The Devil in Jerusalem (10 page)

“But we have no place to go!” Shlomie pleaded.

“Well, in that case, I have an idea for you. The government is trying to add people to communities in the Western Negev. They'll give you land and a mortgage to build a house, along with a mobile home to live in while it's being built. They'll lend you money to buy equipment to set up hothouses for growing tomatoes and peppers and flowers—”

“You want me to be a farmer!” Shlomie scoffed, shaking his head, amused. “What do I know about growing things?”

“None of the other families knew anything either, when they began. They were teachers, computer programmers, editors. You just need to be willing to learn. We'll teach you everything you need to know.”

“Where is that exactly, the Western Negev?”

The Jewish Agency employee cleared his throat. “It's a lovely place, not far from the sea.”

“Right near the Gaza Strip…,” Daniella broke in.

“Yes, yes, that's true, but our soldiers will be stationed all around you. You needn't have any concerns about your security. After all, the entire state of Israel borders enemies everywhere you look. You'll be pioneers, and you'll be making a very profitable living. Some of our older farmers are exporting a hundred thousand dollars' worth of produce a year.”

“Are there any religious people there?” Daniella asked.

“Oh, is that important to you?”

Daniella and Shlomie eyed each other. True, Daniella's hair covering was an expensive wig, but surely even this secular Israeli could see that Shlomie was wearing a kippah.

“Ah, yes. Very important,” she answered.

The caseworker seemed crestfallen. But then his face lit up. “I have just the place for you. Yahalom, in the Jordan Valley, not far from Jericho … and,” he added hurriedly as he saw their expressions sour, “only an hour's drive from Jerusalem! Fifty young, religious families just like you! They grow figs, passion fruit, grapes. They have a wonderful day care center for young children. Why, they even have a
kollel
! I even heard all the families join together every Sabbath for communal meals.”

Shlomie's eyes shone. “A kollel. Where I could learn full-time?”

Daniella glanced swiftly at her husband, mortified.

“Oh, you couldn't do that. The kollel students are all single men. You'd have to work to support your family.”

He looked crestfallen.

Fortunately, tiny baby Yossi began to whimper and squirm. “We'd better go,” Daniella said, thankful to escape further humiliation.

“Think about it, okay? We'll talk next week.”

But Shlomie wouldn't budge. “It's ridiculous, Daniella. Me, a farmer?”

“Then what will you do, Shlomie?”

“I'll find a job. You'll see. My Hebrew is getting better every day.”

*   *   *

Three months later, the showdown finally came. After nursing the baby, feeding and bathing the children and putting them to bed, Daniella sat down opposite her husband at the small kitchen table.

His eyes were glued to a book about Hassidic wonder workers, a subject that of late fascinated him.

“Shlomie, we need to talk.”

“Sure.” He nodded affably, not lifting his eyes from the page.

“Can you please put down the book?”

“Right now?” he asked, aggrieved.

She nodded, trying to keep her emotions in check. Something inside her was coming together, building up, like the first indication of a lava flow about to blow the head off a volcano.

Unhappily, he set his book aside.

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. Then she took out a letter, unfolding it slowly and laying it down on the table between them. “It's an eviction notice. If we don't vacate the apartment in thirty days, ‘legal proceedings will be initiated' against us.”

“They can't do that!”

“Why not? These apartments are meant for six months. How many times did they tell us that? We've been here nearly double that.”

He tapped the white paper nervously with his forefinger.

“And there's something else.”

A strange urgency in her tone made him face her at last.

“I'm pregnant.”

For the first time, his face showed uncertainty. “God be blessed!” he said by rote. “But is it possible? Yossi is only three months old and you're still nursing.”

“You can get pregnant while you're nursing.”

“Really?”

She nodded, growing more furious by the second. “Didn't you notice I was still nursing Duvie when I got pregnant with Yossi?”

“No,” he said honestly, his face full of wonder. “I didn't.”

“It seems to be a pattern with me. Thank God Israel has socialized medicine and the hospital stays are covered, but we need to find a way to support ourselves! If you haven't noticed, our wedding gifts are running out.”

He blinked, taking the rebuke without comment.

“Even if we could stay here, it's a chicken coop. We need a real apartment for a normal-sized family. What are we going to do?”

“You know, I've been looking into different kollels. A few in Jerusalem and Petah Tikva have offered me a place. They'll pay me a monthly stipend.”

“A stipend? Shlomie, I know what they pay yeshiva students to study. It won't even cover our gas and insurance for the car.”

“You were the one who wanted a car!” he accused sullenly, feeling suddenly aggrieved.

“Yes, I know. But how else could we have managed?”

He thought for a moment. “Well, maybe your grandmother—”

“
No.
Absolutely not. Never again.”

“Well, your mother, then…”

“As if … After all the money she wasted on my tuition? Forget it! I can't ask her for the time of day.”

“I don't know why not,” he said, peeved. “It's a mitzvah to support Torah learning.”

“Damn it to hell, you've got to get a
job
!” she shouted, out of control for the first time in their relationship. She felt enraged, all the accumulated tiredness and work and disappointments falling on her with a crushing blow. She felt as if she were being squeezed through a very narrow tunnel with hardly room to breathe and no certainty of making it out the other end.

He must have sensed it because he suddenly stood up and leaned over, gently touching her shoulder. “You're tired. Let me do the dishes.”

“It's not about the goddamn dishes!”
she shouted.

He was devastated, looking at her as if he'd never seen her before. He was paralyzed, unsure of how to react. “Tomorrow, you take the day off,” he said hurriedly. “I'll do everything—feed the kids, do the laundry, the shopping. We'll go to Tel Aviv for dinner.”

She felt her knees buckle in fury and pressed her lips together, suddenly cognizant of the thin walls and her nosy neighbors, who would be listening to their every word. “Is that what we've been talking about?” she said in a heated whisper. “Dinner in Burger Ranch! That's not the point, Shlomie.”

He collapsed heavily into a chair, frightened by this sudden transformation of his kind, gentle, adoring Dani.… He was at a loss. He covered his eyes with his hands. “What is it you want?”

“I want us to have a life. Is that so hard to understand? Free money is the least free thing in the world. It comes with all kinds of strings attached. You have no idea what my family can be like. I don't want them to rule our lives.”

“So, you want to move to that place in the desert and grow figs?” he mocked.

Her face sagged, the anger draining, leaving a pale, exhausted fury in its wake. “I don't want to be dependent on anyone ever again, whatever it takes. I want to teach our children—the children
we
are bringing into the world—the value of hard work and achievement.”

“But a farmer…” He gestured helplessly.

“It's not like it used to be, Shlomie. It's all computerized now, the watering, the fertilizer. Very high tech. It's a real opportunity for us to learn a profitable business.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “We need to work hard, to learn new skills, to contribute, especially now that we have debts to repay. What do you say, Shlomie?”

He smiled and took her hand in his, almost convinced. Besides, it felt so much easier just to give in. “Please God, He will bless us and we'll succeed.”

And so yet another chapter in their marriage began, but not the last, which was as yet still inconceivable.

 

7

Bina Tzedek stood outside the door of the interrogation room with Morris and another senior detective, who between them had more than sixty years of experience in interviewing suspects.

“I'm surprised you think you need me along,” she said.

“You're a woman, a mother,” Morris explained.

“That person is not a mother. No mother—animal or human—behaves the way she has. She's a monster.”

“No, she's not,” Morris answered, shaking his head slowly. “She's young. She has no record of any kind. There is a secret buried here. Something we need to dig out.”

“How many times has she been interrogated? She's worse than the most hardened crime lord. She won't budge. I'm not a miracle worker.”

“Just try,” the other detective encouraged her.

Daniella sat in front of the desk, looking small and incredibly childlike, dressed in the same outfit she had worn in the hospital, but wrinkled now and stained with perspiration and spots the color of tea.

“Let's stop the nonsense, shall we, Daniella?” Morris began.

“Rebbetzin Goodman,” she interrupted him wearily, her hubris gone, clinging to some shred of dignity.

“Why don't you tell us the truth? We are going to get it out of you, one way or the other, Daniella,” Morris continued briskly, ignoring her request. He was done playing games.

“I've told you everything about my ex-husband!” she insisted, tears in her eyes.

“We know, we know, you told us. How he beat you and abused you. How he abused the children…,” the other detective chimed in, his tone skeptical, almost mocking.

“So what do you want from me?”

Bina put a restraining hand on Morris, slipping forward and pulling up a chair. She smiled, reaching out her hand across the desk.

“Hi, Rebbetzin Goodman. My name is Bina. I want you to know that I talked to your ex-husband, Shlomie. He denies all you say, and I believe him. He really doesn't seem like the type at all.”

Daniella ignored the proffered hand but looked up, suddenly wary, her eyes darting to and fro like those of a trapped animal searching for a place to hide.

“Rebbetzin, even if what you say is true about your ex, you divorced him and threw him out of the house three months ago. He has many reliable witnesses who have testified he was many kilometers away in Pardes Chana when the children were injured.”

“They're lying!”

Bina went on mildly, ignoring all interruptions. “One of them is a very well-known rabbi who said Shlomie was in his kollel the night Eli and then Menchie were brought in. There were thirty other students in the kollel who saw him there.” She paused. “So, Rebbetzin Goodman, my question to you is this: If your ex-husband didn't do it, and you didn't do it, who did?”

Daniella wiped her eyes, looking at her questioner alertly. “Nobody. It was an accident.”

The other detective stepped forward, about to say something. Bina quickly caught his eye, nodding curtly. He stepped back. “Look, Rebbetzin, we are here to help you, to help your children. You have a baby lying unconscious—”

Daniella flinched.

“—another child with third-degree burns. Don't you want those who did this to your children punished? Why don't you simply help us, so we can help you—and them?” Bina said gently.

Daniella put her hands into her pockets, kneading something. “My ex-husband did it.”

Suddenly, Bina slammed her hand on the desk. The pencils jumped. “I have a child, almost the same age as your baby. She walks, she talks, she has chubby little arms and legs. I'd kill anyone who tried to harm a single hair on her head! What kind of monster are you to cover for someone who did these things to your babies!”

Daniella suddenly covered her face with her hands.

Morris and the other detective nodded to each other approvingly. Bina pressed her advantage. “Tell us what happened! Be strong, purify yourself, get rid of your guilt, spit it out of you. Those tears aren't helping anyone.”

Daniella pressed her lips together.

“Look, let's say there are three kids in the kitchen and you hear a glass breaking. You go inside but no one is talking. So you ask, ‘Which one of you did it?' No one answers you. But you see that one of them is standing on the countertop opening a closet, and you know it was him. So you'd get even angrier with him, wouldn't you? But if he admitted it and said, ‘Sorry, Mom, it fell by accident,' you'd say to him, ‘Not so terrible, sweetie. It happens. Next time be careful.' That's the position you're in, Daniella. You're holding the broken glass in your hand, and you have the chance now to cleanse your conscience by telling the truth.”

The silence lengthened.

Bina slammed both fists on the table.

Daniella twitched uncontrollably, visibly shaken.

“Tell me what happened with the heater!”

“I already told you!” She wept.

“What, that the child put himself up against the heater and you right away grabbed him away?”

“Yes.”

“Liar
! Those kind of burns don't come from brushing against a heater! He was forcibly held against it for a long time, the doctors said. Tell the truth already!”

“The child … the child who was burnt…”

“Yes, yes. Your son. Your four-year-old son. Your Eli…”

“Yes, Eli. It was his own fault. He stood there; he didn't move!”