The Literary Murder

by Batya Gur

  She didn’t notice exactly when they began to talk about Tirosh and the department. Somehow he had succeeded in managing things so that within a few seconds she found herself telling him all about Adina Lipkin. He was listening attentively, she felt, was really interested in her description of her difficulties, really interested, too, in her observations about the department faculty. He didn’t ask about her relations with Tirosh, only asked her to describe his personality as she saw it.

  Racheli felt transfixed by the dark eyes of her interrogator, spellbound by his soft voice, and she responded to them: “He had a lot of charm. I’ve never met anyone like him. I’ve been a fan of his poetry ever since high school, and my first meeting with him gave me a real thrill. And his outward appearance, and his knowledgeableness about everything, and the way everyone admired him. But I wouldn’t have wanted co be close to him.”

  As she spoke, she sensed that the policeman agreed with her, felt as she did, so she didn’t hesitate when he asked: “Why?” It was clear to her that he really wanted to know why she, Racheli Luria, did not want to be close to Shaul Tirosh, and she answered without thinking: “I was afraid of him. He frightened me.”

  In the same interested tone, he asked: “In what way?” and Racheli, embarrassed, replied: “There was something dishonest about him, but that’s only a feeling; actually, I don’t mean dishonest, but insincere, not genuine. I couldn’t have trusted him. I sometimes used to see him making eyes at people, like flirting, but you could never tell—I could never tell—if he meant it.”

  The man leaned toward her from the other side of the table. She noticed his long, dark lashes, his thick brows, and then, in a coaxing, authoritative tone, he said: “Give me an example; describe a situation that involved you.”

  “I can’t explain exactly, but there were times when I was alone with him in the office, and once, when they were repairing a leak in the radiator in his office, he held his conference hour in the department office and for a while I was the only person there—Adina was recovering from a minor operation; otherwise she’s always there—and we started talking. He behaved toward me then as if he was really interested in me. I remember that I felt as if something really special was happening: he, the eminent professor and poet and everything, was talking to me, the mere student, as if I was a real woman.” She stopped talking, but the policeman didn’t take his eyes off her as he waited for her to go on.

  “And at the same time, I had the feeling that I was watching a movie, a movie I’d already seen. He stood next to the window, looked outside, and talked as if he was talking to himself, about himself. He said that at his age he asked himself if he had any real friends, and something about human loneliness in general, and he quoted a poem by Natan Zach: ‘It’s not good that the man should be alone, but he’s alone anyhow,’ and he asked me if I’d ever thought about the meaning of these lines—that’s how it began. After that he spoke about the real friends, and I thought: Why is he telling me this, what does he want of me? And I had the feeling that if I let myself be dragged into this conversation, something terrible would happen to me, that he would—how can I put it?—that I would be attracted to him. That’s it. He was so attractive, I almost went up to him, to console him, but something stopped me. I sensed that it wasn’t really me he was talking to, but I was just someone who happened to be there. After all, he didn’t know the first thing about me”—she sounded apologetic—“but what really frightened me was that fascination of his, the power that drew me toward him, just to touch his terrible, infinite suffering, which I couldn’t do anything about: I would give him all of myself, and he wouldn’t give me anything back, he had nothing to give me. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “You explain it perfectly,” said the policeman with a sober, encouraging expression, and Racheli blushed, and since she didn’t want to show how much the compliment had meant to her, she went on: “That lecture about loneliness sounded so strange to me because of all the stories.”

  “Stories?” asked the policeman, and he put out his cigarette, which gave off a strong smell, in the tin ashtray at the edge of the table, as he scribbled something on the sheet of paper in front of him.

  “Well, there were all kinds of stories,” said Racheli in embarrassment. “Rumors.”

  “Such as?” he asked softly.

  “All kinds of things,” and again Racheli felt her throat contracting and her feet in their biblical sandals beginning to sweat, but the man wouldn’t let go. His look said: Trust me; I want to know.

  “There were stories about him and women and about other poets and all kinds of people.”

  “Did you think, when he was talking to you, that he was really lonely?”

  “Yes and no. Mainly I thought that it was like a line from a novel, or a movie. I don’t like that kind of empty declaration. And that business of standing next to the window, as if he’d chosen the most flattering angle for his profile. And at the same time, there was something convincing about it, I believed him too, and that’s what frightened me so much. I didn’t think it all out then; it’s only now that I can put it into words.”

  “Who was the person closest to him in the world, in your opinion?” And again Racheli thought that she was being given an important and central role, that she was being asked to offer the fruits of her long and patient observation.

  “Well, his relationship with Dr. Shai was considered to be close,” she said hesitantly.

  “But?” he asked, and waited patiently.

  “But I couldn’t stand the way Dr. Shai abased himself—he simply hero-worshiped him. And then that story with his wife.”

  “His wife?” asked the policeman, and Racheli looked at his brown arms in the white shirt and thought that she knew exactly what his skin would smell like, a clean smell, and she felt herself blushing.

  “Dr. Shai’s wife, Ruchama. I hardly know her; I’ve only seen her a couple of times, and I’ve talked to her on the phone, but still . . . ” She searched for the right words, and in the end she said: “Everyone talked about it; it was obvious that they were together.”

  She couldn’t get the words out quickly enough to express what she wanted to say, clearly and eloquently, about the strange triangle that had been the talk of the department, the students, everyone. Except for Adina, of course, who never said a word about it.

  “Together?” he asked. “You mean Ruchama Shai and Professor Tirosh? They lived together?”

  “No, but it was as if the three of them lived together. Everybody knew about it, and in my opinion Dr. Shai knew too; a lot of people think so, anyway. It went on for years, but lately . . . ” Racheli looked at him and hesitated, but he nodded as if to say: “I’m all ears,” and she went on. “Lately something seemed to have changed.” The policeman remained silent.

  “She would look for him, and he would disappear, or ask us to say that he wasn’t there; to other people too—that is, it wasn’t as if he told us to tell just her, but I felt that things weren’t what they used to be between them, as if he was avoiding her.”

  Racheli couldn’t stop herself. She, who had been observing these people for months, who had heard about them ever since she began studying at the university, and who had kept her impressions to herself all this time, suddenly felt a tremendous need to tell him everything, and for a minute, a second, she heard herself from the outside, and she couldn’t believe her ears. She asked herself if the urge to talk stemmed from the wish to come close to this man, whom she wanted to touch her, to smile at her pleasantly, with the smile that made her talk on and on; or whether, perhaps, it came from the feeling that at last she had a listener, someone who would take an interest in her long labor of observation and appreciate her perceptiveness.

  “And why do you think that Dr. Shai knew?”

  “Because in the first place, everyone thought he knew, but also because of his subservience to Tirosh. And Tuvia Shai isn’t a fool or a blind man, and everyone else saw, and he was in the office
more than once when his wife called, looking for Tirosh. They didn’t even try to hide it. There was something frightening about it; I didn’t understand why he—Dr. Shai, that is—stayed with her, why he didn’t divorce her.”

  The telephone rang. He lifted the receiver and said: “Yes.”

  His face changed. The soft expression with which he had listened to her disappeared, and tensely he jotted down a few words. But he kept his eyes fixed on her, and by now she felt brave enough to face his look.

  “Between two and six?” he said in a hard voice, a different voice. “Okay, I’ll get in touch again later, in a little while.” He replaced the receiver and lit another cigarette.

  Then he asked about Iddo Dudai, and Racheli said: “He was a nice guy, pleasant; even Adina liked him. But he took himself too seriously, in the professional sense, I mean—for example, he’d never say anything off the cuff—but everyone respected him anyway and liked him.”

  “What about Tirosh?”

  “With regard to Iddo, you mean? I think he also respected him; his attitude toward him was paternal, though he mocked him a bit too. Not actually mocked, really, but he made fun of his seriousness, of the way he examined everything under a microscope. But there was no ill will in it.”

  “Did Tirosh dive too?”

  “You mean scuba diving?” And Racheli sensed that the policeman knew something she didn’t know, that now he was directing the conversation. “No; why should he? He always laughed at sports and said that life was too short for suffering. ‘Only skiing is worthwhile,’ I heard him say once, ‘but only in Switzerland, in the Alps, not on Mount Hermon.’ But I can’t imagine him skiing either—if you ever saw him, in his suits, you’d know he wasn’t the type for outdoor sports, despite his tan. He said he loved the sea, but I don’t believe he dived. It was Iddo who was mad about diving.” She didn’t dare ask him why he wanted to know, she had the feeling that there was something else here, something she knew nothing about.

  “And apart from Mrs. Shai, did you notice any other changes? Did anything unusual happen lately? Did Tirosh seem strained? Different?”

  Racheli hesitated before answering. She remembered Tirosh’s pallor and air of weariness after the departmental faculty meeting on Friday, when she had first noticed the traces of age, the deep creases in his cheeks, the heaviness in his tread.

  “Anything at all,” said the policeman. “Whatever comes into your head.”

  Racheli reported the changes and summed up: “On Wednesday night there was a departmental seminar, and afterward everyone behaved as if a catastrophe had taken place, but I couldn’t understand what had happened. I wasn’t there, but I heard from Tsippi, a teaching assistant, that Iddo attacked Professor Tirosh and there was a big scandal. But they’re always having scandals over things like that; it’s all political. They carry on as if one word of theirs can change the face of literature in Israel, and sometimes they even imagine they can influence the whole world.” She was taken aback by her own bitterness and hostility.

  “And Iddo? Were there any changes in Iddo?”

  “Ever since he returned from the United States—he was there for a month, on a grant—he wasn’t the same person,” said Racheli, who realized that she was quoting something she had overheard Tuvia Shai say.

  “How would you describe the change?” asked the policeman, and once more he leaned forward and fixed his eyes on her as if eagerly anticipating her reply.

  “I don’t know exactly; as if he was upset about something, uneasy, angry, and he avoided Tirosh. But that may have been connected to what he heard when he came back.”

  “What did he hear?”

  “I don’t know if it’s true, but people talked, and I saw them in Meirsdorf, having lunch in the guesthouse restaurant—Iddo’s wife, Ruth, and Tirosh. And I don’t know, maybe that’s the way Professor Tirosh behaved with any female, but it seemed to me that there was more to it than just a friendly lunch. He had that agonized expression on his face—the one I told you about, when he was standing next to the window—and afterward I heard from Dr. Aharonovitz. . . .” And Racheli stopped to take a breath, and also in order to convey that she didn’t like Dr. Aharonowitz—he sensed it, she knew, just as he sensed everything else. “He didn’t tell me, he told somebody else, in the line at the cash register in Meirsdorf, and I heard him, because they didn’t see me, he said”—and she looked at the ceiling, she could hear his voice, the ugly innuendo in it—“‘And so we behold our great poet snaring yet another woman in his net. Gullible fools.’”

  “You think he was sleeping with her? With Iddo Dudai’s wife?” asked the policeman. “And that Iddo knew about it?”

  Racheli nodded, then she said: “And Iddo wasn’t the type to go along with it, like Dr. Shai.”

  “Why do you think”—and Racheli’s heart swelled at the emphasis—“that Dr. Shai went along with it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Racheli, and though she started hesitantly, the words turned into fluent, full sentences: “I thought about it a lot, because Dr. Shai’s such an honest, decent person. You could even like him, really, but I think he admired Professor Tirosh so much that he couldn’t bring himself to object even to that. I heard him say more than once that true genius was a force he couldn’t resist. When he came back from Europe, from a conference, at the beginning of the year, he talked about Florence, about the statue of David. He was talking to Iddo, in our office, and I’ve never heard anyone talk about a work of art like that before. As if he was talking about—” Racheli searched for the word while he waited patiently. “—as if he was talking about a woman, or something,” she finally announced, and she bit her lip.

  “And did he dive?” the policeman asked, and then lit another cigarette.

  “Who? Dr. Shai? Not on your life. Have you seen him?” And she refrained from asking why he was so interested in diving, because it was obvious that she wouldn’t get an answer.

  “Did anyone else in the Literature Department go in for diving?”

  Racheli stared at him incomprehendingly and shook her head. After this she obediently answered questions about her movements since Friday and what she had done over the weekend. She explained that she had finished work at noon on Friday, that it had been her turn to clean the flat and do the shopping, that she had been expecting her parents to come on a visit from Hadera, and that they had arrived at four o’clock.

  “So you’re from Hadera?” he asked as he wrote, and she nodded and suddenly realized the purpose of his questions. Gathering her courage, she asked him if he was checking her alibi.

  Again he smiled the smile that narrowed his eyes to slits and emphasized his cheekbones, and he said: “You don’t have to call it that, but yes, more or less,” and in the same breath asked her if she had any ideas about who murdered Shaul Tirosh.

  She shook her head. She had thought about it all night, she said—she couldn’t sleep because of the sight of the corpse, and the smell—but she didn’t have a clue. None of the people she knew looked to her like a murderer.

  “And in the departmental seminars,” he said, and she sensed that he was about to tell her she could go, “does anyone take notes of the proceedings?”

  “No; it’s quite a mass event; sometimes they publish the lectures. But it was apparently a very unusual evening; I heard that they recorded it for the radio and for television, Tsippi told me the next day.” Racheli sensed the change that came over his face; as if a curtain had descended, there was a different atmosphere in the room.

  “Television?” he asked, and a glint came into his eyes. “Is that routine? Do they always have television reporters at the seminars?”

  “No,” said Racheli. “Of course not; there’s a seminar every month. It was because of Professor Tirosh: they call him the darling of the media.”

  “Who, for example, calls him that?”

  “Aharonovitz, I think. He always ridiculed Professor Tirosh, but never in his presence.”

  “Did
Aharonovitz have any particular reason for ridiculing Tirosh?”

  “Not that I know of. Maybe just pathological jealousy. But he never laughed at his poetry. Next to Tirosh, Aharonovitz always looked so repulsive; he’s unattractive in any case, but next to Professor Tirosh it was even more conspicuous.” And Racheli felt terribly tired; she knew with despairing certainty that the man sitting opposite her wasn’t going to get closer to her, and she didn’t have the strength to say another word.

  As if he knew what she was feeling, he stood up and said that he might require her assistance again during the course of the investigation, but for now she was free to go. For a moment the dark eyes rested on her face, but he was no longer with her.

  A young woman with wide blue eyes opened the door with a brisk, determined movement and said: “Listen, Michael—” but then she noticed Racheli and abruptly stopped talking.

  Michael, thought Racheli, of course his name is Michael. And although the woman waited for her to leave the room and didn’t say another word, Racheli could sense the intimacy between them, the equality, and her heart shrank inside her as he opened the door wide and said: “Thank you very much.”

  Without replying, she hurried out into the narrow corridor, where she noticed the frightened expression on Adina’s face as she stood up and took a step toward her from the corner where she had been sitting. But Racheli fled; she didn’t have the strength to face Adina Lipkin and answer her questions about what had happened there, inside the room.

  Racheli ran along the corridor and hurried down the stairs leading to the ground floor, and from there to the backyard of the Russian Compound and into Jaffa Street, running all the way.

  Outside the building, the strong sunlight hit her in the face, making her blink and rub her eyes. At the window of the Jordan Bookshop, she stopped at the sight of Ariyeh Klein’s latest book, Musical Elements in Medieval Poetry. Her legs trembled as she waited for the Zion Square traffic lights to change, and the news dealer on the other side of the street looked resigned as she stood and gazed at the head-lines of the morning papers, reporting the murder, and at the picture of Shaul Tirosh emblazoning them all. Then she bought a paper and made for the Café Alno, on the pedestrian mall, where she sat down at a table. The waitress stood there impatiently until she said, “CocaCola with lemon.” Then she tried to read the story, which continued on an inside page and included a description of the body and a biography of Shaul Tirosh, as well as details concerning the head of the special investigation team, Superintendent Michael Ohayon, who owed his fame mainly to the solution of the murder, two years previously, of the psychoanalyst Eva Neidorf. It said nothing about his private life or his age. Racheli looked at the man sitting at the table on her left, eating his breakfast, and then at the elderly couple at another table nearby, drinking coffee and talking nonstop, and finally she looked at the big clock on the wall opposite her and saw that it was eleven o’clock and realized that the statistics examination had begun at nine and would be over in half an hour. For a minute she panicked, and then she told herself to calm down, she would be able to take the exam later, but she didn’t calm down, and her hands trembled so hard that she had to put her glass down on the table. The man eating breakfast paid and left, and the waitress collected the dishes and put a copy of the daily Ha’aretz on her table. On the front page, next to the picture of Shaul Tirosh, there was a photo of the man she had spent the morning with, Superintendent Michael Ohayon. He held his hands out in front of him as if holding someone at bay, and his lips were parted. Staring at the picture, Racheli picked up her glass and slowly sipped her drink.