I opened the door. It was Greta. A look of horror came over her face, and her hand flew to her mouth.
"Adam, dear God, what happened?"
"Hello, Greta. I had a little trouble."
"Not so little, I think. Can I come in?"
I moved aside, and she entered the apartment. Her nose wrinkled. "We need some air in here." She opened a window, looked at my bed, and asked, "Were you expecting a burglar?"
She had seen the gun. In my rush to the bathroom, I had left it on the sheet.
"A policeman, actually."
Her eyebrows shot up. "I think you'd better tell me everything, Adam."
I massaged my pounding temples. "It's a long story. What are you doing here, Greta?"
"I was worried about you. You were distraught when you stormed out the other day, and then I didn't see you for a few days. I came over here yesterday and the day before, but you didn't answer your door."
"I'm surprised you cared enough to make the effort."
She looked insulted. "Why wouldn't I?"
"You made it clear what you thought of what I did in Jerusalem. Like Ben-Gurion said on the radio, I'm one of the terrorists who tried to topple Israeli democracy."
Greta shook her head, an expression of sadness on her face. "Oh, Adam. You're so hard on yourself sometimes, you think the rest of the world has to be the same way. Well, I'm not. If I'm disappointed in you for something you did, it doesn't mean I've stopped caring about you." She set her bag on my dining table, stepped forward, and engulfed me in her embrace, my chest mashed against her large bosom, my head in the crook of her neck. It was wonderful, like returning home after a cold, arduous journey, and tears sprang to my eyes. But then Greta squeezed me a little too strongly, and I groaned and pulled away.
"What is it?" she asked.
"My ribs." I sat down heavily on one of the two chairs in my apartment, bending my head, struggling to regain my breath.
"What's wrong with them?"
"They're sore."
"Quite a bit more than sore, I'd say. And your nose, your face." She touched my cheek and then my forehead, just like my mother used to do when I was a boy. "You're a furnace, Adam. You need to go to the hospital right away."
"No hospital."
"This is no time for stubborn manliness. You're obviously very ill."
"No hospital, Greta."
"Why not?"
I fixed my eyes on hers. "You can't have a gun handy in a hospital."
That stopped her cold. She looked at the gun, then back at me. I thought she'd ask me again to tell her what happened, but she had other priorities. "If you refuse to go to the hospital, I'll get a doctor to come here."
"No."
"You can keep the gun in your pocket until he leaves."
"He may decide I have to be hospitalized. I can't risk that."
"That means you're in really bad shape. Even worse than what shows."
I thought about the blood in my urine, the busted ribs Kulaski had punched, the high fever, my bone-deep exhaustion. Greta was right. I was in a terrible state. But what scared me more than my health was the chance, however slim, that Kulaski would decide that the pain he'd inflicted on me and my banishment from Jerusalem weren't enough, that he needed to pay me another visit. Even here in Tel Aviv, he terrified me. He'd become a monster, a demon that might appear at any time, any place. And the worst thing that I could imagine was being helpless if he came after me, like I'd been in Jerusalem. That was a scenario I simply couldn't tolerate. I needed to be armed. I had to be able to fight.
"I have medicine," I said, suddenly remembering the two bottles in my pocket. I showed them to her with almost childish pride. "This one's for the fever; this is for the pain."
Greta took the bottles from my hand and studied them dubiously. "Who gave you these?"
"A doctor in Jerusalem."
"Jerusalem? So that's where you've been these past few days?"
"Don't look at me like that. I wasn't there to protest. I was working a case."
Greta nodded, held up the pill bottles. "When was the last time you took one of these?"
Embarrassed, I explained that I hadn't taken any yet, that I'd been sleeping, and that you needed to take them with food. Greta told me to wait a minute, stepped into the kitchen, and returned with a scowl of disapproval.
"You have nothing to eat."
"I'll do some shopping later."
"You?" She snorted, shaking her head, her nest of salt-and-pepper curls dancing. "You can't even sit straight. You still have your coat and shoes on, which means you slept in them. You should have come to the café instead of here. I would have helped you."
