by Batya Gur
Balilty’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Michael. “Someone isn’t telling the truth,” he said finally. His words rang in the silence of the room. “Someone, in other words, is lying, in a big way. What’s in the surveillance report this morning? They must have reported Dalit’s visit. What does he mean, he doesn’t know any Sergeant Dalit?”
“We haven’t received last night’s report yet,” said Tzilla uneasily. “It’s due at noon.”
“They may not have seen me,” said Dalit hesitantly.
“Why shouldn’t they see you? Were you hiding, or what?” demanded Balilty, and not waiting for a reply he said again to Michael: “What does he mean, he doesn’t know any Sergeant Dalit?”
“I’m only telling you what I heard,” said Michael, leaning against the door, which he had closed. “You can listen to the tape of the conversation in Shorer’s office. Why should Mashiah make this up? What good could it possibly do him?”
“We’ll have to talk to him again,” said Balilty uneasily. “We’ve never had anything like this before. There’s something completely crazy here. Why should he deny it after he’s already handed over the key?”
“Why indeed,” said Michael. “I’m wondering why, too.”
“I have no idea,” insisted Dalit, as Balilty again looked at her. Her face was now flushed. Michael felt at a loss. He himself didn’t know what to believe. Now he was sorry he had spoken in front of everybody. Not because he doubted Izzy Mashiah, whom for some reason he tended to believe, but because he felt certain that something ugly and sordid, something murky, was about to be revealed, and he was the one who had exposed it and brought it up from the depths. Without reflection, without thinking of the consequences. In a manner that was uncharacteristic of him. Because he was going to be late for his meeting with Dora Zackheim. And also in order to settle a score with Dalit. But he felt no lust for revenge, or any sense of satisfaction. Where had all the anger he had felt only a moment ago gone? he wondered. How could he not have taken into account his vindictiveness, his desire to get back at her, and admit that it was this which had motivated him? Maybe these things existed in him even though he didn’t feel them at all.
“Get me Forensics,” said Balilty impatiently to Zippo. Eli Bahar followed Michael out of the room in order to go and get Izzy Mashiah. Dalit shrugged her shoulders and collected her papers with nervous, jerky movements. “What’s going on here?” said Michael to Eli as they stood outside the entrance to the building. “What do you think?”
“I had a bad feeling about her from the beginning,” Eli admitted. “But I thought I was imagining it, that it was because of Balilty putting me on the shelf, sending me on errands. Now I’m no longer sure of that. I think,” he said, chewing his lower lip, “that we also have to check the matter of our man in New York, too. If she says she spoke to him, how do we know that she really spoke to him?”
“In other words, are you saying it’s possible that she’s lying?” asked Michael, and to his surprise he felt a surge of anxiety welling up inside him.
“I remember how long it took from the time she found Herzl until she reported it. I’m thinking about that, and I can’t find an explanation for it,” said Eli Bahar.
“But what could her motive be?” wondered Michael. They were already standing at the car door. He looked at the domes of the Russian church, and again he was moved by its naive beauty, standing there untarnished. It was like an illustration from an old book set among the parking lots, the fence around the police building, the clusters of people, the kiosk at the church’s side. Suddenly he noticed the dark brown color of the domes. “Weren’t they green?” he asked, astonished.
“What? What was green?”
“The church domes. Before I went on leave, they were green. I’m sure they were green.”
“Yes,” said Eli, suddenly smiling. “They were green. They’ve been brown for a long time now. I don’t know why, maybe they painted them.”
“She must know that we’ll find out in the end. Where’s the sense of it? Why would anyone do such things, especially when they know they’ll be found out?” Michael persevered.
“Once you would have said, “Wonders will never cease,”’ replied Eli, looking at the tips of his black running shoes. “You haven’t said that for a long time. If it’s true, then she’s simply crazy.”
“Simple is the one thing it’s not,” said Michael, listening to the roar of the car engine. “And that’s no explanation either, only a description. It’s obvious that there’s something crazy here. But what exactly? Do me a favor,” he suddenly remembered. “You go to Zichron Yaakov with the van Geldens, not Zippo. Insist on it!”
“What?” said Eli sullenly. “You want me to ask Balilty? Why should I? I’m not asking him for anything. If he wants to, he can send me.” His face took on a withdrawn expression. He bit his lower lip, his eyes olive green in his dark face.
“Do me a favor,” pleaded Michael. “Don’t do it for yourself, but for me as your friend. What use is Zippo? First of all, someone has to listen to what they say to each other on the way. Second, it really is too dangerous.”
“There’ll be a tape recorder. They’re going in the Forensics van. It’s bugged, which I know for a fact, because it was my job to set it up. So you see what my position has become here. That’s all Balilty thinks I’m fit for.”
“I need someone there I can . . . someone who understands . . . someone who . . . You know what I mean. I need someone who really won’t take his eyes off her. You never can tell what . . .”
Eli lowered his head, again examined his shoe tips, and drew a little circle with his right foot. “Okay, we’ll see,” he said unwillingly, “if it can be managed.”
12
The Right Distance
He arrived in Holon much later than he had intended. Behind the hedge a sprinkler danced over a small strip of lawn. Petunias in red clay pots stained the green with bright pink and purple and white in front of a row of modest white stucco apartment buildings. A paved path, short and straight as a ruler, led to the entrance. Twice he had ignored DEAD END signs as the car twisted and turned in the narrow streets behind the town’s main street. He was following the map Theo had drawn for him. “She’s still living in the one-and-a-half-room apartment they gave her when she arrived in the country after the war. It’s in one of those housing developments from the fifties that look like trains. And in Holon, for God’s sake! That should tell you what kind of person you’re dealing with,” Theo had said, raising his head from the piece of paper on which he was drawing. “Anywhere else in the world she could have been God knows how well off. A musician of her caliber! With so many of the leading violinists in the world owing their careers to her. She’s still there in Holon of her own free will. Not that she’s never had offers, mind you,” Theo said wagging his index finger, “but she always said that those things weren’t what was important. She didn’t have the strength to move. The apartment was good enough, the one she’d had in Budapest was no better. Even though she was already a very well-known violinist before the war, on the brink of an international career. Then came the war, and after the war she never went back to playing. She was in the camps. I don’t know where for sure, I think it was Auschwitz. I remember in our lessons, when she sometimes demonstrated something, she played marvelously. She had a daughter by her first husband when she was twenty. The daughter lives in Cleveland. She’s also a musician, a singer. Dora Zackheim had three husbands. She outlived them all,” said Theo with a laugh. Then he grew serious again, remarking parenthetically that he thought the first one, the father of the daughter, died in the Holocaust, and he resumed his smile when he came to the third: “The last one she dragged with her to Israel. I remember him. He had a mustache, wore a hat, was always on his way outside. She was soon rid of him. But she didn’t want to move. During the war she could only dream of ever having one square yard of her own to live in. And so what she had was enough for her, or as she says, everything’s
already a miracle as it is. You can’t suspect her of any affectation when you see the way she lives. As if there really is nothing in the world except for music, her pupils, and maybe a few books. Gabi also used to try to persuade her to move, but nothing doing.”
For a few minutes Michael stood before the closed door of the apartment, having climbed up sixty-four steep, narrow steps to the fourth floor. He marveled at a woman her age making this climb every day. Coming from behind the door he heard the sound of a violin. It was the Sarabande from Bach’s Second Partita, the first piece of music that no one had introduced him to, that he had learned to love by himself, and that he therefore felt he had actually discovered. He loved it all the more because of this. The music sounded clear, and exquisitely beautiful. He waited for the player to be interrupted so that he could ring the bell. Once or twice, when it seemed to him that the music had indeed stopped, he raised his finger to the doorbell but left it hovering when the music immediately burst out again.
Finally he dared to ring the bell. The music did not stop, but brisk footsteps approached the door, which swung open. A small woman stood before him. Her hair was a dull chestnut brown, as if a tub of dye had been emptied over it. Her eyes—clear and blue in a face almost free of wrinkles—shone with expectation and vitality, as if every opened door held the potential for a great adventure. His first reaction at her unexpectedly youthful appearance—if he hadn’t known how old she was he would have taken her for sixty at most—was amazement. When he introduced himself in a whisper—the violin went on playing—she nodded vigorously and held out a gnarled hand. He suddenly realized that because of Theo’s awe he had expected a very tall woman with a lined face and pursed lips. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would be so tiny so full of grace and vitality and even radiating a kind of joy. Only now did he notice the slender brown cigar she held between the fingers of her left hand, and he almost smiled as he recalled old Hildesheimer gravely insisting on calling these little cigars by the correct name, cigarillos. She remarked that he was very late, and a good thing, too, she said in a strong Hungarian accent, because the lesson was not yet over. She exhaled a cloud of bluish-white smoke and turned her back to lead him inside. Now that he could see the small hump between her shoulder blades and, under the brown striped dress, the thin legs encased in support bandages, he had no doubt that Dora Zackheim was an eighty-six-year-old woman.
A black metal partition divided the small foyer from the room where a tall, thin adolescent stood before a music stand with his back to them. He continued to play. Dora Zackheim said nothing, only shaking her head and clucking her tongue disapprovingly as she walked back toward the violinist and indicated a chair for Michael next to the table in the foyer. It may have served as a dining table, but at the moment it was covered with a yellow cloth embroidered with blue flowers. On it also were a very old typewriter and a Venetian glass vase containing three red gladiolus. This room suddenly reminded him of the home, in the little town of his childhood, of a family of new immigrants from Poland whose only child, a boy his age named Adam, he was assigned to “adopt,” meaning to help him with his homework in a new language. The father was short and thin, with a shifty, fearful look, the mother tall and aristocratic. Adam soon caught up with the rest of the class and soon, no longer needing Michael’s help, became its top student. That family, too, had a table with an embroidered cloth and a vase with red flowers in it.
“The left hand is not free enough, is not strong enough. It is too stiff,” he heard Dora Zackheim calling in a voice filled with grim disapproval. And then, almost in a shout: “Enough! Enough! Stop!” The boy lowered the violin and turned toward his teacher. “It is a sarabande,” she cried angrily. “What about the tempo? Andante and lively at once! From the beginning!”
The boy started to play again, and she tapped several times. “The left hand is not flexible enough today,” she scolded. “The fingers are not strong enough.” She took the boy’s left arm and shook it until his hand swung to and fro. “Not enough!” she complained. “This is a stupid hand. And you haven’t done enough work on the second finger. It probably hasn’t practiced enough scales today.” The boy whispered something. “We don’t go by the clock here,” she said, glaring at him. “One hour is nothing today. The hand is stiff and the fingers not strong enough. There is no control! It is a piece of wood! And the tone!” She ground the stub of her cigar out in a big glass ashtray and clapped her hands. “What kind of tone is that? Terrible! It is no good at all,” she cried in disgust. She looked at the boy, who stood there as if he were used to it, and then she looked at Michael—who quickly averted his eyes—and in a dramatic whisper said: “Last week, at a memorial service for the composer Paul Ben Haim, my pupil Shmulik played this sarabande much, much better.” The boy looked at her without saying a word. “Okay,” she said, softening, “he is not Jascha Heifetz either, but much better than what you are doing here today.” The boy bowed his head as if waiting for something to pass over him. Finally she fell silent, grumbled to herself once more, put her hand on his arm, and said quietly: “I do not like your mood today. You are sad. Is something wrong at school? Are you getting enough fresh air? You have been like this for some time.” The boy remained silent and shrugged his shoulders. She drew a yellow metal container toward her, extracted from it a slender little brown cigar, lit it with a big silver lighter, and, putting her head to one side, looked at the boy. He was silent. Gently she removed the violin from his hand. Now he turned and looked at Michael. Open curiosity burned in his blue, almost transparent eyes, over which dark, thick eyebrows met on the bridge of his nose, emphasizing the white skin of the face with the fair down on its cheeks. “Enough for today. You have a long way to travel. Very far,” she said, concerned. The boy put his violin in its case. “Is Zichron Yaakov one hour or two?” she asked Michael as the boy headed toward the door. For a moment Michael wondered whether he was ready to give up the hour of solitude he had been looking forward to, but when he saw the boy’s friendly smile he couldn’t help announcing that he himself was on his way to Beit-Daniel, and if the young man could wait until he finished his talk with Mrs. Zackheim, he would give him a lift.
“That is wonderful, Yuval!” she cried with delight, wrongly stressing the name’s first syllable. “That is very good of you,” she said to Michael as though Yuval weren’t there. “He works too hard, without enough rest. And it is dangerous these days on the buses,” she reflected aloud. “You can never tell what is going to happen. These are very difficult times,” she said, shaking her head. “And we began at seven o’clock this morning,” she said. She took a deep drag on her cigar, coughed, and added in a confidential tone: “Usually I have to say they do not work hard enough. But him? Too much!” She shook her head. “Too much work, too little life. Children his age also have to live. When will he be sixteen again?”
As if he hadn’t heard a word, Yuval looked down at the lower shelf of a big brown wooden bookcase covering the wall and pulled out a magazine. “This is the Musical America with the article about you!” he said excitedly, turning to the page with photographs of her. “Shmulik told me about it. Can I read it now, Dora?” She waved her hand dismissively. “Nonsense, a lot of nonsense,” she muttered. “Some books fell down,” she added, and Yuval bent down and picked up three paperbacks.
“It is very nice of you to offer the lift because he comes all the way from Haifa,” she explained. “And this is already the third time this week. Every lesson takes a long time. He left home at five o’clock this morning.” Yuval blushed.
“But I do have to talk to you privately,” said Michael, and he looked at the big sliding door that divided the room in two. It was partly open, and he could see the bed taking up most of the space in the other half.
“We can close the door,” she said lightly. “No problem. No sound comes through,” she added, and then she cheerfully announced: “First we have time for fruit juice or coffee.”
Yuval sat down next to Mich
ael, where he read the magazine while playing with the fringe of the tablecloth. Dora Zackheim went into the kitchen, and from where he sat Michael could see her determined movements in the small rectangular space as she noisily poured and stirred. Yuval raised his face, which looked as if he were strenuously suppressing a burst of laughter. His eyes twinkled. “I wondered if I’d get hot chocolate today,” he teased her when she returned carrying a wooden tray with glasses in silver holders, “because I played so badly, and now I see there are even cookies.”
She put her head on one side and looked at him critically, but also with quite a bit of warmth. “It is a good thing you are happy now,” she rebuked him, “because yesterday and today I worried that you were too sad.”
When they finished their snack, Dora Zackheim beckoned to Michael, who hurried after her into the other half of the room. She vainly tugged at the sliding door, which seemed to be rarely used. “Allow me,” said Michael, and she moved aside and nodded her thanks. She opened a small window that overlooked a side street and motioned him to sit down on the only chair. She herself sat down on the bed and put her bandaged legs onto a little stool. Her face grew serious. Her eyes were blue and intense.
“I grieve for Gabi,” she said without preamble. “Such a great tragedy, a very great tragedy.” He wanted to let her go on talking, but she said no more and looked at him with intent expectation, as if she was straining to lift her wrinkled, short-lashed eyelids. Michael had assumed that she would be suspicious of him, maybe frightened, and was surprised at her failure to make any of the usual stereotypical remarks about policemen. Now he thought with satisfaction that his offer to give Yuval a lift to Beit-Daniel had ingratiated him with the old violin teacher.
“I came to ask you about him,” said Michael hesitantly. “I’d like you to tell me about him and also about Theo.”
