one even understood why Tirzah had left Rubin. It was clear how much he loved her, even if she’d been no raving beauty, even if he’d had dalliances with other women. Rumor had it that women were crazy about Rubin. He, Zadik, himself had seen Rubin in action more than once, most notably on a business trip they had made together to England ten years earlier; he would never forget the way
the young assistant to the director of the BBC archives had looked at him. She was a platinum bombshell, like Jayne Mansfield—who remembers Jayne Mansfield today?—with the body of a starlet. Rubin and the girl had disappeared that same evening for twenty-four hours.
To this very day, if he needed something from the BBC, he asked Rubin to use his connections there. He’d heard that the young lady had been appointed to an important position there and that she had had two husbands since then, but for Rubin she was willing to toss everything aside and meet him at any opportunity, even once during a stopover Rubin made on the way to the United States. Rubin had never told him all this, but someone had seen him; maybe it was Matty Cohen himself, he couldn’t be sure. But with Tirzah it was something altogether different; everyone knew it was she who had left Rubin, and not vice versa, though no one knew why. If it was because of other women, well, Rubin had always had someone on the side, so that was nothing new. Maybe, in fact, Tirzah hadn’t actually known about the other women and had suddenly heard about them from someone for the first time. Maybe someone had informed her.
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
