A moment later, Magda returned, looking relaxed now that David was sleeping. By that time the kettle was boiling. "I only have tea," she said apologetically. I told her tea was fine. She brought each of us a cup.
I sat on the sofa and she took a straight-backed chair. I sipped from my cup. She crossed her legs. She had fine, elegant ankles. She held the cup in one hand and rested her chin on the other. After a moment she said in a flat voice, "It seems like it hasn't been this quiet here in weeks. Of course, that is not true, but these past few days…"
She stared at her hands, her shoulders drooping.
"I know," I said. "I came around earlier when you were out. Mrs. Hersch from downstairs told me about your husband."
She bit her lower lip. "So you know he killed himself."
"I know that is what everyone thinks."
"What do you mean?"
"What I mean," I said, "is that I came all the way from Tel Aviv to talk to your husband about Yosef Kaplon. He's dead too, you see. Was found dead in his apartment in Tel Aviv four days ago. Apparent suicide."
I paused as her eyes widened. Her hand went to her mouth.
"From the first moment," I said, "I had a strange feeling about Kaplon's death, but I couldn't say why. I thought if I learned why he had killed himself, that feeling would go away. I found a letter from your husband in his mailbox and thought he might have some answers for me. But then I learned that he had killed himself, too. And in a way that is more of an answer than I could have gotten had I spoken with him. Because you see, Magda, that feeling of strangeness that I had hasn't gone away. I don't think it will, because it wasn't supposed to. I'm no longer trying to find out why Yosef Kaplon killed himself. I'm trying to find out who killed him." I looked right into her eyes. "And who killed your husband, too."
10
She didn't say I was crazy. Didn't burst out accusing me of aggravating her pain with my delusions. Her eyes didn't flick in panic toward the door or the kitchen, where she could get to a knife. My tightly held breath told me I had been expecting such a reaction, and I was grateful when it didn't materialize. Instead of calling me mad, Magda Abramo sat in her straight-backed chair with more calmness than one could reasonably expect. Her eyes were no longer tearing, and she seemed more alert, her fatigue momentarily banished. She seemed beautiful then, with her gray eyes like weathered metal—resilient and tested.
"You don't seem surprised by what I just said."
She breathed in deeply. "No. I was surprised when I discovered my husband dead. Then I was surprised."
"He was not depressed or on edge or anything of the sort?"
"Not that I could see. He was not unhappy. I'm sure that he deeply loved me and David. Life was not perfect and not all of his wishes were fulfilled, but is that ever the case?"
I allowed that it was not.
She said, "Ever since I discovered his body, I have been agonizing myself with the question of how I could have missed the signs. After all, a wife should know her husband better than anyone else. If he was on the verge of suicide, if he was even contemplating it, I should have noticed. So in a way, what you say gives me a sort of relief. Perhaps I was not blind. Perhaps I did not fail my husband by failing to note that he was depressed or had lost hope for the future." She shrugged and took a sip of her tea. "Or perhaps I just want to believe you as a way to avoid blaming myself for his death."
A silence fell between us. Then she asked, "How did Yosef Kaplon die?"
“Slashed wrists. Bled to death in his apartment. I understand your husband was hanged.”
She nodded, then must have registered my frown. "You expected them to be the same? Does it change anything?"
"It might. It will make it much harder to convince the police that these deaths were murders, not suicides."
"Does it make you doubt yourself?"
"No. From early on, I had a feeling that Kaplon's death was not what it seemed to be. That was before I even knew about your husband. Where exactly did you find him?”
I followed her eyes as they traveled up, and I saw a sturdy metal hook lodged in the high ceiling, inches from where a bare bulb now hung. The hook had been made to bear the weight of a heavy light fixture. It had likely been placed there by some fanciful German former owners planning to light the apartment like a European ballroom. Either the light fixture had never been hung, or the owners had taken it with them when they were expelled by the British.
"I came in the door," Magda said, "without a care in the world—well, apart from the daily cares of any wife and mother—and he was hanging there. Not swinging, just hanging. A chair was lying toppled on the floor." She looked down for a moment. "I am sitting on it now, I think. I'm not sure. We have three identical chairs. I thought of throwing them all out, but maybe I can sell them. We're going to need money, David and I. Until I find some sort of work."
Magda looked at me, and there was horror in her eyes. "Have you ever seen a man that has been hanged to death? It is a horrible thing. His eyes, his tongue, the color of his face. No wife should ever see her husband like that. No wife should bear such a memory."
I didn't tell her that I'd seen many such men. The lucky ones whose neck had snapped with a cracking sound that I could feel in my bones. The unlucky ones who twisted at the end of their rope, bucking and thrashing as their life was slowly choked out of them. And I had seen those men die, not just after the fact. And I could not let out a scream or turn away or weep. I had to stand there until I was allowed to move.
I could have told her all that, but I doubted it would help her. I'd heard it said that sharing pain could make bearing it easier. But I'd never believed it.
"Was anything taken?" I asked, and she confirmed my guess with a shake of her head.
"It was the first question the policeman who came here asked."
"Did your husband leave a note?"
"That was the second question." She raised an eyebrow.
"I was a policeman in Hungary," I explained. "Those would have been the first two questions I would have asked had I been the officer sent here."
"There was a note," she said. "I still have it. The officer copied it into his notebook, but he said he didn't need to take it with him, that it was a clear-cut suicide."
I drank the rest of my tea while she went to fetch the note. A moment later she reappeared and handed it to me. It was in Hebrew.
My darling Magda,
Please forgive me for doing this. I cannot bear to continue. At night it's the dreams that keep on haunting me. During the day it is the memories and guilt. I cannot escape in any way but this.
Meir.
I frowned as I finished.
"Is this how your husband wrote?" I asked.
"It is his handwriting," she said, then tilted her head to the right and added, "At least it looks like it."
"And the tone of the letter?"
"When I first picked up the note from where it lay on the table and read it, I didn't notice anything. The shock was too great. Later, when I read it again, I felt that a stranger had written it. Meir was open with his emotions. In the privacy of our home, at least. This letter, it is distant. He addresses me as 'my darling' when he always called me 'my love.' And never is the word love mentioned, nor David. He never once mentions our son."
Her fingers were twisting each other, like she was wringing herself dry of some entrenched tension.
"I thought about going to the police, but then decided I was being foolish. Obviously, I did not know my husband as well as I thought. The man I knew would not have killed himself. It was some secret man I never even glimpsed. It made sense that the note would seem to have been written by someone else."