Hill of Secrets: An Israeli Jewish mystery novel

by Michal Hartstein

  Yinon and I were married by then and decided to buy the apartment ourselves. It was sheer luck. Now, the apartment was worth at least seventy percent more. After we separated, I stayed in the apartment and Yinon got his share from me. My mother didn't understand what I saw in an old, two- bedroom apartment on the second floor with no elevator, with a faulty air conditioner and no parking, but I was in love with my old, rundown apartment. The truth was that I didn't mind living in an apartment like that. There was something soothing about living like a slob.

  When your apartment looked like a goodwill truck had exploded in it, spewing random furniture and accessories, it didn't hurt too much if there was a permanent ring-shaped watermark on the dining room table, or that the sofa upholstery was almost completely crumbling away. These were two defects I managed to hide from my mother because I made sure to cover the table with a table cloth and the sofa with a cover on the few occasions when she honored me with a visit. There are things that hurt less if you're simply unaware of them.

  I was lucky to find parking right at the end of the street. I slowly climbed up the stairs to the apartment. I was feeling good. The visit to Shira's, the hearty meal and now the excellent parking spot—I was unbeatable.

  When I placed the key in the keyhole I was half asleep, but the fact that the door wasn't locked awoke me in a second. Since I’d been involved in the investigation of the infamous Vaserano family money laundering case, a small fear came into my heart that someone would try to get revenge on me, even though the people of the underworld usually were careful about not getting back at police officers. Maybe it was just a thief.

  And maybe it was just Yinon, lying asleep on (formerly) our couch in front of the TV screen, flashing the opening credits of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

  Chapter 11

  I felt like waking him up with a kick, but I knew he was going through a difficult couple of weeks. He was preparing for a huge exhibition in Germany and had been working around the clock for a month. So I just took his shoes off and switched off the TV.

  I sat on the balcony and read the weekend papers. Tsumi, the stray dog we’d found wandering around near our house three years earlier, was lying on the couch Yinon was asleep on, completely ignoring my existence. He hadn't seen Yinon in two months.

  An hour later Yinon awoke.

  "Good morning!" I said to him in a partially angry voice. I couldn't really be mad at him, even though he’d come into my apartment, which, until five months ago was also his apartment, without permission.

  "To you, too!" He smiled at me and tried to soften my reaction.

  "Like to tell me what you're doing here?"

  "I'm really sorry, but I lost an important work disc and I couldn't find it anywhere, so I thought it might be here."

  "Then why didn't you call and ask me?"

  "I called, and I also sent you, like, five texts, but you didn't answer and I was stressing out."

  I remembered I had turned my phone off. I always shut it off when I meet my family on Shabbat.

  "My phone was off."

  "Were you at your parents' house?"

  "At Shira's."

  "What'd you lose there?"

  "Are you joking?" I gave him an angry glare. "She's my sister!"

  "Come on! Since when do you go to Shira's on Saturday?"

  "My parents were also there."

  Yinon looked at me as if he couldn't understand my simple sentence. "Aren't you all going to Jerusalem together next week?"

  "We are, but my parents just had their house sprayed for bugs and Shira spontaneously decided to invite all of us over."

  "How’s everyone?"

  "Great. How are you?"

  "Exhausted."

  "Did you find what you were looking for?"

  "No… I didn't want to go through your stuff too much, but I don't think it's here. I was also searching through the CDs that have movies on them and I found Ferris Bueller's Day Off… I haven't watched that movie in at least a year so I decided I have to watch it."

  "Do you want something to drink?"

  "I'll make us something warm." He slowly got up from the couch and stretched. Tsumi immediately stood up and looked at Yinon with sad eyes. The dog missed his dad.

  Unlike me, graced with an excellent metabolism and a skinny figure (although I could eat like a starved truck driver), Yinon was very aware physically and nutritionally. He also had good genes, but he took care to enhance them. Although I assumed he was, maybe, letting himself go in this busy time in his life, he was still in great shape. He was wearing shorts and a tank top from the army, and when he stretched, his chest muscles stood out and I suddenly remembered that I had not been sexually active in over six months.

  You couldn’t say Yinon was a particularly beautiful guy. He started losing his hair pretty young, he had a slightly hawkish nose and his eyes were too small. He always dressed like a nerd, button down shirts, at least one size too big, tucked into beige or blue trousers. I was relatively safe from female competition. But I saw what others simply didn't see. In my opinion, his nose and eyes gave him a dark, sexy look. Since I persuaded him that it'd be better to go completely bald than struggle over each hair (less is more…), he looked a bit younger and more contemporary. And very few people got to see Yinon's upgraded physique. On the rare occasions that he agreed to take his shirt off on the beach, I could see the sudden, interested looks from other women. Yinon was sort of a caveman. His sex appeal was magnified when he was naked. Every piece of fabric was too much.

  But what attracted me most of all, was the fact that Yinon was as beautiful on the inside as he was, at least in my eyes, on the outside. Pleasant, comfortable and not trying too hard.

  "What do you want to drink?" he shouted from the kitchen.

  "Coffee," I called back and returned to my lounging on the balcony.

  When we were married, Saturday afternoon was the best time in the week for me. We almost always spent it in bed, usually after good sex, with coffee and the weekend papers.

  I imagined Yinon was thinking what I was thinking when he handed me my coffee over the weekend paper. I wondered to myself if he was already with someone else. I imagined he wasn't. A girl would pretty much need to force herself on Yinon for him to get the idea.

  "Spoonful, spoonful, half and half," he announced and placed my mug next to me. Yinon was the only person in the world who knew how I liked my coffee without needing me to remind him, and was the only one who could make my coffee better than I could make it for myself. I thought he changed something in his magic dosage.

  "So how are you, these crazy days?" He sat down on the floor, stroking Tsumi's head with one hand and reaching for the front page of the paper with the other. The Danilowitz family's story covered a large portion of the opening page, including references to the addendum.

  "Difficult story." He gestured towards the headline.

  "Yeah."

  "Did you see the bodies?"

  "Of course."

  "Just unbelievable." Yinon shook his head and leafed through the article on the main page. "Everything that's written here, is it true?"

  "Some of it's correct, some a little less," I answered concisely. When we were married, I was much more comfortable with sharing confidential issues with Yinon; now I felt I was walking a thin line.

  Yinon got up from his perch and sat next to me on the bean bag couch. Tsumi moaned in disappointment. I sat with my back partially turned toward him and he moved closer behind me and warmly embraced me. I lay back in his arms for a moment and then pulled back. "What are you doing?"

  He clung to me again, carefully stroking my hair. "I miss you," he whispered. I swallowed, trying to digest his words. "Don't you miss me?" he asked in a cooing voice.

  I missed him a lot. The sight of Meir, Hanni and the children's bodies, especially little Noa's, haunted me. I was in desperate need of human warmth. I turned to him and returned his warm hug. We sat, embracing, seeking solace in the heat of our bo
dies and in a few seconds Yinon began kissing my neck and his big, skilled hands caressed my back up and down and side to side.

  If at any point I had any doubt about Yinon's intentions, it completely disappeared when his hand suddenly cupped my left breast. I let out a little moan. I’d missed this so much in the past months, not only the sexual touching. I missed this intimacy with Yinon. The sex was always good. We weren't world champion acrobatics and we didn't really concern ourselves with how many times a week other people "do it." In this area, we only cared about what was good for us, and for us it was really good.

  Everything was good except for one giant thing: he wanted kids and I didn't. I remembered our trip to New Zealand, almost a year-and-a-half earlier. Yinon was sure that we were on our last trip before giving up the comforts of life without children.

  During our last week in New Zealand I lost my packet of birth control pills and asked Yinon to stop off to get condoms.

  "I think it's a sign." Yinon parked in front of a drugstore and refused to get out of the car.

  "A sign of what?"

  "That we should go for it."

  "For what?"

  "Finally having a baby." He blurted it out and my heart cringed. We’d taken care not to talk about the subject during the whole trip and I’d hoped Yinon wasn't thinking about it.

  I was wrong.

  "God, Yinon," I sighed. "We're in paradise; why do you deliberately want to turn this trip into hell?"

  "What did I say? That we shouldn't buy condoms?"

  "You know very well what you said."

  "I thought you changed your mind."

  "The fact that I'm thinking about it doesn't mean I changed my mind."

  "I can hope." He tried to smile.

  "You should know," I looked down, "that I thought about it a lot and I still don't want to and I don't know if I ever will."

  Yinon got out of the car and angrily slammed the car door. He returned a few minutes later with two cans of coke and a pack of condoms that was never opened.

  About three months after we returned from New Zealand, I joined the police and felt satisfaction that I hadn't felt in years. I enjoyed going to work, but coming home every day was horrible. We barely spoke, since every conversation finally circled around to expanding the nest. We hardly had any sex. The communication between us, which had been so good in the past, just vaporized. We almost didn't see each other. We each made efforts to stay as long as we could at work.

  On the weekends, we'd fake being a couple around family and friends, but when we were alone, each of us was on his own. When he watched TV, I read a book. When he was reading a newspaper, I was on the internet. Yinon honestly wanted a family, not only a partner, and I wanted only a partner. There was no room to compromise here - you can't have half a child. From the minute I met Yinon I’d prayed this moment wouldn't come, but I knew that if it did, I would have to let go, painful as it was.

  A year after we returned from New Zealand, we got divorced. So many kind souls made sure to let me know that a divorce with no children involved is no big deal. It's like breaking up with a boyfriend who you also happened to marry. I didn't doubt for a minute that a divorce where children are involved is more complex than a couple with no children, but unlike most divorcing couples, Yinon and I got a divorce while we were still in love. We got a divorce despite being a great couple.

  Such a great couple that we couldn't stop ourselves on the decrepit bean bag sofa in our—my—small balcony.

  An hour later, breathless and sweaty on the bed in the bedroom, I knew we had made a mistake. All the love in the world couldn't change the fact that I was not willing to give Yinon what he wanted and was entitled to.

  "This was excellent and unnecessary," I said to him when I could breathe again.

  "Why are you ruining it?"

  "Ruining what?"

  "The moment."

  "Oh, come on." I got out of bed and went to rinse myself off in the shower.

  A few minutes later, when we were already washed and dressed, Yinon insisted on bringing it up again.

  "So you think it was a mistake?"

  "What?"

  "What do you mean, "what”? What we just did!"

  "I didn't know if you meant that or the fact we got married."

  "You're not serious." Yinon opened his eyes in shock. "You know I love you, how could you think any of what we did was ever a mistake?"

  "I love you too," I smiled. "A lot, even." Yinon got closer to me and began stroking my hair. "And I don't regret anything we ever did together." Yinon smiled. "But it would be a mistake to stay together."

  Yinon's smile disappeared and he stopped caressing me.

  "It's hard for me without you."

  "It's hard for me too, but there's no choice."

  "How many couples do you know who are as good together as we are?"

  "It's hard for me to accept the fact that in order to stay together, you expect us to become parents."

  "I told you more than once that I'm willing to wait as long as necessary."

  "And I also told you more than once that there’s a likely chance that it’ll never happen and I'm not willing to let you wait for a moment that might never happen. It's not fair to me and it's even less fair towards you."

  "Then let's adopt. You'll only be in the background. I'll raise the child."

  "You really think it would be fair towards the child for his "mother" not to care about him? That he only has a "mother" for his ID card? What life would this child have - a mother who doesn't want him at all? What do you think would be left of us as a couple? Besides, with your work hours, when exactly will you have time to raise this child? I don't intend to switch to the job of being a mother."

  "I'll work less." I rolled my eyes. "I'll hire a nanny."

  "That kills me, not only with you, but with a lot of people. Why bring a child into this world if you're not going to ‘enjoy’ them. At least I admit, loud and clear, that I get no joy from kids - but those who want kids, and not for religious reasons, but because they claim that children bring them joy or satisfaction - I don't get why they don't bother spending any time with those enjoyable children, but pay other people to do it for them.”

  "You're taking it a bit far. We don't live in a utopia, and I also need to make a living."

  "Then go work a mom job."

  "Maybe I'll do that." I rolled my eyes again. No chance of that happening.

  "I don’t know about you, but I'd go insane at the thought of someone else touching you." Yinon always was a hopeless romantic. Maybe that's why he was so hung up on this fantasy of a couple with two kids and a dog.

  "It'll be hard for me, but I'll learn to live with it," I lied. The thought killed me.

  "Would you accept me with a child from another woman?" Yinon had raised the idea numerous times that he might have a child with a different woman and go on living with me, but the idea always had to do with the fact that the child would be outside of the marriage, meaning we'd stay together and he'd raise a child with another woman.

  "You mean you'd start a family and then leave your new wife for me?"

  "Something like that."

  "I find it hard to believe that you'd do that." Yinon was too good of a man.

  "But would you take me?"

  "I don’t know." Honestly, it wasn't a bad idea. That way, Yinon could have kids without me having to be a mother. "Does it seem reasonable to you to deceive a woman like that?"

  Yinon looked down. He wasn't the sort of person to do such an evil thing to anyone.

  "I want you back."

  I knew I had to be strong. In the past, I’d been very close to cracking. Yinon almost convinced me to get pregnant for him, but with the last of my will, I managed to stay loyal to my wishes.

  I wanted him to stay overnight, he seemed so miserable and broken, but I knew that if he stayed, it would let him believe that there was still a chance.

  Chapter 12

  Sunday, 5.2
4.2009

  On the first morning of the new week, after a Shabbat that was meant to be relaxing, but ended in frustration and heartbreak, I went to the Leumi Bank branch in Petach Tikva. On the way I called Riki and asked her to check with the Department of Health if Ariel Danilowitz had a prescription for Ritalin.

  At nine o’ clock, I entered the office of the manager of the branch where Hanni and Meir ran most of their accounts. Arie Shani was a man of about sixty, stout, balding, with a well kempt comb-over. His shirt was neatly ironed and he straightened his tie from time to time. His office was packed with files and piles of papers. I stared at the piles and wondered to myself if he was really taking care of all this paperwork or if it was only serving as some sort of scenery.

  "Did you handle Meir and Hanni Danilowitz's account?" I asked after sitting down.

  "No, I don't handle cases for specific customers, nor private homeowners, but I'm familiar with the couple."

  "Are you familiar with all of the bank's customers?"

  "No, not all of them, but I try to know as many of them as I can."

  "So how did you know the Danilowitz couple?"

  "Meir Danilowitz's parents are very old and respected customers of the bank."

  "I understand." I looked through the notes I jotted down for myself. "I looked through Meir and Hanni's bank account. I understand they had another account in the Discount Bank."

  "Right. Meir worked for Discount Bank, so it was better for him to open the account his paycheck went to there. Even so, each month he transferred money from the Discount account to us, since most of the activity took place here."

  "I see the couple had quite a few loans and a credit card overdraft."

  "True."

  "I thought there was a new law preventing overdrafts on credit cards."

  "Right. Customers who make any sort of withdrawal that leads to overdraft receive a reminder on the phone from the branch that the withdrawal will not be approved unless they immediately transfer money into their account."