He was still wandering around the room, waiting for the mobile crime lab he had summoned. He paused several times and stared at the sallow face of the deceased, emaciated by prolonged suffering... It seemed to him that some inhuman torment had taken up permanent residence in this body, already abandoned by its soul, and continued to lacerate its victim.
He turned and went into the gallery that surrounded the entire second floor.
The countryside was sinking into sleep...
The edge of the new moon on the surface of the deep sky and a tiny star not far from it seemed like features on someone's partially-covered face, perhaps a brow and a mole on her cheek. The smell of manure and smoke wafted in, a dog was barking rudely in the courtyard, and somewhere on the hillside people were firing guns from the rooftop. Apparently someone was celebrating something—they never miss a chance to show they keep guns in their houses.
Arkady took out a cigarette and lit up.
In the room behind him Ron Degen was already at work with people from his lab; in the gallery his serene voice could be heard indistinctly—he was chatting with Varda. These pathologists, Arkady thought, always have such an even temper and such soft voices, as if they were cultivating orchids rather than disemboweling stiffs. Especially Ron, who never raised his voice. It'll be interesting, however, to see what he says about this case.
An experienced specialist, Ron could usually determine on the spot whether it was necessary to perform an autopsy. If so, it would always mean a scandal.
Not one of the nationalities living here, not one of numerous ethnic groups, liked the idea of handing over one of their dead for an autopsy. There had to be special circumstances. Take the ultra-Orthodox Jews—they'd do the devil knows what to avoid autopsy. They'd steal the bodies of their relatives from the morgue or the hospital. That fact in itself didn't mean anything suspicious.
Besides, this family wasn't strangers. Both Walid and his son Salakh were policemen...
The son had strange, transparent eyes—the color of green grass, beautiful, but ever so slightly crossed; the impression was that he was looking right through you. And his left eye had developed a twitch, as if he were winking at someone behind your back.
They say that the dead sister had raised him from infancy—his mother had passed away very early. So that she was like a mother to him. No wonder the regular patrol police, summoned by the ambulance crew, decided not to drag out the case, but to shut their eyes to it; after all, it was a family drama. Why should they barge into someone else's private affair? It was only sarcastic David, always and everywhere suspecting unnatural death, who insisted on calling in an investigator.
Well, we'll get him to work with us instead of Varda. Why not? We'll send him to take requalifying courses... He's a lad with brains and principles... True, he's an incorrigible character. Never mind, never mind... we'll come to terms.
Now they were faced with the most unpleasant task, that of forcing the relatives to sign a form granting permission for an autopsy.
But maybe they should have it their own way with this family matter, he thought... A clan comes and a clan goes, and nothing ever changes in these villages with their age-old way of life, whether it's a governor-general of the Ottoman Empire sitting here, a British commissar, or the supervisor of an investigative unit of the Israeli police. A young woman did herself in, or else her relatives helped her... it's even possible that the victim and the executioners collaborated in this noble action... One may, of course, get lost in this dangerous maze that goes by the name of "the restoration of family honor," and, smashing everything in sight, consider oneself an arbiter of justice. But not one of the 1500 or so men and women living in the village will sympathize with the victim and say thank you to the police. On the contrary!
Still, it's interesting, what this unfortunate girl did...
Ron came out onto the gallery, leaned up against the railing, and said in a low voice:
"But there are still marks on her neck indicating strangulation."
Arkady took a last drag on his cigarette, crushed the stub against the baluster of the stone railing, and tossed it away.
"We'll take the body," he said.
He turned to look at the door into the room lit by the bright light of a five-pronged chandelier; from here, because of the dark night, it resembled a stage. There, as before, Walid's younger daughter was sitting in her armchair, her eyebrows raised in suffering above her impish little eyes.
"Wait here," said Arkady, walking past Varda. "I'll try to do this myself, in a nice way... They're both packing."
* * *
All week the damp murk hovered above the hills of Galilee, with ragged clouds clinging to the stubble of evergreens. Then it was clear for three days in a row, and the earth started to steam and breathe... From the heights of Safed, the Sea of Galilee seemed like an oblong, convex lens. From such a viewpoint it became entirely evident that the earth was round.
Here and there light pink smoke crept along the folds of deep hollows, as if someone were baking potatoes; it was simply the blossoming of almond trees.
But towards the beginning of the next week the rains poured down and once again forgot to clean up after themselves; wisps of steam were left hanging in the air... They wouldn't disperse.
On Monday, the results of the autopsy arrived from the Institute of Forensic Expertise, known simply as "Abu-Kabir," in as much as it was located next to the well-known holding cell of the same name.
Arkady was looking at the bare, thorny bush of bougainvillaea outside the window. In the summer it was lush and glowing—you glanced out the window and it was a sight for sore eyes! Now it shivered all alone in the wind, its long thorns piercing the clouds of cotton wool.
The tedious pauses, timid sobs, and lonely, lost harmonies: Debussy, the études—that's what this long-lasting fog was like. Debussy's études, which my music teacher, the late Stanislav Borisych, had been so fond of...
He dropped his eyes to the autopsy report and reread it. He ran his fingers quickly along the edge of the table.
He missed the musical instrument that his accursed life did not allow him to touch even for a minute; he often would tap out some passage onto any surface where his hands found themselves. He had played Debussy's étude at his beloved professor's funeral, in the great hall of the conservatory, where coffins were usually placed for farewells...
Why was it, why precisely during these periods of winter fog did the memory of Stanislav Borisych come back to him so often?
He scratched behind his ear with a pen.
According to the experts' conclusions, my dear ladies and gentlemen, the unmarried girl (in his mind he thought of her as an "old unmarried girl") had in no way been "alive and well, alive and well" the night before... She'd been dying for four days before that, in a terrible, agonizing manner. It was a real pleasure to read what our friends from "Abu-Kabir" had scribbled: both paralysis of the respiratory system and a scorched esophagus—an absorbing story, may the devil take you all. The main thing was, her death was caused by heart failure; apparently, she couldn't endure the suffering.
He recalled the convulsive twitch under Salakh's eye, the father's inflexible cheekbones, and the tear-stained face of the pretty younger sister, awash in expectations.
The older one was unattractive, with angular features and a nose that was too long. During her life, however, all this was probably softened by her feminine charm.
Hmm... yes... expert opinion on poisons was in general the main issue in this case. There are no more than a couple of specialists... and in fact, there are two of them: one was Russian, the other, Argentinian—two cheery guys. The work is hellish; every investigator begs for quick results. And the results themselves, to put it mildly, are ambiguous.
In our case: during the last four days, the poison in the body had managed to recede... Now go figure out what she was poisoned with... So, clearly we have to be more ingenious, take evasive action given a tight budget,
find the means for sending a tissue sample to London, to FFS—not an inexpensive luxury; after all, it was a commercial firm, that superb lab...
By noon the gray mist had not exactly dispersed, but had somehow moved, begun to stir... and flowed like blancmange.
From the window of the little wood-panel house where the police headquarters was located, the slope of the nearest hill became visible, with its rust-red rows of low grapevines, bare in winter.
The air became brighter and more cheerful, too; outlines of houses, a minaret, and a hotel tower arose in the silvery ripples. Pale blue Atlantic fir-trees stood along the edges of the roadway, taking in air like powerful grenadiers; during his childhood he had known them as "Kremlin trees"; finding them here in the hills of Galilee, he let out a deep sigh and settled down to live. Even though it had been proposed to him more than once that he transfer to the Central District.
But he loved old Safed, its steep hill where stone steps lead up to the sky or give out suddenly in the middle of nowhere; where structures of five, seven, or even nine stories seem nailed to the cliff like starling houses by someone's powerful hands and—when you glance down from the road—seem to be hanging in the air. Where at twilight enormous lamps like cockades flood the air with light like yellow honey, and townspeople decorate balcony railings, shutters, lintels, and even stone fences in light- and dark-blues, which, as is well known, ward off demons, dybbuks and ghosts from one's house.
Here at every step you see bumpy, colored glass. People place it in windows, doors, and lattice fences; you look here and there and you're touched by all the shades of dark-blue, red, violet, green and yellow. When you wake up in the morning in just that kind of old house, when the resonance of red and sun-yellow burst through your high, vaulted window, uncontrollable joy rushes into you with all its wind and brass instruments: you've awakened in paradise—transparent, multi-colored, celestial paradise!
But it's still a long time until summer.
Along the road home he made a detour to go past his favorite light-blue alley of Atlantic firs. That always improved his mood...
Winter in the hills—there was a book with that title he'd read in his youth. The author was named Wain, it seems. The hero in it was also always searching for someone, wandering around, wandering in the fog...
His daughter Yulka was home already. She was stretched out on the sofa reading a book. But eighth grade, by the way, had a rather difficult program of studies.
"Oh, Papa!" she said cheerfully. Her father didn't often stop by at home in the middle of the day.
"I've got only a half-hour," he said. "Daughter, fix me a little something to gulp down quickly!"
"I can heat the borshch," she said pensively, turning the book over and laying it aside on the sofa.
"Don't treat books like that! How many times have I told you?"
"Pa... you turn the gas up under the saucepan yourself, okay? I want to finish reading this one page..."
Without taking off his shoes, Arkady went into the kitchen and swearing, took the cold saucepan out of the refrigerator, wedged into his arm some jars that had started to tip over on the shelf as he grabbed the soup... He put the saucepan on the burner and thought, is it worth taking off my shoes for only half an hour? He didn't take them off.
They ate in silence; the father thought about his business, the girl continued to read to the end of her chapter.
When she jumped up to answer the telephone, Arkady turned the book so he could read the cover: bah! It was the same Witches and Wizards.
This would be a good time to hold an edifying conversation with her, but Yulka was gabbing with her girlfriend, and it was already time for him to go. He left to the sound of his daughter's peals of laughter. It was interesting how the soft uvular "r" in her Hebrew instantly yielded to the hard trilled "r" in her Russian. He wondered if any changes in the structure of the larynx occurred in bilingual children... That would be something to study, instead of searching for traces of poison in the internal organs of the murdered—yes, murdered, he would prove it!—woman.
He walked out of the entryway, sat in his car and drove to work. Today he still had a lot of things to do. Stop by the courthouse, review budgetary issues with the men, conduct an investigative experiment with this young jazz musician who'd "accidentally" killed his neighbor. Write a request to the criminal lab in London... And not to forget: one of his two investigators, Yoni, wanted Arkady himself to interrogate a psycho, or a guy pretending to be a psycho, the owner of a falafel shop who lured schoolgirls into his back room and showed them various pictures, for which they ought to cut off precisely that body part which he had shown to the girls... The main thing was that, at his interrogation, this psycho stared wildly, with eyes the size of plums, and, leaning his torso over the table, shouted in a mysterious whisper, that he'd received these pictures on command, by fax—from a matchbox!
All of a sudden he decided to drive through the village. Simply to have a look, to see what was up, he said to himself.
It often happened that he couldn't explain to himself why he took one or another unnecessary action, which, in addition, used up time in what was already a day boring enough for him to smoke five cigarettes. He took these steps... not "intuitively"—he couldn't stand that feminine word—but rather as a result of his musical education. There suddenly arose before his eyes an image of the "Bechstein" piano keyboard in his very own classroom number 24, where, before his lesson in composition, he used to seek out the harmonies almost blindly: he would touch the keys, and a triplet would quiver in the upper register... the left hand would support it with a chord... and all of a sudden something resembling a melody would emerge, or—as the late Stanislav Borisych used to say—a fresh musical idea...
So here it was, a fresh musical idea: to drive through the village and drop into the snack bar not far from Walid's house, the one with the large picture window... To have a look around... And, at the same time, to grab a little something to eat! Nadezhda's vegetable borshch never filled him up completely.
"More pita and labane," he said to the lad behind the counter. "And don't stint on the zahtar! More, more, pour it on!"
The lad smiled and showed his white teeth, scooped up a spoon of labane—something like sour cream, but with a sharper taste—and spread it generously on the surface of a large lafa—Druze-style pita, not hollow, but more like lavash baked on an iron stove and shaped like a tent. Like a sower of seeds, he sprinkled the white edges with dark green zahtar powder and sesame seeds, fragrant with flavor. The circular movement of his wrist produced a thick stream of green gold from the rubber tip of the bottle—local olive oil. Then he rolled up the lafa bread.
Arkady sank his teeth into the springy softness... Scrumptious!
During the last few years, he'd grown accustomed to the local food, and lately, when he happened to travel abroad, he would miss it a great deal; in restaurants, he would grumble and criticize refined French and Italian cuisine. In general, these fifteen years spent "among the lands," in the Hills of Galilee, in endless rounds from one Arab village to another, Druse or Cherkessian, hadn't exactly altered, but had somehow deepened, fermented his whole being, just as the local air is fermented by the curdled fog during the winter.
Sitting next to the glass window, its outside surface splattered with dried mud, he observed the typical village street—as much as the patchy murk would allow him—leading up the hill, winding and narrow, where it was hard for two cars to pass. Just then two cars almost sideswiped each other. The drivers honked their horns, gesticulating furiously and cursing...
"Is that Walid over there, in the car?" Arkady asked lazily, indicating the road.
Of course, Walid couldn't be in that car. For the last five days, he and his son had been held in an investigative confinement cell. Arkady himself had interrogated both of them. Without much success. They both kept firmly to their story; alas, Jamilya had done away with herself. In general she was inclined to be unhappy, poor girl,
ever since birth. Not unlike her late mother... In a word—a family matter...
Today was the last day when the suspects could be legally detained in custody. Tomorrow he would be forced to release them for lack of evidence, that is, to admit defeat. "Evidence of what?" he asked himself, chuckling. That they forced the girl to hang herself first, and then they made her drink some agricultural poison? (That's what the boys at the lab believe.) And what if she had made the decision to wipe herself off the face of the earth in such an awkward manner?
"No," said the lad, glancing at the whitish haze behind the glass, as if it were possible to make anything out. "In the first place, Walid has a gray Subaru..."
He didn't say what was in the second place; he held his tongue. Especially since an old man came in from the cooking area; he was wearing a galabiya and a white headscarf wrapped around his head as women do. On the right side the fabric encircled one protruding hairy ear. The old man held a red nectarine in his hand and with a small knife was removing its reddish ribbon of skin.
Life Stories Page 22
