by Batya Gur
Zadik stole a glance at Niva and caught her profile, noticed how she had aged in the last year: the sagging double chin, the wobbly flesh of her neck, everything betrayed her age, no matter that she had cut her hair as short as a boy’s and dyed the stubble bright red, as if she had suddenly been frightened by her own longtime self-neglect and had decided to make one last feeble effort. But nothing would help—not even a diet. He would love to ask her how she felt now that Tirzah was gone, how she really felt, but he would not dare. What was there to ask? The path to Rubin was obviously clear now, maybe Niva would get him to commit to her and the kid and all that. It was strange to think that Tirzah had gone to live with Benny Meyuhas; he had never been able to understand that. On the other hand, all those years everyone had known that Benny Meyuhas was in love with Tirzah, that because of her he had never married. But in comparison with Rubin, Benny was, well…he looked like he could be Tirzah’s father, with his small, pinched face; really, you couldn’t compare the two men at all, even though they were the same age. He, Zadik, had had a lot of time to think it over—after all, he had not slept all night, and there were all those questions the police officer, Eli Bachar, had asked him. He had supposedly come to question him about what had happened, to discuss the accident and shoddy work procedures, but after he had spoken with someone over the phone—Zadik did not hear the conversation, he merely saw Eli Bachar move aside and lower his voice to a whisper—after that, Bachar was asking for a list of the engineers, contractors, technicians, and God knows who else to determine whether this was a case of criminal negligence; that was what he had called it. At first it had seemed as if the whole affair would end with a coroner’s examination, and then all of a sudden the guy was asking questions about Tirzah and her personal life, as if there was some connection. How ironic that in this case, Tirzah had been the most negligent party. Zadik should have explained to Police Inspector Eli Bachar how she had always insisted—this time more than ever—whenever it was one of her husband’s films and the scenery was particularly expensive, that the scenery should stay where it was, and how in this case she hadn’t even agreed to store the scenery in the carpentry workshop until the shooting was wrapped up. Ultimately, even though he was not directly responsible, even Benny Meyuhas could be charged with negligence, as well as Hagar, his assistant and the film’s producer. That police inspector had asked to summon them too, even after Zadik repeated himself several times about Tirzah’s work procedures and how she herself had instructed the carpentry shop workers where to place the scenery, including the marble pillar. Marble! He goes nuts every time he thinks about that marble pillar. What do these people think, that he has piles of money to dish out? All those claims from Benny Meyuhas that an actor performs differently if he’s leaning on a marble column and not a piece of plywood—what bullshit! If it weren’t for those crazy ideas of his, no pillar would have crushed Tirzah’s skull in. He himself was telling them all the time that this insane wastefulness was the mother of all sins. And if he’s already thinking about money, where the hell is Matty Cohen, the guy who had promised to shut down that production? In another forty-five minutes a meeting of department heads was scheduled to take place in his office, and Matty Cohen was expected to attend. But nobody had seen him since yesterday. That stupid production had to be shut down, it had already cost them more than two million—the whole budget for drama—but now they would say it wasn’t the appropriate time, that it wasn’t fitting to stop Benny Meyuhas just when he’d lost his life partner. Zadik himself couldn’t care less whether Tirzah was his legally wedded wife, he was open-minded in these matters, didn’t have any prejudices, and anyway, Benny Meyuhas presented her as his wife, so to him, she was his wife. If only someone could explain to him how those two, Rubin and Benny Meyuhas, had remained friends.
With women it could never happen, Zadik had told Hefetz that morning before the news meeting when they were discussing the police investigation. Women would hate each other for the rest of their lives. Forever. Only with men could a friendship like that endure. “But even me, as a man, I’m not sure I could handle it,” he had admitted to Hefetz. “I don’t know how I’d manage to remain close friends with a man living with the woman who was once my wife. Even worse, I don’t know what I’d do if I still loved her.”
“Close friends? They’re more than close friends,” Hefetz had said. “They’re like…they’re like brothers, like brothers, they’ve been together since childhood, it’s like they’re family. Don’t you think they’re like family? They were like family! I myself have heard Rubin call Benny ‘practically my own flesh and blood.’ So what would you do in his place? Give up on your own brother? What would you do? They were like family, don’t you think they were like family?”
“That’s why it’s even harder to comprehend,” Zadik had said. “I wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
“Nobody ever knows what he can handle and what he can’t,” Hefetz had exclaimed fervently. “What person knows what he’s capable of? Does anyone know what he’s capable of? No, nobody knows, how could they? As for me…” He fell silent suddenly. Zadik followed his gaze and caught sight of Natasha at the newsroom door, her hair disheveled, wearing her usual getup: army jacket, jeans, and a ratty red scarf. She stood scanning the room as though looking for someone until she fixed her large sky blue eyes on him, on Zadik. For a moment she gazed at them both, then turned around and walked back down the hall. Hefetz’s face clouded over.
Zadik could not for the life of him understand these entanglements that people got themselves into. Okay, he himself had not been completely…but with a twenty-five-year-old girl?! Only one year older than Hefetz’s own daughter? These people had no limits, and at work, no less! To get mixed up with a girl you worked with, that’s something he himself would never have done. Anyway, not here, maybe overseas, where nobody could…
The drill started pounding again, and a cloud of dust rolled out from the open door of the adjacent room straight into the newsroom.
“Tell them to lay off,” Zadik instructed Aviva.
“How can I?” she answered with a shrug. “I’ve been waiting a month for them to come. You wanted renovations, you said the foreign correspondents’ room needed renovating. That’s what you said, didn’t you? I’ve been waiting a month for these guys, so today’s the day they start work. I’m not going to tell them to lay off now. If you want to, tell them yourself. Call Maintenance.”
“Stop!” Zadik shouted. “Take a break, go drink some coffee, come back in an hour!” The two workers stood at the doorway of the foreign correspondents’ room, staring at him. Zadik tried to soften his tone. “Haven’t you heard what happened?” he asked. The worker holding the drill stared at him in silence. “Didn’t you hear that one of our senior employees was killed last night?” The second worker shook his head and whispered something to the first. They emerged from the correspondents’ room and stood at the doorway of the newsroom stealing furtive glances at the people seated around the conference table. Aviva hurried over to them.
“Come back in an hour or two,” she told them. She turned to Zadik, casting him a look of reproach. “It took me ages to get these guys here, ages for them to find the time to do the job, and then you go and toss them out.”
“We’ve got to get the lineup started, there are all kinds of problems and changes with tonight’s topics,” Hefetz said, to which Zadik nodded. Erez made a show of rattling the page in front of him.
“Just another word or two,” Zadik told him, clearing his throat again. “There’s more I need to tell them.” Erez sighed, and Hefetz covered his sheet of paper with his two large hands.
“We all know,” Zadik began, his voice choked with emotion, “we all know how devoted Tirzah was to her work, how much she gave of herself. Anyone who worked with her knows that she was on the job day and night. Now it turns out that she literally gave her life…how shall I say, her life was an offering on the altar of her work. I don’t need to tell you a
ll,” he said, glancing at the ginger curls of David Shalit, the correspondent for police affairs, who was sitting not far away from him and jotting something down in his PalmPilot, “that Tirzah was a true artisan, a perfectionist and a person of real integrity. I don’t need to tell you those things about her—she and I spent thirty years together in this building, we were around when there was nothing here, she and I and Rubin and Benny Meyuhas. You too, Hefetz, we’ve been together right from the start. And I never heard a bad word about anybody from her. You know, Tirzah…Tirzah, was, she was…” He fell silent and looked around; it had never been so quiet in the newsroom, it had never happened that he could complete an entire sentence without someone interjecting a wise-crack. “But in the meantime,” he said slowly, emphasizing each word, “we can’t let everything come to a halt. With news, there’s no time for mourning, we don’t have the luxury of mourning, especially as Israel’s official television station.” His eyes blurred with tears as he glanced around the table at all the assembled, their faces cast downward. “There’s no stopping the news,” he said with determination, then he fell silent and bent his head forward into the palms of his hands.
“There’s no choice,” Hefetz chimed in in his deep bass. He ran a hand over his clean-shaven pate, then stroked his whiskers. “Do we have a choice? No, we don’t have a choice. Will someone else do the job for us? No. Nobody’s gonna do it for us. That’s what I’m trying to explain: there’s no choice.” How long, Zadik asked himself absentmindedly, how long would he have to put up with watching this Hefetz angle uninhibitedly, shamelessly, to replace him? After all, any idiot could see how Hefetz parroted him, repeated everything that came out of his mouth like a broken record, seven times at least until you wanted to throw up…. Suddenly Hefetz stiffened, his eyes on the door of the newsroom. Zadik followed his glance: Arye Rubin stood in the doorway, Natasha at his side, clinging to his jacket. That Natasha is too thin, Zadik thought, she’s an unholy mess, and that wool scarf she never goes anywhere without, wound around her neck, her chin buried inside it, gives her the look of a waif. But those blue eyes…She seems glued to Rubin. Doesn’t make sense that Rubin’s got something for her. First of all, she’s Hefetz’s girl, and Rubin wouldn’t…he would never…Rubin’s got style, he would never let himself get caught up in…It seemed to Zadik that the silence was deepening, and everyone was looking dumbly at Rubin until Niva rushed up to him and laid her hands on his arms, peering into his face as though they were the only two people in the newsroom. She stood there as if she were acting in some American movie, talking in hushed tones that everyone could hear. “What a terrible tragedy, we’ve been worried about you, Arye. Are you all right, Arye?” Rubin nodded his head and otherwise ignored her, gently removing her hands from his arms. He looked at Zadik, walked quickly to him, leaned over, and whispered in his ear: “I’ve got to speak with you, Zadik, as soon as possible.”
“Not now,” said Zadik, startled. “After the morning meeting I have a meeting with the department heads. Only after that, after ten—”
“No way,” Rubin whispered. “Right away, as soon as the lineup is ready. It’s urgent.”
“Okay, okay,” Zadik said, acquiescing. “But for now, take a seat.”
Hefetz quickly scooted his chair aside, closer to Erez, and Rubin took a seat at the corner of the conference table. Aviva, who was standing behind him, placed a soft hand on his shoulder, pressing gently, while David Shalit caught his glance, shrugging his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. It really was an insufferable situation; no one knew what to say or what to think. Arye Rubin lifted the page and glanced at it. Hefetz was watching Natasha as she cast Rubin a questioning look, then threw her canvas bag on the corner sofa next to the water dispenser.
“There’s no choice,” Hefetz said again, wrenching his gaze from Natasha, who was leaning on the wall next to the sofa and playing with the fringes of her red wool scarf. “As they say, we don’t have the luxury of mourning. Do we have that luxury? No, we don’t. We’ve got to discuss the lineup.”
“So what have we got today?” Zadik asked with a sigh. “The way it looks to me is that today the strike is entering a new phase, the taxi drivers and the whole health system out on an open-ended strike. Soon they’re going to take to the streets. So, what have you people got?”
“Ben Gurion Airport, trash collection,” Erez said. “We’ll start with a piece on the trash in Tel Aviv, we’ve got pictures for the opening credits, and lots of stories from the airport.”
“Yesterday I said—about the airport—bring in an interesting angle, something new: foreign workers, Arabs,” Hefetz complained. “I said get some foreign workers, didn’t I? I did, that’s what I said. And it’s not a bad idea to get on the phone with some folks stuck overseas, is it? No, not a bad idea at all.”
“Overseas? Why overseas? We’ve got a general strike right here, lots of stuff going down,” David Shalit interrupted. As always when he was talking about something that mattered to him, his forehead turned red and he blushed to the tip of his pointed chin, concealing the freckles that dotted his cheeks. “The overseas operator is connecting people stuck overseas free of charge. In Tel Aviv…”
“Yesterday I heard that soldiers have been fighting over seats on buses,” Niva added from the far end of the conference table, where she was engaged in disentangling the phone cord from the receiver of the hotline.
“Guys,” Erez said, raising his voice as he tinkered with the metal frame of his glasses, “we’ve got the Mossad affair, Zohar’s handling it, he’s got some great stuff.”
“Where is Zohar? Isn’t he in Turkey covering the exercises the IDF is doing with the Turkish army?”
“Tell me something,” Miri the language editor interjected, removing her reading glasses. “Don’t you think it’s high time we do something about those daily ads that keep appearing in Haaretz, the ones that read LIAR? Don’t you think people are interested in knowing who’s behind them, and who’s the liar? After all, they cost a fortune.” She stared expectantly at Hefetz.
“No,” Hefetz said to Erez, “Zohar is back in the country, but he phoned to say he’d be late. He doesn’t even know about Tirzah yet, about what happened. Something’s going on, I don’t even know where. He went out with a crew…he’ll be calling soon.”
“Everyone knows who those ads are about,” Aviva said, her lower lip protruding. “Who doesn’t know that the liar is Bibi Netanyahu?”
“Are you certain about that?” Miri asked as she raised her thick-lensed glasses to her eyes and leaned forward to read from the lineup. “Sometimes what seems totally obvious—”
“A thousand percent certain,” Aviva answered assuredly. “There’s not a soul who doesn’t know that.”
“And then there’s Bezalel,” said Erez, continuing, “who lands two hours from now with the prime minister. There’s an unscheduled meeting about the new round of talks with the Palestinians, and then this evening a specially convened assembly of the Labor Party—”
“Oh, give me a break,” said Niva mockingly as she reconnected the phone cord to the hotline.
“You’ll be surprised to hear this,” Hefetz said, “but there is still such a thing as the Labor Party.” To Erez he added, “Am I right? Isn’t there still a Labor Party? Yes there is, there is still a Labor Party. You people want to bury the Labor Party? What is this? Is the Labor Party your mother, that you can bury her? No, it is not your mother. You haven’t even mentioned a word about Golda in your lineup. It’s the anniversary of her death, and yesterday I said that I want photos from the ceremony. If there aren’t any photos, then at least I want her mentioned.”
“And what’s this item about Bassiouny?” Zadik queried them. “All that’s written here is ‘The Egyptian Ambassador and the Scandal.’ Have we got anything new? Or do we have to wait another hour or two for Bezalel to come back from Washington with the prime minister?”
“Listen,” Niva called out, waving the telephone recei
ver, “we haven’t got the studio in Tel Aviv. You hear me?” She looked to Hefetz, who nodded. “So what are we gonna do?” From experience she knew not to expect an answer, and she followed Hefetz’s gaze as it shifted cautiously from David Shalit to the far corner of the room, near the water dispenser, where Natasha was sitting. “You wanted to interview Amir Peretz live from Tel Aviv about the strike,” Niva reminded them. When no one responded, she waved the room away in a gesture of desperation and caught sight of her fingernails, now painted neon green. After years of ignoring her fingernails she had decided to paint them—bright green, no less! What can you make of human beings, Zadik said to himself with a start; that bright green is out of place after what happened last night. Niva raised her foot, which was ensconced in a thick wool sock, from the heavy wooden clog she was wearing and brought it to rest on the chair next to her.
