“You of anyone should know about that sort of thing,” Michael said, indicating the pile of cassette tapes by the foot of the table. “Your work is also based on investigations, and you’ve been at it for a while.
You yourself told me how you’d latched onto that doctor, and about the family of that Palestinian kid who was tortured.”
“That’s true,” Rubin said with a sigh. “But I really didn’t want Benny to know about this. Not Benny or anyone else because—you have to understand what a humiliation it is for a director of Benny Meyuhas’s caliber to be dealing with the junk he does here. They’ve given him the worst: religious programming, entertainment, kids—all of it. And once in a few years a film, usually a documentary, something neutral, meaningless, and he’s—”
“How did that happen?” Michael wondered.
“That’s Israel Television for you,” Rubin answered bitterly. “This isn’t exactly Cinecitta here, this place has really come down in the world… . Benny started working for Israel’s official television station right at its inception, and he had high hopes, he thought—at first he really did get to direct a few things, you can see for yourself in the archives, I even have a few of them—there was no video then, no video cameras, so I had them transferred to videocassettes just a few years ago. I can show you what a talented guy he is. But then little by little he got pushed aside, it’s been years since … He wasn’t capable of leaving, he wasn’t the self-starting type. He needed security, he’d pretty much given up; he was just sitting around waiting to retire. You can’t imagine how happy he was when Zadik called him in to inform him about Iddo and Eynam. Suddenly he’d reverted to what he’d been once, like when we were young, it was—”
“So he had no reason to bear a grudge against Zadik?” Michael asked.
“None whatsoever,” Rubin insisted. “On the contrary. I’ve already told you and I’ve told the district commander, Shorer, and I’ve told the police commissioner himself: no one in the world knows Benny better than I do. It’s not just that he could never harm another human being; he wouldn’t even hurt a fly! He didn’t have any reason to kill Zadik, it makes no sense for him to do something like that. There’s no way that Benny’s a murderer, he’d be incapable in any situation. He’d prefer to kill himself before killing anyone else, in fact—well, anyway, in light of the circumstances and everything you know about him, I guess I can tell you that he did try to commit suicide once. He swallowed pills because he thought he was about to be fired. He almost succeeded.
You have no idea how worried I am about him right now because—”
The telephone rang, putting a stop to his nervous prattle. Rubin fell silent and wiped his face; he stared at the phone, shrugged his shoulders, and let it continue ringing. “In any case, it’s not Benny,” Rubin said to the room at large. “If he calls, it will be to my cell phone.”
“Who exactly was responsible for … failing to make use of Benny’s talents, or, as you see it, for his humiliation?” Michael asked.
“There’s no one person,” Rubin said after a long moment of silence.
“Certainly not Zadik, if that’s what you’re hinting at. It’s more a matter of the state of the world today and the powers that are at work in it, not really about specific people here at Israel Television. It’s a question of ratings and money and compromises and power struggles and the nature and meaning of this medium—television—which has so much power, both to destroy and sometimes to build. And it’s about what’s happened to how Israel sees itself, and what Israel thinks about literature and art, about the writers Bialik and Agnon. And it’s about the fact that Israel Television has become so closely aligned with the government, which wants to believe that most Israelis are stupid and soulless. It’s a good thing that the current director general of the Israel Broadcasting Authority was not in charge when the money came in, he never would have given it—he would have confiscated it and used it for some grand spectacle, a big variety show. Or some big Hanukkah party. Oh well, I guess it’s stupid to expect—after all, there’s no real affinity between television and art in the commonly accepted meaning of the terms.”
“Really?” Michael asked. “Do you really believe that? On principle?
What about the BBC? What about people like Dennis Potter?”
“No, of course you’re right,” Rubin answered, then added, sadly:
“Television can certainly be an incubator for great art. The problem is what’s become of us, and television is the symbol, the place where you can sense it most clearly, the nation’s conscience. Anyone sitting here like me can see it: our conscience has totally calcified.”
There was silence for a moment, then Rubin said quietly, “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, it’s all obvious. Did you learn anything new from what I’ve just said?”
“Zadik ran Israel Television for the past three years,” Michael said,
“but before him there were—”
“It didn’t work,” Rubin declared. “People want to survive in the system, they can’t push for a production that uses up the Drama Department’s entire budget. They told him to do something less …
less bombastic; that was one of the terms they used to describe it.
They told him, ‘Adapt a short novel, some contemporary short story, something like what Uri Zohar did with Three Days and a Child by A. B.
Yehoshua, or Ram Levi’s Khirbet Khaza’a. A short film for television, thirty, forty minutes tops.’”
“That didn’t suit him?”
“Actually, it did, and he made a few attempts: a story by Yaacov Shabtai, an independent screenplay. I can show you. But his dream was—” Rubin opened a side drawer in his desk and removed three cassettes held together with a rubber band. “This is the unfinished material, I’m keeping several copies of it.”
“Iddo and Eynam, ” Michael pondered aloud. “Ultimately, it’s the story of a love triangle. One woman and two men who compete with one another in every sphere.”
“You’re familiar with the text?” Rubin asked, dubious. Michael nodded. “It’s probably been a while since you read it,” Rubin said. “If you read it now, you would read it differently. In any event, Benny saw it in a completely different way, in his eyes it was a story of … you know?
He wrote something about it, let’s see if I can find it—” He emptied
the drawer. “I’ll find it,” he assured Michael. “He sees it as a story of Eastern Jewish heritage and how civilization—the power of the intellectuals, the academics—has suppressed the originality, the spontane-ity, the spirit and the sentiment of the people. That sort of thing. He thinks that Zionism made a huge mistake by aligning itself with Western civilization. But if you ask me what I really think, I’ll tell you it was the mystery, the conundrum, the depth of the story that caught his eye from a visual standpoint. He simply wanted to deal with the greatness of it… .” Rubin’s voice slowly faded. He shrugged instead of attempting to explain.
“Allow me, for a moment,” Michael said slowly, “to be conventional.”
“Be my guest,” Rubin said. “Would you like some water?” Without waiting for an answer, he rose from his chair and pulled a bottle of water from under his desk, along with two Styrofoam cups. “It could be refreshing,” he said, then chuckled softly. “I don’t mean the water, I mean that if you don’t ask me some kind of conventional question, you’ll totally ruin my stereotypes about the police.”
“We’re talking about a man who for the past few years lived with a woman you loved your entire life, a woman who was once your wife but who abandoned you. That didn’t affect your relationship with Benny Meyuhas?”
“No,” Rubin said. “I keep hearing that question over and over these past few days, ever since Tirzah … is no longer with us. There hasn’t been a policeman or a doctor or a colleague who hasn’t asked it, either directly or indirectly, it’s really amazing how … how unimaginative people can be. Truly, people can only imagine themselves, their own lives. They can’t fathom that human beings are varied, different, that they think or feel in ways different from their own.”
“There were no strains in your relationship at all?”
“I can’t explain it,” Rubin said, fatigued. “I have no explanation. Do I need one? I loved them both, Benny and Tirzah. My marriage to Tirzah ended because of things between the two of us, which I have no desire to discuss right now, and in any event you’ve undoubtedly heard … I saw you talking with Niva, and she doesn’t exactly keep the matter a secret,” he added bitterly.
“You’re referring to the boy?” Michael asked.
“Tirzah didn’t know about that, I hope she didn’t know about it, I only wanted … I wanted to save her the grief.” It seemed as though Rubin’s cheeks suddenly sank, that his face had caved inward in pain.
“But there were other matters. You stand there facing your wife, time after time she wants to know. She’s heard rumors, she’s seen things, she’s felt things. You answer. You lie, of course you lie, what else are you going to
