by Batya Gur
“You must miss him,” said Shorer reflectively. “That’s why people need a lot of children, one isn’t enough.” He added something about the difficulty of being a father, a difficulty that increased grew as children grew older. “What can you do except stand by one and pray,” he said, not for the first time that day. Again it crossed Michael’s mind, hopefully and fearfully, that the subject could be avoided. It seemed to him that he saw the figure of Shorer’s wife emerging from a side door, and suddenly he hoped that they would call Shorer in, distract him. But when he looked again at the man standing next to him, he saw that his eyes were fixed on him. Therefore, like someone forced to jump into a deep pit in the hope that the bottom would be padded with sawdust, he expounded in a few short sentences on what he prefaced by referring—with embarrassment, aware of the stilted attempt to sound objective and restrained—to “special circumstances on the personal level.”
First he spoke about the baby and how he had found her, about his desire to keep her, and then about Nita, about how he had received the first call on the radio. He spoke about the objections of the team members to his presence on the SIT, and about his own inability to give up either the case or the baby. He repeated this conclusion twice, wonderingly: “I can’t give them up. I want them both,” he said to his own astonishment, as if he had just discovered a great truth. “I need both.”
Shorer was silent for a long time.
“Let’s go sit over there,” he finally said with cold reserve, pointing at two empty armchairs. “Let’s sit down and talk for a minute,” he said, and he took hold of Michael’s arm, as if in support of a sick person. He settled into the orange upholstery, patting the armchair beside it. He put his coffee cup down on the linoleum at his feet and turned to Michael, who was still holding the cup from which he had not yet taken a single sip.
With an empty heart and a dry mouth Michael waited, in what seemed to him to be utter indifference, for sentence to be passed.
“You love her, and so you have too little distance from the case,” said Shorer. “That’s all there is to it.”
“She’s so small, and sweet, and dependent on me,” Michael tried to explain. “If you could only see her—”
“I’m talking about the woman, not the baby,” said Shorer, putting his hand on Michael’s arm. “About Nita van Gelden.”
Michael was silent. He couldn’t produce even a meaningless sound. The world began to spin. Shorer sounded confused to him, unexpected, unbalanced. How could he tell if Shorer was right?
“I don’t intend to gloss over anything about this,” Shorer promised, “but if there’s one thing that makes me happy about the whole business it’s that you really love her. And it seems to me that you had a dream with her, a dream of a nice, happy family. I know you.”
“I’m concerned about her,” said Michael. “I care about what happens to her. But the main thing is the baby.”
“You’ll have to give up the baby,” said Shorer severely. “That’s absolutely obvious.”
“But why?” Now Michael set the full coffee cup down at the foot of his chair and stared at Shorer. A heavy lump began to form in his throat, and he was terrified that it might find its way to his eyes.
“Because she’s not yours,” answered Shorer simply. “You don’t find babies in the street. The world doesn’t work that way. This baby has no place now, between the two of you.”
“But there’s nothing between us! Between us nothing’s happened yet. . . . You have to believe me. It’s exactly as I told you!”
“I only believe the facts. Calm down. But even you,” said Shorer calmly, “don’t know everything about yourself.”
Michael said nothing.
“How long have we known each other? Almost twenty years. You know that I know you. I’ve never said anything about any of your affairs. I always knew when you were with someone. Of all your women, including that married one—how long did that go on, seven years?—I liked Avigail best. She had guts, Avigail. And delicacy and charm. And she was no fool. You never told me what happened with her, but I’m sure you didn’t really love her, otherwise you wouldn’t have let her go. Maybe you wanted to love her, I don’t know, but you’re such a romantic, God help us! It didn’t work out. Why not?”
“She didn’t want children. No matter what, she didn’t want to have children,” said Michael. “Maybe that’s why. I think that’s the reason. She had a lot of psychological problems about a skin disease she couldn’t overcome. Everything with her was complicated. She couldn’t trust me. These aren’t things you can explain. It’s an accumulation of a lot of things. Constant disappointments. It was impossible to achieve tranquillity or intimacy with her. Peace of mind. Maybe if I’d waited a few more years—”
“You didn’t love her enough,” pronounced Shorer. “Sometimes it’s as simple as that. I hear you talk about this woman, this Nita. You’re completely taken with her. And that’s it.”
“I don’t feel it,” said Michael, embarrassed. “I only feel that I’m concerned about her. I simply want her to come back to life. To start playing the cello again. You have no idea how gifted she is. I want her to be happy again. I don’t want anyone else to mistreat her. Before it all happened, I felt that I could make her happy. In a careful kind of way, we had it good together.”
“I’m sorry, it can’t go on like this,” said Shorer with a sigh. “You have to give up the baby and get off the case. Hypnotist or no hypnotist, she remains a suspect until we know otherwise. Is Balilty interrogating her?”
“Why should I give up the baby?” whispered Michael. Something of the total numbness he felt started to melt and give way to anger.
“Once again: Because you don’t find babies in the street. You don’t find babies in the street. Leaving aside the fact that you’re too busy to take care of the baby properly. You want a baby? Very well. Fall in love with a woman and you can have a baby. I told you long ago: The way of the world makes sense. You may deny it, but there’s a logic in the natural order of things. For a baby you need a mother and a father.”
“Just because I’m a man?” protested Michael.
“Yes. This isn’t California, or Hollywood. This is real life,” said Shorer without a smile. “I believe that bringing up a child takes a mother and a father. I’m not saying,” suddenly the certainty and authority of his voice wavered, “I’m not saying there aren’t special circumstances—divorce, death, things like that—but finding a baby in the street? No!”
“You’re being completely illogical,” said Michael sharply. “All of a sudden you sound like my grandmother. How can you subject a thing like this to that kind of reasoning?”
“What can I do?” said Shorer, sighing. “When you spend two days and nights here, and you see so much trouble, and you turn into a kind of dishrag, into someone who realizes that in a matter of minutes he could lose everything—his daughter, his baby granddaughter—you get a sense of proportion. So I’m being illogical! Or maybe you don’t understand my logic. Which is sometimes your logic, too, and which I’ve often failed to understand. What can I tell you? We’ve exchanged places!”
“And if—which I don’t intend doing, but for the sake of argument—if I give up the baby?”
“What ‘if? There’s no ‘if about it! You’ll give her up because Mrs. Mashiah will force you to give her up! So if there’s no ‘if’ about it, what is your question?”
“How do you know Ruth Mashiah?”
“Never mind that now. What’s your question?”
“The case. This case.”
“If you can stay on it?”
Michael nodded.
“We’ve never had anything like this. And how do you see it? You go to bed with her and then—”
“I’ve never been to bed with her!” said Michael in despair. “I told you, I’ve never even touched her.”
“Okay, okay,” said Shorer soothingly. “So let’s say you sit with her in the afternoon as a friend. You hold her h
and, you play with her baby or whatever, you want her to live, to be happy and so on, and then you interrogate her in your office? With Balilty? How do you see it? How did you imagine it? Explain it to me. I’m not making any problems about what’s already happened. But I demand an explanation of how you see things in the future. An investigation like this one could go on for weeks and months, who knows?”
“We can work it out. I can concentrate on other aspects of the case,” mumbled Michael. “I have to find out,” he heard himself saying hoarsely. “I have to find out exactly what happened.”
“Yes. You have to,” said Shorer, sighing. “And I’m sorry, too. For once I hear you talking about a woman in a way you’ve never talked about any woman before. Tell me how it could work.”
“I won’t be in any kind of contact with her until we solve the case,” announced Michael. He himself heard in his voice the blustering tone of the disobedient child promising to mend his ways. “No personal contact.” Skeptical thoughts arose within him: Are you sure? Be serious. How will you deal with her feeling neglected? You’ll have to live with the fact that she hates you. You won’t even be able to explain it to her.
Shorer looked at him inquiringly. “How will you do it? You live right below her apartment. Assuming, just assuming, for the sake of argument, that it solves the problem. How would you do it in practice?”
Michael bent his head. He, too, didn’t know how exactly, or if, he could do it. Or what it was that was compelling him to continue working on the investigation. He looked at Shorer, he wanted to tell him that he didn’t know, to ask for help. But stronger than this was the wish to maintain his self-control, not to betray the uncertainty, the confusion that was overwhelming him. If Shorer were to ask him why he was, for the sake of working on the case, prepared to give Nita up—because for a moment he understood that giving her up for a while would mean giving her up forever—he would be at a loss for an answer. And even if he found the words, Shorer wouldn’t understand them. “Put me under surveillance. Whatever you want of me. I’ll move out of my apartment,” he said in the end, “just don’t take me off the case. Please. And I also have to know that she’s being watched. She might be in danger. I don’t know if I told you how worried I am about her.”
“Don’t you think that she needs you more now as a friend?” asked Shorer. “Forget procedure for the moment. We’re talking personally now.”
“I can’t be her friend now!” lamented Michael. “Not until I know for sure, until I have proof!” Dryness hurt his throat. He drank the dregs of the coffee.
“Do I have to endanger a murder case that has the commissioner and the minister on my back, and the press and the whole world breathing down my neck—do I have to screw up because of your personal problems?” said Shorer angrily. “I’m through talking personally. Now we’re talking about work, what’s good for work. I’ve always told you, for work you need distance.”
Michael thought for a long moment. “There are things that only I know how to ask,” he said finally. “Or to understand,” he added quickly. And when he saw the expression on Shorer’s face he made haste to add: “I’m the only one around here who understands anything about classical music. Not much, but something. And this, believe me, is a musical case.”
Shorer snorted. “So we’ve finally arrived at your famous ‘spirit of things,’” he said with bitter amusement. “I wondered why you hadn’t said anything about it yet. But this time it’s not so simple. Do you remember what a mess you got into with Aryeh Klein? And with him you were just his ex-student. You couldn’t stop yourself from believing him even when you discovered he Was lying. You liked and admired him, you knew him. And here? Can you really be objective?”
“I really and truly believe, ninety-nine percent. To be strictly rational, we’ll leave one percent of doubt.”
Shorer cut in furiously. “You know our rules. They exist for good reason. As you yourself would say in my place. Emotional involvement disqualifies you automatically.”
“But I don’t feel like that, not this time. It’s not like it was with Aryeh Klein,” protested Michael, even though he was well aware that his protests were falling on deaf ears. They didn’t even convince him. He was on very dangerous ground, like a gambler betting everything on one card. “Besides, in the final analysis I was right about him. He lied, but it wasn’t important.”
“Haven’t you arrested anyone yet?” asked Shorer in an entirely different tone, as if he could see the Commissioner or the Minister before him. “Or do I have to get hold of Balilty to find out what’s really going on?”
“We haven’t arrested anyone. All we’ve done so far is take passports. It isn’t that Balilty wanted to arrest someone and I wouldn’t let him.”
Shorer reflected aloud: “The brother and sister, or maybe even that mental patient, should at least be seriously interrogated. And what about Izzy Mashiah? You haven’t dug deep enough there yet.”
“And Nita, too?”
“You don’t have anything against her so far,” admitted Shorer. “Or anyone else, either. About that, you’re right.”
“So maybe,” said Michael in a sudden illumination that almost relieved him, “maybe we should wait a day or two. Maybe tomorrow, after I’ve talked to Dora Zackheim, and after I’ve spent the day with the two of them in Zichron Yaakov, we can reevaluate the situation.”
“Do you think something will happen and in a day or two the case will solve itself? You’re waiting for a miracle, is that it?”
Michael nodded and sank into his chair. He bent his head, and his hands held the arms of the chair.
“Even a day or two comes with a price,” said Shorer.
“What do you mean, a price’?”
“You can’t be alone with her.”
“With Nita? She can’t be left alone in any event. There’s always someone . . . I told you that.”
“No, my friend,” said Shorer severely. “I’m talking about cutting off relations, keeping away from her completely.”
“I thought you were glad that I . . . that I love her. That’s what you said,” Michael protested. A feeling of panic rather than joy spread though him at this unexpected understanding on Shorer’s part. This understanding rather disrupted his train of thought.
“You step down from the case,” said Shorer quickly and firmly, “and end this business with the baby. That craziness has to stop,” he said, staring straight ahead. “But that, I have to tell you,” he said clearing his throat, “is already being taken care of.”
“What do you mean, being taken care of?” Michael felt the blood draining from his face and arms, as if it were pouring right out of his body. A great weakness overcame him. His fingertips prickled as if an electric current were flowing through them.
“I have to tell you now,” said Shorer, gazing into his eyes with an expression gentler than usual, and even frankly paternal, “that the baby is no longer with you.”
“Where is she?” Michael heard himself ask in a strange voice that sounded as if it were coming from a distance, with no connection to his body, to his vocal cords.
“Ruth Mashiah has taken her to a foster family. She found a good place for her,” promised Shorer as he gripped Michael’s arm. “She said that you could come see her, if you like.”
“How could they do that?” said Michael. The lump in his throat threatened to dissolve into tears. “How dare you do such a thing to me without . . . without. . . .” For a long moment he was filled with wordless feelings. Images whirled before his eyes. The worst has happened, he tried to say to himself in order to stop the giddiness, the churning emotions. Maybe it’s not the worst, he thought, maybe it’s better this way. It was necessary to give her up. It really was conceit and craziness to think that he could do it. How could he? Shorer was right. How sad it would be for him now, to stand before the empty cradle. Facing nothing. Facing the nothing inside him, he corrected, demanding uncompromising honesty of himself. An image of a tiny garment,
orphaned. No more running home to hold the baby. He had to give her up. It was right. To return to the old-new loneliness, familiar but different. There was no such thing in the world as that sudden, miraculous salvation. There couldn’t be. It couldn’t be that she provided it. It wasn’t right to concentrate so on a baby. The sudden stab of a great, paralyzing fear now gave rise to the question of how it would be from now on, if salvation was not possible. But another thought arose, with quiet confidence: You’ll endure it, because you have no choice if this is the truth that emerges. Shorer was right: You really don’t find babies in the street. In this truth there was something great and right. And then there was Nita. With her it might be possible to build something. She could be . . . When her face suddenly lit up with joy. . . . But why? A new torrent churned inside him. Why should he think that it was impossible? Why should he think that it couldn’t be done? Who were those others to decide what was best for the baby? What did they know? He wouldn’t let them get away with it. He had to fight them. Maybe there was such a thing as sudden, miraculous salvation. Finally, it was no coincidence that it was he who had heard her crying in the cardboard box. Finally, it was no coincidence that he had been open to that crying. No, he wouldn’t agree. He wouldn’t let them do it.
For a few minutes they sat without talking. Shorer’s hand never left his arm. Suddenly the realization struck him, sharp as a knife. “How do you know?”
“How do I know what?” asked Shorer calmly. He took his hand away from the trembling arm, which Michael quickly crossed with his other arm.
“How do you know they took her away? You . . . you knew it all the time!”
Shorer nodded.
“And you never told me . . . You let me . . . How long have you known it?”
“Since this morning,” said Shorer calmly. “They came to tell me this morning. I didn’t say anything to you because I had to hear what you had to say.”
“Because you wanted to see if I would tell you,” muttered Michael in a voice choked with anger. “Because you thought I would deceive you. The whole thing was a test. Who came to tell you?”
