“Who are you? How did you get in?”
“Your mother said,” the older one answers, “if she’s not home, I’m allowed to calm him down with the television.”
He points to the little boy.
“She couldn’t possibly have said something like that.”
“I swear it. You weren’t in Israel, that’s why you don’t know.”
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Yudel… Yehuda… Yuda-Zvi.”
“You be careful, Yuda-Zvi, I know all about you two. You’re Shaya’s kids.”
“Just me. This is Shraga, he’s a cousin, the youngest son of my mother’s sister. But you got to know only my father, not my mother.”
“Right,” she answers. “I never met your mother and I don’t want to meet her. Now turn off the television. Where’s the remote?”
“I don’t have it. He has it. He picks out for himself what and who calms him down.”
“Like the prime minister, you mean,” she says with a smile.
“Yes, he can relax him, depending on what he says. And this one, if he doesn’t get a little TV every day, he runs up and down your stairs and everyone goes crazy, including your mother.”
Noga bends over the little boy, who has still not looked at her, and searches for the remote under the hat on his lap. Then she removes him from his seat and rummages in the depths of the armchair. But the child doesn’t mind; his eyes are glued to the screen, and the remote is hidden the devil knows where. She gives up on him and unplugs the TV, and the child attacks her with a wild scream, tries to bite the hand that silenced his prime minister, and when she shakes him off, he curls up on the floor and bitterly weeps.
“You can’t take him away from the TV like that,” Yuda-Zvi explains, sitting peacefully in his armchair.
“Like what?”
“All of a sudden.”
“Enough is enough,” she says. “What’s with this kid? What’s wrong with him? Where’s his mother? Where’s his father?”
“His father is always sick, and my aunt has no more strength for him, so my mother asks me to take care of him. Because he — you may not know this — he is not an ordinary boy but an important boy.”
“Important?”
“He’s the great-grandson of the Rebbe, the Tzaddik, the righteous one. And if other children in that family die, he might someday have to be the Tzaddik, when he’s a hundred and twenty.”
But she is unimpressed by the tzaddik wailing on the floor.
“Does your grandmother upstairs know you’re breaking into an apartment that isn’t yours?”
“Grandma doesn’t know much of anything anymore,” the boy answers truthfully. “But even if she did know, she wouldn’t care, because she understands that only television can help his pain. And I promise you, Noga”—he speaks her name matter-of-factly—“your mother also doesn’t care if I calm him down with her television. She even gave me a key.”
“A key!”
“Yes. Because she knows that if I take him in through the bathroom window, he could possibly, God forbid, fall and be crushed.”
“And where is the key now?”
“Why?”
“Where’s the key?”
“It’s here… I have it.”
“Give it to me.”
“Why? You don’t have a key to the apartment?”
“Give it to me right now, or else…”
As the little tzaddik looks up at her, his eyes gleaming with tears, the older boy unbuttons his shirt collar and hands her a string with the key that her father had put on a red ring, to tell it apart from his many other keys.
She opens the front door and quietly says:
“That’s it, boy. That’s it, Mister Yuda-Zvi. This is the last time… and I will speak to your grandmother and your grandfather.”
“Just not Grandpa,” says the terrified boy. “Please, not Grandpa,” he begs, before she slams the door on them both.
Thirteen
A FEW NIGHTS LATER, on the ride back to Jerusalem after the jury shoot, with the actress’s red scarf still wrapped around her neck, Noga casually tells Elazar about the two boys.
“Even if you took away their key, don’t be so sure they won’t come back,” he says. “The little b-b-bastard probably made a copy, so don’t be surprised to find them again in front of your TV.”
“So what am I to do?”
“The n-n-next time, don’t kick them out and don’t argue. Act friendly, get in touch with me, and I’ll put on my old police uniform and make sure that the little tz-tzaddiks won’t b-b-bother you again, forever.”
“Forever?” She laughs. “I’m only staying in Israel for another couple of months.”
“So wh-what? You’re still entitled to p-p-peace and quiet.”
The stutter is annoying, but also charming in its way, with an element of surprise. Entire sentences flow smoothly, and just as she has forgotten that he stutters, an ordinary word or a modest preposition, which might carry some hidden implication, becomes a psychological impediment, and then, instead of simply repeating a word or syllable, he gets stuck on a certain sound and prolongs it. In the dark minibus making its way to Jerusalem, she senses his attempt to draw closer to her, not only because he likes her, but because she is free and unattached, without a husband and children, with no desire to have children, and also because her time in Israel is limited and there’s no risk of getting emotionally involved, which could hurt him or someone in his family.
And since he knows about future projects of the agency that hires the extras, he tries to win her over during the drive by urging her to take part in them as well.
“I don’t need that much money,” she says.
“It’s not just m-m-money,” he protests, “but to be a participant without any effort or ob-obligation in the stories of all kinds of characters, and perhaps also be engraved in the m-m-memory of the audience. Tonight, for example, you announced the verdict very well. When this movie is completed, if it ever is, there will doubtless be viewers who will remember how softly but c-c-confidently you pronounced gu-il-ty, as if you were not talking about the killer, but about y-y-yourself.”
The retired judge, sitting silently across the aisle, apparently dozing, turns his head. “Yes, madam, Elazar is right. These days a court is expected to announce a grim verdict in a personal tone of voice, even with mild hesitation. I am still used to declaring a verdict with dramatic force, which is why they passed me up.”
At the bus stop near the former Edison movie theater Noga and the judge get out, and Elazar suddenly decides to join them. “I’ll see you home so I know where to come q-q-quickly if you want to chase away the boys.” But Noga points to her building from afar, lest he attempt to escort her upstairs.
Fourteen
ELAZAR WAS UNDETERRED. The next day he phoned and asked her to join him in the late evening at a bar, where a scene was to be shot for an Israeli film requiring several middle-aged extras to supplement the regular younger crowd. This was no more than a pleasant evening on the town, he added. The scene would be simple, not long, and would be shot without fancy direction or cinematic effects, the extras would blend in anonymously, the camera would be hidden. The extras would be asked to act naturally like the rest of the crowd, drink, listen to the music and chatter away to their heart’s content. They would not be paid. The production would cover the cost of drinks; the night on the town constituted the pay.