on the table, and laid her head down on them. When his eyes met those of David Shalit, the correspondent for police affairs shot him a questioning look. Shalit stood from his place and approached. “I’d like to have a word with you, Chief Superintendent Ohayon.” In a whisper he said, “I’ve got to know how many—”
“Forget about that for now, Davey,” Hefetz said quietly. “Nobody’s gonna talk to you about that right now, they’ve got…slightly more important matters to attend to. Wouldn’t you say that’s true?” he asked, turning to Michael. “How long do we have to wrap up?”
“Another half an hour or so,” Michael answered after consulting his watch. “And I hope that we’ll be finished by morning. That depends on how things develop.”
“What about the late-night news?” Hefetz insisted. “You can’t take the folks from the late-night news, somebody’s got to be around for the broadcast.”
“Prepare a list for me,” Michael said. “Name all the people who are absolutely essential, but I mean essential, the ones that you can’t do without, and we’ll—”
“But that’s almost all of us,” Hefetz protested. “Erez, and the anchor and the late-night production assistant, and the researcher and the reporters—Danny Benizri and Rubin—and Niva—”
“I don’t have to be here,” Niva said.
“You draw up a list, and we’ll come for those people with the van, after the late-night broadcast. I want to see that list. As for the others,” Michael said, “they’ll have to come with us now, no arguments. Anyone who doesn’t come in at nine-thirty will be questioned after midnight. No problem.”
A uniformed officer entered the canteen. “Sir,” he said breathlessly, “we…wanted…” He indicated that he would prefer to speak to Michael outside the canteen.
Michael rushed over to him. “What is it, Yigael? Anything n
ew?” he asked.
“A couple of things, sir,” the policeman answered. “First of all, there’s this guy at the entrance to the building with a special delivery for Hefetz. They wouldn’t let him in, but he’s got this envelope in his hand and he won’t let anyone see what’s inside. He says, ‘I’m only giving this to Hefetz, that’s what they told me, the editor told me.’ So we decided to ask you, sir, if—”
“Hefetz,” Michael called out, and Hefetz hurried over. “Tell him, Yigael, let him decide,” Michael said to the policeman.
“I woulda let the whole thing go, sent the guy packing,” the policeman said apologetically, “but he was so insistent, and I thought—”
“You did the right thing,” Michael said. “In these situations you never know.” In fact he was thinking about Natasha; he wondered whether those pages meant only for Hefetz were about her.
The policeman explained the matter to Hefetz as the three progressed together to the main entrance. Michael and Sergeant Yigael stood next to the stairway and watched as Hefetz approached the messenger, who was holding in one hand a scooter helmet and in the other a yellow envelope, which he handed over silently to Hefetz and then made to leave. “Hang on a minute, hang on,” Hefetz called after him. “I haven’t signed for this,” he said, but the young man had already disappeared from view.
“What’s the second thing you had to tell me?” Michael asked Yigael as he watched Hefetz holding the envelope as though weighing it. On their way back to the canteen, Hefetz began ripping it open. Michael considered asking him to open it in his presence, but the police sergeant distracted him when he said, “Sir, you’d better come with me to the second floor, where the newsroom is, we found something—They’re waiting for you there.”
A policeman was stationed at the entrance to the newsroom as well, while inside there were three members of the forensics team. “Yaffa will show you,” one of them told him as he walked into one of the rooms. “It’s in the third room down, in the room marked FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS.”