I knew that Birnbaum was right. I had only met Gafni once, but that was enough to know what kind of man he was. Going against him meant taking a huge risk, with heavy potential penalties. It was a risk I did not want to take.
But then I thought of Moria Gafni. Not the twenty-three-year-old woman with skeletons in her closet who took her own life, but the innocent sixteen-year-old girl she'd been when she came home one day to find her mother dead.
Some deaths are cleaner than others. Taking pills and lying in bed to die is neat; slicing your wrists is messy. The human body holds a prodigious quantity of blood. Open your veins and it all comes out. It spreads around farther than most people would imagine. It's a hard sight for a grown-up; for a teenager, it could leave a permanent mark. And if it's your mother whose blood it is, and if in the center of that pool of red you see her body—well, that would change you fundamentally and forever.
I thought I understood one thing now: why Moria had opted for pills instead of blowing her own brains out with her gun. She'd seen a violent suicide, a bloody scene, and her work in the war had educated her as to what gunshots can do to the human body. She'd wanted a cleaner ending for herself. A cleaner ending than the one her mother had bequeathed Moria's sixteen-year-old eyes.
"I'll take my chances," I heard myself say, the words tripping out of my mouth before my conscious mind had time to fully register their utterance.
"What does that mean?" asked Birnbaum.
"It means that I'm going to get to the bottom of this, Shmuel. I'm going to do my job. I'm going to discover why Moria Gafni killed herself. And I'll make sure whoever is to blame pays for it, even if it's Baruch Gafni."
"What are you talking about, 'whoever is to blame'?" Birnbaum said, and I remembered that he didn't know the full details. He hadn't read Moria's note. As far as he was concerned, this was your run-of-the-mill suicide.
"Never mind, Shmuel."
"Don't you never mind me," he said. His voice was alert now, his professional curiosity fully piqued. I could picture his eyes sparkling with excitement behind his glasses as he picked up the scent of a fresh story. "Come on, spill."
"There's no need to, remember? You said there would be no public interest in this case, no matter the outcome," I said, reminding him of what he had told me in his car just before I went to meet Baruch Gafni.
"I have a feeling I should revise my earlier statement."
"Do yourself a favor and ignore it. You were perfectly right, Shmuel. As you said, Baruch Gafni is not a man you want as an enemy."
"I can take care of myself, Adam."
"I believe you. And I can do the same."
"I'm not the one in danger of being locked up in prison."
He had a point. I was more vulnerable than Birnbaum. He did not have the threat of imprisonment hanging over him, and his position and connections afforded him a measure of influence and protection that I lacked.
But that didn't matter. What mattered was Paula's accusations echoing in my head. For the time being, Moria was an innocent woman who'd gone through some bad things and died much too young. I did not want Birnbaum to start nosing around this case. I did not want him digging into Moria's life. I did not want her life exposed in the pages of Davar.
"Be that as it may," I said. "I don't see how you could write about this, even if there was something worth writing. Gafni came to you for help. He trusted your discretion. Imagine what will happen if you end up writing about him or his daughter? No one will trust you, Shmuel. And no one talks to a journalist they don't trust."
He was quiet for a few seconds; then he let out a grunt of frustration. He knew I was right.
He said, "I also vouched for your discretion, Adam, remember?"
"I remember. Don't you worry, I'll be as discreet as possible."
"As possible?"
"Yes, as possible. As much as I can. But not for Baruch Gafni's sake, and not for yours either."
"For yourself, then?"
"No," I said. "Not for myself. I'll be doing it for Moria."
When I opened my eyes, the hotel room window was filled with the gray light of a January sun. I had woken late after sleeping the night through, dreamless. I had Daniel Shukrun to thank for that. I did not know why and did not care to speculate, but for me, violent days led to peaceful nights. It had been that way since the war in Europe ended.
Most other nights were filled with vicious nightmares of Auschwitz, real and assumed and imagined, memories and ghosts and human monsters that wouldn't go away or die. By charging me in Moria's apartment and falling victim to my fists, Shukrun had granted me a night of uninterrupted sleep. I was grateful, particularly because I had worried about my screams waking the other guests.
The sagging mattress squeaked as I shifted to a sitting position. The room smelled stuffy, so I opened the window, and cold air flowed in, raising goosebumps on my arms. Looking outside, I saw the cloud cover had lightened further. The air smelled clean and fresh.
I went down the hall to the bathroom and was gratified to see the faint pink hue of my urine. My kidney was on the mend. I washed my face and shaved and looked at myself in the small mirror above the sink. I looked the same as I did on any other day. Not like a man who the day before had felt as though his world had flipped over itself. Life was pulling me along, like the rest of Israel.
The lobby was empty. No trace of the clerk. Out on the street, the sun was bright and sharp, like a light beam shining through a clean pane of glass. Either the rain had cleaned the air, or my eyes needed to adjust to the sunlight after a few gloomy days.
I had breakfast at a café. Smoked my first cigarette of the day over coffee. I thought of Greta and my chessboard. I thought of Sima Vaaknin. I thought of Reuben. I thought of Moria. I thought of Israel negotiating with Germany. The food turned sour in my stomach.
I went to the hospital. Thankfully, Paula wasn't there. Nor did I see Naomi Hecht or Anat Schlesinger, though they could have been in one of the rooms or somewhere else on the premises. I asked a passing nurse where I might find Dr. Leitner, and she pointed at a silver-haired thin man talking to another nurse near the end of the hall. I walked over there and waited a few feet away while Dr. Leitner regaled the nurse with a story of a surgery he'd recently performed. Way he told it, he hadn't just fixed and stitched a boy up, he'd rebuilt him from scratch. The nurse looked suitably impressed, but I noticed her fingers were drumming on the outside of her thigh; she was eager for her boss to quit blabbing and release her.
Coming to her aid, I cleared my throat loudly and said, "Dr. Leitner?"
Leitner shot me an annoyed look, his mouth still open. I'd interrupted him mid-sentence. He was around fifty, with thinning hair, eyes like pebbles, and one of those diamond-shaped faces that taper sharply from wide cheekbones to a pointed chin.
"Yes?" he snapped.
"Sorry to burst in on your conversation." I smiled politely at the doctor and sneaked a wink at the nurse. "My name is Adam Lapid. I would like to talk to you for a few minutes."
Leitner's small mouth compressed to the shape of a hard ball. "I'm in the middle of something, Mr... eh..." He hadn't caught my name. "I'll be doing rounds in a half hour. We can talk about your child then."
"I'm not the father of any of your patients," I said. "My name is Adam Lapid, and I want to talk to you about Moria Gafni."
Leitner narrowed his eyes. His forehead was creased with wrinkles that reminded me of suture marks. "What's your interest in her?"
