Because of the despair in Marianka’s eyes Avraham suggested that they eat hummus at a restaurant in the Old City, but Anika tasted one warm chickpea and left the entire serving on the plate. Avraham already knew that he’d go to the station when they got back, so he strove to be friendly and talkative. They had only one more day together, and he tried, for Marianka. He asked her father about his work at the theological seminary and when he started practicing karate and about immigrating to Brussels, but Bojan answered him with few words, as if against his will. He actually ate all his hummus as well as the portion that Anika left. But the whole time it seemed he wanted to say something else.
Marianka kept quite throughout the entire meal, and when they ordered coffee Anika, of all people, turned to him and said, “Are there developments in the murder case?” And Avraham said, “Yes, it seems so.”
“So you certainly want to go back, no? I feel that you aren’t with us.”
Bojan signaled to the waiter that they would like the bill, and Avraham looked at Marianka when he said, “I have no choice,” and Anika said to him, “Police never actually get a vacation.”
He tried to smile when he said to her, “Sometimes they do.”
“I mean a time when you don’t think about your work. You certainly take your investigations everywhere.”
Avraham hoped that the waiter would come quickly with the bill, but he passed before them with five plates of hummus on the way to another table.
“Why do you actually love it so much?” Anika asked, and Avraham tried to understand what she meant.
“Why did you decide to become a police detective? You certainly could have done other things.”
Avraham was still thinking of how to answer when he heard Marianka saying, “Avi needs to be near pain,” and then saw her dad nod, like a senior doctor who confirms the diagnosis of a junior one. This wasn’t true, but Avraham knew that this is what Marianka thought, because they spoke about it sometimes. He tried to explain to her that since he was a boy he dreamed of being a policeman because of his addiction to detective novels and his sense that he could prove that the fictional detectives were wrong and that the people convicted were innocent. No one knew this was the reason, other than Marianka. Not Eliyahu Ma’alul and not Ilana Lis and definitely not his parents, from whom he hid his dream to join the police until the day when he was accepted to serve and informed them that he wouldn’t be a lawyer. When he said, “I think I became a policeman in order to save people in danger,” Avraham sought out Marianka’s eyes, but she was looking in a different direction, and on Bojan’s face rose a forgiving smile, as if his answer were incorrect.
Avraham actually didn’t have much to do in his office during those hours. When Shabbat ended, Vahaba began showing the policeman’s picture to rape victims in the district, but Ma’alul still hadn’t arrived. Avraham tried calling the neighbor from the second floor, but he still wasn’t at home, and then he looked again and again at the footage in which the policeman could be seen passing by on the street. Perhaps because he was alone in his office and because he had watched the policeman so many times, Avraham suddenly realized that in his head he was talking to the policeman in second person, as if he were sitting across from him in the room. How did you obtain details of rape victims? And what did you want from them? He wrote the questions in pen on a clean sheet of paper. When he sent Ilana Lis a brief text message: Maybe we can meet anyway? she invited him to come to her home on Monday. And Benny Saban sounded like he had woken up from sleeping when Avraham called him and Benny asked, “What picture are you talking about?”
He informed Saban about the fact that a high-resolution photo of the policeman had been found, and suggested that they post it on the Facebook page or in the media, and Saban asked to get back to him. But when he called again after a few minutes he announced to him in a tone even more aggressive than the one he used in the meeting on Thursday that there was no chance the picture would be published. Before saying good-bye Saban asked him, “You’re off tomorrow anyway, no?” and Avraham said, “Not sure yet. The guests are going early Monday morning, but in any event I’ll be available all day. Everyone knows what they need to do and they’ll keep me up to date, and if they need it, I’ll come in.” Esty Vahaba and Eliyahu Ma’alul were supposed to go through all the sexual assault victims in the district until another woman contacted by the policeman was found, and to report to Avraham after each inquiry was carried out. And they did call him every hour or two, but by Sunday evening they still had no news. None of the women they presented with the photograph identified the man in the picture, and none of them was questioned or received a request from a policeman she didn’t know. Avraham spent these hours on visits to churches and monasteries with Bojan and Anika Milanich, because he didn’t want to leave Marianka alone. First in Nazareth and afterward at the Sea of Galilee, in the place where Jesus apparently walked on water. His cell phone didn’t stop ringing, and Marianka stopped trying to start a conversation involving everyone, so they wandered from site to site silent and expressionless, as if they belonged to a forlorn Trappist order, counting the hours remaining for them together. Toward evening, when they returned to Tel Aviv and sat in a restaurant on the boardwalk, Avraham even thought about ignoring the ringing of his phone, but finally answered and heard Ma’alul saying in an agitated voice, “Avi, are you alone? Can you speak for a moment? It’s very urgent.”
Marianka looked at Avraham when he went out of the restaurant to the parking lot.
“What happened? Is everything okay?”
“Definitely not, Avi. You have no idea what went on here today, when we weren’t at the station.”
Through the glass windows of the restaurant Avraham saw that Bojan was speaking to Marianka, and she looked upset, exactly like Ma’alul sounded.
“What happened?”
“Shrapstein brought Yeger’s son in for additional questioning. And arrested him. We just returned to the station and Saban informed us that we’re not to continue presenting the picture of the policeman to the victims, because Erez Yeger has been arrested and the investigation is now focused on him.”
Avraham was stunned. And remembered that Saban asked him yesterday if he was taking vacation and didn’t try convincing him to cancel it.
“What exactly did he arrest Erez Yeger for? We know that the assailant isn’t a relative.”
He absentmindedly put his hand in his coat pocket in order to take out a pack of cigarettes, when Ma’alul said to him, “That’s the thing, Avi, he’s not her son. I mean not biologically. He’s adopted, apparently. Her daughter revealed this to Shrapstein during questioning early this morning, and he brought Yeger in for questioning as a precaution and arrested him immediately. His alibi doesn’t hold water, either, because he was released from reserve duty a few hours before the murder and could have reached Holon. Didn’t you know that he wasn’t her son? And in the meantime, he’s refusing a polygraph and DNA test. He’s taken a lawyer and is maintaining his right to remain silent.”
Avraham took the phone away from his mouth. He recalled a thought that passed through his head at the funeral when Erez Yeger fell on his mother’s grave mound: He doesn’t resemble her at all.
“Avi, can I ask you something?” Ma’alul said, and Avraham answered, “Yes.” He knew what Ma’alul wanted to ask even before he heard his words.
“I’m with you on this policeman, but isn’t it possible we’re mistaken?”
He didn’t immediately respond. Before Diana Goldin entered his office he indeed was able to imagine Erez Yeger standing on the other side of the door.
“I’m not saying that we’ll stop checking out this angle,” Ma’alul continued, “but the son is a logical suspect, don’t you think?”
But Leah Yeger wouldn’t have written down a meeting with her son on the calendar that was taken from the scene nor in her datebook, and there was also the testimony of the neighbor about the policeman who came down the stairwell and the pi
cture of this policeman that was found! And besides this, the neighbor didn’t see anyone else leaving the scene of the murder. Ma’alul listened to him and then said, “But maybe there’s an explanation for that, you know?” And Avraham fell silent. “Her son does reserve duty at an air force supply base, and it could be that the neighbor got confused between a police uniform and the uniform he was wearing, do you get it?”
Marianka looked strange to Avraham when he returned to the restaurant.
Her eyes were red as if she had cried and washed her face. And how did all that Ma’alul told him not weaken Avraham’s confidence? If he had been alone he would have gotten into his car and gone to the station, but the time was almost ten and he didn’t even leave Saban a message when he called him and didn’t get an answer. Before they said good-bye Avraham told Ma’alul, “Anything could be, Eliyahu. And there’s certainly a reason why the son lied. But I think that they simply don’t want the investigation to head in the direction of the policeman, don’t you understand? In any case, I ask that tomorrow you and Vahaba continue showing the photo to the remaining victims. And if we need to I’ll find a way to publish it, with or without Saban agreeing, you’ll see.”
When none of them asked him why he left the restaurant for such a long time, Avraham already understood that something had happened. The waitress came to their table and Marianka didn’t order anything for herself and then said, “Do you want to share what you have to say with Avi as well? He deserves to hear what you think.” Both she and Anika looked at her father, and Bojan spread a napkin over his lap and indeed began to speak.
At the start of his speech Avraham still wasn’t listening to him attentively because he was thinking about the things he’d need to do when he arrived at the station the next morning. But after this the words sharpened in his ears, and he couldn’t believe what he heard. And even though Bojan’s remarks were directed at Avraham, he looked only at Marianka while he spoke.
“As you can imagine for yourself, and as we already told Marianka, we didn’t come here for nothing,” he began. “We missed her and were also happy to meet your parents and visit places that we had only read about until today, but the reason why we’re here is to try to convince Marianka to return home. We had misgivings before we came, but now we are certain that this is what she must do. We have no intentions on hiding anything from you, and therefore we now say this to you as well.”
Next to Avraham’s plate was a glass of red wine that he hadn’t ordered, and he sipped from the glass and waited. Marianka sat next to him and played with her fork but didn’t look at him. “Why convince her to go back?” Avraham asked, and Bojan said, “Because she made a mistake when she came here. We told her our opinion beforehand and we said it again now. She has nothing to do here. We all started building a new life for ourselves in Brussels. She had a good job with the police and a chance to advance, and here she is alone and far away from people who truly are concerned for her.” Bojan was silent for a moment and then looked at Marianka and continued. “We know that you won’t admit this in front of us,” he said, “but we feel that you are very miserable here. You’re throwing your life in the garbage, and we think you know this and want to ask Avi as well to understand and help you come to the right decision. It is important for us to say that we are not opposed to the relationship between you, but we understand that there’s no chance that Avi would leave his job and come to live with us in Brussels.”
Avraham didn’t say a thing. Marianka raised her eyes from the table and looked at her mother when she quietly asked, “Do you really think I’m miserable here?” And Bojan smiled.
“I look miserable to you?” she asked her mother again, but Anika didn’t answer.
“Definitely. You are miserable because you’re alone and far from the family and the life that you built for yourself and that we helped you to build,” Bojan said. “And we see this, even though you try to pretend. You’re squandering your talents and your life in a place where you have no one. Avi has a job and a family and he can’t take care of you. And you won’t find work that is appropriate for you without knowing the language. And you aren’t a Jew, either.”
Avraham needed to interrupt and stop him then, but Marianka and her father looked only at each other, as if he and Anika weren’t sitting at the table, and Marianka said, “But I am happy here, don’t you see? I love Avi and we have a home. For the first time I have my own place. It’s true I don’t yet know what to do with myself, but I’ll find something.”
“And if you don’t find anything?” Anika suddenly asked, and Bojan signaled with his hand that he wanted to continue speaking and said, “It is important to us that you hear these things, because no one else loves you enough to say them to you. And I don’t know what you mean when you say that you love Avi, but you thought that you loved other men as well before him, right? And at some point those loves ended. In any case, our obligation as parents is to inform you that we won’t support your life here. We won’t be able to come back because that would be an expression of support for your choice. And it is important to us to emphasize that we have nothing against Avi, just the opposite, we respect him, and actually because of that we hope that he will understand and help you to leave.”
He had to say something, if not for himself than at least for Marianka. And maybe he just needed to take her hand and get out of there. He tried to smile when he said, “I understand your concern for Marianka, but I want you to know that she’s in good hands. We’re thinking about our shared future, for now we haven’t made any decisions, and if it gets hard for Marianka we’ll think about that together. I can promise you that I only want what’s good for her.” Everyone was silent when he finished, as if he hadn’t said a thing.
Bojan continued looking only at Marianka. The waitress served the appetizers and on the table a short candle burned. “I don’t know if you’re a believer, Avi,” Bojan said. “We are. We all are. And a day before we came here I saw from the window of my office a sight that was for me a sign that we are doing the right thing. On the street opposite the window there was a run-over dove, and suddenly I saw another dove land next to it and begin to peck at its corpse. I tried to understand what I was seeing, until I realized that it was impossible to know if it was kissing it or saying good-bye to it or perhaps actually eating its flesh. Do you understand what I mean?”
Avraham didn’t understand, but Marianka did. And he couldn’t help but recall the birds on which he found Leah Yeger’s body. If the conversation had taken place at another time, and not minutes after Ma’alul informed him that Saban and Shrapstein were trying to wrest control of the investigation away from him, perhaps Avraham would have responded differently, especially when Marianka put down her wineglass and smiled at her father and then said to him, “You’re an idiot, you know? I now finally understand how much of an idiot you are.”
“I’m trying to say to you that your good intentions don’t change the situation, Avi,” Bojan continued as if Marianka hadn’t said a thing to him. “I believe you that you want only good for Marianka, as you say, but she is the one run-over in the street now, and you’re pecking at her flesh, even if it seems to you that those are kisses.”
Anika touched Bojan’s hand, as if to signal to him that he had gone too far. Or perhaps she actually did this in order to support him? Marianka was the one who got up first and left the restaurant, and Avraham simply went after her. And only later on, when they returned to their apartment, did he ask her, “What the hell was that crazy fable about the dead birds?”
Marianka asked him to open the car door and got inside and sat in the passenger seat and burst out laughing.
“Let’s go,” she said to him afterward, and when he asked what her parents would do, she answered, “Doesn’t matter. Let them go back on foot.”
They stopped in a parking lot not far from there because Marianka wanted them to go down to the beach, and when they sat facing the dark water she said to him only, “I’m sor
ry,” and he asked her, “About what?”
“That you heard all that. I should have known that this is what would happen. You were right.”
So why did he feel that he needed to apologize to her? To apologize for bringing her to Holon and for not responding to her father and mainly for hiding from her everything he was going through since the investigation opened and for truly leaving her alone. They didn’t talk almost at all about her parents that night but about themselves instead, about her and about him, and Avraham managed to tell her everything he hadn’t said in recent days. He told her about the conversation with Ma’alul and about Erez Yeger, who wasn’t his mother’s biological son, and about the fact that she was raped in her home by a man she knew and about the policeman whom he was sure asked to question her for reasons he still didn’t comprehend. When Marianka asked him why he hadn’t shared all this with her before then, Avraham told her the truth. That he had no idea. And then he added, “Maybe in order to protect you from something,” and she said, “To protect me? From what? And why do you think that I need protection?”
The next day, at four in the morning, they said good-bye to Bojan and Anika in the street, across from a cabdriver who had come to take them to the airport, without hugging.
Avraham couldn’t go back to sleep, and even though he wanted to stay with Marianka all day, he went ahead and left for the station early. When Esty Vahaba called him toward noon he was in the car, on his way to Ilana Lis so that she could advise him on how nevertheless to publish the picture of the policeman who went down the stairs and disappeared, only Vahaba said that she thinks there’s a woman who perhaps knows something about the policeman.
He slowed down and asked her, “What? He visited her, too?” and Vahaba said, “No, she didn’t say anything, but she was quite shocked when I showed her the picture, I think. And I have a feeling she didn’t tell me everything she knows.”
The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything Page 13