Murder in Jerusalem (36 page)

“Sroul, too, if brothers are measured in their willingness to come up with two million dollars,” Michael noted.

“In that sense, yes,” Rubin said. “I knew that if I asked him for the money, and if it was for a story by Agnon and not some of the usual political stuff or something too contemporary, that he'd give it.”

“You met with him,” Michael said as he consulted the spiral notebook in his hand, intentionally taking his time; he recalled exactly the dates marked in the secret files from Zadik's office, but he was listening to Rubin's heavy breathing and sensed the tension in his body even before Rubin stretched his legs. “You met with him exactly two years ago during Hanukkah, in Los Angeles.”

“I went to his house,” Rubin admitted. “Without phoning in advance. I waited for him, ambushed him really, I had the address from…from family of his in Israel, he had this relative in—never mind, I don't even remember. I knew he had five kids, I knew all along what was happening with him…you could say I'm the sentimental type, I couldn't accept the way he'd cut himself off. I don't take no for an answer, as you know from my work, from my program. My whole life, I've set my mind to something—anyway, I went there, waited for him, ambushed him, pleaded with him. He agreed. Even an ultra-Orthodox Jew can perform a good deed for a secular Jew! That's how he came to be the secret, silent producer. Nobody knew about him, our shadow producer. The agreement was that no one would ever know, and I had no intention of talking about it with anyone, but you already—I don't know how you found out—”

“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 Cinecittà 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 spontaneity, 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 do? In the end you get to the point where even when you
haven't
done anything…She asks you where you've been, with whom, when…in a line of work like mine, try explaining that you weren't…After all, I'm a man with a past, and Tirzah, I can understand…being in the position of the suspicious wife who spies on her cheating husband, well, there's something humiliating about all that, that role didn't suit her. In the end we split up, we couldn't find another way. So then…Benny had always loved her. I prefer…I preferred that she be with someone who really loved her. He'd remained faithful to her all through the years, without hope or expectations, he simply never married, even though he had plenty of opportunities.” Rubin's voice faded to nothing, but Michael remained silent until he resumed. “He had girlfriends, women, but nothing ever worked out. He waited and waited, and in the end he got Tirzah. I've already told you, he's not a flexible person. He can't compromise. On anything. He prefers having nothing at all to compromising in order to survive. This isn't something he'll tell you himself, but I know what I'm telling you is true. I know the man. Believe me, he hasn't harmed anyone.”

“What about Sroul?” Michael asked.

“What about him? If he's in Israel, I don't know anything about it. He hasn't made contact with me.”

“According to our records,” Michael said on a hunch, pretending to read from the spiral notebook, but in fact watching Rubin tense up from the corner of his eye, “he entered Israel two days ago, the day after Tirzah was killed.”

“Maybe he wanted to come to the funeral,” Rubin said. “I have no idea how he would have known about it, maybe from the newspaper—but I didn't see him there, at the funeral. You can check the video, since the funeral was filmed—”

“Did you inform him about Tirzah?”

“The truth? No, I didn't,” Rubin said, looking very guilty. “I didn't have time. I didn't manage it—”

“But somehow it seems he heard about it.”

“Maybe from Benny,” Rubin said, openly doubtful. “I don't see how…Benny wasn't in touch…but maybe if Tirzah was in touch with Sroul, then Benny might have phoned him.”

“Why, in fact, was she in contact with Sroul?” Michael asked.

“No idea,” Rubin responded. “I swear. Maybe to get money from him to finish the film up. Don't forget, she was in effect Benny's wife. I think she loved him, too.”

“Did she know that the funding for the film had come from Sroul?”

“No way,” Rubin answered emphatically. “No chance, she didn't know a thing. But maybe she got it into her head. Wait a minute,” he said as he looked at his watch and turned up the volume on the monitor. “I'd like to see this, not on the screen but live. Come with me downstairs to the studio if you want to or if you have to. They're making the announcement about Zadik, and Hefetz will speak. I want to watch it in the studio. Why not join me if you're planning to stick around?”

They stood waiting for the elevator, but Rubin quickly grew impatient and was about to take the stairs when the elevator arrived, and Rubin flung open the narrow door. Inside stood Hefetz, bare from the waist up, just shoving his arm into the sleeve of a dark blue shirt. Next to him stood a wild-haired, blushing young woman, a man's dark suit jacket flung over her shoulder and a makeup kit in her hand. “First put your shirt on,” they heard her saying before Rubin waved the elevator on and closed the door.