“Come by the station tomorrow morning; I’ll give it to you. Any other requests?”
There was one. I told him what it was when we went back inside the workshop to tidy things up. He raised an eyebrow but nodded.
I chose one of Tadeusz’s drawings. A landscape that had caught my eye earlier. Rich, detailed, magnificent. I rolled it carefully and tucked it under my coat to protect it from the rain.
I would have it framed, I decided. It would fit nicely on one of the two empty nails in my apartment. One of these days, I’d find something to hang on the other.
36
Nathan Frankel was buried in the shade of a cypress tree in Kiryat Shaul Cemetery. Attendance was surprisingly sparse. Misha, myself, two neighbors from Nathan’s building. For such a likable man, Nathan had had almost no true friends in this world.
The ceremony was brief. No teary eulogies, no drama, just the interment of a dead body in the earth of his homeland.
A lanky rabbi with weak eyes recited the customary prayers, and we in turn mumbled amen in all the right places. It all sounded hollow, meaningless, done by rote, with no purpose other than the maintenance of tradition.
Misha had supplied Nathan’s date of birth and the names of his parents, and these had been scribbled on a small marker that was then thrust into the head of the grave, until a proper headstone could be made. At some point in the far reaches of the murky, distant past, Misha’s and Nathan’s families had been bonded by marriage. It was a tenuous relation, no doubt, but it made Misha the only blood tie that Nathan had had in this world. As such, he was asked to read the Kaddish, which he did slowly, in a choked voice, barely able to contain his tears.
After the funeral, I handed Misha the photograph of Nathan and Peter Frankel that I’d collected from Leibowitz earlier that morning. He wept at the sight of it.
I was not surprised by Tamara Granot’s absence. No doubt her father forbade her from coming. But I had expected to see Iris Rosenfeld. Perhaps her grief had been too great for her to attend. Or, and this I felt was more likely, it was the pain of her rejection by Nathan that had kept her away.
I felt pity for her. She had lost the man she loved not once, but twice. The first time was when he’d left her for another woman; the second was when he died soon after. And I had only augmented her pain by subjecting her to an interrogation, treating her as a suspect in the murder of the man she had loved and lost.
She lingered in my mind long after the funeral was over, and I made the decision to go see her, to apologize for having suspected her.
My knock on her door was answered by a short, pear-shaped woman, black-haired and olive-skinned, who peered up at me with curious brown eyes.
“Iris isn’t here,” she said.
“You’re her roommate?”
“That’s me. Rina Ben-Simon.” She thrust out a hand and gave mine a solid pump before releasing it.
“I’m Adam Lapid. Any idea when she’ll be back?”
She shrugged her round shoulders. “Not a clue. I don’t keep tabs on her. But it probably won’t be too long.”
“Can I wait for her inside?”
She examined my face and found no threat in it. “Sure. Come in. You look like you could use a glass of water. I can also make you some tea if you like.”
“Water’s fine. Thank you.”
I sat on the sofa in the living room while she filled a glass at the kitchen sink. She handed me the glass and watched me drain it.
“My, my, you were thirsty. Want another one?”
“No, thanks. One was all I needed.”
She took the empty glass from my hand and gave me a sympathetic look. “Can I give you a piece of advice?”
“Sure.”
“Forget about Iris. You seem like a nice man, and you’re good looking, too. Go find some other woman. You’re wasting your time with her.”
“You don’t seem to like her very much.”
She smiled. “You noticed, huh?”
“It must be hard, living with a roommate you dislike.”
“It’s no picnic. I just make it a habit to be in when she’s out and out when she’s in. The good news is I won’t be her roommate for long. Sweet Iris has given me notice. She’s moving out in two weeks.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. And it fills my heart with joy that no innocent soul will have to endure the agony of sharing a home with her.”
“She’s moving to her own place?”
“A two-room apartment on Dizengoff. Not too far from the square, according to her bragging.”
“That sounds expensive,” I said. “I didn’t think she made that kind of money dancing in a bar.”
“But sweet Iris is a bar dancer no longer, or haven’t you heard?”
“I heard. She told me she was taking a job as a dance teacher.”
Rina Ben-Simon laughed. “How uncharacteristically modest on her part. She’s not going to be a mere dance teacher. She’s opening her own dance studio. Close to where she’s going to live, actually. Prime location.”
I frowned at her. “Are you sure about all this?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? I heard it all from the mare’s mouth.”
“Where did Iris get the money for all this—to live by herself and open her own business?”
Rina Ben-Simon flashed a wide smile. She took a distinct pleasure in telling me all this. “From the deep pockets of her rich lover, I imagine.”
“Lover? Who?”
She studied me closely. “Please tell me you’re not the sort to fly off into an envy-induced rage.”
I saw no point in wasting time and effort in explaining to her that I was not romantically interested in Iris Rosenfeld. “I’m not. You have my word.”
“Well, the truth is I don’t know the man’s name. I’ve only seen him twice. I can tell you he’s old enough to be her father. I call him Old Mr. Tomato.”
“Why do you call him that?”
“Because of his face. It has this reddish tint to it. On another man it might have been funny; on him it’s downright scary. He looks like a humorless man. No wonder he has to pay Iris for her time and company. I wouldn’t spend five minutes with him for all the money in the world.”
She prattled some more, but I had stopped listening. The image of a man hovered before my eyes. A ruddy-faced man. A man I had recently met. And in the depths of my brain came a sound similar to the one made by tumbling blocks of dominoes, as one mental construction of assumptions and false conclusions came crashing down, and a new one was beginning to assemble itself.
It took a minute before I realized she had ceased talking and was peering worriedly at me.
“Say, are you all right?”
I inhaled deeply. “I’m fine. About this man you said you saw with Iris…”
37
I had just about finished asking Rina Ben-Simon all the questions I had when we both heard the sound of the front door being opened.
“Speak of the she-devil,” Rina Ben-Simon said with a wink. She rose from the chair she’d been perched on just as Iris Rosenfeld appeared at the entrance to the living room. She froze when she saw me.
“Oh, not you again.”
“Afraid so,” I said.
Rina Ben-Simon clapped her hands once. “Well, I’ve got to rush off. It was a pleasure meeting you, Adam. You’re welcome to drop by again any time.” She brushed past Iris, who gave her not a gesture nor a word of farewell, and stuck her tongue out at her hated roommate’s back before giving me a frilly wave with her fingers. She was whistling by the time she went out of the apartment.
Iris Rosenfeld remained rooted in place. She wore a black pleated skirt into which she’d tucked a cream-colored blouse. She must have removed her jacket when she came into the apartment. Her mouth was set in a dissatisfied line.