To the rest of the world Greta was kind, generous, and unfailingly cordial. To her customers she offered a sympathetic ear, a nonjudgmental spirit, good inexpensive food, and the best coffee you could find in Tel Aviv.
Her café was a simple establishment, cozy and unpretentious. It would never attract the sophisticated clientele of Kassit or Roval, nor did Greta want it to. She seemed happy with the way things were—with the old chairs and tables, the handful of cheaply framed pictures hanging on the walls, the serving counter with its accumulation of scratches. And with her small but ardent band of customers who frequented her café with unflagging regularity. None more so than me.
Greta's Café was a place in which you could be alone or with company, to read a newspaper in peace or engage in a heated political discussion over a sandwich or a bowl of soup. It was a place you could sit in for hours without getting the evil eye from the staff. It was a place to relax, to unwind, to think deep thoughts or none at all. If you were into loud music or bright lights, you would need to look elsewhere. But if, like me, you wanted a place that felt like home minus the loneliness, you would be hard pressed to find its equal.
"What are you going to do about the fan?" I asked.
Greta gave the rebellious appliance a long reproachful look and then sighed. "I'll get Mr. Lebenberg to come over and fix it again. In the meantime, I'll turn it off. It won't get too hot until noon." She turned to me. "What can I get you?"
"Coffee would be nice. And a little breakfast."
I went to my table at the rear. A few minutes later she came over with a tray bearing utensils; a steaming cup of coffee; and a plate holding three pieces of toast, a few strips of vegetables, and a small cube of margarine. She set it all down on the table and said, "You saw Dahlia Rotner yesterday?"
"I did," I said, smearing a thin layer of margarine on a piece of toast. I took a bite. The toast was perfect, crunchy but not dry. "An impressive woman. I wish I had seen her on stage. I went to see her old theater perform last night. Shakespeare. King Lear."
"Really? I didn't know you were a theatergoer."
"I'm not. But she hired me to look into something concerning her theater, so I thought I'd go and get an impression."
"And did you?"
I thought about the play and the emotions it had evoked in the audience. I thought about Isser Rotner, eying each attractive female who came into his orbit with a wolfish hunger. I thought about him and Pnina Zelensky kissing in his car, driving off somewhere to do much more than that.
"Yes, I most certainly did." I took a sip of coffee. "Greta, does the name Anna Hartman mean anything to you?"
Greta furrowed her brow, deepening the wrinkles carved across it. "It's familiar, but only barely. Who is she?"
"Was," I said. "I'm told she was a theater actress who was murdered five years ago."
"Murdered?" Greta's eyes widened.
"Her body was discovered in Trumpeldor Cemetery."
"Oh, now I remember. I read about it in the newspaper at the time. Ghastly. They didn't report the details of the crime, but the place..." A shudder went through her big shoulders. "A murder in a cemetery. There's something uniquely scary about that. Is this what you're looking into? This murder?"
"Yes," I said, not mentioning the fact that my client suspected her husband was the killer, even though I knew Greta would not breathe a word of what I told her to anyone. I trusted her implicitly, but I doubted Dahlia would approve of my sharing her suspicions. For the time being, at least. In fact, apart from Greta, who already knew of our meeting, I did not plan on telling anyone the identity of my client. "What else do you remember from the newspaper reports?"
"Hardly anything, I'm afraid. Just where she was found and her profession. I don't even remember how she was killed. I may have seen her perform, but if I did, she did not leave a lasting impression on me."
Dahlia's voice echoed in my head. Her ambition far outweighed her talent.
Just then, another regular stepped into the café, and Greta went to see to his needs. I steered my mind away from the case and concentrated on my breakfast. I took my time, chewing slowly, remembering days in which this meager meal would have seemed like a banquet fit for royalty. It was strange, and disheartening, how these dismal memories could pop up at any time, without warning, like a body rising to disturb the placid surface of a lake in which it had long been submerged.
I gritted my teeth and gave a violent shake of my head. The memories dispersed like shadows before light. But they weren't really gone. I knew that from experience. They had simply scuttled away to some dark corner of my mind, one which I could never reach and cleanse. They would bide their time. They would be back to torment me.
But for now I was free to enjoy what remained of my breakfast. I focused on the taste of each bite—the subtle saltiness of the margarine, the juicy tang of the tomatoes, the earthy freshness of the cucumbers and carrots. It was a simple pleasure but one that I did not take for granted. There was scarcely anything I took for granted anymore. That blissful ignorance was one of the things I'd lost in the camps.
On the other side of the front window, Allenby Street bustled with activity. Pedestrians marched purposefully in both directions. The occasional truck, bus, car, or wagon—drawn by either horse or mule—rolled up or down the wide road. Traffic was light as usual, since most Israelis, myself included, did not own a vehicle.
Once I finished my breakfast, I cleared my dishes to the service counter. Greta took them from me with a smile. I shook my head when she asked if I wanted anything else, then reached over the counter to where she kept my chessboard and pieces and took them to my table. I played chess for a while, read through that day's newspapers, and hoped that Reuben would have the investigation file for me that afternoon.
A little before noon, I went up to King George Street to buy food. At the grocery store, I presented my ration card to the grizzled vendor, and he wordlessly tore off the appropriate strips and gave me the products that I had been allotted. Nearly all food was rationed in Israel. Each citizen was allotted a monthly ration of corn, rice, sugar, legumes, cheese, onion, flour, eggs, meat, and a host of other staples. If you had money, you could dine at cafés like Greta's, but if you expected the menu to include anything but the basics, you were courting disappointment.
To truly eat well, you needed to forsake lawfulness and supplement your rations by procuring contraband food on the black market. This was illegal, of course, but also widespread and, for the most part, socially acceptable. People who had never committed a crime in their life routinely violated the law by buying a little extra meat for their children or selling illicitly obtained sugar to their neighbors.
The government propagandized against it on the radio and in lurid posters that depicted the black market as a snake that needed to be strangled, or an inky hand that was raised against the unfortunate onlooker. It also employed inspectors who searched cars, rifled through bags, and sometimes even raided homes and businesses in search of contraband. People settled old scores by snitching on each other to the authorities. Quite often, this did not keep the snitches from dabbling in the black market themselves.
All this did little to deter the local citizenry from patronizing the black market in droves. Israeli mothers were particularly fervent in their quest to provide their children with the best nourishment their pockets would allow, and against this maternal instinct the government was impotent.