Murder in Jerusalem

by Batya Gur

  “Did you edit the cabinet meeting yet?” Erez asked the political correspondent, Yiftah Keinan, who nodded.

  “It’s almost ready,” he said.

  “Well, you’re going to have to do it again, with Bibi and David Levy this time,” Erez said.

  “What are you shouting for?” Yiftah Keinan protested as he tucked the shirttails sticking out from under his light blue vest into his trousers. “I only need twenty seconds for the VTR.”

  “Yiftah,” Erez said impatiently, “are you prepared to tell me whether to begin with David Levy or with Bibi?”

  “I told you already, start with David Levy,” he said as he went over the new lineup. “Just tell me if the VTR covers everything.”

  “Yes, yes, it does,” Erez grumbled. “How many times do I have to repeat myself?”

  Once again, Niva raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Why are you people shouting? Why can’t people talk pleasantly to one another for once?”

  Hefetz sat at the head of the table, and Michael stood behind him, peering over his shoulder at the lineup, while Erez, at the other end of the table, waved the new page at the language editor, who was quickly and carefully applying lipstick in the corner of the room. “Miri,” he called, “have you gone over this?”

  “What am I, God?” she asked bitterly. “When exactly would I have had time to go over it?” Miri snapped her lipstick closed and approached the conference table.

  Hefetz was talking on the phone and scanning the pages in his hand. “So you want to tell me that having one driver under the age of twenty-four is going to push my policy up by two thousand shekels?” he grumbled into the receiver. “Don’t try and sell me that bullcrap, I’m no sucker and I’m not paying that kind of premium on my car. What? No, they won’t pay for it from work, of course not.” He raised his head for a moment, and when he noticed Michael, he glanced at the large wall clock, nodded to him to indicate he was aware of his presence, and covered the receiver with his large hand. “You’re going to have to wait,” he told him, “I just can’t meet with you right now—you see what’s going on. That’s the way it is, you can’t make any plans with someone responsible for the news. I can’t stop everything. You’re welcome to wait here, you can sit in that armchair at the side, you won’t be in the way. Or you can go out and walk around, whatever you like. Take a seat down in the canteen, we’ve got a big mess with the satellite. Let’s wait until she’s on the air,” he said, indicating Natasha. “We’ve got something pretty big going down, you can stay here if you’re interested. Whatever you want,” he concluded, returning to his phone call.

  Erez moved his chair aside, making room for Michael to sit behind him, and said to Hefetz, “It would be nice if we knew what this ‘pretty big thing going down’ was. When exactly are you planning to tell us? What am I supposed to write on the lineup? How can I edit the news without knowing what—forty minutes to air time, and look what’s written here: ITEM X TWO MINUTES FIVE SECONDS NATASHA. So how do you expect me to give this a title?”

  Michael sat down to observe them until Hefetz was free, since you could always learn something about people if you watched them in secret while they were occupied with their own affairs and paying no attention to you. But Zadik, who had entered the room, waved to Hefetz and, just to be sure, hurried over to him. “Where do we stand?” he asked as he leaned over the table to have a look at the papers. “What do I see here? You took Yaacov Neeman off the lineup?”

  “There’s no room, and I can’t go overtime tonight,” Hefetz said, rising from his chair and pushing it backward. He glared at Zadik. “Can I go overtime tonight or not? No, I can’t. You told me not to go overtime, so—”

  “Okay, okay,” Zadik said, disconcerted, and stepped away from Hefetz. “I’m not getting involved,” he said, trying to placate him. “I was just asking. Asking is still allowed, isn’t it?”

  But Hefetz ignored him, shouting, “Karen, go to Miri and see about the corrections. Miri, get a move on it, this isn’t a doctoral dissertation. You’ve still got to approve these corrections, and even then—”

  Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 was playing again from inside the large black bag at Michael’s feet, and in an instant Niva was at his side, fishing through it. By the time she had managed to locate her cell phone, it had stopped ringing. “Oh, not again!” she grumbled as she hit the memory button. She bent down next to her bag, very close to Michael, and he heard her heavy breathing as she said, “Mother? What? What?” And then, after a minute, “Now?! We’re on the air in less than an hour, and I don’t have time to…never mind, in the upper right-hand cabinet…no, not there, on the top shelf…listen to what I’m telling you, why aren’t you listening? Did you find it? Okay, so take it now…no, not later, God, I’m hanging up—” She turned off the phone and tossed it into her bag, shoved the bag under Hefetz’s chair, and hurried to the computer printer, which was just then producing a new printout, and another, and another.

  “Erez. Erez!” David Shalit shouted to the news editor, “come here, we’ve got to make a change in the Jerusalem murder, there’s a gag order on showing photos of the barber and his girlfriend.” He shut his cell phone with a snap and said to Erez, who had joined him, “It’s the hottest story today, he wasn’t just any old barber, he cut the hair of the prime minister’s wife. There may be fallout from this, and I have material filmed by a local television station and also—”

  “The prime minister’s wife?” Niva asked, butting in. “Didn’t Bibi say the guy had ‘served’ as his own barber?”

  “His precise words were, ‘served in our home,’” David Shalit corrected her. “With a guy like Bibi and all his regal pomposity, even barbers ‘serve.’ Erez, did you hear what I said? About this item, we’ve got to—”

  “All right,” Erez answered calmly, “I heard you, don’t get all worked up. First of all, I’m not sure that’s really the hottest item we’ve got today, and second, you’re going to have to be patient: I’ve already contacted our Tel Aviv office about this and told a lawyer for the Israel Broadcasting Authority to be prepared, there’s still a chance we’ll run the photos, but we have to wait and see what the judge on duty says. Now just give me a few minutes to write the titles, I’ve got to concentrate.” He sat at the corner of the table and hung his head over several empty pages before speaking up again. “If you ask me, this is the last time we’ll hear about the laid-off strikers, tomorrow they’ll already be yesterday’s cold noodles.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Danny Benizri said defensively. “It’s not over yet.”

  “Hey,” the correspondent for political parties shouted from his place at the table, “what’s happening with the story about the violence at the Kahane memorial service?” He had shifted the knitted skullcap from the crown of his head and was scrutinizing a small comb he had pulled from the back pocket of his trousers. “I can’t find it on the lineup. Our lives are out of control, and nobody gives a—”

  “Look again,” Hefetz bellowed. “Have you people forgotten how to read? Look at item number thirteen, see where it’s written, NO-CONFIDENCE /POLITICS? Is it written there? Yes? Very good. That item includes the threats to television crews, there’s a shot of policemen on horseback hiding behind a tree. We talked about it this morning. Weren’t you listening?”

  “Wait a minute,” Zohar, the military correspondent, interjected angrily. “How is it that the story about Yitzhak Mordechai meeting with army officers about the new round of talks with the Palestinians has been dropped?” He blew his pointed nose noisily. “I spent hours on that, and—” He rapped a sheaf of papers on the table and looked around, but no one was listening to him. “I can’t even get an answer,” he said bitterly. “If you’d only give it even thirty seconds…I’ve been out freezing my ass in that tunnel since before dawn and then caught in a downpour down south running after…and nobody even—”

  “What about the mining disaster in Russia?” Tzippi called on her way in from the next room, her han
d resting on her oversize belly. “Is that still pertinent?” When no one responded, she turned to Niva. “What should I do about the Russian mines?” she asked.

  “Keep it, maybe we’ll use it on the late-night broadcast,” Niva answered distractedly as she leafed through the pages emerging from the printer.

  “And what about the Nazi gold?” Tzippi asked as she approached Hefetz. From up close the brown pregnancy splotches on her forehead were noticeable. “When did you plan that for?”

  “Save the Russian mines for the week-in-review show, it’ll still be pertinent by Friday,” Erez promised her. “As for the Nazi gold, we need a filmed announcement but no sound. Leave it in.”

  “What do you mean, leave the Russian mines for Friday?” Tzippi complained. “If I’m still at work on Friday, you people are going to have to deliver this baby right here!”

  “So leave it with Rafael,” Hefetz instructed her. “He’s handling all the international news anyway, he’s taking over for you, isn’t he?”

  “Rafael!” Tzippi shouted as she heaved herself with a loud sigh into a chair at the side of the room. “We need you in here—”

  Michael glanced at the bespectacled young man with the intelligent expression, who looked to be about the age of his own son. Hefetz slapped him on the back and said, “Listen, Rafael, we’ve got two American stories I’d like you to do voiceovers for. One’s about that shooting in a high school, a couple of teenagers who shot everybody up. Where was that again?”

  “Colorado,” Rafael answered in a pleasant voice as he scrunched up his face, his eyebrows touching. “A place called Littleton, near Denver. The school is called Columbine.”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Hefetz said, as if he were really in the know about all the details. “And there’s another story about a new virus called Monkey Fox that’s threatening to wipe us all out. Have you heard anything about that?”

  Rafael nodded. “There are some pretty good pictures of the fire in Australia, too.”

  “Don’t need ’em,” Hefetz said. “Australia doesn’t interest us today.” Turning to Erez, he said, “I understand there’s no financial report today, so how about having Rafael do a voiceover about the school in Colorado.”

  “Tell me more about this virus,” Erez said to Rafael.

  “It comes from monkeys,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Something that passes from monkeys to people, some disease.”

  “How does it get transmitted?”

  “Sexually,” Rafael answered.

  “That’s by sex, too!?” Hefetz exclaimed, glancing at Niva, who was holding two telephone receivers, one on each ear. “In the end we’ll all wind up in a monastery.”

  “You haven’t told me yet if you want the school shooting and the mining disaster,” Tzippi reminded him as she rubbed her swollen belly.

  “Problem is, they’ll come one right after the other,” Erez said, thinking aloud.

  “Virus?” Hefetz interjected. “You want the virus after that? What about the item about Scientology? Are you going to put that in? Anything about cults is very interesting, or else I can go with the Nazi gold, Scientology, and the Colorado school shooting.”

  Erez did not respond. Instead, he turned to Karen. “Come sit next to me, and we’ll get started,” he said, and the anchorwoman did as she was told. To Rafael he said, “Get upstairs and start editing.”

  “Niva,” Hefetz called out, “get me Rubin on the line. I need to know what’s with his story about the doctors who cover up for Israeli intelligence operatives. Is it ready for today, or are we postponing it to tomorrow?”

  “It’s not even for the news, it’s for his own program. Next week, I think,” Niva said, thrusting her hand into her thin red hair. “Anyway, I can’t get through to him, I’ve been trying. He’s at Benny Meyuhas’s house, and he’s not answering calls.”

  “So,” Zadik said, addressing Michael, “I see you’ve become a permanent fixture in the News Department. You think that Israel Television is only the news? Come, let’s get out of here, nobody here has time for you now, they’re running full steam ahead. I’ll take you down to the canteen, that’s where everything important takes place anyway. Maybe they’ll even have a leftover Hanukkah doughnut for us. I love doughnuts. Not the American kind, but the Hanukkah kind, like my grandmother used to make.”

  The two death notices were posted throughout the building, on walls and doors and everywhere, and still it seemed as though life was carrying on at its usual mad pace. The sound of the blessing over the first Hanukkah candle and the holiday song “Rock of Ages” as sung by a children’s choir could be heard blaring from several monitors along the way. The canteen itself was so overrun with people that the children’s choir was nearly drowned out, and on top of all that, Dror Levin, the correspondent for political parties, who had come running in and pushed Michael and Zadik aside as they stood at the counter, could be heard shouting at the top of his lungs at a young man in a gray suit (“That’s the lawyer who was appointed assistant legal counsel last month,” Zadik explained): “Who do you think you are? How dare you throw that bullshit at me!” Dror Levin said, indicating the open booklet that the lawyer was holding. “What are you reading to me from that for? You’re brand-new here: you think you’ve got something to teach me about the Nakdi document?” In a calm and level voice the lawyer said, “Everything I said is written right here,” indicating the booklet, “and I quote: ‘An issue in which a correspondent or cameraman has a personal involvement and the results of which report he/she has prepared may have a direct effect on his/her private interests, his/her involvement disqualifies him/her from covering the topic.’” He raised his eyes from the booklet. “That’s all I said, so if you have no personal involvement, then there’s no problem. I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” he concluded as he stuck the light blue booklet into a file he was carrying and made as if to leave. Then he added, “If Member of Knesset Yossi Beilin invites you to his son’s bar mitzvah party…,” and he spread his hands in lieu of finishing his sentence.

  The correspondent said, “Well, since I am certainly guilty of this corrupt act, I guess I’ll just have to—” and turned away from the lawyer, hastening to sit at one of three tables pushed together, around which sat a large crowd. “That’s the team from the week-in-review program,” Zadik said with a sort of odd pride, “our flagship, personal stories and everything. Arye Rubin can usually be found here, but not today—and there’s Shoshi, the editor. See her? As tiny as she is, that’s what a terror she is.” Michael looked at the diminutive woman, whose helmet of gray hair topped a surprisingly young face.

  When they reached the table, she turned to Zadik and said, “We’re talking ethics here. The question is, if the mayor invites all of us in this forum on a tour of Jerusalem, is there anyone who objects?”

  A bearded correspondent said in a deep voice, “I do. We’re crossing boundaries: on occasion I interview the mayor in our studios.”

  “I don’t see any conflict of interest here,” Shoshi declared. “Have a seat, Zadik. In that context, but not really in that context, I wanted to request that we be trained in this new audience measurement system, the People Meter. That’ll be the ratings we live by—”

  “Not now,” said the deep-voiced correspondent as he stroked his beard. “I wanted to say that I think we should make a tour of some of the development towns in the south, places that we—”

  “Do you people know Ohayon?” Zadik interjected as he fell into a chair. “Chief Superintendent Ohayon?” They regarded him, and someone made room for him to sit down. “As long as you’re all here, I can talk to you about what’s bothering me, which I keep repeating like a parrot: that we’re using material that is not ours. Last Wednesday we broadcast four shots from a film by Naomi Aluf. The material was not ours, and we have to request permission to use it, otherwise we’ll have to pay hundreds of dollars.”

  “I suppose the director did it because he didn’t know about the copy
right issue,” the bearded correspondent said. “I’m going to get some sweetener, but I just wanted to say I saw it, and it looked like part of a journalistic report, not some documentary film from someone outside Israel Television.”

  “Who says you people have got it right?” the political correspondent said as he pulled up a chair and sat between Zadik and Michael. “Maybe they didn’t use shots from that film. It looks to me like they didn’t use any footage from the film; those were just similar shots lifted from the Mabat program.”

  Zadik leaned his head back and said, with fatigue, “It’s been proven.”

  “Where?” said the bearded correspondent.

  “In the archives. We’ve already discussed this issue, when you people used material from the last Academy Awards ceremony.”

  A parade of children entered the canteen dressed in various Jewish costumes—Yemenites, the ultra-Orthodox, a Jewish peasant in a sarafan—followed by Adir Bareket, who called loudly after them, “Children! One doughnut, a quick drink, make a tinkle, and in three minutes we’re going back. Got that?”

  “Yes!” the children shouted in obedient chorus. Zadik winced. To the people gathered around the tables he said, “I don’t get it. What are all of you doing here? Is this an official meeting? Here? Now?”

  “Well, we couldn’t have our regular meeting, since we lost part of the workday because of Tirzah’s funeral,” Shoshi explained. “And of course I went to pay my respects at Benny Meyuhas’s. Don’t forget, we go back a long way together, in fact, he’s the one who brought me in to work here. So we postponed our meeting until now, and we haven’t even gotten to reviewing the previous program yet.”

  Michael moved his greasy doughnut aside and drank the coffee, which made him nauseous. All around the table people were smoking, in spite of the NO SMOKING signs posted around the canteen (though no one called these to the attention of anyone else), and he felt the clouds of smoke and breathed them in deeply, lustily. How long would he be bothered by this feeling of missing something? And why was he sitting there, waiting for Hefetz, to speak with him again about these two deaths, which, just because they had taken place there…