by Batya Gur
“But that’s what you did yourself, later on. You destroyed the cassette to prevent yourself from being exposed. You didn’t bring the truth to light,” said Michael wearily.
“And that’s the main reason I’m talking to you. I’ll go to prison as long as it helps bring the truth to light,” said Tuvia Shai, and he began to shiver.
“And after you killed him you went to the movies?” asked Michael without sounding surprised.
He described how he had left the building, and that he hadn’t even thought of being afraid. There were no bloodstains on his clothes. He put the statuette into a plastic bag and removed the cassette from the tape recorder. He explained that from that moment onward his feelings had been paralyzed. “If a fire had broken out I would have gone on standing there,” he said. He didn’t take the trouble to hide and nobody noticed him. When he finally left Tirosh’s office, it was after half past one, and he took the car and drove it to the parking lot of the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus and listened one more time to the cassette before erasing it. And then he had noticed that it was getting late and he would be late for the movie. It was only then that he wiped off the fingerprints, with the cloth Tirosh kept in his glove compartment. Afterward he threw it away in Wadi Joz.
“You could have gone home, no?” asked Michael.
“I didn’t think of it,” said Shai in surprise. “I don’t even know why I had to see Blade Runner.” And then he was silent.
It took several hours to draw up the statement. Tuvia Shai insisted on formulating his motives himself. He went back with them to Tirosh’s office on Mount Scopus and reconstructed the murder to the satisfaction of Emanuel Shorer, who had come into Michael’s office just as Tuvia Shai finished talking.
When Balilty suggested again, as usual, that they should “go and celebrate at some place with style,” Tzilla warned him with a withering look. She knew Michael Ohayon’s moods. “You can talk to him in a few days’ time,” she said, and glanced at Michael. “Do me a favor, leave him alone now.”
That evening Michael sat with Emanuel Shorer in the Café Nava. Shorer stirred the sugar in his tea. Michael stared at his coffee.
“What are you thinking about?” asked Shorer, and smiled.
Michael didn’t answer. He held the glass cup in both hands and went on staring.
“By the way, I forgot to ask you,” said Shorer. “What was that piece of paper on the desk? Did you ever find out what it meant? You know, the one you told me about, about the last chapter of that novel by Agnon. Do you understand it now?”
Michael shook his head. He had not told any of the members of the special investigation team about Manfred Herbst and the nurse Shira. He was tired and depressed. As always, he had no sense of victory. Only sadness and a longing to curl up inside a woman’s body and sleep for years.
Shorer sipped his tea and looked at him, and finally he said: “I’ve been meaning to tell you for some time now, that for a person who believes you should love the human race, or that it’s more important to love than to be loved, you don’t seem to be doing such a great job of it.” There was no rebuke in his voice.
About the Author
BATYA GUR, novelist and literary critic, was almost single-handedly responsible for making the detective novel a flourishing genre in modern Hebrew. She passed away in 2005 in Jerusalem.
Gur’s novels won the Krimi Preis in Germany as well as the WIZO prize in France. Each of her mystery novels was voted one of Ten Best Mysteries of the Year by the New York Times Book Review.
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Also by Batya Gur
The Saturday Morning Murder: A Psychoanalytic Case
Murder on a Kibbutz: A Communal Case
Murder Duet: A Musical Case
Copyright
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1993 by HarperCollins Publishers.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to quote from copyrighted material:
From “Samson’s Hair” (here), by Natan Zach, edited and translated by Warren Bargad and Stanley F. Chyet. Copyright 1988 Indiana University Press. Used by permission.
From “Lament” (“See the Sun”) (here), by Schlomo Ibn Gabirol, in The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, edited and translated by T. Carmi. Copyright 1981 Allen Lane Ltd. Used by permission.
LITERARY MURDER. Copyright © 1991 by Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem Ltd. English translation copyright © 1993 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST HARPERPERENNIAL PAPERBACK PUBLISHED 1994.
FIRST HARPER PAPERBACKS EDITION PUBLISHED 2020.
Cover design by Andrea Guinn
Cover illustration by Christopher Zacharow
* * *
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Gur, Batya
[Mavet ba-hug le sifrut. English]
Literary murder: a critical case/Batya Gur; translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“Aaron Asher books.”
ISBN 0-06-019023-X
I. Title.
PJ5054.G637M38131993
892.4'36—dc20
95-56195
* * *
Digital Edition JULY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-297040-4
Version 06042020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-092548-2 (pbk.)
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* Literally, Moses’ right hand; the neighborhood is named for the nineteenth-century Anglo-Jewish philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore.
† Abraham’s Vineyard; another Jerusalem neighborhood.
