The novelty is that now Juliette feels connected to Olga in a very tender way, a connection that should grow stronger in the future. A real girlfriend. Being arrested together—that’s something you can’t forget. It marks you and leaves traces, like surviving a war or a shipwreck. So there’s nothing to be gotten from conventional morality, no solution to be hoped for from the usual rules that govern faithfulness.
Juliette goes back to bed and turns off the lamp, leaving Elias sitting there in the darkness. But an anguished sigh escapes her at the thought that Olga could see both of them in this room or learn about it one day. That would hurt her so much. It would just be horrible.
“Why’re you sighing?” Elias asks in the blackness. “You’re thinking of Olga?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re thinking what, exactly?”
“Nothing, let me sleep, please.”
Hoping to fall asleep, she tries to empty her mind again, or something like empty it, drive out the parasitical thoughts at least, the desires and fantasies. It doesn’t work. She’s awake, it’s nighttime, and Elias is there, within reach. She can practically hear him breathe. No use turning toward the wall, she can’t fight against the desire that comes to her from behind, as he liked to do in Jeru at dawn in days gone by, before he’d cut out and not communicate with her at all for a few days. And then, she’s sure he feels the same thing and has the same urge, despite his anguish and sorrow. In such moments, you’d like to be able to set everything right with the wave of a magic wand, have the memory of a goldfish and feel nothing, satisfy your urge without hurting anyone and without suffering, without memories and without consequences, thank you and goodbye.
When will he lose all decency and come slip into bed with her?
CHAPTER 25
The next morning, he gets to work at eight thirty, although he doesn’t begin until an hour later. He walks right into Marcel’s office. Elias wants to get the editor-in-chief to take him back as a reporter, on the grounds that he’s been unjustly set aside because of fake news. He demands to be reinstated without delay, and this, before they learn Olga is in police custody. As she starts at 3:00 p.m. on Sundays, Elias hopes to create an irreversible situation if he can succeed before they realize his darling is absent and, in fact, being held by the cops. But Marcel already knows about it and says to him coldly, “Let’s wait till Olga is released, OK? Did you get a lawyer to defend her?”
Elias stalks out of the office, slamming the door in disgust, and goes back to his workstation in production. At each limp handshake from a colleague, he feels still more abandoned. Only Danielle Godmiche gives him an effusive hug. He goes into a corner and calls Diabolo. “We’re on our way,” the fat man announces. “Jérémie’s going to bring your honey back to you. Don’t get all worked up!” That’s what’s great about hoods. They don’t spare themselves, they don’t judge or prejudge, they’re always ready to give you the air you need to breathe, the ten cents change to make a round number. Tel Aviv to Mitzpe Ramon in a Cinquecento—even if it’s customized and air-conditioned, that’s really something when you’re not obliged to do it! But Diabo doesn’t have to be from nobility to have noble feelings. His ugly excess weight doesn’t prevent him from being an aristo of the heart.
Waiting for Jérémie to come out of the court with Olga, he remains calmly in the car, puffing on a Cohiba while listening to the complete songs of Michel Sardou.
“Your honor, we arrested Miss Olga Picard here in possession of a large sum of money, which she justified by claiming it was a gift from the NGO Tag Shalom for the Khaldun family,” the police officer in charge of the case begins before the impassive magistrate in Mitzpe Ramon. “We also found the defendant was lying about her personal relationship to Elias Benzaquen, who is involved in a criminal case against two members of the Khaldun family.”
The cop’s goal is to obtain an extension of the pretrial detention to have the time to show the connection between this money and the case of the two Bedouins, but especially the personal relationship between Olga and Elias. So he talks about factors that tend to prove there is an “attempt to suborn witnesses”—so he’s already into big words—and his presentation does not neglect a single detail of the affair, while Olga listens attentively to the simultaneous translation as she sits in the defendant’s place to the left of the judge. She has on the same clothes as the day before, the same makeup, and nonetheless the same freshness despite twenty-four hours in detention without being able to wash or even brush her teeth. She’s a gem, that girclass="underline" grace incarnate in the clutches of the law. Jérémie was able to talk with her five minutes before the hearing, and he found her really top notch but also extremely detached, strangely distant, almost as if she were reporting in the court and not suspected of serious crimes. Not personally involved, you might say: a journalist to the core, not a criminal facing trial. He asked two or three questions about the circumstances of her arrest, and she answered precisely, although she seemed more interested in the little love note Elias had given him for her than in his strategy as a lawyer. A love letter in which her lover asks her forgiveness for letting her go on that wretched expedition and promises that when she gets back, they’ll both go to Venice for a few days to forget all this.
When the cop has finished, the lawyer stands up to address the judge. “Your honor,” Jérémie declares, “my client has committed neither a crime nor a misdemeanor, there is no Israeli law making it illegal to transport the sum of money she is accused of transporting. So we don’t understand what the officer is getting at. Keeping her in detention brings nothing to the investigation, because every part of the case is already known. Moreover, Olga is ready to confront the generous donor who gave her this money, but the police did not wish to disturb that gentleman. Besides, my client has all the guarantees necessary for her to be released: no record, a salary, and a stable job. Therefore, I am asking the court to reject the police’s request.”
But the judge refuses to release Olga. She grants the police three supplementary days in detention, and the hearing is adjourned.
Jérémie joins Diabolo in the Cinquecento, and they leave empty handed for Tel Aviv. Diabolo is disappointed, but Jérémie really takes it badly. He could see himself already, swaggering around, freeing the beautiful captive in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, and dining with her that same evening at the Cantina or the Brasserie on Ibn Gabirol.
“Now I can stick my finger up my ass!”
“She’s Elias’s chick, you don’t have a chance. Even I can’t…” Diabolo begins.
“Even you what?” retorts Jérémie, annoyed.
“You know very well no woman can resist me… hey, speak of the devil.”
“The news isn’t very good,” Diabolo says. “They’re holding her three more days. But take it easy, the cops don’t have a thing on her, and Jérémie fought like a lion. You should’ve seen him. They were trembling in the corridors, I tell you. That is, there are no corridors in Mitzpe Ramon, it’s just an image, but man, he’s got the gift of the gab, I swear.”