Afterward, we lay by each other, cooling down. Sima dozed off. I felt the same way I always did in the aftermath: sated and ashamed. Soon I would get off this bed, go home to my sparsely furnished apartment, and fall into my bed. In my dreams I would see her—Deborah, my love—and I would plead with her to forgive me, and she would say that six years was long enough for mourning.
I looked at Sima lying on her side, hands tucked under her head. Her body was bare and beautiful and relaxed. I let my eyes linger over her dips and swells. Something distant was calling attention to itself in my mind. Something that I had missed. I closed my eyes, slowed my breath, and focused on that distant mental signal, a sort of scratch in the back of my mind.
What was it?
I unleashed my thoughts, letting them go wherever they wished. This was risky—bad memories could rise to the surface and try to take me down with them. This time, though, no dark memories came forth. What rose to the front of my mind was a memory of Yosef Kaplon standing on the small circular stage at Café Budapest, playing the violin. There was no sound, no violin chords, not even the bated breath of the audience. All I had was what I was seeing.
Kaplon held the bow in his right hand, the violin in his left. He drew the bow over the strings, his expression flexing and shifting with the silent music.
The image faded and I saw him up close, sitting at the bar, the brandy before him. He drained his glass and stared morosely at its emptiness. With his right hand, he picked up the bottle and poured himself a new drink. He set down the bottle and shifted the glass from his left hand to his right.
To his right hand.
I jerked my eyes open and sat up in bed. I must have gasped or cursed because Sima stirred beside me. She stretched her arms over her head, her breasts flattening over her rib cage before filling up once more as she relaxed her arms. It would not have been incongruous had she purred.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"Are you right- or left-handed?"
"Me?" She smiled. "I'm good with both my hands." To prove it, she sat up, reaching toward me.
I caught her hands, looking her straight in the eyes. "Serious question. Right or left?"
She pushed out her lower lip, as though hurt by my rejection of her touch, but answered, "I'm right-handed."
"So am I, so is almost everyone," I said. "Now, suppose you wanted to kill yourself, to slit your wrists, how would you do it?"
She laughed. "I've had all sorts of strange men, but none have ever thought of killing themselves after making love to me. I told you you were crazy."
I shook my head. "It's for a case, Sima. Think this through with me. Make a game of it if you must. Let's say you wanted to slit your wrists. Both of them. You have a knife or a straight razor, and you're right-handed. How would you begin?"
She was silent. I lifted both of my hands in the air, holding them before her. "I'm right-handed, so the natural thing for me to do would be to take the razor in my right hand and run it over my left wrist. Like so." I mimicked the sliding movement of the blade over my wrist. "Then I would quickly switch hands, because I'm bleeding from my left wrist and my hand is weakening. It's painful to hold the razor in it. I would slash my right wrist and let the razor drop here, beside my hand." I lay back down, dropped my left hand along the left side of my body, and unclenched my fingers in a relinquishing motion.
Sima stared at me, wide eyed. I gave her a smile, then looked at the ceiling.
"Yosef Kaplon was right-handed, too. So why did he end up on the floor with the straight razor by his right hand instead of his left?"
9
We made love again. Afterward I said, "I should get going."
"Yes," Sima Vaaknin said. "I suppose you should."
I got dressed. I laid some money on her dresser.
"Will you come again soon?" she asked, and I must have been mistaken, because I caught a note of actual need in her voice.
"I don't know," I answered. "I hope not."
She nodded. "But I can always come to you for help, right?" Now her voice had an edge. But of what? Bitterness? Mockery?
"Yes. That you can always do."
She plopped back onto the mattress, her hands resting on her thighs, delicate fingers caressing tender, soft skin. The smile of the seductress was firmly back on her face. "You're always welcome, Adam. This was sweet. But next time, let's try it without talking of slashing our wrists. All right?"
She still had that smile on her lips when I left.
I went home, showered, got into bed, and lay for a while in the dark, thinking. His right hand, I thought. It didn't mean anything. He could have been standing up when he cut himself and the razor could have simply fallen by his right hand. Or, even more likely, he could have made the last cut, the one on his right wrist, and let the razor drop from his left hand on that side of his body. The story I had spun at Sima Vaaknin's apartment was just that: a story. It was certainly not evidence. It was flimsy, open to interpretation, more supposition than fact. Nothing that would get the police to look at this case again. If I were them, I wouldn't have done so.
The spark of certainty that I had felt in Sima Vaaknin's apartment as I lay beside her naked in bed, slashing an imaginary blade over my veins—that spark was gone. I became angry with myself. I had taken Greta's advice too much to heart. I had begun looking at this case as if it were a criminal investigation, and now I was seeking a crime where there wasn't one to be found. Perhaps Greta was right—something about Kaplon's suicide scared me. And so I wanted it to turn out not to be a suicide after all.
I passed the night in that hazy state of shallow sleep and frequent wakefulness that left you exhausted and frustrated in the morning. I dreamed of my wife, and woke up covered in sweat and awash with guilt. I staggered out of bed at six, showered in cold water. Went back to bed. Fell asleep until nine. For breakfast I had some coffee—which was a poor substitute for what Sima Vaaknin had served me—and made myself an omelet. I ate it with some brown bread smeared thinly with butter. It was my last egg, and the bread was almost gone as well. I found my ration book and went down to the grocery store. There I got a loaf of bread, three eggs, two hundred grams of margarine, a hundred and fifty grams of cheese, a small sack of sugar, a can of powdered milk, and some vegetables and fruit. The proprietor removed the relevant stamps from my ration book and casually remarked that he had some sugar in the back, if I had the money. I told him I would think about it.
Back in my apartment, I arranged the meager groceries in the icebox and cupboards. Then I left my apartment and made my way to Levinson Drugstore. I called the number Yitzhak had given me. He answered on the fourth ring.
"It's Adam," I said. "I'm in."
He whooped so loud I had to tear the receiver from my ear.
"That's great. I knew you'd come through."
"Arrange the meeting with Feinstein. And let's meet afterward: you, Shimon, and me. Café Ravel. Say, nine o'clock?"
"Nine o'clock it is," he said. "Adam, one thing about your meeting with Feinstein. Don't let him see your crazy side. All right?"
I felt a cold shiver run over my spine. "What the hell are you talking about, Yitzhak?"
He laughed. "You'll see when you meet him. Gotta go. See you tonight."
I stared at the receiver after he had hung up. Had he been serious, or was this another of his stupid jokes? With Yitzhak it was never easy to tell. Tonight, I told myself. You'll find out tonight. For now, just do what you would regularly do on an investigation. Worry about your sanity later.
With Meir Abramo's letter in my pocket, I went to the bus terminal. I bought a ticket on the direct line to Jerusalem and by ten o'clock was on my way east.