by Batya Gur
Yair says: “Yiftah is done. We knocked on the doors of all the apartments and we’ve spoken to almost all the neighbors, with everyone who was at home. We went from building to building and we were in all the shelters and the shops and the gardens and the boiler rooms and the attics and everyplace you can think of, and there’s nothing.”
“Roger,” says Tzilla into the speaker, and into the telephone receiver she says quickly: “I don’t have time now, Balilty. Go wait for him outside the Basharis’, or come wait for him here,” and she hangs up.
“You should see the scenes that are going on with that dog here,” Yair tells her on the background of noises and static over the receiver.
“What dog?” she asks, and waggles her hand at Moshe Avital to leave the room, but he apparently thinks she just means the open door, and comes into the room and shuts the door.
“Storm, the tracking dog. He didn’t want to leave the watchama-callits’, the Beinisches’, yard. He dug there like crazy, and we thought . . . But there was nothing. And he also latched on to Yoram Beinisch, the son, jumped on him and almost devoured him.” Moshe Avital is sitting in front of her. He has moved the chair away from the desk and is looking at her with those eyes and she can’t even, simply can’t, tell him to scram.
“Nu?” she says into the transmitter. She hasn’t got a lot of patience right now for this slowness of Yair’s.
“Nothing,” says Yair. “The dog handler says that judging from Storm’s behavior you might think the little girl was everywhere. Are you leaving the transmitter open all the time?”
“Yes, of course. What do you think?” she answers, and looks at Moshe Avital. And nevertheless she presses the red button and leaves her finger on it, and the transmitter goes silent. “You’ll have to wait outside,” she says to Moshe Avital in the most authoritative tone she can muster, but even when he sees how pressured she is, he isn’t moved at all and he gets up very slowly, and again says to her: “What do you care? You have my mobile phone number. Why shouldn’t I go out in the meantime until he comes back? I’m not running away anywhere.”
And she still can’t be strict and brutal with him. At most she says to him: “Where would you go, anyway? Everything is closed because of the holiday,” and also: “Wait. He’ll be here soon, but wait outside. Do me a favor.” And she looks at him as he very slowly goes out of the room, as if meaning to annoy, or perhaps he’s waiting for her to change her mind, and he doesn’t even close the door all the way, but she has to take her finger off the red button and she can’t possibly run to close the door properly right now.
Once again the room is filled with noises and squeaks, and on the background of them comes the voice of Einat, who is searching with Yair and yells into the wireless, “Tzilla, Tzilla, Einat here. Can you hear me? Over.”
“Roger, roger. Over,” she replies, and hears the tiredness in her voice, and it’s only a little after ten in the morning, and that nudnik Avital has been waiting since six, ever since Balilty left him, and really, how long can she—
“We’re at the Greek’s house on the corner of Othniel and Bethlehem. Over.”
“I’ve written it down,” she replies, and just then her mobile phone rings. “You don’t need to draw my route,” Eli says to her on the mobile. “I’m on the wireless with Aliza, and she’s sitting there at the switchboard, and she has a map so it won’t be too much for you . . .”
“Have you spoken to your mother?” she asks him, and sets aside the red felt pen.
“Yes. The children are fine—only I’m falling off my feet,” says her husband without even asking how she is. “Aliza will bring you my reports upstairs to you, if there’s anything, and then you can collate everything.”
The conversation ends or is cut off, but she doesn’t have time now to call back, because over the transmitter Yair’s voice is heard again. “This house,” he says to her. “It’s a palace, not a house. There’s Jerusalem stone here. Unbelievable how beautiful it is!” He doesn’t even say “Over” to her and she restrains herself from telling him that he has no cause to get all excited about Jerusalem neighborhoods right now, because he’s not on any holiday walk, and she also doesn’t remind him that there probably aren’t things like that in Tel Aviv, or at his moshav, but only says: “The corner of Othniel and Bethlehem? Over.”
“It’s locked,” she hears a muffled voice in the background saying. “They’ve locked everything up, and the windows are boarded.”
“Einat here. We are proceeding toward Shimshon Street. There’s a mikveh there. We’re going in. Over.”
Tzilla marks the structure on Shimshon Street with a star, and for a moment a picture flashes before her eyes of a small body lying at the bottom of the murky greenish water of a ritual bath. She shudders. If only she had been smart enough to have brought some coffee with her at least, to this office in which she is now shut up like some kind of prisoner.
Someone is knocking gently on the door, and before she manages to say “Yes,” the door opens slowly, and who is standing there if not Moshe Avital with his yellow sweater. Now he looks like a soft yellow frog, but in his two hands he is holding paper cups, and he extends one of them to her, and steam is coming out of it and the room fills with the smell of coffee. “It’s from the machine downstairs in the street,” he explains to her surprised look—she does not even know what surprises her more: the coffee and the soft pretzel they sell in the Old City, or Moshe Avital’s nerve—and on the desk, taking care not to touch the map of the neighborhood, he untwists a strip of newspaper. “There’s hyssop and sesame and salt for the soft pretzel. Hyssop without sand, absolutely clean.
“Nu, drink,” he urges her with a small smile, and his deep big eyes don’t stop gazing into hers. “Why wait when it’s hot?”
What can she do? The coffee really is hot, and just what she needs. She drinks and pulls off a piece of the soft pretzel, splits it in half with her fingers and sprinkles some hyssop mixture on it. Now she can’t throw him out. How can she throw out someone who has brought her coffee and a soft pretzel? She manages to say, limply: “Thanks, but you left the building.”
“It was just for a moment,” he answers her, and smiles—he has big white teeth, but not straight and even, and the edge of his front tooth is broken a bit, like Matan’s. Matan broke his in a game of hide-and-seek. Where did Moshe Avital’s get broken? Who was he chasing? And in his cheek, in a straight line under his right eye, there’s a small dimple that is only now visible, when he grins.
“Einat here. There’s nothing in the mikveh on Shimshon Street. Over.” And again there are noises in the background, and with a bit of the soft pretzel stuck in her teeth and the green felt pen in her hand, she bears down hard to mark a thick X and takes the soft pretzel out of her mouth and says: “Noted. Over.”
“Get a load of this orchard,” she hears Yair’s voice. “Will you just look at those figs. A jungle of figs, and so neglected!” It’s a good thing Balilty isn’t here yet. He would have said something nasty had he heard those comments of Yair’s. “An abandoned storage shed,” says a voice she doesn’t know, and loud barking is also heard.
“Is Mr. Balilty also supposed to be coming here?” Moshe Avital asks her, and she nods affirmatively. What is she going to tell him with her mouth full of soft pretzel and hyssop that he has brought her, with coffee that is too sweet? “So maybe he’ll get here first, before Ohayon,” Moshe Avital murmurs, and extends to her an open packet of Marlboros, from which one cigarette protrudes.
“No, thanks, I don’t smoke,” she says, and he lights one for himself. Without asking if it’s all right.
“You must wait outside.” Since when has she been so namby-pamby?
“It’s not good to be so tense. It’s bad for your health, and you such a pretty young woman. You have to watch your health.”
Nothing like this has ever happened to her. That man is sitting there—as if he were some friend of the family, an old friend who is giving her advic
e, and she . . . What’s happening to her? Maybe it’s the exhaustion.
“We’re going up to Gideon Street. Over,” says Yair’s voice, and in the background she hears a man’s voice saying in strange English, “There’s a playground in the middle,” and then there are squeaks and barks and a few cries of annoyance. “A basketball field. Empty. Just a few kids. Over,” says Yair into the wireless.
“Tell them to look in the shelters of the housing projects over there,” Moshe Avital says suddenly, and instead of telling him to get out of here and not meddle in her business, she asks: “Why?”
“Those are big housing projects there,” he says, and his French accent grows more pronounced. “There are a lot of people, and no one pays attention.”
“Mikveh on Gideon Street. Locked. We’re breaking in now. Over,” says Yair.
“Have you gone into the shelters in the projects? Over,” she says, putting down the soft pretzel and marking with the green felt pen.
“They’re looking there now, with the dog. I can’t understand why there are so many mikvehs here.”
“Sweetie,” a woman’s voice says to him, Einat’s maybe, “where do you think you are? This is Jerusalem here, haven’t you noticed?”
Moshe Avital wipes his lips with a paper napkin and smiles. He isn’t even pretending not to hear. He’s simply eavesdropping on the conversation. “But I thought this was a secular neighborhood,” says Yair. “And it was more becoming to you before, forgive me for saying so, with your hair like that . . . Ooof, too bad I said so. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Now Tzilla is certain that the voice is Einat’s. And something in the way she and Yair are talking to each other makes her feel uncomfortable. “What? It isn’t secular here?” she hears Yair asking.
“There are no secular neighborhoods in Jerusalem. How can anyone be secular when the religious have so much power? Never mind the municipality—even the mayor is in their back pocket. Without that, he wouldn’t get elected.” Where do they think they are?! Why are they talking like that to her in the office? And Moshe Avital smiles with all those teeth and the dimple below his right eye.
“So what is this, like in Mea She’arim?” asks Yair, and Tzilla suddenly interrupts and says into the transmitter: “A mikveh or a synagogue. Or both. Get used to it. That’s the way it is here. Have you opened the mikveh? Over.”
Moshe Avital laughs and the transmitter goes silent until Yair’s hesitant voice is heard. “Do you have someone there with you?” he asks.
And then there is a long silence, as if they had turned it off until again there are noises, among them the “Einat here,” which is beginning to get on her nerves like the chatter of the broadcasters on the Army Radio tunes and traffic report show at seven in the morning. “Proceeding toward Bethlehem Street in the direction of Boaz Street. Over.”
Maybe to show that she is in the know, she now says: “So search at the British Council, too. It’s right there. Over.”
“I have it marked. Don’t worry, Tzilla,” says Yair. “And also the park with the fountain . . .” The cough that reverberates over the speaker cuts off the sentence. And Moshe Avital shrinks back. You would think that germs come over the radio waves.
“And there’s a way down in this yard to a storeroom and a cistern. Yigal Hayoun wants to talk to you. Over.”
“Put him on,” Tzilla says, and looks at Moshe Avital’s hand lighting a cigarette he is holding between his third and fourth fingers. A ray of light coming in from the window behind her illuminates the gold ring he is wearing.
“There’s a way down here to a storeroom and a cistern,” says a strange new voice. “When we were kids we used to throw stones down there and wait to hear them hit the bottom. The water is really deep here.”
“Not only that,” interrupts Einat’s voice. “There’s an underground chamber here the size of the whole house and that’s where the opening to the cistern begins. Over.”
Tzilla holds the green felt pen—the cistern and the underground chamber are not indicated on the map they prepared for her—and marks two points on the route. “So what’s the problem?” she asks as she marks. “Are you going down there or not? Over.”
“We need a flashlight. Do you have one?” She hears Yair’s voice on the background of loud barking. “Wow!” gushes Yair after a few moments. “Will you look at that? The water is black and there are patches of mildew on the walls that look like . . . Look how beautiful it is, with all those kinds of mold—isn’t it? Just like an ancient cave with paintings.”
“Eeek!” She hears a yelp and Moshe Avital tenses in his chair, and from the speaker comes Einat’s hysterical squawk. “What are those things?”
“That’s nothing, just naked snails. They don’t do anything.” Beyond the map and the sounds of the voices, Tzilla can picture them exactly—fat and slimy, sticking to the wall and glistening—and she is nauseated. In a moment she’s going to throw up the pretzel.
“She’s not here. Tell her that she’s not here.” She thinks that the voice is the voice of Yigal Hayoun, and this voice is the one that is suddenly shouting into the system: “No one could have dragged her here without anyone noticing. Nessia is not a skinny child.”
Squeaks and squeals fill the room at the Russian Compound before Yair says: “Returning to Bethlehem Road. Over.”
“Where on Bethlehem? Over.” Tzilla fills her mouth with a piece of the soft pretzel, and as Einat speaks she marks an arrow on the main street of the neighborhood in a southerly direction. She also marks a spot next to the first greengrocer and another one next to the second greengrocer, and a curving arrow into the yard behind the shops. “What?” she clarifies with Einat. “What did you say? The greenhouse? Where is there a greenhouse? Over.”
“It’s not a greenhouse,” says Moshe Avital as if he had been asked. “It was a place where they had potted plants . . . What do they call it? A plant nursery? But now there’s nothing there.”
Anger gives her courage. “Do me a favor and wait outside, like I asked you,” she says to him, and moves aside the cup of coffee and the soft pretzel and the hyssop mixture. “You can’t be here now.”
“Am I in the way? Sorry. I just want to help,” he says, not in the least insulted, and saunters out of the room.
After that things take on a rhythm that is soothing in a way, if you disregard what it is all about. She almost forgets that they are looking for the little girl who has disappeared, because she is so busy concentrating on marking the map: the thin arrow along the narrow lane between Bethlehem and Mordechai Hayehudi, to the house that used to belong to the Labor Party.
“There are signs that someone was here,” insists an unfamiliar voice.
“This is still here from the Romanian workers. No one’s been in here with those boards blocking the entrance,” answers someone else.
“Do you have a synagogue there at the end of Mordechai Hayehudi?” asks Yair. “Over.”
“I have a star here,” she replies, “a kind of Star of David. There’s a synagogue on the map at the end of Mordechai Hayehudi, but it’s a dead-end street.”
“What difference does it make if it’s a dead-end street? Over.” To this question she has no answer.
Again she hears blurred voices, talking about a grape arbor, and somebody mentions a kiosk. At that moment the door opens noisily and Balilty is standing there. “I stopped off at home. I’ve brought you . . .” He is panting as if he has run the whole way. “Matty sent this for you, a little chicken soup and some rice with okra and meat.” And as he speaks he sets a large plastic bag down at her feet and unties the knot to show her a tower of square plastic containers. The smell of food fills the room, and Balilty nods in the direction of the corridor. “He’s wrung out, that Avital, huh?”
“So you take him,” says Tzilla. “Just get him off my back. All morning he’s been driving me crazy.”
“I can’t,” says Balilty with a sigh and a miserable face. “I’ve already done
my bit with him. My job was to find out about the apartment and the alibi—nu, eat something, Matty put in a fork and a soup spoon. Look, take it out while it’s still hot, it’ll get cold, no?” And without waiting for an answer he takes the top square container out of the bag and opens it, and the smell of chicken soup that comes to her nostrils reminds her how hungry she is.
“And does he have one?” she asks, carefully bringing the spoon from the container to her mouth.
“What? Ah, an alibi. Not really. You couldn’t say he has much of an alibi. A lot of talk, that’s what he has.”
“He’s been sitting here since six o’clock in the morning,” Tzilla says, and drops the spoon on the desk and brings the corner of the plastic container to her mouth and sips the soup from it.
“Tell me,” says Balilty, looking out the window, “what do they see in that ugly thing? You women drive me crazy—even you. How did he get his hooks into you, too?”
“No one has got his hooks into anybody,” she corrects him, and moves on to the second plastic container. “Tell Matty that since my mother died I haven’t had chicken soup like this. Tell her, you hear? Don’t forget.”
Balilty turns away from the window. “Taste the okra. No one cooks okra like that. He met with Zahara Bashari on the day she died. Imagine.”
“When?” asks Tzilla in astonishment. “In the morning or in the evening?”
“He says in the afternoon, but go know,” says Balilty, helping himself to a piece of okra out of the plastic container. “He said that they had lunch together at a grilled meat place. The restaurant owner, a guy named Itzik, in Mahaneh Yehuda, still has to be asked. I know him, Itzik. I haven’t got—”
“So let him go home already and call him in later,” demands Tzilla. “Are you afraid he’s going to run away somewhere?”
