hear what was bothering him. But then, too, Eli had evaded him. Once he said, “Everything’s fine. Why?” and the second time had even answered, “Not so great,”
but had held back any details and hastened to change the subject.
Yaffa is right, Michael thought now as he looked at Rubin. His face had a certain Bogartian severity, the kind that women supposedly love because in their eyes it is only a mask for potential gentleness. It was clear both from the quiet way Rubin had spoken to Yaffa the day before on his way out of police headquarters and from the way he had
looked into her eyes until you could see her melting, that Rubin knew well the impression he made on women, though it was not clear whether he derived any special pleasure from that. There was a certain generosity in his eyes, which might have been vulnerability or weakness, but there was no escaping the powerful emotion that flowed from them.
“Are you generally in good health?” Michael asked. Rubin flinched, and cast Michael a look of surprise. “I mean, your heart, blood pressure, that sort of thing. According to this,” Michael indicated a form he had removed from a manila envelope containing a signed statement by Rubin taken during the investigation of Tirzah’s death, “you are fifty years of age, born in 1947. Is that correct?”
“Yes. I’ll be fifty-one in another two months,” he said, once again stretching his lips into a distorted smile, while his soft gray eyes suddenly clouded over. “Why are you interested in the state of my health?”
“It’s a standard question,” Michael explained. “We don’t wish to put people under unnecessary strain, like with Matty Cohen.”
“You people also believe Matty Cohen had a heart attack because of the investigation, and all the tension?” Rubin asked. “In his condition he shouldn’t have agreed to undergo the investigation. I specifically told Zadik—oh, well, what does all that matter now?” Rubin waved his hand dismissively and looked with anticipation at Michael.
Michael did not respond; instead, he repeated his question, while pretending to give his undivided attention to the papers in front of him. Did Rubin have any special health problems?
“No. None,” Rubin answered.
“Do you take any medications on a regular basis?”
Rubin flashed him a guarded look. “No, I don’t. Sometimes I take an aspirin for headache or back pain, and something for allergies when the seasons change—I’m allergic to cypress trees—but nothing out of the ordinary. How does all this concern Zadik?”
“We’re asking the same questions of everyone,” Michael stated,
“just as we asked everyone where exactly they were this morning when Zadik …”
“Yes,” Rubin said distractedly. “Eli—is that the guy’s name?—he already asked me that during questioning. That was considered an official interrogation, was it not? I told him I was right here, with Dr. Landau from B’tzelem, the human rights organization. We were working on the report for Friday’s program. Don’t you have that information?”
“Apparently I do,” Michael said, mimicking Rubin’s own distracted tone of voice. “But I don’t have all the reports in front of me at this moment, I only have—” He dug around inside the manila envelope and fished out a small spiral notebook. “So I’ve been asked to question you again.”
“I was here the whole time, as I told them,” Rubin said.
“And you’re certain—sorry for asking this again—you’re certain that you had no contact from here with Benny Meyuhas?”
“Absolutely positive,” Rubin answered, his body tense. “I wish I had—this whole situation is completely out of hand, believe me. I was looking for him like crazy before this, before they found Zadik. I wanted to tell him his production of Iddo and Eynam had been approved—that is to say, that he can complete it—but I couldn’t find him anywhere. I haven’t heard from him since yesterday. It just doesn’t make any sense to me, I’m worried about him. I can’t understand how he hasn’t even called me, at the very least—”
“And you have no idea who this person was who allegedly took him away?”
“Why ‘allegedly’?” Rubin asked, incredulous. “That’s what Sarah said. She was there in the house, wasn’t she?”
“Benny Meyuhas and Sarah have a very close relationship,” Michael noted.
Rubin shrugged. “Who knows?” he said. “People say that the relationship between a director and his actors is always close.”
“Oh, come on,” Michael said, “we’re not children here, you know what I mean.”
“Are you asking me or telling me?” Rubin countered.
“I’m asking you,” Michael said. “I’m asking you whether he spoke with you about this young woman, Sarah, and I’m asking you to tell me anything that comes to mind about the man who picked up Benny Meyuhas—who you think that could have been, even if there doesn’t seem to be any grounding in fact for your ideas. And I’m also asking you about Benny Meyuhas’s relationship with Zadik, and where you
think he might be, because under the present circumstances he is not only a suspect, it’s also possible that his life is in danger. You certainly understand that he is very shaky right now, that he could harm himself. You two are very close friends; this is no time to conceal things.”
“That’s true, we’re very close friends. Even more than that,” Rubin said. “We’re brothers. Benny Meyuhas is my brother.”
“You’re speaking metaphorically, right?”
“A brother you’ve chosen to be your brother is often closer than a biological brother,” Rubin said, lowering his gaze.
“You’ve known each other since you were kids,” Michael stated, his eyes on a photograph in the right-hand corner of the corkboard. It was the same photo of a school field trip he had seen, framed, at Benny Meyuhas’s house, featuring a youthful Benny and Rubin and a third friend, along with Tirzah.
“Since we were kids,” Rubin said, following his gaze. “I’m an only child, Benny, too. My parents were old: Holocaust survivors. My father died when I was twelve. My mother is still alive. Benny’s folks were old, too, I think one side of the family came from Turkey, and the other—I don’t remember, maybe Bukhara. Things were pretty tough in his home.
His parents didn’t have any children, and after ten years of marriage his father took another wife and had three daughters with her. Then suddenly Benny’s mother got pregnant and he was born. The father divided his time between the two houses and ran around trying to make a living to support two families. They were poor, we weren’t. We had reparation payments from Germany, they got welfare. Benny would come to my house, I would help him with his homework. We played soccer, that’s how it all started. We became inseparable.”
“And what about Sroul?” Michael asked, gazing at the photograph.
After a long pause Rubin sighed. “Yeah, Sroul, too. Who told you about Sroul?”
Michael did not respond.
“We met Sroul when we were fourteen, in the ninth grade. He was …
he came from a Revisionist household, his father had come from Iraq and married a Polish Jew; in Israel he was part of Menahem Begin’s inner circle, a member of the Irgun … I don’t remember exactly, I think he was in the Jewish Underground; wherever Begin was, he was there too. After that Sroul came along with us to the youth movement and the immigrant camps. Caused a big scandal in his house, they wanted him to be in the Beitar Youth Movement and all that… .” Rubin fell silent, then after several seconds, added, “But he doesn’t live in Israel any longer.”
“He left after the war,” Michael said. “Because of his injury.”
“He lives in Los Angeles, became ultra-Orthodox,” Rubin said bitterly. “At first we kept in touch, but it’s been years since …” Rubin’s voice faded out but Michael waited in silence. “We haven’t spoken in years,” Rubin said.
“Only Tirzah did,” Michael said simply, as if stating a fact. “She’s the only one who kept in contact with him all these years.”
“Tirzah!” Rubin said, astonished. “No way! What did Tirzah have to do with—”
“She was your girl, not just yours but Benny’s and Sroul’s too. That’s her in this photograph, isn’t it? The Three Musketeers and all that?”
“Sure, she was once, when we were young, but—”
