Tzilla, who was interrogating Hefetz at that moment, would take issue with this and that when she watched the video recording later, using her criticism to vent her frustrations. But Lillian managed to continue: “What we discovered was that she does, in fact, take digoxin, and that she should have had eight ampoules in her cupboard. But there were only four.”
Rubin spread his arms in an elaborate gesture of surprise and helplessness, then let them fall noisily to his lap. “I certainly have no control over that,” he said as though registering a complaint. “Is that my responsibility, too?”
“Well, we figured you could surely help us out,” Lillian said. “We wondered how it could be that two evenings ago you visited your mother,” she said, glancing at her papers as though she did not already know what was written there by heart. “It says here you saw her the day before at seven o’clock, and then suddenly, the next morning, the digoxin had disappeared.”
“I don’t know anything about that digoxin,” Rubin said impatiently.
“And when exactly was I at my mother’s at seven in the evening?
Which day?”
“No,” Lillian hastened to amend, “not seven in the evening. Who said evening? Seven in the morning. You were there at seven the next morning, the night after Tirzah was killed.”
“All right,” Rubin conceded, “I visited her in the morning on my way to work. I wanted to see if she was … she loved Tirzah, my mother was very attached to her. I wanted to know, I was afraid they would tell her about Tirzah or she’d hear about it on the news—”
“No, you’re misunderstanding me,” Lillian persisted. “Not only did you visit her, but after that visit the ampoules of digoxin suddenly disappeared. So we were thinking—”
“I don’t know what you want from me,” Rubin said, annoyed.
“What would I want her digoxin for?”
Lillian sat up straight in her chair, her hands clasped on the desk, her fingers interlaced. “Matty Cohen was taking digoxin, too, just like your
mother. Matty Cohen died of an overdose of digoxin. Did you know that?” Lillian asked with sincere interest, just as she had been taught.
“No,” Rubin answered, furious, “I did not know that. Sorry if that surprises you. Is digoxin such a rare drug?”
“No, I wouldn’t say it was,” Lillian said, “it’s a drug that regulates heart rate, the drug you purchased for your mother and which you now suddenly don’t know anything about.”
“It could be that I got mixed up,” Rubin admitted.
“And what about at six in the evening, or whenever it was?” Lillian asked.
“What? What about six in the evening?” Rubin asked, completely confused. He glanced at his watch. “Why don’t you tell me where Benny is? Why don’t you answer my questions about him? I want to speak with Benny, and at the rate you’re going—”
“No, I’m talking about the second time you left the building with permission,” Lillian said, ignoring his outburst. “You said it was at six o’clock?”
“What do you want from me?” Rubin exclaimed with the obvious antagonism of a person being pursued. “God,” he cried out in anguish,
“it was with a whole crew: a cameraman and a soundman, everyone.
We went to Umm-Thuba, do you know about Umm-Thuba?” His tone shifted from nervous agitation to condescension. (“Pure aggression,”
Tzilla would call it later when they listened to the tape and watched the video featuring Rubin’s face, drained of color, and Lillian’s back.
“She made him completely lose his composure,” Tzilla would say with admiration and not a word of criticism against Lillian.) But throughout the interrogation Lillian was tenser than ever at the thought that Tzilla would join the group behind the curtain, watching her every move, eager to see her fail. It wasn’t that the process of interrogating a suspect was foreign to her, not only in her position as an investigator for the Youth Department as an expert on drug users, but also since she had interrogated dealers and parents and anyone else who passed through Narcotics. But now they were listening to her from the other side of the wall. (Tzilla had told her, without looking her in the eye, that this was a “crucial interrogation.” This made Lillian regard her and think, I’m sure you don’t want me to be the one doing it, but she did not say a word; “I’m also sure they forced you to take me on here,” she thought, mortified, until she reminded herself that no one here, not even Tzilla, could read her mind. Even Michael Ohayon could not do that.)
“Of course,” Lillian said shortly to Rubin, as though they were both aware that he was needlessly wasting their time. “But after all, you sent the crew back, and you returned alone. You weren’t with them the whole time.”
“After we made our inquiries and completed the filming,” Rubin said, “I wanted time to speak in private with the mother of the boy from that village. When you talk with someone in private, without a crew and away from the cameras, everything looks different. She cooperated completely, it was very important for the report. I didn’t know then that they would be relieving me of my duties on the show—”
“So you stayed on to speak with the mother of the boy who’s the star of your report?” Lillian scanned her papers to verify his statement.
“Yes, it’s a program about doctors who cover up for—”
“Yes, I know,” Lillian said. “We are well aware of which program you were filming, the one about the Palestinian youth tortured by the Israeli secret services. That’s what you’ve been spending all your time on lately, isn’t that so?” She was trying to sound provocative; while Rubin remained silent, she could not help noticing the slight twitch in his eye. (Earlier, Balilty had told her, “Don’t forget to rile him up a little, that always brings out the best in them.”) “We know how deeply devoted you are to the struggle for human rights, that’s your big issue, isn’t it? You’re pursuing justice in the case of a Palestinian youth who threw a Molotov cocktail—”
“He’s a child, not a youth,” Rubin protested.
“Sixteen is a youth, nearly the age of an Israeli soldier,” Lillian insisted. “Tell me, when they attack Jewish citizens of settlements over the Green Line, are you this perturbed? The truth: if they had picked on a sixteen- year-old settler youth, would you have made a program about him?”
“You’re mixing everything up,” Rubin complained. “That’s cheap demagoguery. But I’m accustomed to that nonsense, I hear it all the time.
It’s like I’ve already said twice before: first of all, we’re not talking about
picking on someone here, we’re talking about very serious physical torture. You don’t even want to know the details, believe me… .
Furthermore, if the settlers weren’t occupying territory, if they were living on land that belonged to them, inside the Green Line, then nobody would toss Molotov cocktails at them. And anyway, my program deals in a general manner with human rights abuses and the resulting injustices perpetrated on—”
“—the Palestinian people,” Lillian said, completing his sentence.
“Human rights abuses and the resulting injustices perpetrated solely on the Palestinian people, and not on anyone else; that’s what the viewer sees when he watches your show.”
“Can I go see Benny now?” Rubin asked, repulsed. “I think this argument is—this is not the reason you brought me here, is it?”
“No, it isn’t,” Lillian admitted. “It’s to find out about that missing hour and a half.”
“What hour and a half ?”
“From six-thirty until eight,” Lillian said. “From the time the crew departed from Umm-Thuba, when you told them you would follow them later. And that’s exactly what you did. You returned an hour and a half later.”
“I just told you,” Rubin said, exploding, “that I stayed to talk to the mother. And the boy’s sister, too, you can—”
“—ask them?” she said, smiling sweetly. “They’re already here, under interrogation. Don’t concern yourself about it. But we want to ask you, not them.”
Rubin stood up and pushed his chair back. At the same moment, the door flew open, and Tzilla was standing there, pale-faced. She signaled to Lillian to join her in the corridor. Lillian stepped outside, leaving Rubin alone. The video later showed that he did not move from his place, did not even try to look at the papers on the desk; it
