Michael narrowed his eyes; he could only recognize the tallest, whose forelock cast a shadow over his brow and his broad smile. As for the other two and the girl, he had never seen them before. The photograph gave him a pang; something about it made him think of a time that would never return, and that what had been lost was not only the look of youthful exuberance shining from their faces in black and white on a background of white sand. Even today Arye Rubin was a handsome man, but his face did not retain the slightest hint of that joie de vivre so evident in the photograph taken more than thirty years earlier. They looked the part of a joyous band of kids on the annual trip of a youth movement. He himself had photos like these, with larger and smaller groups of friends, from annual treks and journeys in the Negev and the Galilee. They seemed to be his age, or at least of the same generation. And the girl: how much charm there was in her thin silhouette, in her long leg extended forward! Her upper lip was stretched over prominent front teeth, and the little guy with freckles to the right had curly hair and a broken front tooth.
“You’re Benny Meyuhas’s producer,” Eli Bachar said in a tone that indicated he knew everything there was to know about Benny Meyuhas.
“His producer, assistant, and close friend, too. I’m everything wrapped up in one,” she said dryly, as if clarifying that she was the one who wore the pants in the family.
Michael turned to her. “Who are the people in this picture? This is Arye Rubin, isn’t it?” he asked, pointing to the tallest of the three boys.
“Yes, that’s Rubin on the right. The girl standing next to him is Tirzah, and this,” she said, coming close to the photo and touching the face of the short guy with the freckles, “is Benny. They were together in the army. This photo was taken during a trek in the Negev after they finished high school, before their enlistment. And here they are in the army,” she said, pointing to a different photograph in which the three young men appeared in uniform and dusty paratroopers’ boots, berets tucked into their shoulder straps, their arms slung around one another’s necks. Rubin was standing in the middle. To his right was Benny Meyuhas, and to his left the third youth from the Negev trek.
“And who is this?” Michael asked, returning to the previous photograph. The young man he was pointing to was thin and dark and smiling from ear to ear, his arms spread wide in a clownish gesture of someone wishing to embrace it all.
“I don’t really know him,” she said reticently. “I’ve never met him.
His name is Sroul, they were a group, a clique, together all the time.
They were like the Three Musketeers, never separated. They grew up in Haifa, went through the new immigrant camps and Reali High School, and joined the paratroopers. Everyone knew them.”
“Where is he now?” Michael asked. “Where’s Sroul?”
“In the United States. He left right after the Yom Kippur War. He was seriously wounded—burned—so they sent him there, at first for plastic surgery and treatments, and then he just stayed on. I’ve heard that he’s become quite ultra-Orthodox, a genuine religious fanatic.”
“And they’ve stayed in touch all through the years?” Michael inquired. Hagar intended to answer him, but just then the door at the
end of the hallway opened and suddenly the gray floors lit up, and only then did he notice that they were painted green and gold, the wooden doors in turquoise. Rubin stood in the doorway. “You can come in,” he said to Michael, and then to Hagar added, “Could you make him a cup of tea? He’s getting dehydrated. Put three teaspoons of sugar in to give him some energy.”
“Since yesterday he hasn’t touched a thing, only a few drops of water,” Hagar complained. “Has he stopped the business with the wall? I can’t stand it, I was afraid he would split his head open.”
“He’s stopped,” Rubin said. “Now he’s quiet.”
Rubin returned to the room and left the door open. Michael followed him inside. The bedroom was spacious, high-ceilinged. A double bed stood next to the wall, and atop the disheveled sheets sat a thin man, his head leaning against the wall. He did not direct his gaze at Michael, who was standing in the doorway, nor did he relate to Rubin, who was sitting at the edge of the bed. Michael took in his small, wrinkled face and his bleary blue eyes, which were fixed on the opposite wall. Not only was there no trace of that chubby, freckled youth of the photograph in this man, but it was completely incomprehensible that he and Rubin could be the same age. Behind the bed stood two arched windows, and beyond them, past the raised blinds, were two large planters filled with pansies. It had stopped raining. Michael pulled up a chair from the corner of the room and sat not far from the bed. Eli Bachar stood hesitantly in the doorway. Muffled voices could be heard from another room, then someone apparently opened a door and the voices grew louder and clearer.
Only then did Michael realize they were coming from a television or radio. Distractedly he heard the beginning of a news broadcast: “The hospital spokesman has informed us that the condition of the minister of labor and social affairs is stable and that she is expected to be released within the next few days.”
Michael introduced himself to Benny Meyuhas, who blinked, stared, and grimaced, his lips parched and cracked. “Arye tells me,” he murmured quietly, “that you want to postpone the funeral, that you want to perform an autopsy… . I don’t … it’s not my decision, we were not officially married. Arye Rubin will have to give his consent.
Officially, he’s still her husband.”
“We’ll get to that,” Michael said as he threw Eli Bachar a questioning look. Eli shrugged his shoulders to say that he had no idea whose consent was needed. “But you have no objection as such, do you?”
Michael asked.
“What does it matter?” Benny Meyuhas responded finally with a frown. “Tirzah is no longer with us. She has left us.”
“You’ll have to clarify whose signature is necessary,” Michael said quietly to Eli Bachar.
Eli Bachar nodded. “I’ll take care of it,” he said on his way out of the room. To Rubin he said, “Why don’t you step out with me, we’ll leave them alone.”
Rubin straightened in his chair. “Why should I step out?” he asked, astonished. “I’m here to be with Benny.”
Benny Meyuhas pounded the wall with his fist. His knuckles were ruddy and raw. “He doesn’t need to go anywhere,” he said in a parched voice. “I keep no secrets from him.”
Eli Bachar walked out of the room quickly, in the direction of the foyer. Michael shut the door. The only sound in the room was Benny Meyuhas’s noisy breathing. He sounded as though he might choke.
“I also wanted to ask you,” Michael said, “if you knew that Tirzah was there, in the middle of the night. We’re trying to understand what she was doing there so late. Did you know she was there?”
Benny Meyuhas shook his head and passed his hands over his cheeks and his thinning hair. “I didn’t know,” he said at last.
“How could that be?” Michael said. “You were filming on the roof of that same building. How was it that you didn’t know?”
“She didn’t tell me,” he said dismissively and turned his head toward the wall.
Michael asked whether he had any idea why she would have been there so late at night.
Benny Meyuhas had no explanation. She had not told him that she would be at work, and he did not know of any unfinished scenery that demanded her presence.
Michael asked whether it was possible she had made an appointment with someone in her office.
“Anything is possible, how can I know?”
“No, I’m asking whether it was normal, whether there were precedents for such a thing,” Michael explained.
Benny Meyuhas grimaced as if to deny the possibility. She was always meeting with people in the office or the canteen, but never in the middle of the night.
“I’m trying to understand,” Michael said slowly, emphasizing each word. “What did you mean when you shouted, ‘It’s my fault, it’s because of me’? What did you mean when you saw Tirzah—when she was no longer alive?”
The look Benny Meyuhas gave him was one of confusion.
“You do remember that you said those things.”
“I remember,” Benny said, perplexed. He pursed his lips into an expression of loathing. “But what is there to
