The Missing File (26 page)

Should he file the letter in the case file? Throw it in the trash? Keep it for the next case in which Ze'ev Avni turns out to be involved? In all his years on the police force he had never come across anyone like Avni, who had made every effort to become the subject of a police investigation. Apparently Avni had an urge to confess something, but Avraham had been unable to discover exactly what it was. And perhaps Avni couldn't, either.

M
arianka arrived the following week, on Monday, at 4:00 p.m.

She was dressed in blue jeans, a pink T-shirt, flowery and short-sleeved, and sneakers. Her brown hair was cut short. They kissed each other on the cheek, twice, and he took her silver suitcase and wheeled it behind him to the parking lot—all the while hounded by thoughts of the suitcase into which Ofer's dead body was stuffed. He had the feeling she saw the shadow darkening over his face.

He'd spent the week ahead of her visit getting his apartment in order. Several months had gone by since a woman last visited his place, and it had been almost two years since someone had spent the night there with him. On Thursday, his last day at work before his vacation, he left the station early to go to the Holon industrial area to buy a fold-out bed. He then cleared out the small room that served both as his office and a storage room, moving cartons of old documents—some related to his police work, and others to his personal life—to a storeroom downstairs, and taking the two dusty fans and old stereo system down to the trash room; the small desk and computer he moved to the living room. As evening fell, he polished the windows by the gloomy light that cleaved through from the dirty glass of the lamp hanging from the ceiling, and hoped he hadn't missed anything. The following morning he scrubbed the remaining rooms in the apartment, especially the kitchen, and then drove into Tel Aviv to shop for fruit and vegetables, spices and salted snacks at the Carmel market, where he also bought new linens for the fold-out bed, which was delivered on Sunday morning.

He didn't know if they'd be eating in. He didn't even know if they'd be spending all of Marianka's time in Israel together. To be on the safe side, he spent hours browsing through the Internet on Saturday in search of Tel Aviv's finest restaurants. He also decided that if Marianka wanted to eat lunch or dinner at home, he would tell her that he usually eats out and suggest they do the shopping together in a local supermarket. He didn't know whether to make plans for the evenings too.

Marianka liked the apartment. She stepped carefully through the living room, as if she was walking around the house of a total stranger, looked at the picture on the wall—a framed black-and-white photograph of a father and son riding a bike along a country road—read the names on the CDs arranged on a tall metal stand, and then stopped by the bookcase. “These are the detective novels you told me about, aren't they?” Almost all of them were translations into Hebrew.

“Yes, they are. Let me show you the guest room,” he replied and led her to the small room, which—without the carton boxes and computer desk and with the fold-out bed, as well as the blue cushions and small lampshade he had managed to buy that morning—looked spacious and bright.

He suggested they go to Tel Aviv or Jaffa for dinner, to discuss her vacation plans, but Marianka was tired from all the traveling and the hours spent sitting down on the airplane, and wanted to stretch her legs. She asked if they could walk to Tel Aviv, and he laughed.

“Then we'll walk around here. I want to walk,” she insisted, and he said, “But there is nothing to see here, and nowhere to eat.”

“You live here, don't you?” she said. “So there must be something to see. I'm in a city I've never been to before. How could that be boring? By the way, what did you say its name was?”

They walked through the streets of Holon.

She studied the apartment buildings, the faces of the passersby and the clothes they were wearing, as if she had just arrived in New York or was on an undercover detective assignment. And she walked slowly in Holon. There was only one street they could not visit, and he led her far away from there. On the way back to his apartment, they passed by his parents' home.

“So when do I finally meet them?” she asked, and he said, “They'll come to our wedding, you'll see them there.”

It was all so strange and different, as if they had just kept on walking through the streets of Brussels. They spoke in English, and Avraham thought to himself that this was the first time he was speaking a foreign language in the city where he had been born and had lived almost his entire life.

“What happened with Guillaume?” he asked, and she said, “Nothing special. I knew I wasn't in love with him after two weeks, but I couldn't end it. It's the second time I've made the mistake of going out with someone from work.”

“And how did he take it?”

She smiled. “He wasn't in love with me, either. I think he's secretly in love with Elise, Jean-Marc's wife.”

That made sense.

It was while he was rummaging in his pocket for the keys at the entrance to his building that Marianka suddenly said, “I haven't asked you about the case, not because I don't want to but because I felt you don't want me to. If you're able to speak about what happened and what you are going through, I want to listen.”

They ate tomatoes, yellow peppers, mangoes, grapes, watermelon, and thick slices of bread—because that's all there was. And they watched a little TV because Marianka wanted to hear some Hebrew. Then they made plans for the rest of the week. Shortly after 10:00 p.m. Marianka took a shower and emerged from the bathroom in pajamas. She kissed his cheek, said goodnight, and went to her room. He washed the dishes in the kitchen. When he sat in the living room and started reading a book, something he hadn't done in weeks, she came back and sat beside him, folding her legs and putting her bare feet on the sofa. She asked him, “Can I sit closer?” and his heart felt heavy with excitement when he told her, “Yes.”

After that the wonderful struggle between them began.

He didn't always understand what she was asking of him. From time to time, she would withdraw, place a finger on his lips, and ask him to stop; there were moments when he felt her body drawing him in. He suggested they move to the bedroom, but she wanted to stay where they were, and asked him to turn out the light, searching for his eyes in the darkness even when he shut them. He wanted to keep them open so as not to stop seeing the hands that were touching him and the fragile body wrapped in his arms—but wasn't always able to. He could not believe that such a miracle was happening inside him.

They listened to David Bowie's “Absolute Beginners” in the dark living room, naked.

“Just so it's clear, I'm sleeping in my own room,” said Marianka, and Avraham didn't fully comprehend that she really meant it.

“Not that I'm complaining, but why did you do that?” he asked, and she said, “Because I wanted to, and also because I didn't want to. And because it's forbidden. And because now everything between us will be much easier than before. Though it was very easy already.”

He slept in his bed, and when he woke the following morning and stepped out of his room, he saw her through the open bathroom door, brushing her teeth.

H
ad it not still been so close to the conclusion of the investigation, it would probably have been the most beautiful week of his life. On Tuesday, they drove to Masada and the Dead Sea, and Avraham watched from the beach as Marianka hesitantly entered the dense water and rubbed mud on her cheeks and forehead. He hated the Dead Sea, from childhood. Early Wednesday morning, he drove her to East Jerusalem, from where she continued alone by taxi to Bethlehem. He regretted rejecting her pleas to come along, particularly when he found her so quiet and pensive when she returned. She touched his face and hands in a fuller way. She told him she had sat for over an hour in the Church of the Nativity and thought about her life. “What did you ask for?” he inquired, and she said, “I didn't ask for anything. It's not a wishing well, you know, it's a church. I felt that I want to live differently and that I don't know how.”

Later that evening, she turned down his offer to take a walk along the beach in Tel Aviv, choosing instead to read in her room, and he fell asleep stricken with anxiety and despair. When he opened his eyes in the morning, she was sleeping beside him.

Marianka wasn't joking when she said she'd like to meet his parents, so he called his mother on Thursday and told her he had a guest from Belgium. “Would you like to come for dinner tomorrow?” his mother immediately suggested—and to her amazement, he didn't refuse. She called twice that same day to ask what Belgians like to eat and if meatballs in a sauce would be sufficiently respectable. “What's the problem?” came his father's voice in the background. “Just prepare for her some rice and beans; I'm sure she isn't familiar with that.” Marianka insisted that they could not arrive without a bottle of wine.

Much to his surprise, the meal didn't end in disaster. His parents had dressed up for the occasion, and his father even wore shoes. They had set the table in the living room and his mother had placed a green vase with a nice bouquet of white lilies in the center. Marianka wore a black dress, and he saw her putting makeup on for the first time. His parents didn't ask about the nature of their relationship, and he and Marianka didn't offer any explanations. His mother grilled Marianka about the origin of her name, and she told them she was born in Slovenia and had immigrated to Brussels with her family.

“Oh, so you're not really from Belgium,” his mother said, clearly disappointed.

“So what?” his father said. “And we're from here? My parents were born in Iraq. And where do you think she was born? In Hungary!” And his mother hissed at him in Hebrew, “What are you talking nonsense for? You think she cares where I come from?”

He felt Marianka's fingers climbing up his thigh under the table. His mother cleared the dishes from the first course and he followed her into the kitchen to help.

“She's charming,” his mother whispered, “and very pretty. Where did you meet her?” and he said, “We met in Belgium,” adding nothing more. Marianka stayed at the table. He saw from the kitchen that she fixed her serious eyes on his father. She really was so beautiful, and he wondered whether in Belgian or Slovenian terms he, for his part, could be considered a handsome man.

The conversation in English proved difficult for his father, who made an effort at first but then switched to Hebrew and waited for someone to translate what he said, until he grew weary of that and went silent. He buried his gaze in his plate and still drew the food to his mouth with careful movements after everyone had finished eating. Avraham had told Marianka of his condition before dinner, and she listened to his father patiently, even when he mumbled unintelligible words in Hebrew. Toward the end of the meal, his father suddenly whispered, as if to himself, “It's good that you're leaving the country. There's nothing for you here,” and then addressed Marianka in slow Hebrew, saying, “I will miss him very much. Do you know how much I love him?”

T
he next day they went to Jerusalem. It was Saturday, the last day.

They began their tour in the western part of the city and he took her first to the old Nahlaot neighborhood. They walked among the alleyways where his grandfather had once lived and where he himself had rented an apartment for a year during his studies, a long time ago. The city was empty and still. The air was stifling and hard to breathe, laden with the sorrow of their parting.

Ever since she arrived, Marianka had been asking him to take her to the Mount of Olives. Her father, who had visited Israel many years earlier, had told her of the sacredness of the mountain and the spectacular view of Jerusalem from its peak. Avraham struggled at first to find his way along the new roads leading to the eastern part of the city. It was animated and noisy there, and the higher they climbed, the more the commotion of the tourists grew. They sat on a wooden bench and looked out over the city that lay spread out before them, flat and stony. Cameras clicked around them and the golden Dome of the Rock blazed. Avraham spoke less and less and Marianka tried to comfort him. A distance had opened up between them even before her plane left the ground.

“Do you know that that's the gate through which the Messiah will one day enter Jerusalem?” she asked, pointing toward the Old City.

“No doubt,” he said.

“You don't believe that? The Jews also believe that the resurrection of the dead will begin from the Mount of Olives. I think the prophet Elijah is supposed to blow a shofar from here,” she said seriously, and he replied, “I don't think it will be heard in Holon. And where do you know all of that from?”

“My father,” she said. “He didn't just teach me karate.”

They both went silent for a long time before Avraham could no longer hold back the sadness within him and said, “The worst thing is that sometimes I think he's better off dead. I am so angry at him without even knowing him.”

“Who?” Marianka asked.

“Ofer. The teenager who went missing. The boy we were looking for.”

And for the first time since leaving the station that night, he spoke about what had happened. He told her about his interrogation of Hannah Sharabi and her refusal to speak, her blind refusal to admit to what had happened in Danit's room, the room whose door was shut to him. That was why they had hidden the daughter from him to begin with. “I am really so angry that I thought a few times that it was good that he died the way he did. And I am frightened by the thought.” Marianka let go of his hand.

“I don't understand how you can be so sure that he assaulted her,” she said as he lit a cigarette. “I don't believe that's what happened.”