"Is that your case, this murder?"
"No. I'm working a suicide. The dead woman worked with the murder victim."
"If you have any information, Adam, you should go to the police."
"I don't have anything. No evidence of any kind. All I've got is a hunch. I need to read the file to see if it's just that or something more. Can you help me out?"
Reuben thought for a moment. "I can try, but I'm not making any promises. Give me the name and date, and I'll see what I can do."
I told him the date of the shooting and that the victim's name was Dr. Shapira, then sheepishly admitted I did not know his first name. The way I had bungled my conversation with Paula, I was lucky to know as much as I did. But Reuben made no comment on the incompleteness of the information I gave him. He simply read it back to me to make sure he had it right, then asked me how I was.
"Fine," I said. "I'm fine."
"You were in the demonstration in Jerusalem." It wasn't a question as much as an attempt to verify a near certainty.
"How did you know?"
"I assumed as much." A pause, laden with static and unspoken questions, and perhaps also accusations. Finally, he asked, "How are you really, Adam?"
"I'm fine, I told you."
"You don't sound like it," he said, in that caring voice of his. This short, slim man with the spirit of a lion and a heart as pure as spring water. This man who had saved my life and was always there when I needed him.
I enjoyed talking to him, usually, but now I couldn't get off the phone fast enough. A terrible fear had me in its claws, a fear that at any second, Reuben would express his disappointment in me—joining Birnbaum and Greta and most of the Israeli public, not to mention David Ben-Gurion. Right then, I felt utterly alone, more alone than at any moment since I'd arrived in Israel.
Shutting my eyes, cold sweat blooming along my hairline, clasping the phone with fingers that had abruptly turned clammy, I said in a rush, "It's the line, Reuben. Just the line. I'm all right. I gotta go. Someone is waiting to use the phone. I'll call you tomorrow morning, okay?"
Before he could answer, I tore the receiver from my ear and dropped it into its cradle as though it were a piece of hot coal. I stood still by the bar, the voices of the other patrons streaming past my ears without registering, as though I were a stranger in a strange land and Hebrew was a foreign language.
You coward, I thought. You miserable, pathetic coward.
"Dammit!" I cried, forming a fist with my right hand and slamming it down on the bar like a hammer. The blow rattled my untouched coffee cup, and part of the liquid sloshed over the rim and onto the bar. Someone to my left called, "Hey!" and the proprietor stomped over, scowling. "What the hell are you doing? What's the matter with you?"
I looked at his hostile face, into his dark, distrusting eyes, and opened my mouth to explain myself to him, to plead my case to this absolute stranger. Just like I had done with Greta, with Birnbaum, and again and again during the past two days, half-consciously, with myself. But he wouldn't have understood. Not even if he despised Ben-Gurion, hated the idea of negotiating with Germany. And all the other patrons, now silent and watching, would join him in his condemnation of me.
The words died deep in my throat. I closed my mouth, my face hot with shame, and I swept my eyes across the small café, stumbling over the loaded stares of the other patrons. Without looking at the proprietor, I dug another coin from my pocket, dropped it on the bar, murmured, "I'm sorry," and staggered to the door and through it into the cold street.
With my hands shoved deep in my pockets, I hurried, almost running, further east, head angled down to avoid the eyes of passersby. My side throbbed with my haste. My heart pounded. My back prickled with the insane sense that the eyes of the men from the café were still on me. Only when I turned the corner onto Strauss Street did I pause, catching my breath.
It was drizzling, sharp little droplets stinging my face. I lit a cigarette, watched the smoke as the wind whipped it away into nothingness. It reminded me of the gas the police had used against us the other night.
When the cigarette was done, I tossed the stub into the road and walked on south, passing Bikur Hulim Hospital, the street descending steeply, pine and cypress trees dotting both sidewalks. I didn't need to ask for directions; I'd been to Café Atara on one of my previous visits to Jerusalem.
I stopped at the corner of Jaffa and Strauss, outside Maayan Shtub, the large clothing store, and waited for a traffic cop on an elevated platform in the middle of the intersection to signal for me to cross. On the other side of the road began King George Street.
The house on the corner, number 2, carried a plaque commemorating the founding of the street in 1924. Herbert Samuel, the British high commissioner, had attended. The plaque was in three languages: Hebrew on the left; Arabic on the right; and in the middle, English, like a buffer to stop the other two from tearing each other apart.
One night in 1948, Lehi members had changed all the street signs along King George, renaming the street King David. Following a formal request from the British government after Israel had secured its independence, the original name was restored.
Down King George was Frumin House, where the debate in the Knesset neared its end, where I prayed that honor and good sense would prevail and the government would lose the vote. It had to. Despite everything. The alternative was unbearable.
I moved on, past Yampolski Pharmacy; Allenby Café, from which wafted the scent of latkes; and the Talitha Kumi building, which until the Second World War had been a school for girls run by German nuns, and now hosted a variety of businesses, offices, and studios.
Approaching the corner of King George and Ben Yehuda, with Frumin House about a hundred meters ahead, I saw half a dozen police vehicles of various sizes. Ranged across the intersection and the street beyond was a mass of officers behind barbed-wire barricades, armed and watchful, ready for the resumption of hostilities, though there was no sign of any.
Suddenly, I was seized by an acute dread that one of them would recognize me from the other night. That an officer would point his finger and yell, "There's one of the bastards. Let's get him!"
But no one pointed. No one yelled. In fact, none of the cops paid me any mind. Still, I was relieved when I turned onto Ben Yehuda Street, out of their sight.
Heading east again, I realized I was tracing the same path I had the other night, only in reverse. I had walked this street as part of the crowd of demonstrators en route to the Knesset, with Menachem Begin's speech resounding in my brain.
But now the crowd was gone. There were no banners. No thudding mass of feet. No coats with a yellow star pinned to their breast. No eyes glowing with insult, grief, and determination. There were still a few anti-government posters here and there—plastered on walls, on a noticeboard, a couple nailed to trees, all of them wet to near illegibility—but other than that, no sign of the recent upheaval, of the argument still raging.
I felt like a soldier retreating from a battlefield after a defeat. But no. It was not over yet. The Knesset had not yet decided. There was still hope.
Café Atara stood near the center of Ben Yehuda Street, at number 7. The sign above the entrance displayed a triple-pronged crown over a steaming cup of coffee, with the café's Hebrew name floating on the steam. Each of the three prongs doubled for the letter A, with the letters T and R printed in the spaces between, together spelling the café's name in English, a relic of the time when a sizable proportion of its clientele had been made up of British soldiers and officials.
The space inside was large, longer than wide, with a short counter on the left side and pastries under glass at the far end. And in between, a scattering of square tables that could sit four, with straight-backed chairs around them.
The café was nearly full. I felt underdressed. Many of the men wore suits and ties. Government officials, or maybe employees of the Jewish Agency, whose building was a short walk away on King George.
I found a table and sat facing the entrance. I checked my watch. I was early. There was still time for Naomi Hecht to arrive.
I ordered a coffee and drank it slowly. Atara boasted of the finest coffee in Israel, and it wasn't bad, but it didn't hold a candle to Greta's. My heart gave a twinge when I thought of Greta, how she'd looked when she said, How could you, Adam? after I'd told her I'd participated in the charge on the Knesset. I gritted my teeth and pushed the memory away. Naomi Hecht would be here soon. I needed to focus.
The waiter came by, asking if I wanted a newspaper, but I declined. I did not want to read any more about the government's projected triumph.
When I finished my coffee, it was already ten minutes past the appointed time at which Naomi Hecht had said she'd meet me. I smoked a cigarette, telling myself to be patient. When the cigarette was done, she'd still not arrived. The waiter asked if I wanted to order anything else. I said I was waiting for someone; she would be arriving shortly. He gave a little bow and moved off. I thought I caught a little smirk on his lips. He'd seen his share of hopeful, delusional men waiting for women who never showed up.
