Which must have made Rotner burn with envy, I thought.
"Did they get along, the two cousins?" I asked.
"Who knows? They were friendly enough to start a theater together, but that was six years before Dattner died."
"I was told he was killed by an Arab."
"Yes, the damn fool ventured into Jaffa at night while the Arab Revolt was still ongoing. He was shot to death."
"What was he doing in Jaffa?"
Birnbaum shrugged. "No idea. Whatever it was, it wasn't worth it."
"Did they catch the guy who killed him?"
"No, and I sorely wished they had. It was a nasty murder. The killer stuck an anti-Jewish pamphlet in Dattner's mouth." Birnbaum shook his head. "It was a dreadful time, Adam. A frightening time. Who could have imagined that soon much worse things would befall Jews?"
I certainly didn't, which was why I didn't act in time to save my family from the catastrophe that would soon consume us. The old familiar guilt snaked its icy fingers around my heart and squeezed.
I closed my eyes and opened them. "So Rotner became the theater's leading man?"
"At least in terms of him getting the main roles."
"What do you mean?"
"In the theater, it's not always the best actor who gets the leading parts. Especially when another actor is a founder of the theater and owns a piece of it."
"Like Isser Rotner does."
"Exactly. Shoresh Theater had another actor at the time, Nahum Ornstein. He was young, tall, handsome, and had a stage presence. Not like Dahlia, mind you, but enough so a few critics, including yours truly, suggested that he might surpass Shoresh Theater's new leading man."
This was the first time I'd encountered the name Nahum Ornstein. "What happened to him?"
"He died. A stupid death, but that's what you get when you do stupid things. Apparently, Ornstein not only enjoyed drinking, but he also partook of hashish. He took a bath while intoxicated with both drug and alcohol, slipped, hit the back of his head on the edge of the tub, and drowned." Birnbaum shook his head. "And so ended a promising career on the stage."
But I wasn't thinking of Ornstein's career, but that of another man. A tingle began at the base of my neck and quickly climbed to spread over my scalp. My heart started pounding. "And Rotner was no longer overshadowed by this upstart," I murmured.
Birnbaum's mouth fell open. "What are you saying, Adam?"
"I'm just stating a fact."
"No, you're doing more than that."
"All right. Two facts. One, that Eliezer Dattner's murder propelled Rotner to the top man's position. And two, that Nahum Ornstein's death removed a potential rival, or at the very least, silenced those voices who were intimating that Ornstein was a greater talent."
"But surely you're not suggesting—"
"When did Nahum Ornstein die?" I asked.
"1940. April or May, I think."
"And Dattner?"
"July '39. I don't remember the exact day."
Which was no problem. I could find out easily enough.
"So about nine, ten months apart," I mused. "And Anna Hartman was killed six years after that. Any other members of Shoresh Theater who died a sudden death?"
"Brigitte Polisar. But if what you're looking for is a dead body to conveniently fill in the time gap between Ornstein and Hartman, you're out of luck. She died two years after Hartman did, in May '48, in one of the Egyptian air raids on Tel Aviv. Please don't tell me you think Rotner was flying one of the planes."
I ignored his sarcasm, thinking that I had one less person to interview. Brigitte Polisar had worked at Shoresh Theater at the same time Anna did.
"She was pregnant at the time," Birnbaum continued, his face grim, "and her husband, Emil, who was also an actor in the theater, shot himself a week later, right after the shiva. Just as soon as all his friends and relatives left him alone to suffocate in his grief."
Birnbaum took a deep breath and sighed.
"And finally there were David Azulay and Tzipi Toren," he said, "who both died during the War of Independence. Toren was an army nurse. She died in the Battle of Jerusalem. Azulay was killed in the Galilee during Operation Hiram. October '48, if memory serves."
It did. I did not take part in that operation, but I knew when it had taken place. So there were four less people to interview, not just one, because Emil Polisar, David Azulay, and Tzipi Toren had also worked with Anna, had in fact joined the theater before she did.
I sat back, letting my mind absorb this deluge of new information. "It's strange," I said after a moment. "Don't you find it strange, that seven people working for the same theater died in the space of nine years?"
"No, I don't. Because the first was killed by an Arab, the second by his own carelessness, the third by an unknown killer, the fourth in an air raid, the fifth committed suicide due to the death of his wife and baby, and the last two fell in battle. The only death shrouded in mystery is Hartman's."
"We don't know who killed Eliezer Dattner," I said.
"But we know why he was killed. And it has nothing to do with Rotner or any of the other deaths."
"There's also Nahum Ornstein. People generally don't drown in their own bathtubs."
"Generally, they don't. But it does happen every once in a while. And it's usually someone who is drugged or drunk."
He had a point. As a policeman, I had encountered a couple of such cases, and in both, an empty bottle or a vial of some narcotic was lying around.
"Still, seven in nine years."
"It's a high number," Birnbaum said, "but three of them died during the war—Azulay and Toren as soldiers and Brigitte Polisar in an air raid. And Emil Polisar's suicide can also be attributed to the war. So that leaves just three, which isn't low, but not exceedingly high either. And it's twelve years, not nine, because this is 1951 and the first of these deaths occurred in 1939."
Again, he was right. It was by no means remarkable. Still, that prickly feeling did not abate. Logic did not support it, but my gut instinct did.
"Tell me, Shmuel, did Emil Polisar pose any threat to Rotner, like Dattner and Ornstein did?"
He gave me an incredulous look. "So now you think Emil Polisar was murdered, too?"
"Just humor me, all right?"
He sighed. "Polisar was strictly a mid-rung actor, always playing secondary roles. Dependable, but nowhere near as good as Rotner."
This was not what I wanted to hear. Because if Rotner had had reason to kill Emil Polisar, I would have known I had stumbled upon the truth. Now all I had was a hunch that these deaths—some of them, at least—were connected.
"And even if he was,” Birnbaum said, "what would that have to do with Anna Hartman? She was certainly no threat to Rotner."
"Not professionally."
"Not in any way you know about, or am I wrong?"
"No, you're not wrong," I answered reluctantly, and could feel myself slipping into dejection. Because I wanted my hunch to be right. Just like I wanted Rotner to be guilty of murder. And it was quite likely that this was clouding my judgment.
"I know what it's like, Adam," Birnbaum said, "to feel you're on the verge of exposing an incredible story. But what I learned is that the truth is usually simple. Chasing after wild theories will get you nowhere."
"I understand, Shmuel. But what if this is the exception? What if this time the truth is anything but simple?"
"In that case," Birnbaum said, a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his eyes, "just make sure you don't forget to tell me everything when you're through."
24
Birnbaum stuck around for ten more minutes. He used the time to try to persuade me to vote the right way, and would only leave when I threatened to cast my ballot for Menachem Begin's right-wing party Herut.