"My name is Adam Lapid," I said. "Sorry to bother you, but it seems that I'm at the wrong address. I'm looking for Eliyahu Toledano. I understand he used to live here."
"He still does," she said. "Why do you think you're in the wrong place? Eliyahu's in his study. Why don't you wait in the living room and I'll go fetch him?"
The apartment did not look like the habitat of a drunk. Neat, tidy, with curtains on the windows and a few tasteful pictures on the walls. The furniture in the living room was of good quality and could not have been older than five or six years. Flowerpots bloomed on the balcony.
I was in the living room for less than a minute when I heard footsteps drawing near. I turned and saw a man approach with a held-out hand and a question in his eyes.
"My wife told me you wished to see me, Mr. Lapid?"
I shook his hand, slowly taking in his features.
"You're Eliyahu Toledano?" I asked with incredulity.
The man smiled. "Is that so hard to believe? You are in my apartment, after all."
He looked nothing like the man Meltzer had described to me. Clear-eyed, straight-backed, with recently barbered black hair and a mustache whose exact symmetry could only have been achieved by careful husbandry. His clothes were clean and pressed. His breath was fresh. The skin on his face displayed none of the slackness induced by excessive consumption of alcohol. He looked like a healthy man of twenty-five or so. This was no drunk.
"Forgive me, Mr. Toledano, but what I was told about you led me to expect a different sort of man."
"Ah," he said, and that one syllable carried with it a sea of understanding and an ocean of regret. "Perhaps you'd care to tell me why you came to see me?"
"I'd like to talk to you about the night you might have seen a murderer exit Trumpeldor Cemetery."
Toledano's face registered surprise. "Are you a policeman?"
"A private investigator. But I've read the police report and talked to the detective who investigated the case. He told me of your testimony."
Toledano glanced over his shoulder. From another room came the sound of his wife cooing to the baby, and the high-pitched, ecstatic reply of the infant.
"Let's go out on the balcony," he said.
Once there, he explained, "My wife knows about that night, but she doesn't know everything about the man I used to be." With a sigh, he leaned both hands on the stone railing, as though trying to support the weight of his past. "About how low I allowed myself to sink."
The balcony was bathed in the gentle sunlight of early evening. The sweet scents of daisies and carnations and lilies rose from the flowerpots, wafting about us like incense.
With his head lowered, Toledano said, "After my parents died, I came apart. I was inconsolable. I found refuge in a bottle. In multiple bottles."
He turned to face me, and I saw the anguish and guilt in his eyes. "Everything they taught me, all the lessons they imparted, were scattered like dry leaves in a wind. I did nothing but drink. For two years of my life, I was a prisoner of my own weakness and self-pity. My recollection of that time is patchy, as though I was only awake for brief snatches of time. There are whole days of which I remember nothing. And then...then came that night."
"What can you tell me about it?" I asked.
"Not much. And if that policeman hadn't come calling, I'd probably remember nothing at all. Much worse, I'd probably be dead."
"Why do you say that?"
"I was drinking so much that I was barely a man anymore. I would fall asleep on park benches, on street corners. Once I awoke from a blackout to find myself on the beach with my legs soaked to my knees by encroaching waves. I was drinking myself straight into an early grave. What happened that night finally made me change course."
"In what way?"
"I was finally confronted with the consequences of my drunkenness. I cared nothing for myself in those days, but I was still my parents' son. They'd brought me up to be a good man, and here I was, a potential witness to a murderer's escape from the scene of his crime, and I had almost no recollection of it." Toledano shook his head, his brown eyes glittering with tears. "If I hadn't been so drunk, I would have remembered his face clearly."
"If you hadn't been drinking, you wouldn't have been on that sidewalk in the first place," I pointed out.
Toledano flicked me a sad, grateful smile. "I know what you're saying is true, but it doesn't change what happened. That night was like a much-needed slap in the face. I realized I could not go on the way I was. I stopped drinking, resumed living. I became a man again."
I asked, "Now that you're sober, do you remember anything more about the man you saw that night?"
Toledano screwed his eyes shut and gave a despaired shake of his head. "I thought about him a thousand—no, a million—times since then. The only thing I remember is that he had a dark beard. Everything else remains shrouded, and I can't tear through that shroud, no matter how hard I try."
"But you're sure it was no dream?"
"Yes. Of that I'm certain. He was real. I saw him."
"And you're sure he came out of the main gate?"
"It's exactly where he crossed the street. So yes, I'm sure."
"But you remember nothing about him apart from the beard?"
"Nothing." But I saw hesitation tiptoe its way across his face.
"What is it?" I asked. "Is something new coming to you?"
"Nothing specific, I'm afraid. It's just a vague sense I have about that man, about his walk."
"His walk?" A prickle of excitement darted up my back. "What about his walk?"
"I can't say for sure whether it's real or not."
"That's all right," I said. "Just tell me what it is."
Toledano sighed, dragged both hands through his hair, and said, "There was something wrong with it."
"Wrong? How?"
He threw up his hands. "I don't know. That's what I told you, it's nothing specific. It's just a feeling I have. There was something strange about his walk. Something not right."
"Did he stagger? Limp?"
"I don't know."
"Did he favor one leg over the other? Walk stiffly? Think, Goddammit!"
"I don't know!" he shouted, and then caught himself and cast a worried look into his living room. His wife stood there, still holding the baby, and on her face was a look of shock and concern.
"It's all right, Shula," Toledano called to her. "We'll be done in a minute or two."
Shula Toledano nodded and left the living room. Her husband turned back to me. "If I knew, I'd tell you. I'd tell the police. But I just don't know what about his walk was wrong, only that there was something."
"How long have you had this feeling?"
"Not long. Six weeks, two months, something like that."
"So maybe your memory is clearing up."
"Maybe. But at this rate, I'll be long gone before I remember anything useful."
I studied his face. Remorse molded every line, shaped every ridge and crease. I was angry at him, for his failure of memory, but I also felt sorry for him, sensing the burden of guilt he carried.
"How sure are you of this, Mr. Toledano? The walk, I mean. How sure are you that your memory is real?"
He examined his feet, then blew out a breath and shrugged helplessly. "As much as I can be, given my condition at the time."
I nodded, disappointed and frustrated, though I hadn't expected any better. I stared across the street at a treetop in which two birds were duetting. A love song by the sound of it.
"I'm sorry," Toledano said. "I'm so sorry. I wish I remembered more. That poor woman, I owe her so much."
I did not need to ask who "her" was.
"Without her," he went on, "I would not have met my wife. And my daughter, Hannah, would never have been born."
I looked at him. "You named your daughter Hannah?"
"Yes. After that poor woman, Anna Hartman. Hannah is the Hebrew version of Anna, you know."