A Possibility of Violence (23 page)

Nothing of what he said was correct.

And what crushed Chaim's wall of silence wasn't Avraham's outburst. Jenny never cheated on him, and if she had cheated on him, he wouldn't have touched her.

A minute or two passed before the door opened again and he saw the older cop who before had held Ezer's shoulder. Only after the fact did he understand that the blow to the door may have been a signal of some sort. The older cop said to Avraham, “You're needed out here for a moment,” and Avraham said to him, “Not now,” and the cop came in and whispered something in his ear.

Chaim was left alone in the room.

The vulgar questions that Avraham taunted him with about Jenny hovered in the air.

The pain inside him was different now. More horrible, actually. This is what the children would hear if he continued his silence.

You found her in bed with someone that day? And you can't get it up anymore, right?

Avraham came back, he didn't know exactly when because there was no clock in the room, and sat down on the table, in front of Chaim's chair. It seemed like he had calmed down.

Suddenly he extended his hand and touched Chaim's chin with his fingertips, trying to lift his head. His voice was almost soft when he said to him, “Chaim, don't you understand that nothing will save you anymore? You're lost,” and Chaim tried to prevent the words from reaching him without covering his ears with his hands, and instead of asking Avraham not to touch him, different words came out of his mouth. He again asked in a voice suffused with shame, “Why did you bring Ezer here?” and Avraham said, “Your son told us everything, Chaim. Do you hear me? He told us everything. And you knew the whole time that he saw.”

 

CHAIM WANTED TO GET UP AND
lay him down on the table and beat the crap out of him, but his body was paralyzed with shock and he could do no more than lift his eyes.

He asked, “Who saw?” and Avraham answered, “You know that Ezer saw you take her down in the suitcase. Don't pretend you didn't know. Because of that you felt it was urgent to go to the Philippines with them. It took me a while to understand why you wanted to take them to Manila, but in the end I understood.” He didn't touch Sara's chin with his fingertips again.

The inner pain had disappeared entirely, and from that moment on, Chaim thought about nothing other than what Ezer saw that night.

And at first he didn't pay any attention to the things the detective was saying about the trip. Had Avraham lied to him? How could he have known then? He thought that maybe he lied, but Ezer really had said some strange things about the suitcase that was found by the daycare. Chaim remembered that the boy had lain in his bed in the evening, on his back, in that frozen position that frightened him, when he told Chaim for the first time that his first father knew who put the suitcase there and that he was forbidden from revealing it to others. Ezer's words gave rise to a vague anxiety in Chaim, but he couldn't imagine how this might be connected to the suitcase. What troubled him, he thought, was the mention of the first father. And in the days that followed, Ezer barely spoke and was guarded and wary around him, and then he told Chaim that his first father had helped Jenny escape at night with a suitcase and said to him that she wouldn't return. But afterward he stopped mentioning the first father, and Chaim also stretched the thread across the door to their room at night, and in the mornings it became clear to him that Ezer hadn't gotten up in his sleep.

And on the night he murdered Jenny he made sure that the two of them didn't wake up.

“He can't have seen that,” he said to Avraham without thinking, and the detective responded immediately, “But that's exactly what happened, Mr. Sara. Unfortunately for you, and for him. And you knew very well that he saw you. It won't help you to pretend otherwise, because he told us not only what he saw but that he told you, too.”

What if all this was true?

If he could have a clear answer to this question, it's possible he'd confess immediately.

Yet it seemed to him that everything he did that night he did without making a sound. He opened the blinds in order to let a bit of light into the dark room and packed up Jenny's clothes in the small suitcase, and then he took the suitcase down to the car. And on the way he checked to see if the boys were asleep. Had he made a noise and woken Ezer when he closed the door behind him? He remembered distinctly that the door hadn't creaked. Jenny was still on the floor in the bedroom, rolled up in a blanket that he'd found in the closet.

But it seemed to him that he had peeked into the boys' room again when he returned, and that the two of them hadn't moved. When he left the second time, carrying Jenny in his arms, he locked the door with the key and didn't pause there to hear if they had woken up because he was in a hurry to get to the car. Only when he started driving did he notice that it was getting late and he sped up in order to get back before the children woke up, until he realized he didn't want to attract the attention of a traffic cop and slowed down. He returned to Holon at a quarter to seven, and as it turned out Shalom was the one who was already awake. Not Ezer. He turned on the television and sat in front of it on the floor in the living room and asked him, “Dad, where's Mom?” And Chaim didn't answer.

Avraham returned to his place behind the table, and waited silently. Chaim recalled that Ezer woke up late that morning and that they didn't get to school or daycare on time. Was this a sign that he, too, had woken up during the night? But Ezer didn't say a word that morning, and only a few days later, when the bomb was discovered next to Shalom's daycare and they were held up because of it, did he start talking about the first father and about what he saw. Ezer also asked him where Jenny was when he woke up that morning and discovered she wasn't there, and Chaim told them for the first time that she had taken a trip. He didn't have a plan then; he'd think up the trip to Manila many days later.

Avraham said, “So do you want to tell me how you killed your wife or should I be satisfied with what your son told us?” And Chaim suddenly understood what the detective was implying when he said that he knew that Ezer saw him and that he was planning to take the children to Manila because of this. He didn't answer but instead asked, “You think that I wanted to take Ezer so that he wouldn't speak to the police? Because he saw me with Jenny?” And Avraham said to him calmly, “I don't
think
, Mr. Sara. I know with certainty that you planned on killing the two of them there. And you'll pay for that as well.”

He should not have said these things, and Chaim screamed as much in a broken voice not his own.

Only a few days later, when the indictment against him was filed, did he understand that Avraham did indeed mean the things he had said. Chaim again screamed at him, “Don't say that, I didn't plan on killing anyone,” but the detective stared at him with that crazed look and said, “Don't raise your voice to me, Mr. Sara. You planned to kill your two children there and then return to say that they decided to remain with their mother in the Philippines, correct? Maybe that could have worked for you. Why, your wife is already there, right? And who would have checked? Their mother went away, and what could be more natural than the children traveling to be with her, and then staying there with her. And you just brought them to Manila, right? You're the courier. And when their bodies were found there, no one would have a way to identify them because in the Philippines your children don't officially exist. Isn't that exactly what you planned to do?”

Chaim saw the crazed look burning in his eyes, so why did he try to convince him?

Maybe he should have demanded then that the interrogation stop, or at least continue with a different detective, or in the presence of a lawyer. How could someone accuse him of wanting to kill his sons? He covered his face with his hands, and then removed them, but still tried to defend himself when he said, “Ezer and Shalom are all that I have. Do you think I'd give them up? I could never harm them,” and Avraham asked immediately, “Then why take them to Manila? Explain that, please.”

But how could he explain that?

They were supposed to fly to Manila and not see her at the airport and be disappointed, and then go to the house where she supposedly was staying and not find her there either. They would receive the farewell letter that Chaim wrote in Jenny's name, either there or at the hotel, the letter that he buried in the suitcase. They wouldn't have to know that she was dead, only that she didn't want them and that he was all they had left now. In recent weeks he could picture, endless times, in his imagination their life once they returned to Israel, a life without pain. And this was the only thing he wanted, for him and for them. He didn't get to respond and tell the detective why he had planned to take the trip, or about the letter—because Avraham screamed, like someone who had lost control of himself: “And don't tell me that you bought the children return tickets, because you also bought your wife a ticket. You repeated the same pattern. Where did you plan on burying them there? Or maybe you planned on throwing their corpses into the ocean? That's what you would have done with their corpses, right? You would have dumped them in the ocean,” and Chaim, maybe because of the horrible repetition of the word “corpses,” cut him off: “Don't say that. Don't you understand that I killed her for them? To protect them?”

Avraham was smiling when he looked at him.

And Chaim understood very well that he had confessed, but that wasn't important.

“To protect them from whom?”

The smile didn't leave Avraham's face when Chaim said to him, “From her.”

“From her? Did she beat them? Is that your story? So you had to kill her? Do you expect me to believe that?” and Chaim said, quietly, not to himself but not to Avraham either, because he didn't need to hear it, “She didn't beat them, she just didn't love them.”

 

THAT WAS THE MOMENT WHEN THE
interrogation ended, even if the detective didn't immediately understand that.

Chaim was already preparing himself for another conversation, in which he'd speak only to the children and explain the truth to them. This was the first time he'd ever uttered those words aloud; he'd told his mother something different. And immediately after they left his mouth he knew that he wouldn't have another chance to make them heard, not even to the children.

Avraham didn't listen to what he said at all. He said to him, “Mr. Sara, I don't believe a word of what you say. I want you to tell me now where your wife's body is,” and Chaim said suddenly, “Bring Ezer here.”

Something had changed in the room, because he no longer had anything to hide. And it seemed to him that after the detective saw the farewell letter that he had written in Jenny's name that he'd be convinced that Chaim didn't plan on harming the children and that the goal of their trip was nothing like what the detective imagined. “Bring who?” Avraham asked, and Chaim was more decisive when he said it a second time: “Bring my children if you want me to tell you where she is. I'm ready to tell you everything.”

At first Avraham refused to respond to the request but Chaim insisted and returned to his cave of silence.

His determination deepened, and it seemed to him that Avraham hesitated.

Finally the detective glanced at his watch and left the interrogation room, and Chaim remained alone.

In the time that passed he thought mainly about the things he'd say to the children.

He had planned for this to happen in Manila, but they'd never get there now.

If they'd had time, and if they were alone, perhaps he would have told them everything from the beginning. From the day they came into the world.

Ezer was born in the fall and Shalom in the summer, at the peak of the heat, and he remembered every moment at the hospital, the first touch, and how he held Ezer in his hands for the first time. He carried the baby when they brought him home, and the baby's eyes were open and looked all around as if he could already see everything. Everyone said that he very much resembled Jenny and not him at all, but Chaim saw himself in him. Jenny didn't want to nurse him, and from the first day he himself fed Ezer with a bottle. And went to the baby at night when he cried. He would get him back to sleep in the rocking chair in the living room, in silence, without songs, as they told him his father had done for him. He continued thinking about what Ezer saw that night, if in fact he did indeed see anything, and recalled how he had carried Jenny rolled up in a blanket past the door. On the day they returned from their wedding in Cyprus she asked him to carry her over the threshold and he refused. And when he wrapped her body in the blanket he saw for the last time, under her pajama top, the downy hair on her stomach that rose to her breasts. He remembered that he repeatedly told himself on the day after the murder that this was what he had to do. That he had no choice. The children were suffering because of her; because of her, Ezer grew more and more distant. She encouraged Ezer to talk about his imaginary first father in order to hurt him. He went to work that same day, as usual, but returned early to straighten the apartment up. Everything was silent when he entered, and the place was empty, exactly in the state he'd left it in, and perhaps only then did he understand what he had done.

For some reason he grabbed a duster and went over the furniture in the living room and bedroom. Gave a once-over to the floor with warm water, without soap.

All of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, he thought about how he wouldn't dress his boys in the morning anymore, that someone else would be doing this. Maybe the reason was that since he had remained alone with them he had, at precisely the time of night it was now, arranged the little shirts and little pants on the blue chair in their room, and afterward went to the kitchen and worked an hour or two in silence.