“All right,” Erez answered calmly, “I heard you, don’t get all worked up. First of all, I’m not sure that’s really the hottest item we’ve got today, and second, you’re going to have to be patient: I’ve already contacted our Tel Aviv office about this and told a lawyer for the Israel Broadcasting Authority to be prepared, there’s still a chance we’ll run the photos, but we have to wait and see what the judge on duty says.
Now just give me a few minutes to write the titles, I’ve got to concentrate.” He sat at the corner of the table and hung his head over several empty pages before speaking up again. “If you ask me, this is the last time we’ll hear about the laid-off strikers, tomorrow they’ll already be yesterday’s cold noodles.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Danny Benizri said defensively. “It’s not over yet.”
“Hey,” the correspondent for political parties shouted from his place at the table, “what’s happening with the story about the violence at the Kahane memorial service?” He had shifted the knitted skullcap from the crown of his head and was scrutinizing a small comb he had pulled from the back pocket of his trousers. “I can’t find it on the lineup. Our lives are out of control, and nobody gives a—”
“Look again,” Hefetz bellowed. “Have you people forgotten how to read? Look at item number thirteen, see where it’s written, NO-CONFIDENCE POLITICS? Is it written there? Yes? Very good. That item includes the threats to television crews, there’s a shot of policemen on horseback hiding behind a tree. We talked about it this morning.p>
Weren’t you listening?”
“Wait a minute,” Zohar, the military correspondent, interjected angrily. “How is it that the story about Yitzhak Mordechai meeting with army officers about the new round of talks with the Palestinians has been dropped?” He blew his pointed nose noisily. “I spent hours on that, and—” He rapped a sheaf of papers on the table and looked around, but no one was listening to him. “I can’t even get an answer,”
he said bitterly. “If you’d only give it even thirty seconds … I’ve been out freezing my ass in that tunnel since before dawn and then caught in a downpour down south running after … and nobody even—”
“What about the mining disaster in Russia?” Tzippi called on her way in from the next room, her hand resting on her oversize belly. “Is that still pertinent?” When no one responded, she turned to Niva.
“What should I do about the Russian mines?” she asked.
“Keep it, maybe we’ll use it on the late-night broadcast,” Niva answered distractedly as she leafed through the pages emerging from the printer.
“And what about the Nazi gold?” Tzippi asked as she approached Hefetz. From up close the brown pregnancy splotches on her forehead were noticeable. “When did you plan that for?”
“Save the Russian mines for the week-in-review show, it’ll still be pertinent by Friday,” Erez promised her. “As for the Nazi gold, we need a filmed announcement but no sound. Leave it in.”
“What do you mean, leave the Russian mines for Friday?” Tzippi complained. “If I’m still at work on Friday, you people are going to have to deliver this baby right here!”
“So leave it with Rafael,” Hefetz instructed her. “He’s handling all the international news anyway, he’s taking over for you, isn’t he?”
“Rafael!” Tzippi shouted as she heaved herself with a loud sigh into a chair at the side of the room. “We need you in here—”
Michael glanced at the bespectacled young man with the intelligent expression, who looked to be about the age of his own son. Hefetz
slapped him on the back and said, “Listen, Rafael, we’ve got two American stories I’d like you to do voiceovers for. One’s about that shooting in a high school, a couple of teenagers who shot everybody up. Where was that again?”
“Colorado,” Rafael answered in a pleasant voice as he scrunched up his face, his eyebrows touching. “A place called Littleton, near Denver.
The school is called Columbine.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Hefetz said, as if he were really in the know about all the details. “And there’s another story about a new virus called Monkey Fox that’s threatening to wipe us all out. Have you heard anything about that?”
Rafael nodded. “There are some pretty good pictures of the fire in Australia, too.”
“Don’t need ’em,” Hefetz said. “Australia doesn’t interest us today.”
Turning to Erez, he said, “I understand there’s no financial report today, so how about having Rafael do a voiceover about the school in Colorado.”
“Tell me more about this virus,” Erez said to Rafael.
“It comes from monkeys,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Something that passes from monkeys to people, some disease.”
“How does it get transmitted?”
“Sexually,” Rafael answered.
“That’s by sex, too!?” Hefetz exclaimed, glancing at Niva, who was holding two telephone receivers, one on each ear. “In the end we’ll all wind up in a monastery.”
“You haven’t told me yet if you want the school shooting and the mining disaster,” Tzippi reminded him as she rubbed her swollen belly.
“Problem is, they’ll come one right after the other,” Erez said, thinking aloud.
“Virus?” Hefetz interjected. “You want the virus after that? What about the item about Scientology? Are you going to put that in?
Anything about cults is very interesting, or else I can go with the Nazi gold, Scientology, and the Colorado school shooting.”
Erez did not respond. Instead, he turned to Karen. “Come sit next to me, and we’ll get started,” he said, and the anchorwoman did as she was told. To Rafael he said, “Get upstairs and start editing.”
“Niva,” Hefetz called out, “get me Rubin on the line. I need to know what’s with his story about the doctors who cover up for Israeli intelligence operatives. Is it ready for today, or are we postponing it to tomorrow?”
“It’s not even for the news, it’s for his own program. Next week, I think,” Niva said, thrusting her hand into her thin red hair. “Anyway, I can’t get through to him, I’ve been trying. He’s at Benny Meyuhas’s house, and he’s not answering calls.”
“So,” Zadik said, addressing Michael, “I see you’ve become a perma-nent fixture in the News Department. You think that Israel Television is only the news? Come, let’s get out of here, nobody here has time for you now, they’re running full steam ahead. I’ll take you down to the canteen, that’s where everything important takes place anyway. Maybe they’ll even have a leftover Hanukkah doughnut for us. I love doughnuts. Not the American kind, but the Hanukkah kind, like my grandmother used to make.”
The two death notices were posted throughout the building, on walls and doors and everywhere, and still it seemed as though life was carrying on at its usual mad pace. The sound of the blessing over the first Hanukkah candle and the holiday song “Rock of Ages” as sung by a children’s choir could be heard blaring from several monitors along the way.
The canteen itself was so overrun with people that the children’s choir was nearly drowned out, and on top of all that, Dror Levin, the correspondent for political parties, who had come running in and pushed Michael and Zadik aside as they stood at the counter, could be heard shouting at the top of his lungs at a young man in a gray suit (“That’s the lawyer who was appointed assistant legal counsel last month,” Zadik explained): “Who do you think you are? How dare you throw that bullshit at me!” Dror Levin said, indicating the open booklet that the lawyer was holding. “What are you reading to me from that for? You’re brand-new here: you think you’ve got something to teach me about the Nakdi document?” In a calm and level voice the lawyer said, “Everything I said is written right here,” indicating the booklet, “and I quote: ‘An issue in which a correspondent or cameraman has a personal involvement and the results of which report he/she has prepared may have a direct effect on his/her private interests, his/her involvement disqualifies him/her
from covering the topic.’” He raised his eyes from the booklet. “That’s all I said, so if you have no personal involvement, then there’s no problem. I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” he concluded as he stuck the light blue booklet into a file he was carrying and made as if to leave.
Then he added, “If Member of Knesset Yossi Beilin invites you to his son’s bar mitzvah party … ,” and he spread his hands in lieu of finishing his sentence.
The correspondent said, “Well, since I am certainly guilty of this corrupt act, I guess I’ll just have to—” and
