Survival Of The Fittest

I knew she'd resumed teaching school and couldn't be this depressed with her students. So our visit had raked things up.

“Okay,” said Carmeli, sitting next to her and waving at some chairs on the other side of a glass coffee table.

We sat and Milo went through one of those little detective speeches full of sympathy and empathy and possibility that he hates to deliver but delivers so well. Carmeli looked angry but his wife seemed to relate a bit- shoulders straightening, eyes focusing.

I'd seen that before. Some people- usually women- respond to him immediately. He gets no satisfaction from it, always worried that he'll fail to produce. But he keeps delivering the speech, knowing no other way.

Carmeli said, “Fine, fine, we understand all that. Let's get on with it.”

His wife looked at him and said something in what I assumed was Hebrew. Carmeli frowned and tugged down at his tie. They were both good-looking people who seemed drained of their life-juices.

Milo said, “Ma'am, if there's anything you can-”

“We know nothing,” said Carmeli, touching his wife's elbow.

“My husband is right. There's nothing more we can tell you.” Only her mouth moved when she spoke. The brown dress tented and I could see no body contours beneath it.

“I'm sure you're right, ma'am,” said Milo. “The reason I have to ask is sometimes things occur to people. Things they think are unimportant so they never bring them up. I'm not saying that's actually the case here-”

“Oh for God's sake,” said Carmeli, “don't you think if we knew something we'd tell you?”

“I'm sure you would, sir.”

“I understand what you mean,” said Liora Carmeli. “Since my Iriti is… gone, I think all the time. Thoughts… attack me. At night, especially. I think all the time, I am always thinking.”

“Liora, maspeek,” Carmeli broke in.

“I think,” she repeated, as if amazed. “Stupid things, crazy things, monsters, demons, Nazis, madmen… sometimes I'm dreaming, sometimes I'm awake.” She closed her eyes. “Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.”

Carmeli's face was white with rage.

His wife said, “The strange thing is, Iriti is never in the dreams, only the monsters… I feel that she is there but I can't see her and when I try to… bring her face into the picture, it… flies away from me.”

She looked at me. I nodded.

“Iriti was my treasure.”

Carmeli whispered urgently to her in Hebrew again. She didn't seem to hear.

“This is ridiculous,” he said to Milo. “I request you to leave at once.”

Liora touched his arm. “The monster dreams are so… childish. Black things… with wings. When Iriti was little she was afraid of black, winged monsters- devils. Shedim, we call them in Hebrew. Ba'al zvuv-that means “lord of the flies' in Hebrew. Like that book about the schoolboys… it was a Philistine god that controlled insects and disease… Beelzebub in English. When Iriti was little, she had nightmares about insects and scorpions. She would wake up in the middle of the night and want to come to our bed… to help her I told her stories about shedim. The Bible- how we- the Philistines were… conquered… and their stupid gods… my culture- my family is from Casablanca- we have wonderful stories and I told them all to her… stories with children conquering monsters.”

She smiled. “And she stopped being afraid.”

Her husband's hands were blanched fists.

She said, “I thought I was successful because Iriti stopped coming to our bed.”

She looked at her husband. He stared at his trousers.

“When Irit got older,” said Milo, “was she afraid of anything?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I thought I'd done a good job with my stories.”

She let out a short, barking laugh, so savage it tightened my spine.

Her husband sat there, then shot to his feet and came back with a box of tissues.

Her eyes were dry but he wiped them.

Liora smiled at him and held his hand. “My brave little girl. She knew she was different… liked being pretty… once, when we lived in Copenhagen, a man grabbed her and tried to kiss her. She was nine, we were shopping for jeans and I was walking in front of her instead of with her because Copenhagen was a safe city. There was a museum, there, on the Stroget- the main shopping street. The Museum of Erotica. We never went in but it was always busy. The Danes are healthy about those things but perhaps the museum attracted sick people because the man-”

“Enough,” said Carmeli.

“- grabbed Iriti and tried to kiss her. An old man, pathetic. She didn't hear him- she had her hearing aid off, as usual, probably singing songs.”

“Songs?” said Milo.

“She sang to herself. Not real songs, her own songs. I could always tell because her head would move, up and down-”

“She stopped doing that a long time ago,” said Carmeli.

“When this man grabbed her,” said Milo, “how did she react?”

“She punched him and broke free and then she laughed at him because he looked so frightened. He was a little old man. I didn't even realize anything was wrong until I heard yelling in Danish and turned around and saw two young men holding the old man and Iriti standing there, laughing. They'd seen the whole thing, said the old man was crazy but harmless. Irit kept laughing and laughing. It was the old man who looked miserable.”

“That was Denmark,” said Carmeli. “This is America.”

Liora's smile vanished and she lowered her head, chastened.

“So you feel,” said Milo, “that Irit wasn't afraid of strangers.”

“She wasn't afraid of anything,” said Liora.

“So if a stranger-”

“I don't know,” she said, suddenly crying. “I don't know anything.”

“Liora-” said Carmeli, taking hold of her wrist.

“I don't know,” she repeated. “Maybe. I don't know!” She broke free of her husband's grasp and faced the wall, staring at the bare plaster. “Maybe I should have told her other stories, where the demons won, so you needed to be careful-”

“Ma'am-”

“Oh, please,” said Carmeli, disgusted. “This is idiotic. I insist you leave.”

He stomped to the door.

Milo and I got up.

“One more thing, Mrs. Carmeli,” he said. “Irit's clothes. Were they sent back to Israel?”

“Her clothes?” said Carmeli.

“No,” said Liora. “We sent only… she- when we- our customs- we use a white robe. Her clothes are here.” She faced her husband. “I asked you to call the police and when you didn't, I had your secretary call. They arrived a month ago and I kept them.”

Carmeli stared at her, bug-eyed.

She said, “In the Plymouth, Zev. So I can have them with me when I drive.”

Milo said, “If you don't mind-”

“Crazy,” said Carmeli.

“I am?” said Liora, smiling again.

“No, no, no, Lili, these questions.” More Hebrew. She listened to him calmly, then turned to us. “Why do you want the clothes?”

“I'd like to do some analyses,” said Milo.

“They've already been analyzed,” said Carmeli. “We waited months to get them back.”

“I know, sir, but when I take on a case I like to make sure.”