by Batya Gur
“Go on,” said Michael.
“As far as relations between a man and a woman are concerned, in other words from the romantic point of view, our marriage was already quite dead before Izzy met Gabi. We were just good friends. As soon as they met, I knew, I knew right from the beginning. But that’s something connected with intimate details I have no wish to go into now. I’m prepared to say only that the separation enabled me, or even compelled me, to realize myself and to confront my own truths. And Izzy never deceived me. I had no reason to bear him a grudge.” Again she rubbed her forehead, pulled at the corners of her eyes as if she wanted to straighten them, laid her hands in her lap, put her head on one side, and said: “You’re divorced.”
He nodded. Years ago he had understood that in order to create a sincere atmosphere in an interrogation, especially in a case like this one, he, too, had to open up.
“Do you have children?”
“One son. He’s grown up now.”
“How old was he when you got divorced?”
“Six.”
“You didn’t bring him up?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Partly,” he said. “As much as possible.”
“A hostile divorce,” she said sympathetically. “Not a friendly one.”
“Not particularly,” he admitted. “But in recent years it’s been . . . less of a problem.”
“Okay, so it’s really hard for you to understand. But our daughter has something to do with it. The realization that for her sake it’s worth making an effort. And besides, there’s a basic feeling of affection between us.” She took a breath and added: “And all those years, until the relationship with Nita, you’ve lived alone?”
“More or less. There have been a few failed experiments,” he found himself replying. For a moment Avigail’s face floated unhappily before his eyes. Then it disappeared. Ruth Mashiah looked at him with wide eyes. “You want the baby,” she said at last.
He tried to swallow. His mouth was completely dry, and he nodded.
“And you’re not Nita’s baby’s father.”
“No, I’m not,” he admitted.
“Actually, you’ve only been with Nita for a short time. Nita told Gabi and Gabi told Izzy. He didn’t know that Izzy would tell me.”
“Why didn’t he know?” Michael sat up straight.
“Who? Gabi?” She smiled. “Don’t you know anything about couples? Do you think that Gabi wasn’t ambivalent about my relationship with Izzy? He was sometimes jealous. He didn’t like Izzy telling me everything, or almost everything.”
“I thought that between men there would be more . . . I don’t know.”
“Couples are couples. There’s no difference between heterosexual couples and others in this respect. To tell the truth, it seems to me that with them the jealousy can sometimes be even worse. Perhaps because of the isolation to which they think they’re doomed, there’s more dependency between them. With Gabi and Izzy it was like that. Anyway, I know that you’ve only been with Nita for a short time.”
“That’s not important,” he argued.
“All of a sudden you want an instant family? With a ready-made baby?”
“What’s wrong with that?” he protested, swallowing with an effort.
“Nothing wrong. In principle. Except that there’s a long line of people waiting, and I hate line-jumping. Besides, you’re actually a single parent, and if Nita’s your partner in this, then she’s in no fit state at the moment. And above all—and I wouldn’t mention it outside this room, in case people consider me crazy—above all, you’re a policeman, a detective, and I understand that you’re good at your job.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” He was flabbergasted. He had been bracing himself to hear about Nita’s disturbed mental state, about her involvement in two murder cases, about her being a suspect even, and mainly he had been expecting a verdict couched in professional jargon about the lack of emotional stability in view of the circumstances.
“It’s got a lot to do with it. We always take the professional status of adoptive families into account. You understand that what’s important is not your wish for the baby, but the good of the baby.”
“But even Nurse Nehama said—”
“I’m not saying that you don’t take care of the baby properly. For the moment, at least,” said Ruth Mashiah. Her expression became hard, concentrated, and aggressive. Her tone was critical: “The information you gave us was inaccurate.”
Michael said nothing.
“But the important thing, as I say, just between us, is that you’re an investigative detective.”
“Why?” His voice rose indignantly. “I have a steady income, benefits—”
“If Nita could have provided a balance . . . But she’s not stable either. When all this is over she’ll be concertizing abroad again . . . And it’s impossible to predict how long your relationship will last. It’s not clear at all if you’ll be able to manage it.”
“What exactly has to be managed?” He heard the hostile tone in his voice, and gave himself a silent warning.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence that you’ve lived alone all these years? I’ve learned some things about you, you know.”
“Are you talking about the irregular working hours and . . . ?”
“About your working hours, too,” she interrupted him. “But that’s marginal compared to what I’ve learned about you in the last few days. I’ve read your whole history. It’s very problematic for a single parent, and officially you’re a single parent. Do you want to tell me that you have plans to live with Nita?”
“That wasn’t my intention to begin with,” he admitted, after deciding that his best bet in the circumstances was to be frank and honest. “But things . . . change.”
“That’s not enough to rely on,” she stated. “We’re talking about a baby with her whole life ahead of her, and you can’t provide her with any stability.”
“You can’t know that,” he protested angrily.
“Why not? Don’t you know anything about people? Can’t you come to conclusions from what you know about them and their personalities? I’m telling you that I’ve read all the material about you in the police files.”
“That’s confidential, for internal use only!”
“You waived confidentiality when you applied to us,” she reminded him calmly. “You waived medical confidentiality, too. I’m sure you’ll agree with me that these things have to be checked before abandoning an eight-week-old baby to her fate.”
“Abandoning to her fate!”
“Without optimal suitability, it can be abandonment. Again, I know from what I’ve learned about you that you understand very well what I’m saying. You’re perfectly capable of seeing things from my point of view. Your personality—excuse me for being blunt—your personality is not suitable for an adoptive single parent.”
“I don’t know what gives you the right to come to a decision like that so quickly, without even talking to me,” he said, trying to suppress the panic, the hurt, and the anger flooding through him.
“You’re obsessively dedicated to your work, to the point of total exhaustion. There are whole days when you don’t go home. But I’ve also learned that your personality, your preference for solitude, your withdrawal, your perfectionism—I’ve read your reports—are inherent in the nature of a real detective.”
“I don’t believe it!” he whispered. “I haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re talking about. I thought you were a rational woman. I can’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“Can’t you? Don’t you read detective fiction?”
He looked at her to make sure that she was serious, that she expected an answer to her question.
“I don’t like detective stories,” he finally said. “I have no idea what the connection is—”
“You don’t like detective stories? You of all people? What a pity. I’m an addict,” she confessed. “And Gabi was, too. It was one o
f the things I had in common with him. We would exchange books and . . .” She sighed. “Only a few days ago I gave him a detective story by a Dutch writer he liked a lot. His stories are set in seventh-century China. You have no idea how much you can learn about ancient China from his books. In general, you can learn a lot from detective stories.”
“Listen,” he said wearily, “Dostoevsky didn’t think it necessary to teach in this way.”
“Anyway,” Ruth Mashiah continued stubbornly, “this Dutchman was a diplomat in the Far East and may not be a great writer, but he has a fascinating hero, a prosecutor called Dee, who also lives alone. Why don’t you like detective stories?”
He shrugged his shoulders. The conversation sounded surreal to him, but he felt impelled nevertheless to answer her honestly, as if the very effort to answer all of her questions provided a way to change the situation by impressing her with his sincerity. “They seem completely unreal to me. I don’t have the patience for them. Everything’s known in advance. It’s all so contrived. Except for Crime and Punishment and Simenon’s The Snow Was Black. Those I could read again.”
“But Crime and Punishment isn’t a detective story!” she argued.
“My literature teacher at school said that it was a classic of detective fiction,” he said with a half-smile, embarrassed by what seemed to him the transparency of his attempts to charm her in an almost childish way.
“It’s not a detective story because it focuses on the murderer’s consciousness. The question that interests the reader of Crime and Punishment isn’t who killed the old woman, or even how he’s caught, even though that provides an element of suspense. It’s how Raskolnikov will live the rest of his life after the murder. How he’ll come to terms with what he’s done.”
“So you do understand what’s not interesting about detective fiction. It’s the same in The Snow Was Black, the same as in Dostoevsky. In ordinary detective stories they never tell you about what’s going on in the murderer’s mind.” Michael hesitated, wondering how much benefit he could derive from a discussion like this. Did he have a chance of impressing her if he spoke seriously? The need to impress her made him feel indignant again. And how could he know what was likely to impress her? She wasn’t a simple woman, some Nurse Nehama, for instance. And precisely because of this he felt impelled to express himself superficially, to be almost provocative. “In detective stories there are often suspects who exist only to serve the plot. Those are not real characters. And there’s always a murder. And the books always end with a solution. You never know what happens to the characters afterward. Except where the murderer dies at the end, which is very convenient. And the whole question of the difficulty of proving the case in court hardly exists at all in this type of literature, and when it does exist, as in the Perry Masons, it’s entirely unreal. Everything is solved so quickly. And, in general, everything is cleared up.”
“What’s wrong with that?” she asked with surprise. “Can’t you accept the rules of the game? Gabi used to say that he found a lot in common between detective novels and opera, the same logic.”
“Everything serves the plot, the mystery,” Michael persevered. “There’s no room to breathe, no beauty. No digressions from the central concern. Everything’s functional. A conversation like this, between us now, couldn’t take place in a detective story, because it’s not functional. I don’t have the patience for it. I have enough mysteries in my work. And the conclusion—whatever happens in the middle, the conclusion is always disappointing. Either you know too far in advance who the murderer is, or you feel you’ve been tricked, that the writer’s pulled a rabbit out of a hat.”
“But no one likes detective stories only for the mystery!”
“No? Why do they like them then?”
“Because of all kinds of other things. The riddle, the mystery is only part of the contract, the agreement between the detective story writer and his readers, and the truth is . . .” Ruth Mashiah fell silent as he opened his mouth to say something about secret agreements, but changed his mind.
During the seconds of silence he wondered if she could really take the baby away from him. How come, he reflected, she didn’t see what he, and only he, would be able to give the child? An opposing thought mocked this complaint. They want somebody conventional, he reminded himself, a regular, warm family. What would he do if they took the baby away from him, he wondered in terror at the sight of Ruth Mashiah’s tilted head examining his face. What would he do with all the things he’d bought, with the crib he’d ordered, the baby dresser, the toys? He was surprised by and ashamed of this petty concern. They weren’t going to take her, he assured himself, they weren’t going to take her away so fast. He would fight.
“More than anything else, people read detective fiction for a sense of innocence,” said Ruth Mashiah.
“A sense of innocence? Ah, a sense of innocence!”
“Yes, that’s what I think. We all walk around with feelings of guilt,” she said, ignoring his mockery.
“About what exactly?”
“I really don’t know if you’ll accept this,” she said, sighing. “But in short I’d say that the feeling of guilt stems from a desire to kill one’s father. At least as far as men are concerned.”
“Oedipus, oh, Oedipus!” cried Michael, and he was silent for a long moment. “Okay, no wonder I don’t need your sense of innocence. My father died when I was a small child.” And then, because he read the disappointment in her eyes and saw her tensing her body for the explanation he knew in advance—that there was no connection between the historical date of his father’s death and the feeling of guilt in his heart—and also because of his own oversimplification, which suddenly embarrassed him, as well as the anger he felt at this cheap psychologizing, he added: “Are you saying that the reader of detective stories is relieved of guilt feelings because he’s not the murderer?”
“He identifies completely with the detective and his sense of justice. For as long as he’s absorbed in the novel, he’s sure he’s one of the good guys. He’s also alone and doomed to eternal loneliness like the detective. At least until the truth is revealed.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he suddenly burst out. To his own surprise, her words gave rise in him to more anxiety than if she had asked the expected practical questions regarding how much time he would be able to spare for the baby, his ability to cope with family crises, Nita.
“About the fact that I’ve studied you, and that you have the detective mentality. A detective can’t really afford to get married, and if he does, he runs into complications. And he certainly can’t bring up children. That’s what it’s been like since Sherlock Holmes, maybe even since Edgar Allan Poe.”
“I read detective stories when I was young,” he said angrily. “I don’t remember any of that being an issue.”
“But maybe you do remember the loneliness of the detective in the novels?” she asked without a trace of mockery. “Naturally it’s more extreme in fiction, but the idea . . . I’ve always noticed it. Even Inspector Maigret. I’m sure you like him, Simenon’s Maigret.”
He nodded. “There’s a Madame Maigret, too,” he suddenly remembered.
“There is,” she agreed, “to bring him his slippers in the evening, and give him his soup. Did you ever hear him talk to her seriously? They live like two strangers.”
“Because he’s a detective? What’s it got to do with being a detective? Madame Maigret is a simple woman, and the inspector is actually—”
“You don’t know how simple she is. You don’t really know her at all. All you know is that she’s presented as a housekeeper, and Maigret hasn’t even fallen in love in recent years. At most he’s been attracted to someone, mainly out of curiosity and the wish to know the truth. Detectives don’t fall seriously in love. They have only passing attractions. Almost always, anyway.”
“Assuming you’re right,” he gave in finally. “What’s it got to do with my baby?”
&nb
sp; “Don’t say ‘my baby.’ She’s not yours!” said Ruth Mashiah sharply. “You’re a temporary arrangement. The police are looking for the mother. You have to be ready to see the baby go.”
“I can’t bear to think of it,” he said with his head bowed.
“You have to think of what’s best for her. Maybe you were never really meant to be a family man,” she explained. Seeing him open his mouth, she added: “Forgive me. Maybe you’re ready now, but it’s still too early to tell. Detectives hardly ever have intimate relationships. They lack basic trust. I see in your work, too, that you really don’t rely on others.”
He felt himself going pale with anger. “This is real life,” he said in a strangled voice. “Your criteria have to be serious! Even though this is a private conversation! How can you, on the basis of cheap detective novels . . . a person in your professional position . . . talking so irresponsibly—”
“Why cheap?” she protested. “What’s cheap about Simenon? What’s cheap about Chandler? They show you the essential tragedy of the detective figure. The price he has to pay for knowing the truth.”
“I’m not interested in discussing detective stories anymore,” Michael said nervously but resolutely. “I’m really astonished by your statement that I’m not cut out to be a family man. It’s irresponsible, not to say impertinent,” he said, his voice rising.
“You’re angry because you know I may be right,” she said calmly. Panic filled him at the thought that this was one of the only times in his life that an interrogation was slipping out of his hands. Looking at the little woman, at the lively slanting eyes that never left his face, at her capable little fingers, at the bruise on her thumb, he felt that she wasn’t out to get him, that he could trust her to a certain extent, but her words hurt him anyway. The feeling that her statements had nothing to do with his yearnings grew stronger. He wanted to talk about what was behind his words “impertinent” and “irresponsible,” he wanted to tell her about Avigail, about the relationship that was doomed from the start. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t his fault and that it wasn’t he who had decided on the break-up. But these wishes were weaker and more muffled than the wish to protect himself against her and to return the interrogation to normal channels. Even though at the same time he knew that there was no such thing as normal channels. He suddenly felt that this irrelevant conversation, so threatening to him, might lead to things he knew nothing about.
