Nearly an hour after we left Tel Aviv, the bus entered the gorge called Sha'ar Hagai and began its ascent through the mountains toward Jerusalem. To the south of the road lay the ruins of a nineteenth-century roadside inn, where weary travelers to Jerusalem had rested their horses, mules, camels, and themselves. To the north stood a small fort that had been built by the Ottoman Empire. On both sides of the road, the mountains rose precipitously, all jagged rocks, scraggly bushes, and trees clinging crookedly to the mountainside. In the early stages of the war, Arab gangs had control of these heights and from them would rain fire on vehicles traveling the road below toward the Jewish part of Jerusalem. At the time, there had been no other road to Jerusalem from the Jewish-controlled area of the country, so the Arabs had effectively blockaded the city. The Jews began to send armed convoys in an attempt to supply Jerusalem, but these convoys were invariably attacked and suffered heavy casualties. A shortage of food, water, and medical supplies threatened the Jewish residents of Jerusalem. A strict rationing regime was enacted. There was fear that the city would have to be abandoned.
In April 1948, while serving in the Givati infantry brigade, I had fought in these mountains, as part of Operation Nachshon. The goal was to break the blockade and allow the passage of supply convoys to Jerusalem. We could hardly be called an army at the time. Many of the soldiers had very little training, and our weaponry and supplies were laughable. Compared to the armies I had seen in Europe, the German Wehrmacht and the American Army, we looked like children playing at being soldiers.
Now, with the engine groaning as the bus crawled up the steep incline of the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, I recalled the days of Operation Nachshon. The battles were often fought at close range, with rifles and grenades. A personal sort of fighting. Much of the war was like that, and perhaps for an infantryman it always was. During the ten days of the operation, I saw many brave men die. And I had killed my fair share.
At the end of Operation Nachshon, a small convoy of trucks made it through the blockade and delivered essential supplies to the beleaguered Jews of Jerusalem, but the road to the city was quickly blocked off again, and the siege resumed. Still, it was considered a victory, a turning point in the war.
I had not been in Jerusalem since, neither as a soldier nor as a civilian. I spent the rest of the war, until I was injured, fighting in the southern part of Israel, largely against the Egyptian Army. I wondered what my father would have felt had he been there in the bus with me, inching our way toward the holy city. A religious man, he had prayed facing toward Jerusalem every day. I supposed that he would have been excited to walk its streets, to feel its history around him, to be close to the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall, to King David and King Solomon. I also imagined that he would have been horrified had I told him what it took to secure access to the city. In truth, there was no reason to be horrified. No one had ever had control of Jerusalem any other way.
It was a sunny day in Jerusalem, though not as hot as in Tel Aviv. The air felt lighter, less humid. From the main bus terminal, I boarded a bus that dropped me at the entrance to HaMoshava HaGermanit, a neighborhood that had been established by German Templers toward the end of the nineteenth century. The German inhabitants, many of which were proud Nazis and made no effort to hide it, were arrested and deported by the British during the Second World War. Now the neighborhood was inhabited by Jews, many of whom were refugees from Europe.
HaMoshava HaGermanit was bisected by Emek Refaim Street, which was lined with handsome houses, most of them one or two stories in height, with walls made of rough-hewn Jerusalem stone. Many of the houses bore Latin inscriptions and the architecture was distinctly German. Other houses, villas mostly, used to belong to well-to-do Arabs who had fled during Israel's War of Independence.
I showed the return address on the letter I had taken from Yosef Kaplon's mailbox to a long-bearded man dressed in a thick black jacket and a wide-brimmed black hat, and he directed me to a two-story squat building with high Gothic windows and wooden shutters that hung open on metal rods. There were two apartments on each floor: one facing the rear, the other the front. Abramo's apartment was the frontal apartment on the second floor. I climbed the smooth stone steps and knocked on the door, waited, got no response, and knocked again. Nothing. I tried the neighboring apartment with similar luck. I descended to the ground floor and rapped on one of the doors. A handsome middle-aged woman answered it. She had graying-blond hair, pulled back, exposing fine cheekbones, and brown eyes with a fine set of lines around them. She was wearing a light-fitting blue dress that went nearly to her ankles.
She greeted me with a smile and asked how she could help me. I introduced myself and she said that her name was Sarah Hersch. Her smile faded when I explained that I had come from Tel Aviv and was hoping to find Meir Abramo.
"Oh, so you haven't heard?" she asked.
"Heard what?"
"About Meir. He's dead."
I must have looked stunned, because she said, "You didn't know, did you? It was awful. And him with a young wife and baby. Awful." She shook her head to punctuate the awfulness of what had transpired. "Did you know him long?"
"No. Actually, I've never met him. I knew a friend of his in Tel Aviv and came here to see him. What happened? How did he die?"
"It was so sad. And surprising. I don't mind telling you that I was shocked when it happened. Shocked. He didn't seem the sort."
It dawned on me. "You mean…"
She nodded curtly. "What was going through his mind? I surely don't know. And to think about poor Magda finding him dead. I heard her scream, you know. It was bloodcurdling. I dropped a glass when she screamed and it broke to pieces. And then, of course, the baby started wailing, so frightened he was by Magda's screams."
My mind was racing. Could it be a morbid coincidence? Two men who corresponded with each other kill themselves within the space of a week? Could Kaplon have learned about his friend's death? Could that have been the reason for his suicide?
Mrs. Hersch was peering at me, frowning. "Are you all right?"
"How did he die?" I asked. "When did it happen?"
"Hanged himself," she said flatly. "Upstairs, in their apartment. Magda was away with the baby, and when she came back, there he was, hanging dead. As for when, his body was found on Monday evening. Eight days ago."
I did some rapid calculations. I had seen Kaplon perform on Wednesday night, and he died either that night or early the next morning. So only two days separated the discovery of Abramo's body and Kaplon's death. Could Kaplon have read about Abramo's suicide in the paper? Unlikely. News traveled slowly in Israel. The earliest the papers would have written about it was Wednesday, and Kaplon had seemed chipper during our meeting that morning. Not a man who had just learned of a friend's death.
I could feel a rush of excitement in my arms and legs. My fingers tingled. I took a deep breath. Mrs. Hersch was peering at me intently, and a wary look came upon her. She took a step back, curled one arm around her torso, and caught the door with the other hand, ready to shut it in my face. I felt the tension in my jaw and mouth. I had flattened my lips together hard, clamping my jaw muscles. Whether I looked merely determined or predatory, I couldn't say. Judging by Mrs. Hersch's reaction, it was probably the latter.
And it was appropriate. I felt like a predator who had been following the tracks of one prey and then caught the scent of another. And this second prey, this unexpected quarry, held the promise of more meat. I was no longer looking for a reason why Yosef Kaplon had killed himself in his neat Tel Aviv apartment. I was looking for a murderer. I was going to find out who had murdered Kaplon and Meir Abramo. That was my new prey. And it felt good to have his scent.