by Batya Gur
“He disappeared quite a while ago,” said Michael, hearing Nita’s voice as she demanded that they notify Herzl. “Nobody’s known where he is for months.”
“He wasn’t at the old man’s funeral, either,” said Balilty. “We looked for him there.”
“And he had a key to van Gelden’s apartment,” put in Eli, “old man van Gelden, that is.”
“There’s no question about it, we have to find him,” summed up Balilty.
“So who’s going to do it?” asked Zippo.
“You,” said Balilty. “From now on, that’s your job. Dalit will give you the details.”
“We’ll never find the painting.” Tzilla’s voice echoed despairingly. “Maybe nobody even smuggled it out of the country. It could be anywhere, even in this employee’s, this Herzl’s closet.”
“Nothing’s certain,” muttered Eli. “We hardly know anything yet. It could be the opposite, too. We haven’t spoken to enough people yet. And we haven’t even got the official report from Forensics yet.”
“What do you mean, the opposite?” said Dalit, sitting up.
Eli Bahar lowered his long eyelashes. “Nothing special,” he said, wiping his face. “I just thought that there was another possibility—that someone knew that Gabriel knew something about the painting, about the robbery and the murder, and the culprit got nervous and wanted him out of the way. . . . But we don’t know anything like that yet.”
“And did the husband find her?” Tzilla asked Dalit across the table.
“In Bogota, of all places,” replied Dalit, collecting the crumbs into the paper wrapping. “She had a tailor shop there, with seamstresses and everything. She’d become a lady.”
Because of the absentmindedness with which Balilty assigned and detailed the next tasks; because of Dalit’s question: “And what about me, what do you want me to do?” and her crestfallen look when Balilty replied: “You have to go back there, right away, we can’t leave the van Geldens alone for so long”; because of the flagrant transparency of Balilty’s attempts to appease Dalit by his flattering remarks about what a good listener she was and how she would thus be able to make “the maestro and his sister talk”—because of all this, Michael had the feeling that the meeting was disintegrating, petering out with no conclusion. When he heard the knock at the door, he knew that it was over.
“There’s a Mrs. Ruth Mashiah here looking for you,” said the uniformed policeman in the doorway to Michael. “She says she and her husband were told to come.”
Michael glanced at Balilty. “Should we do this together?” asked Balilty.
“Why not?”
“Two are better than one,” said Balilty as he stood up slowly from his seat at the head of the table. “Did she bring his passport?” he asked the policeman, who made a face as if to say: I have no idea. Then he said: “The media are waiting outside—TV cameras, reporters, everybody. One of them’s been here all night.”
“You see what a mess we’re in because of the Commissioner’s troubles with the state controller. If he were here he would already have had a press conference. Will you talk to them?” Balilty asked Michael.
“Not on your life,” said Michael with an expression of horror.
“So it’s up to me?” asked Balilty unenthusiastically. “I’m no good at talking to the press, and besides, I don’t want my face all over the papers,” he muttered. His eyes wandered around the table and came to rest on Dalit. He paused and pressed his lips together reflectively.
“It has to be someone with a lot of experience,” said Michael quickly.
“Bahar, will you be the press officer?” asked Balilty.
“That’s very irregular,” protested Eli Bahar. “It’s usually the head of the team.”
“Who says so?” flared Balilty. “We’ll decide what’s regular and what’s irregular here. Do you agree or not?”
Eli said nothing and stood up. “Make them wait outside, at the entrance to the building,” he said to the uniformed policeman.
But they didn’t wait outside. Cameras clicked the moment the door opened, and a flash momentarily blinded Michael, who averted his face as he elbowed his way through the crowd, feeling a burning sensation under his chest as it became more and more certain that everything was going to become known, including the story of the baby. Balilty followed him with a stern expression, both of them deaf to the questions flung at them from every side, and ignoring, too, the cries of “The public has the right to know!” and “He’s a world-famous conductor!” as they took the brief walk to the office at the end of the corridor, where Izzy Mashiah was waiting for his ex-wife to arrive with his passport.
She has a key to the apartment, Izzy had said as the interrogation was ending at four o’clock in the morning. From the way he had spoken to her on the telephone, murmuring into the receiver with his head bowed and his back to Michael and pretending to himself that he was alone in the room, Michael sensed that they felt mutual responsibility and concern for each other. “We’re close friends,” Izzy Mashiah had explained when he insisted on calling her and waking her up as early as an hour later so that she wouldn’t hear of Gabriel van Gelden’s death from the papers or the 6:00 A.M. news, which she always listened to compulsively. Michael had signaled to him in the middle of the conversation and Izzy raised his head, said “Excuse me for a minute,” into the receiver, heard Michael out, and then repeated his request to bring the passport with her.
“I don’t know what for,” Michael heard him saying loudly and indignantly, for his benefit. “That’s what they say, that’s what they want. You know that,” he stressed, “but they don’t know it. Why should they?” There was other talk, too, and someone named Irit was mentioned, and the care they should take when they inform her of Gabi’s death.
“Who is Irit?” Michael had asked when Izzy put the phone down and his hand hovered over the phone as if he were about to dial again.
“My daughter,” said Izzy, and he folded his arms as if to demonstrate his resignation at the prospect of spending hours waiting idly for his ex-wife and his passport.
Now Michael examined the small, thin woman who looked first into his eyes and then into Balilty’s. She had small, slanting brown eyes, framed by crumpled lids she seemed to be straining to keep open, and surrounded by a delicate net of wrinkles. Her cheeks, too, were covered by the same fine wrinkles, and also by freckles, which were generously scattered over her little nose. Everything about her seemed small and wrinkled, except for the smooth area around her mouth. She had short, frizzy, light brown hair sprinkled with gray. Her wrinkled hands, covered with golden-brown spots, lay on the metal top of the office desk, and her short, thin fingers with their flat, pale nails drummed on it as if it were a keyboard.
While he was still standing in the doorway with Balilty, he saw her slowly take her hand from Izzy’s and put it down on the desk in front of her. Her fingers—the thumbnail was a bruised blue—had begun to drum as soon as Michael sat down opposite her. She pointed to the brown envelope lying in front of her. “Izzy’s passport, as you requested,” she said, and she looked at the two of them with open curiosity. For a moment a flash of anger glinted in her slanting eyes, and her hand rubbed her forehead as if to erase some invisible spot.
“Mrs. Mashiah,” said Balilty, and she stopped rubbing her forehead. “We have to talk to you, too.”
“Well, of course you do,” she said in a clear, youthful voice. “I imagined you would,” she said again, this time angrily, and she clamped her lips shut. Then she opened them again and added: “But you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not focused,” she said, looking into Michael’s eyes. “Because first of all I slipped in the bath and hurt myself, and I’ve got a terrible headache that started last night.” She pointed to the middle of her forehead. “And then, the news about Gabi . . .” She fell silent and spread her hands out on the desk in front of her, looked at Balilty, and waited.
Izzy heaved a long sigh. For a few seconds this was the
only sound in the room. She looked around expectantly. “So, you wanted to talk to me?” she said in an authoritative and impatient voice. It suddenly sounded familiar to Michael, a voice he had recently heard in an entirely different context. The feeling grew more intense as she added an impatient “Yes?” Balilty went first. He pulled some forms out of a file drawer. Michael knew the technique, having used it himself on more than one occasion. Balilty sat down slowly, took a ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket, and began to ask her questions about her identity. Patiently she gave him her name, address, and occupation. He heard her say “social worker,” and the bell began to ring in his head. He had a clear suspicion now as to where he knew her voice from. Balilty asked her with uncharacteristic formality, as was his habit when he felt uncertain, where she worked. She smiled pleasantly as she replied: “I’m director of the Child Welfare Bureau in the Social Services Department.”
Balilty’s hand, thick and solid, rested on the form. The room began to spin. He didn’t give Michael so much as a glance. And precisely this avoidance of eye contact betrayed his thoughts. Michael found it difficult to concentrate and recall what he knew about the Child Welfare director. He had only the policewoman Malka’s reports, as conveyed to him by Tzilla, and one very brief phone conversation. It had taken place before Nurse Nehama’s first visit, and he remembered the clear, youthful voice and authoritative but reassuring tone with which she had spoken to him. Malka, according to Tzilla, felt respect bordering on awe for the director, and constantly referred to her intelligence. Michael had described the Child Welfare Bureau to Balilty as a threatening, nearly sinister agency. About Nurse Nehama he had not said a word to him.
Just before this morning’s meeting Tzilla had responded to Michael’s anxious look by saying: “There’s nothing new. They haven’t found out anything yet.” She said this unwillingly and bitterly, as if she wanted once more to convey her objections on principle to the whole business. When he complained despairingly: “It won’t help now anyway. Even if they don’t find the mother, they’ll take the baby away from me,” Tzilla shrugged her shoulders as if to say, You brought it on yourself. And then he added: “Even if I weren’t on the case. Just because of my connection with Nita. I can’t say now that I’m bringing the baby up by myself. I’m in a bind whatever happens.”
Tzilla’s face softened. “Malka told me that she hasn’t heard yet from the Child Welfare Bureau,” she said encouragingly, as if to make amends for her earlier critical tone.
“You’re not taking it down,” remarked Ruth Mashiah to Balilty, and again she rubbed her forehead.
Balilty quickly bent over the form in front of him and wrote something down. Then he raised his head, looked at Michael, and said: “I’ll take the gentleman to another room, so that we can have a little chat alone, and you stay here with the lady.” He spoke in a conspiratorial whisper, as if he were leaving the field clear for an intimate, even romantic encounter. Michael was about to protest, but Balilty gave him a warning look and jerked his head toward the door.
“Just a minute,” said Michael hastily. He leaped for the door with Balilty behind him. In the corridor they conferred in whispers, and after Balilty had turned his head in all directions like a weathervane and raised it toward the stairhead above them as if on the alert for some danger, he said without looking at Michael: “I’m not prepared to get into it. First straighten things out with her, or we can send somebody else entirely, Tzilla, for instance. Otherwise she’s going to ask me about you and Nita, and in the end I’ll be to blame. She knows your name, she knows which end is up. You saw her yourself—you can’t fool her. When are you going to see Shorer?”
“Shorer won’t solve this. It’s too late for Shorer to solve anything now,” said Michael bitterly. “Nothing will make any difference now. Just tell me if you knew.”
“What?” said Balilty, confused. “If I knew what? That they’ll take the baby away from you now?”
“No, that she’s the director of the Child Welfare Bureau.”
“Are you crazy?” said Balilty, offended. “How the hell was I supposed to know? Didn’t you see how shocked I was? You told me a completely different name, not Mashiah at all. Do you want me to get Tzilla to interrogate her?”
“No,” said Michael, a strange, almost dreamlike calm descending on him. A fatalistic feeling. “We’ll do what you said. You’ll talk to him about the polygraph results, and I’ll talk to her. I don’t see any problem. I feel quite competent to question her.”
And so it was. With his head bowed, Izzy Mashiah followed Balilty out of the room, and at the door he sent a despairing, hopeless look at his ex-wife, who nodded at him as if he were a child she was leaving behind on his first day at school. She rubbed her forehead and turned to look at Michael. For a few seconds they sat in silence, until she interrupted it by saying calmly: “Izzy has told me about you. I know the case from another angle. You’re the one who’s living with Nita van Gelden and her baby and the baby you found?” She asked the question matter-of-factly, as if it were the most natural of questions. “I’m surprised to see that you’re involved in the investigation, in view of your interest in the case. In our profession we’re very strict about keeping our private lives separate from our work. Aren’t such things significant in the police force?”
Michael said nothing.
“I would have thought that since you know the kind of work I do, you’d have a more serious attitude toward my schedule and not keep me here for hours. It’s obvious that Izzy has nothing to do with it, and neither, of course, do I.”
“I know of you as Ruth Zellnicker, not as Ruth Mashiah,” said Michael defensively.
“My maiden name. I started at the bureau before I married, and that’s how I’m known there,” she explained and sat up straight in her chair.
“Were you in the vicinity of the concert hall yesterday, the day of the murder, at any time during the course of the day?” Michael asked her as if she hadn’t said anything. “Did you see Gabriel van Gelden yesterday?”
She looked at him gravely, tilting her head to one side. She had a long, thin, and very wrinkled neck. Then she took a deep breath, leaned back, and began to talk. Yes, she had been near the concert hall building yesterday morning. Apparently at the time of the rehearsal. “But,” she stressed, “I didn’t go inside. And the last time I saw Gabriel was . . . a few days, maybe a week ago, when I brought my daughter to the apartment. I brought him some books.” Since her car was being repaired, and since she had to leave town, she had walked to the concert hall to get Izzy’s car, which Gabi had been using. Because of her daughter, she had keys to Izzy’s car, and also to the men’s apartment. Her relations with Gabi were very correct, she added, and she even liked him. Irit, her daughter, was very attached to him. She herself had not had very many conversations with him. Theo she hardly knew. She had only met him once, at the celebration of Nita’s baby’s circumcision. Gabi had often consulted her about Nita, especially during her pregnancy, when Nita had seemed on the verge of a breakdown. “He told me she had stopped playing completely, which had never happened before.” She herself had been opposed to an abortion in this case, mainly because of Nita’s age. “It’s not a good idea to abort a first pregnancy at the age of thirty-seven. Besides, Nita wanted the baby.” She had spoken to her and even suggested professional help, therapy and so on.
She hadn’t really known Felix van Gelden. She had met him but they had never spoken. “Except at the shop,” she added with a faint, mocking shrug. She had been a good girl, who played the recorder and the piano, and had bought her music there. She also remembered the mother, who had made an impression on her because of her height and her fair hair combed back in a bun. “An aristocratic figure,” she mused aloud. “Didn’t you know the mother?”
Michael shook his head. Determined to keep the conversation within the limits of the facts of the case, he fended off any hint of familiarity, but he was already afraid, as he listened to her with an effor
t, that the boundary would soon be breached.
Naturally she was shocked, she said with the directness that had characterized her speech, with its guttural sabra accent, from the beginning. She didn’t have the luxury of giving way to her feelings when Izzy was on the verge of collapse. He had been so attached to Gabi she didn’t know how he was going to cope with his death, and especially the manner of it. She herself, she went on, had seen so many terrible things, in her work and outside it, that it had become second nature to her to keep her distance, to show reserve in displaying her feelings. “And sometimes in having them, too,” she added with a smile that made her face look younger, tightening the network of wrinkles on her cheeks, bringing a twinkle to her slanting eyes, and suddenly revealing a hint of the youthful charm she must once have possessed. “You can be overwhelmed, if you’re not careful,” she said, and she switched off the smile. In spite of his relative youth, she went on in a worried voice—she was a few years older than he—Izzy suffered from severe medical problems. “Part of it comes from his asthma and allergies. People don’t know how serious asthma can sometimes be. It can be fatal.”
“Tell me, please,” said Michael, “how you managed to maintain such friendly relations? Didn’t it upset you that he left you for a man?”
She looked thoughtful. “You mean as opposed to him leaving me for a woman?” she asked.
He looked at her and saw her brown eyes regarding him with great seriousness.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, aware of the interest aroused in him by the question. “That too, maybe. But in general, being left. For anyone.”
“I don’t know if it makes any difference whether the external agent is a man or a woman. I imagine it does. Although to tell the truth, in our case anyway, the main difficulty was in dismantling the framework, in breaking up the home.”
