by Batya Gur
“I want to give you both, now, the official version of what happened. Do you understand me?” Shorer said, looking at Rubin. Rubin averted his gaze. “The way I’m going to tell it to you is the way it happened. The true story is that Rubin killed Tirzah because he was jealous, he couldn’t live without her. He pleaded with her to come back to him, but she refused. Matty Cohen saw the whole thing, saw him push Tirzah, knock her down, all the things we already know…so he poisoned him. We don’t yet know all the details, but we will. Right, Rubin?”
Rubin’s head swiveled, his intent unclear.
“We’re going to bring him in now for a proper interrogation, and we’ll hear about how Zadik found out about it and then had to die. And that’s all. No Ras Sudar or any of the other stuff. Do you understand me?” he asked, turning to Rubin. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Rubin nodded.
“Do you think something like this can be kept a secret?” Michael queried, astonished. “Why do you even want to—”
“We have a police commissioner and a state and an army and censorship and enough troubles already right now without riling up the Egyptians with this story,” Shorer said, glaring at Michael.
“Forget about the moral aspect for a moment,” Michael said in a shaky voice. “Let’s be practical here. Do you really believe something like this can be kept secret now, after everything that’s happened?”
“No question about it,” Shorer declared resolutely.
“And what about you?” Michael exclaimed. “Will you keep quiet about it? Can you keep quiet about a story like this? And me? Am I capable of shutting up about it? Because what—”
“Of course you can!” Shorer said, grabbing Michael’s arm and lifting him to his feet to look closely into his eyes. “Look at me,” he commanded when Michael avoided his gaze. “Don’t you treat me like some war criminal. The good of the nation is as important to me as it is to you. Or do you think you’ve been appointed Guardian of the Truth?”
Michael said nothing.
“How many years have we known one another?” Shorer asked, but he did not wait for an answer. “Your uncle Jocko, my best friend—who brought you to me—what did he tell you? In my presence he told you to trust me like a father. And hasn’t that been true all these years? Have I ever let you down? Did I ever fail to back you up?”
Michael bowed his head.
“So, what? Suddenly I’ve turned into a villain? You yourself in another few days—maybe before that even—you’ll discover for yourself…After all, you studied history, didn’t you? What are you going to do with this truth we heard here today? Do you believe that every wrong can be righted? That the truth is always the highest value, that the truth wins out over life itself even? Do you know what kind of material we’d be handing over to…to everyone! To the Palestinians and the Egyptians and to…to us, ourselves. There is no question about it; in any event the Censor’s Office would never allow this to get out…. It’s just a waste of time, do you understand me?”
After a pause, Michael said, “I don’t know if I can keep quiet about this. I don’t know how a person can live with a secret like this.”
“Oh, yes, you do!” Shorer said sadly. “You most certainly do. You’ll keep quiet, and how,” he said, his grief deepening. After a brief silence, he added, “We’re evolving, you see? We’re learning to keep quiet about bigger and bigger matters.”
Afterward, everything took on a quality of unreality. As though weightless, Michael followed the policemen who escorted Rubin to the police van, and as though in sleep he heard bits of a news broadcast from car radios in the parking lot: “…he shot his wife, fatally wounding her,” came the broadcaster’s voice. “The couple’s two children were in the apartment at the time….” And when Michael entered Shorer’s car—the radio was on there, too—he heard that seventeen women had been murdered by their husbands or partners during the previous year, and heard, too, the item about Shimshi and the other workers who had been brought to court for a hearing to extend the period of their arrest.
Natasha was awaiting their arrival at the entrance to police headquarters. Her gaze followed Rubin as he stepped out of the van, his hands in cuffs. She moved the canvas bag from her shoulder, ran a hand through the lank locks of her hair, and tugged at the ends of her scarf. She approached Rubin. “Rubin!” she exclaimed. To Michael, who was plodding heavily nearby, she said, “What’s going on here? Why is he—” When Michael said nothing, Natasha said, “It’s a mistake, a big mistake. Rubin is the kind of person…what, are you really arresting him?” She choked on her words.
Michael did not answer her.
“I came here for a totally different reason,” Natasha mumbled, her eyes on Rubin’s back. “Now I really don’t know what to do, because…” Something in her lost expression prevented Michael from telling her to go away, to leave him alone. She stood next to him talking, though only fragments of her sentences reached his ears. “Now Hefetz is no longer willing…I told him you knew…I told him…that you would help me bring it to air…the State Prosecutor’s Office…if you saw the video you’d know…” And without knowing how it happened, he found himself following Natasha up the stairs, her light-colored, dirty canvas bag bouncing against her gaunt thighs as she led the way to his office. “Do you have a VCR?” she asked, winded. “Because if you don’t—” He opened the office door; he still had not spoken, or at least that was the way it seemed to him. Then again, several minutes later Balilty entered the room carrying a VCR. He inserted the cassette into the appropriate slot, and without intending to, Michael heard the sounds and viewed the scenes that flooded his office, and noticed Tzilla, too, who had entered his office by pushing the door open with her foot—her hands occupied with three mugs—and was now watching the screen. They were looking at aerial shots of a green city on the banks of a river, Natasha’s voice in the background explaining that this was an area, not far from Montreal, to which Rabbi Elharizi had smuggled the money and gold bricks he had gathered from his followers. “Two days ago,” Natasha’s voice proclaimed, loud and clear, an image of Rabbi Elharizi on the screen, “I fell into a trap, I let myself be led blindly by facts that were fed to me in order to keep us from seeing what was really going on. And that begins with this,” she said as the film skipped to Rabbi Elharizi, standing at the entrance to Ben Gurion Airport dressed as a Greek Orthodox priest, his head bent but the hood covering his face slightly pushed to the side, exposing him. “What is Rabbi Elharizi doing at Ben Gurion Airport in the garb of a Greek Orthodox priest?” Natasha asked. “What is he doing? He’s preparing the groundwork for realizing his vision; in order to bury this scoop of ours, I was led astray two days ago. But now there are no more diversions. Let’s watch a snippet from a secret cassette distributed by Rabbi Elharizi among his believers.” Again the film skipped to Rabbi Elharizi, speaking as if possessed: “The Holy Land of Israel will be laid to waste, the destruction of the Third Temple is near. Soon, no stone will be left unturned and all will be ashes and dust. Our Arab enemies will lay our cities to waste and run our fields asunder. Jewish women will fall prey to them, our homes will be set aflame and our children annihilated. Destruction and desolation, my brothers! But we, we wish to keep our breed holy! Let us depart for the New Jerusalem!”
“Stop, stop the tape!” Tzilla shouted. From inside that same weight-lessness Michael watched as Balilty’s finger moved to the VCR and pressed the button, freezing the frame.
“What is this?” Tzilla cried out. “Call everyone, they’ve got to see this. They’re running off with the taxes we’ve paid! Everyone’s got to see this, these people are skipping out on us!”
“As far as I’m concerned,” Balilty proclaimed, “they’re welcome to leave yesterday, along with all their corruption. Come on, let’s keep watching,” he said to Natasha. To Tzilla he added, “You want us to call Eli?”
“Eli’s with the kids now,” Tzilla said as she sat down. “Go on, go on,” she told
Balilty. “This is something that you just can’t—something everyone needs to know.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’ve got to keep watching even if it makes me sick.”
Michael thought that on any other day he would have been shocked by this cassette tape, he would have been highly disturbed by the insult of it and overcome with nausea at these scenes of the rabbi’s “vision” and the Jewish way of clinging to exile and boxes of gold. But today these images were simply floating in the chasm of grief that had opened up inside him these past few hours.
Balilty pressed the button, and the film lurched forward, Rabbi Elharizi’s voice echoing in a closed room. “Unlike Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai, who was smuggled to Yavneh in a coffin when Jerusalem was under siege by the armies of Vespasian,” cried the rabbi prophetically, “we shall leave proudly in an aerial convoy, my brothers, every hour another plane departing. These ships shall transport you to the land of water: Canada. Pack your belongings; no redemption, no revival, awaits us here. A voice came down from on high in the still of the night and visited both me and the mystic Rabbi Bashari. And it said, ‘And I will make them as a vexation to all the kingdoms of the land…and the carcass of this people will be as food for the birds of prey and beasts of the field. And there shall be no succor, for the land shall be laid to waste.’ Soon it shall come to pass! Rise and depart! Depart! Depart before the destruction! There will be seventeen meeting points,” the rabbi said before Natasha’s clear voice interjected to read a list of the names of towns in the Negev and in the north of Israel, as well as the names of the rabbis in charge at each point. This was followed by the continuation of the rabbi’s speech: “We must save the souls of our brethren, our fellow Jews,” Rabbi Elharizi intoned, behind him the wizened old mystic himself, struck dumb years earlier and exploited now by his sons and followers at festive gatherings for the purpose of dispelling doubts on questionable matters. “Canada!” Rabbi Elharizi cried, and the head of the old mystic, who sat sunken into a velvet armchair and propped up by huge pillows, lolled backward. “We shall build the New Yavneh there, we shall save our race before—” Suddenly the speech was cut short, and the film showed Rabbi Elharizi humming a tune from the Neilah prayers of Yom Kippur: El Norah Alilah, which Michael, like any traditional Eastern Jew, recognized from his own childhood. The rabbi sang, “Judge them now, in the hour when the gates of repentance are closing,” while a choir of ultra-Orthodox men carrying suitcases and boxes joined in for the chorus: “Oh Lord of deed and action, provide us with forgiveness.” And with that the picture was cut off, the voices fell silent, and the screen was blue and empty.
“What…What are they planning?” Tzilla whispered. “They’re taking all their—”
“They’re leaving for Canada,” Natasha explained. “A whole city is being built for them there. All the government allocations they’ve received, all the contributions from wealthy benefactors, it’s all been converted into gold bricks. I’ve got pictures of the boxes, and Schreiber’s testimony. He’s seen it with his own eyes.”
“But what’s he talking about?” Tzilla cried. “Why are they leaving Israel?”
“Why?” Balilty chuckled. “Because they’re jumping off a sinking ship. I’ve known about this for a while, we’ve collected quite a bit of material. This tape you’ve brought can certainly help us,” he told Natasha, “you’ve done a great job, no question about it.”
“Please explain to me,” Tzilla interjected, “do me a favor; I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
“There’s not much to explain here,” Balilty said dispassionately. “Rabbi Elharizi himself dealt with transferring the money. He’s not just any old rabbi, he’s a rabbi with vision! Wouldn’t you say that’s true?” he asked, turning to Michael, who was sitting the whole time behind his desk, at his usual place, feeling the weak December sun penetrating the room through the dirty window and waiting, resigned, for his room to empty of people.
“It’s very simple,” Balilty continued. “Brilliant and simple. All the brilliant ideas are ultimately simple, don’t you think?”
No one answered him.
“And it’s not Rabbi Elharizi on his own,” Balilty proclaimed, “he’s got Rabbi Bashari the Cabalistic mystic with him. You saw him in the background, didn’t you, sitting in his armchair? We think of him as a puppet, but his followers believe he has supernatural powers. Don’t ask! No outsider could ever understand it.”
“So, like, he’s going to bring whole families to Canada?” Tzilla asked.
“Tens of thousands of them,” Natasha said, her eyes flashing. “There’s already a whole settlement set up there, they’ve got…”
“Not tens of thousands,” Balilty corrected her, “it’s more like hundreds of thousands.” When he saw the look of disbelief on Tzilla’s face, he hastened to add, “We’re talking about vision here! This is prophecy! There were doubters in the distant past, too, but believe me, we’re talking about a prophecy of destruction and redemption here! Our people have attended rallies, and I’ve heard all about this from them, but we didn’t have any concrete evidence before. We weren’t able to get our hands on a videocassette or a finger on all that money. I still haven’t figured out where this young lady here got it all,” he said, glancing at Natasha, “how she managed to come up with all the material we couldn’t—”
“There are about one hundred seventy-five thousand believers at present,” Natasha said.
“Anyway,” Balilty continued, “whole families are going to emigrate to this Canadian New Yavneh. Rabbi Elharizi himself said that Jerusalem will soon be laid to waste, that’s what he saw in his vision. And here,” Balilty said, pointing at the empty blue screen, “will be the New Yavneh. Is that all, Natasha?”
“There’s just a little bit more,” she said humbly. Balilty extended the remote control to her, and she fast-forwarded the tape until the screen showed Rabbi Elharizi, once again in the hooded garb of a Greek Orthodox priest. Natasha’s voice intoned, “Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai was smuggled in shrouds and a coffin out of besieged Jerusalem, but Rabbi Elharizi has made do with a different disguise…”
“Great work,” Balilty mumbled. “That’s first-class journalism, honey. Come with me, we’ll take this film to where it needs to be. What do you say?”
Natasha looked at Michael. He intended to nod in affirmation, but just then the telephone rang, and Tzilla rushed to answer it. While she chattered happily into the receiver, obviously talking with someone she particularly cared for, Natasha followed Balilty out of the room, closing the door behind her.
“It’s Yuval,” Tzilla said with a big smile, handing him the phone. “He’s in Jerusalem, arrived here half an hour ago. He wants to know if you have a little time for him. Did you even know he’s doing a stint in the army reserves? He’s barely got half a day off before he has to go back.”
Michael took the receiver, wondering from where he could draw the strength to sound normal, but his son, uncharacteristically agitated, did not even ask how he was, only whether Michael could meet him. “Are you all right, Yuval?” he asked, startled; abruptly, he snapped out of the state of floating he had been immersed in.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Yuval reassured him. “I just wanted…I’ve got a couple of hours, I wanted…I was hoping that if you had a little time…”
Michael recognized the budding disappointment he remembered so well from his son’s childhood, which had affected Yuval each time like a slap to the face; time after time he had let the boy down by failing to keep their appointments. So Michael hastened to name a place they could meet.
Pale rays of sunlight filtered through the glass-brick walls of the coffee shop, where large gas heaters warmed the room, illuminating Yuval’s whiskers and the dark eyebrows he had inherited from his father.
“Let’s have breakfast,” Yuval said, and Michael, nodding, signaled to the waitress. She hastened to inform them about the healthy-breakfast special. “It’s new,” she told them, “not on the menu yet.
”
“I’d like a three-egg omelet and a big salad,” Yuval said. “How about you?”
“The same for me,” Michael told the waitress.
“And we don’t smoke,” Yuval announced to the coffee shop at large, which at the time contained only the two of them, an older man reading a newspaper, and a young woman who continually looked at her watch.
“I didn’t know you were doing reserve duty,” Michael said. “How come you didn’t tell me?”
“Didn’t have a chance,” Yuval said. “It’s just an exercise. It was supposed to be a regular three-day exercise, but—never mind, it’s not important…I wanted to ask you something,” he said hesitantly, glancing away as if uncomfortable.
“I’m listening,” Michael said, simultaneously thanking God for installing in children the mechanism that prevents them from discerning that something has befallen their parents.
“It’s something we almost talked about once,” Yuval said, “when I was doing my regular army service.” He fell silent for a moment, then said, “Back then I had—I don’t know if you remember, but—I had thoughts about…you probably don’t remember—”
“I’m going to need some kind of clue, some kind of a lead. Anything,” Michael said apologetically. “There were a few things that…how can I know if you don’t say anything?”
“Tell me,” Yuval said, leaning forward, “without making fun of me”—Michael was about to assure him he would never dream of making fun of him, but Yuval did not wait for his reassurance—“and don’t tell me this isn’t the kind of question a guy who’s one year away from finishing his bachelor’s degree should be asking, okay?” Again, he did not wait for an answer: “I wanted to ask you—but really now—if you’re a Zionist. Are you a Zionist, Dad?”
The arrival of the waitress with a tray upon which stood their mugs of coffee and a basket of fresh rolls, and her setting of the table with plates and forks and knives and spoons and napkins, delayed Michael’s response and restrained the astonishment he was about to express. Of all the things in the world he was preparing himself for—problems with a girl or a crisis at university or even waffling thoughts about the future—he had never imagined that this was the matter about which his son would ask to meet with him so urgently.
