Tirzah, but there was something coquettish and juvenile about them which did not quite jibe with the impression he was forming of her.
Michael was still pondering this when he heard Rubin say, “Drink up, Benny, otherwise we’ll have to put you on an IV; you’re dehydrat-ing. You don’t have to eat, but you’ve got to drink.”
The sound of Benny’s head butting the wall behind him sickened Michael. “She’s left us, Arye,” he wailed. “She didn’t want to be with me anymore.”
The door opened again. Eli Bachar stood for a moment watching the two men on the bed, then said to Michael, “They say that Arye Rubin has to sign. If he agrees.”
Rubin regarded him, stunned, then nodded his consent. To Benny he said, “I’m going to give my consent to an autopsy, if that’s okay with you. Do you agree?”
“I’ve got to get going,” Eli Bachar said impatiently. “Someone will call you and bring the forms around, okay?” Without waiting for an answer he left the room.
“Benny,” Rubin said hesitantly, “do you consent? Is it all right with you?”
“She’s left us, Arye, she didn’t want to live with me anymore. I don’t have … I didn’t have any reason to go on …”
“That’s the way he’s been the whole time,” Hagar said from the corner of the room, her brows knitting to the point where the crease between them deepened even further. “That’s the way he’s been talking the whole time,” she said, and left the room.
Michael followed her. She was standing in the foyer, next to the kitchen door, her arm on the door frame and her head resting on her arm.
“It’s my impression that you’re the person closest to him,” he said, looking at her unabashedly. “Do you think you might know what was going on with them?”
She lifted her head and stepped away from the doorway. “With who?” she asked suspiciously.
“Benny and Tirzah.”
“Going on? Who says anything was going on? When?”
“Rubin told me you’d know the details,” Michael said, “about the rift between them lately. He said you would know, that you’d certainly felt it, even if Benny had never mentioned anything about it to you. He says you’re the only person who always knows what’s happening with Benny.”
Her face softened. “Believe me, I have no idea. I was very close, I mean, pretty close, but … he never talked to me about Tirzah.” She scratched at an invisible spot on the door frame with the tip of her fingernail. “I was close to him in matters of ”—she gestured toward the maquette—“anything related to work. In those matters I’m an expert.
But where his private life is concerned I’m not, not where his life with Tirzah was concerned.”
“But you certainly must have felt something, perceived something.
Sensitive people can recognize things in people they’re close to even without talking about it explicitly, don’t you think?”
She looked down the hallway as if to verify that no one was listening. “Where’s Sarah?” she wondered aloud. “Her coat is here, so she hasn’t left yet. Maybe she’s in the other room watching television,” she said, indicating the living room. “There was tension between them lately, something was weighing heavily on Benny, that much was clear to me. I know him like the palm of my hand; there’s no question that something was going on. I didn’t ask him because I didn’t dare to, but it was clear to me also from the way Tirzah was behaving, even from the way she talked to me lately. But I don’t have a clue what—” She glanced at her watch, startled. “Are you planning to be here for a while?” she asked quickly, and without waiting for an answer added,
“because if you are, I’d like—look, I’ve got to get back to the station to talk to Zadik about continuing filming. We can’t stop now, there’s only a little more to wrap up, we’ve got to—I’m going to Zadik with Rubin… . Sarah,” she said, turning to the young woman who had suddenly appeared from the next room. “Can you stay here a little longer?
I don’t want to leave Benny alone.”
“No problem,” Sarah said, rubbing her feet one against the other.
“Where are your shoes?” Hagar asked, surprised, and the young woman blanched.
“Over there,” she said, pointing to the living room. “I took them off in
there. I’m going to—it’s cold in here, but there was mud on them …”
She fell silent. But Hagar was already putting on her coat and made no response.
“Arye,” she called toward the bedroom. “Arye, let’s get moving.” As she spoke, she moved toward the room.
“Where are your shoes?” Michael asked in a whisper, and Sarah blushed, indicating with her head the room she had just emerged from.
“Black boots? Embroidered?”
She cast him a suspicious look and nodded.
“Know where they are?”
She shrugged, her answer unclear.
“I actually know where they are,” Michael said. “Shall I tell you?”
“That’s not necessary,” she whispered, her frightened eyes on the bedroom door. “I just don’t want Hagar to know. If she did, she’d—”
Sarah did not complete her thought.
“Yes, what would happen if she found out?”
“She would think that we … that I …” She spread her arms wide.
“That what? That you what?”
“That I, you know, like, like that I was with him,” she said, averting her glance.
“And the truth is that—”
“Nothing. I mean, yes, I … he … he was crying so hard and asked me to … and Hagar wasn’t here … so I, not that I, I just lay down next to him. He put his arms around me and cried and talked and I … what could I do? I let him talk.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“Truth is, I didn’t understand most of it,” she admitted. “He said she didn’t want him anymore, that she— Tirzah—had already gone away before this happened, that she’d left him. I don’t understand why, but he said, ‘She couldn’t forgive me.’ I don’t know what it was she couldn’t forgive him.”
Rubin and Hagar emerged from the bedroom. “We’re on our way to Zadik,” Hagar said. “Are you going to be around here much longer?” she asked Michael.
“No, not much longer,” Michael assured her. In fact, he had no idea how much longer he would stay.
“But you’re staying,” Hagar commanded Sarah.
“Sure,” she responded, nodding vehemently. “For as long as necessary.”
When the door had shut, Sarah regarded Michael with suspicion.
“You won’t say anything to her, will you?” she asked.
“Why are you afraid of her?” Michael asked. “Do you think she’s jealous? That she’ll be angry with you?”
“Of course!” she said with a look that made it clear she thought he was thickheaded. “Everyone knows. She … he … always, right from the beginning people told me.”
“And Tirzah?”
“What about her? There was nothing going on between Benny and Hagar, they were just … they didn’t sleep together, people just said she always wanted to. Tirzah didn’t … well, I don’t know.”
“What’s it like working with him?” Michael asked.
Her face lit up. “He’s amazing, the best, everyone says so. He’s a wonderful director, teaches you everything. But he demands a lot, all the time.”
“Who built this model, this maquette? Tirzah?”
“Yes, it’s the model of the house,” she said, pursing her thick red lips, which gave her face a look of exaggerated earnestness. “The whole story takes place there. Do you know Iddo and Eynam?”
Michael mumbled something incomprehensible.
“I play the part of Gemullah,” she said, and her eyes shone with visible pride. “That’s why I had to understand the story really well. Iddo and Eynam is the story of ancient Jewish Hebrew roots,” she declaimed.
