by Batya Gur
“And the children?” asked Michael, who wanted to get the conversation back to the question from which it had started.
“Yoram was born after we had already been living here for many years. After we had already despaired. It was like a miracle.” Now he snorted and shook his head. “You think there’s been a miracle and God laughs in your face. I invited them to the circumcision. I went over there, and for once I spoke to Mr. Bashari. To this day my wife doesn’t know. I thought . . . an opportunity. And they didn’t come. Nothing. No congratulations, no explanations, no apology, after years that we’d been living there without . . . And they, with all their four children . . .”
“But I understand that as children your Yoram and Zahara Bashari would . . .” Michael did not complete the sentence and allowed it to hang in the air.
Efraim Beinisch wiped his broad hand over his eyes for a moment, as if to eradicate from them sights that he could not bear. “They were such beautiful children,” he said, and spread his palms as if in supplication. “Both of them were so beautiful. Even she, Zahara . . . I have nothing against Jews from the oriental communities, Mr. Ohayon, believe me. Had it been up to me . . . But their mothers didn’t let . . . First the mothers and then everyone, her brothers and her father, and I—what could I do? Argue with them all? ‘Let them, let them play together.’ She could have been good for him, a good influence on him. But her big brother caught them together. They were so little and there was . . . I want to tell you, precisely because of the feud, and precisely because his mother hated her parents so much—this is exactly why he fell in love with her. But we killed it for them. Yoram, he loved her, but the hatred was bigger. What could he have done when the families . . . hate each other like that? And Yoram is his mother’s son and he’d never go against her. And Clara, it’s impossible to budge her from this, even in the smallest things and certainly in a thing like this. That her son should go with the daughter of . . . Yoram was a mamma’s boy . . . They say that in the old days everything was different here, that everyone was poor but together, that there weren’t . . . But that’s incorrect, Mr. Ohayon. In the old days things were also bad. Everyone was poor, and everyone was a new immigrant and . . . they didn’t let you live, there wasn’t solidarity and mutual aid . . . You don’t know what a child . . . So good-looking, like his mother . . . She looked like that when I first met her in our city. Just like that, with those huge eyes . . .” His voice faded and he looked around as if trying to understand where he was, until finally he gathered his wits and tightened his lips.
“But nevertheless they were in love and had a relationship,” said Michael. “You saw them.”
“One time I saw everything with my own eyes, just once,” said Efraim Beinisch. “I was the one who saw it, and not my wife. And I didn’t say anything to anyone. No one in the world knew, even his mother. No one . . . God almighty, a person has an only child . . . one . . .”
“When was that?” insisted Michael.
“Before . . . Yoram was in the army and she wasn’t yet, I think. He was in computers in the army and he came home every day. An only son, came home to his mother. And once we were . . . His mother wanted us to check our gas masks because we’d received a notice that they were out of date and they had to be checked. They were in the shelter. The shelter is shared. It . . . During the Gulf War . . . Never mind. What happened during the Gulf War in . . . In the end, I built a sealed room inside the house. But there, in the shelter, were the gas masks, and I went down there at night—not late, but it was already dark—to get the masks. The door was closed, with a lock. I didn’t find a key. There’s one small window. The shelter is half underground and half aboveground. I thought . . . maybe burglars . . . I went down on my knees and looked in. There was a rag on the window, but there was a little gap in the rag. I looked through a hole. There was a bit of light, maybe a candle. I saw . . . They were . . . together.” Efraim Beinisch crossed his two fingers as if to explain by the gesture what he had seen.
“And only that time?” asked Michael.
“I didn’t see anything more than that, but I know things.”
“And it was Zahara?” confirmed Michael. “You’re certain?”
“Her face was in the light, and she was naked—the upper half of her body, her face in the light. She didn’t see me—I was in the dark.”
“And you think they had a relationship like that all those years?”
“Of course they did. All those years. I know it here”—he pinched his arm. “I know it on my flesh. The whole time. It was because of the hatred that they fell in love. We made him sick. I don’t know exactly where they met and there are many more . . . things that I don’t know . . . Even about Michelle. He’s going to marry her. When I met her parents and . . . Doesn’t she see anything? Tell me, how can a woman be with a fellow and not know anything? How can you know anything about anyone? I used to think that you could know about your own child . . . But you only know if you want to know.”
“Or if you look in his sock drawer,” noted Michael.
“Believe me,” said Efraim Beinisch. He looked at his large hands and then rose a bit and pulled the packet of paper tissues out of his back pocket again and very carefully pulled out one tissue and used it to wipe his face and then his hands. “If only I hadn’t had to look there, if only I hadn’t needed to know what I know. God, I just think about his mother and she . . . She just won’t believe it.”
“What won’t she believe?”
Efraim Beinisch pointed to the small leather notebook that was lying on the table near Michael. “God almighty,” he said, and shook his head. “I gave that boy so much—going places with him and talking to him and the zoo and karate lessons, and the computer, one of the first ones in the country. There wasn’t anything . . . But it didn’t help, Mr. Ohayon. Believe me, you can’t know . . . When the air is full of hatred—what can possibly grow there?”
“Mr. Beinisch,” Michael said, and turned his chair to face the other man. “Where was Yoram on the night Zahara Bashari was murdered? Where was he really?”
Efraim Beinisch wiped his brow again and then laid his hands on his knees and arched his back and said: “He went to pick up Michelle from the airport. That’s what he told us. We thought she was supposed to arrive at two o’clock in the morning, but in the end she only arrived at six.”
“We checked,” said Michael gently, “and she wasn’t supposed to have come on the KLM flight. She wasn’t on the passenger list. From the outset she was on the passenger list for the El Al flight that comes in at five in the morning.”
“Yes,” protested the father, “but at the time we didn’t know that. He said that . . . You already know what he said.”
“And even at two in the morning. Even supposing she was coming in at two in the morning, when did he really leave the house?”
“Yes, this is what I came here for . . . ,” said Efraim Beinisch miserably. “I wanted to tell you . . . he wasn’t at home. My wife thinks I was asleep, and my son thinks I will say what I’m told to say, but I’m telling you: I wasn’t asleep, I hadn’t taken a pill, and he wasn’t at home. I don’t know where he was. He has a car and he’s independent and he never tells me anything because I don’t ask. Why ask? And if I did ask, would he tell me? And if he does tell me anything, there’s not a chance it’s the truth. That’s the truth, Mr. Ohayon, may God forgive me. What would you do in my place, Mr. Ohayon? You’re an intelligent person. Tell me, what would you do?”
“It really is very difficult, your situation,” Michael murmured, and for a moment he saw his own son’s face in his mind’s eye. “I,” he would have said to Efraim Beinisch, “would not have been able to be in your situation,” and he immediately reprimanded himself for this certainty.
“There are people who will tell you,” said Efraim Beinisch, “even my wife, that it doesn’t matter what your child does—he’s always your child.”
“You aren’t denying Yoram, Mr. Beinisch,” Mic
hael promised him. “These are two quite different things.”
“Exactly,” said Efraim Beinisch. “That’s what I thought. I’m not severing anything with him, but I can’t protect him by lying. I should have protected him a long time ago. And not with a lie. Only there isn’t anything I can do if he . . . if it turns out that he really did . . .” His voice faded and his gaze blurred. The room was silent, save only for the rain that beat down hard on the iron shutters.
“And on the eve of the holiday?” asked Michael after a long moment. “Where was he when the little girl disappeared?”
“He told us that he was with Michelle, that they’d gone to Tel Aviv. I’m telling you the truth,” whispered Efraim Beinisch. “That’s what he told us, but later it turned out that Michelle had gone to visit a friend of hers at a kibbutz, some kibbutz near Netanya; I forget what it’s . . . He drove her there and said that he had to go back to take care of something, and apparently he came back here . . . We didn’t even know he’d come back . . . I . . . didn’t . . . want to think . . . I took a sleeping pill. A person can’t be thinking like that all the time, Mr. Ohayon, don’t you see?”
Michael nodded his head, pondering the face of the fiancée, who had not batted an eyelash when she stated that Yoram Beinisch had been with her the whole night at Kibbutz Yakum. He wondered what Yoram had told her so that she would lie for him so brazenly. “A person can’t . . . ,” continued Efraim Beinisch, but he stopped suddenly in alarm when the door handle squeaked. Eli Bachar was standing in the doorway. “I need you for a minute,” he said when Michael looked at him questioningly. “Could you just step outside with me for a moment?”
Michael hesitated for a moment and then rose, asking himself whether Eli would take him out like that from a conversation with the father of a murder suspect because of what had happened between them earlier. And Eli, reading his look, said: “It can’t wait.”
Michael laid his hand on Efraim Beinisch’s arm. “Just a moment,” he said to him, and hurried out.
“There are results,” said Eli Bachar, “and I’ve already phoned his mother. I’ve asked her to come here, but she said she couldn’t, she wasn’t feeling well. Her voice . . . It was as if she already knew. I asked her where her son was and she said he was there, at home, but I’m certain she was alone . . . I told her that we were on the way to their place. I didn’t say that the father was here, I didn’t want to . . . I have a feeling that . . .”
“We’ll take him with us,” decided Michael. “The two of us will take him with us and there, in the house, when the three of them are together, there will be . . . Things will become even clearer.” For a moment he hesitated as to whether to say anything to Eli about what the father had confided to him, but instead of speaking he opened the door and went up to the large, heavy man, whose shoulders slumped. “Come, Mr. Beinisch,” he said to him. “Let’s take you home. We have some news that isn’t very—”
“Has something happened to my wife?” said Efraim Beinisch in alarm, and he rose from his chair. “She wasn’t feeling so well last night—all these things with her blood pressure and her heart condition aren’t . . . Has something happened to her?”
“Your wife is fine,” promised Michael, “but we have the lab results, and the picture, I’m afraid, is not so good for your family.”
“It’s the genetic test,” said Efraim Beinisch. “It’s his child, isn’t it?”
Michael nodded, and without speaking the three of them walked down the corridor, Eli Bachar in the lead, Efraim Beinisch behind him and Michael in the rear, looking at the broad ruddy nape, in the wrinkles of which beads of perspiration gleamed. When they reached the car, Efraim Beinisch looked helpless. He turned to gaze at the building as if he were seeing it for the first time, raised his eyes to the dome of the Russian church and then sank into the backseat and sighed loudly. “God almighty,” he muttered, and shrank even more into the seat as Eli Bachar shifted into reverse and turned the Toyota around, listening to the squeal of the tires.
“The tires need air,” said Eli. “Remind me to fill them up.”
Chapter 17
It’s locked. Maybe she’s not home,” said Efraim Beinisch, and with a trembling hand he grasped the key ring he took out of his pocket. He anxiously fingered one of the keys and finally fitted it into the keyhole with a decisive gesture. Michael followed him into the living room, and from there to the kitchen and the bathroom, and saw how he was trying to restrain the frenzy in his movements, while Eli Bachar’s footsteps receded in the direction of the other rooms. They heard him call out from the other end of the apartment, just as both of them were looking at their reflections in the bathroom mirror. “There’s one room here that’s locked,” Eli Bachar called to them, and immediately the two of them rushed back to the dim corridor.
“This is our bedroom,” said Efraim Beinisch in a shaky voice. “We never lock it,” and he pushed the handle down once or twice and tried to force the door open with his shoulder and called out in a panic: “Clara, Clara. Open the door, Clara. It’s me. It’s only me.” Not a sound came from the locked room.
Eli Bachar looked at Michael, then took a Swiss Army knife out of the inner pocket of his windbreaker and selected one of the blades. “I’m opening it,” he warned, and Efraim Beinisch obeyed his voice and stepped back.
“It’s open,” said Eli Bachar after a moment, and he carefully laid the metal frame that had been around the keyhole on the floor. Only then did he move aside and let Efraim Beinisch go in. In the space between his body and the doorjamb, in the illumination cast by the night-light next to the bed, Michael saw only the bare white legs swinging in the middle of the room, in which the shutters had been closed, tinted in the yellow light and swinging away from it, changing from light to dark as they swung almost to the old wooden ladder that had been positioned there. And because of Efraim Beinisch’s large body standng in front of him, and then collapsing into his arms, he did not have time to lift his head to the high ceiling and to the shadow that moved back and forth across her face.
He lay Efraim Beinisch down on the flowered carpet and was wondering whether to awaken him from his faint when Eli said to him: “Hold the legs of the ladder for me. It’s pretty rickety.” Only when he had thrust the weight of his body on the base of the ladder did Michael look up and see, as Eli climbed quickly up the rungs, the iron hook stuck in the middle of the ceiling—there was one like that in his new apartment, and if it wasn’t used, as Linda had said, to suspend a lantern or to dry strings of garlic or peppers, it had probably been used to hang large cuts of meat after slaughter—and the synthetic laundry line that was dangling from it, white and shiny, and after that he saw the bluish-blackish hue of Clara Beinisch’s face and the pinkness of the tongue protruding from her mouth.
“Help me get her down,” groaned Eli Bachar from the top of the ladder, which was swaying now that he had cut the cord and was holding the body in his arms. “She’s heavy as a . . .” He puffed as Michael held the legs. “Heavy as a corpse . . . How long has it been since we called her?” he muttered as he laid the body on the pink bedspread. She was not cold like other corpses, and it would have been possible to think for a moment that she was still alive had it not been for the face, which was blue and distorted, and the astonished-looking open eyes and dangling, broken neck. Lest he become nauseous, Michael looked away before he began imagining how he himself would look had he hanged himself by the neck like that from the iron hook.
“Just look at how she arranged everything. It couldn’t have been because of my phone call. She had planned it before then,” said Eli Bachar, who surveyed the room as Michael picked up the phone beside the bed and called an ambulance. “You don’t do a thing like this on the spur of the moment,” said Eli Bachar. “It needs preparation,” and as he leaned over the bed and stubbornly but futilely tried to find a pulse in Mrs. Beinisch’s wrist and neck, Michael pulled the mobile telephone out of Eli’s belt and called the Criminal Identification
lab vehicle.
“Too late,” Eli muttered, and dropped her left arm. “It’s been half an hour since I spoke to her, maybe even an hour. Apparently she went right afterward and . . . And there’s no sign of a note or a letter or anything,” he complained, and looked around.
Michael now knelt beside Efraim Beinisch, patted his cheeks and called: “Mr. Beinisch, Mr. Beinisch, Efraim, Efraim,” and Eli Bachar walked around the double bed and examined the chest of drawers next to it. From a small jewelry box on top of the bureau he drew out a string of white pearls that had been coiled like a snake, the gold clasp sticking up, and only then did he notice the book that was lying next to the jewelry box.
“I don’t know what language this is,” wondered Eli as he paged through it, “but there isn’t a note inside it, either.” By the light of the night-light he opened drawers and peeped under the bed. When Efraim Beinisch opened his eyes and looked with an unfocused expression into Michael’s eyes, Eli Bachar had already opened in turn all the doors of the large wardrobe, all of which were embellished with a thin gilded frame, and each of them in turn had squeaked until it bumped into its neighbor.
Michael opened the shutters. Pale light came in through the large window, muddied by the streaks of raindrops, and the light brought into relief the black dress Clara Beinisch had been wearing before she climbed the ladder and tied the laundry line to the iron hook. “I’m just getting some water,” he said to Efraim Beinisch, who was still lying on the carpet at the foot of the double bed, with the pink satin fringes of the bedspread above his head.
The kitchen was tidy and quiet, as if nothing had happened, and on the marble countertop, on a very white towel that had been spread next to the sink, cups that were still damp inside had been placed to dry, and it was clear that they had been washed not long ago. After Michael examined them, he filled one of them with water from the tap, and on second thought filled another glass as well and brought both of them with the damp towel into the bedroom. There, at the foot of the bed, he knelt again and dipped the edge of the towel into the water and patted Efraim Beinisch’s cheeks with it. As he did not move, Michael folded the towel into a narrow rectangle and laid it on the forehead of the man who was lying there and watched the drops of water trickling from its edge onto his large ears and from them onto the white ceramic floor. And at the same time he wondered what the original floor had looked like, and immediately tried to rid himself of this thought, unsuccessfully. Then he heard Efraim Beinisch muttering, as he slowly lifted his hand to his forehead: “If I had been at home, this wouldn’t have happened. This wouldn’t have happened.” Efraim Beinisch slowly wiped his forehead with the towel and his eyes closed again halfway. “Can’t anything be done? Is she dead?”
