The Devil in Jerusalem (16 page)

She managed, but just. And then she was pregnant again. When she reached month four, she suddenly started spotting. Her doctor put her on complete bed rest.

“It's impossible! I have five little kids.”

“Well, if you want to have six you'll have to find a way to manage.”

Shlomie wrote her grandmother, who immediately sent a check for full-time, live-in household help. She was furious he'd gone behind her back.

“To save a life, all is permissible,” he'd answered with equanimity, refusing to apologize. After all, he was only following her lead, no? The children came first, before their parents' silly pride and even self-respect. Whatever harsh thing she said (oh, she could be very harsh!) he let roll off him like oil on a Teflon pan. While domestic harmony was important, saving a life was paramount per all the laws of the Torah.

Holed up in the bedroom with Shoshana, there was little Daniella could do but accept the situation. They found a very efficient woman who cooked, cleaned, and took care of the children. In addition, the entire community chipped in, making a rotation schedule in which every day another volunteer picked up the children from school, while someone else took the baby for an hour or two, and someone else dropped off a lovely dinner.

Daniella, used to endless activity, felt she was in prison. But soon she got used to it, secretly reveling in her newfound idleness, making up for years of overwork. She relished the undivided time with baby Shoshana, something she'd never had with the others. Even with Duvie she'd been working in the jewelry store. If you had nothing else to do, having a little baby by your side all the time was the most marvelous thing in the world.

But then, despite all their efforts, she awoke one morning to find the bed soaked with blood. Rushed to the hospital, there was nothing anyone could do to save the fetus.

“You're young, you're healthy. There is no reason you shouldn't have more if you want them,” her doctor assured her.

At home, she took to her bed. She felt useless, guilty, cursed. Why would God do this to her? What was she being punished for? she wondered, completely convinced that the baby's loss was preventable. Perhaps she hadn't prayed hard enough? Or perhaps God could see inside the dark shadows of her heart where she kept hidden the shameful secret of her ingratitude, her unhappiness, and her fatigue? God had known that she didn't want this baby, even if she hadn't been able to admit it to herself.

She wrote her grandmother, asking her to come. “I don't know when I'll be up to bringing all the kids on a plane. I miss you so much! I want you to see your great-grandchildren.”

To her surprise, she got a phone call from her mother. “Your grandmother has cancer. She doesn't have long. There's no question of her, or any of us, traveling just now. If you want to see her, you'd better get here fast.”

Daniella was numb with shock.

Only two weeks after the miscarriage, she found herself on board a flight to America with all five children, Shlomie staying behind, unable to leave the hothouses. The trip was a nightmare: eleven hours with four kids running up and down the aisles, spilling cups of juice and soda, vomiting, the two youngest screaming with ear pain and fatigue.

Gabriel, and especially baby Shoshana, really should not have been on an airplane filled with dangerous germs. But sometimes, she thought, you have to make difficult decisions for your children. Would it be better for them never to have met their great-grandmother? Or for her grandmother to die without ever having seen them? She couldn't bear the thought of such a loss.

They stayed three weeks in her mother's spacious home. Almost immediately Duvie, Yossi, and Gabriel came down with the flu, keeping her up all night. But thankfully, Amalya and the baby were fine. The problem was, she couldn't take the sick ones into her grandmother's hospital room, which broke her heart. But at least she took her oldest and her youngest.

Her grandmother was propped up on a pillow, her hair carefully coiffed by Phillipa, the woman who had been looking after her all these years. A swipe of pink lipstick gave color to her pale face, and matching nail polish highlighted her still beautifully manicured fingernails. Still, her face was haggard, and there was no question—as much as she desperately wanted and tried to hide it—that she was in terrible pain.

“Don't keep her too long. She needs her rest,” Daniella's mother warned.

“Oh, don't be a yenta, Claire! This is the best medicine in the whole world. My granddaughter and her babies,” her grandmother scolded, holding out her arms. “Come, my darlings.” Carefully, Daniella placed Shoshana in them.

“I wish I had a camera,” Phillipa said.

Her mother took out her cell phone and snapped a picture. “Now, you get in with Amalya,” she instructed Daniella, who crouched down beside her grandmother's bed, her arm around her daughters, her face resting next to her grandmother's on the pillow.

Later, she would never be able to look at that picture, look at the expression of terror on her own face.

Her mother and Phillipa took Amalya and Shoshana down to the cafeteria to get themselves coffee and something sweet to share with Amalya, leaving her alone. Daniella pulled a chair close to the bed. Her grandmother's elegant hands with their long fingers and magnificent rings reached out to her. She clasped them.

“So tell me, Dani, are you happy?”

She nodded. “You can't imagine. Thanks to you, we built a lovely house. Shlomie is getting really good at being a farmer. You wouldn't believe all the tomatoes and strawberries … imagine!”

They both laughed at the irony.

“You shouldn't have come here so soon after losing the baby.” Her grandmother shook her head.

“I had to. Next time, I won't wait so long to come.”

“Oh, darling, there isn't going to be a next time,” she said softly, stroking Daniella's hand.

Daniella put her hand over her grandmother's. Tears stung her eyes. “What am I going to do without you, Granny?”

“You'll do fine. I want you to know, you and your family are never going to have to worry about money.”

“Please … don't!”

“Oh, don't act silly. Don't pretend. You and I don't have that kind of fakery between us. We never did.”

Daniella nodded, dabbing her eyes.

“They are beautiful, beautiful children, Daniella. Such a blessing! I could only have the two, your mother and your uncle Arthur, God rest his soul. In such a dangerous world, you need a lot of children. Take care of them well.”

“It's my life, Granny,” she said with simple sincerity.

“I know, I know. But take care of yourself, too. Children need a strong, healthy, happy mother with her feet on the ground. Especially if their father is a
luftmensch.
”

Daniella knew what that meant. It meant a person floating in the air, with no real profession or connection to the realities of life. I should be insulted, she thought. If only it wasn't such a perfect description of the man she'd married.

Truthfully, she worried all the time about the work Shlomie was doing. Often, he'd forget to turn off the taps, which flooded the plants' roots, rotting them; or he'd put in too much fertilizer, risking burning them. So far, Marwan had always been able to save him in the nick of time. But she wondered if the day wasn't far off when he'd succeed in achieving a disaster so complete it would ruin them.

“Don't worry, Granny. I'll take care of him, too.”

“Ha, right—that's the spirit, girl!” Her face suddenly went from palest white to deep red. She groaned and closed her eyes. “Go, Dani! Take care of your babies. I don't want you to see me like this.” She pressed a button. The room filled with nurses. Daniella felt herself crowded out toward the exit. She couldn't even manage to say good-bye.

 

12

The police rounded up Yissaschar Goldschmidt and Shmaya Hod, but they couldn't find Kuni Batlan.

“All these guys look the same, with the beards and black hats and suits,” the sergeant said.

Bina winced. “I know. Like all the Chinese look the same, right? You know, Sergeant, the Chinese think all us Westerners look the same.”

He looked at her sideways, wondering if she was trying to be funny.

“All I'm trying to say is, these three are vital to our investigation. We must talk to all of them. Can't you put out an alert in the haredi community? Talk to some of the more influential rabbis? After all, these guys are dangerous child abusers. I'm sure they don't want them running around loose in their communities either.”

“Thing is, Detective,” the sergeant drawled, “at the moment, we are on the outs with the haredi community, big-time.”

There was no need for him to elaborate. Not a day went by when there wasn't some other headline-producing battle between police and an increasingly vocal and belligerent minority among haredim. First, haredim had a campaign to put women at the back of public buses, abusing and insulting any female who resisted. When they tried this on gun-toting girl soldiers, though, the police had to be called in, and the men were arrested, causing riots and the burning of tires and garbage cans in haredi neighborhoods. This was followed by the beating of women at the Western Wall who wanted to form their own prayer quorums and read from the Torah, some of them choosing to wear the hitherto male religious accoutrements of prayer shawls and skullcaps like their Conservative and Reform American sisters. They were cursed, physically accosted, threatened, and even had chairs thrown at them. But when the police were called, they oddly decided to haul the women off for creating a “disturbance of the peace.” Soon, the indignant women returned with court orders, and the police had to spend time hauling off the belligerent men.

And then there was the haredi campaign to keep public parking lots in Jerusalem closed on Saturdays in order to encourage people not to drive and thus, in their minds at least, prevent the desecration of the Sabbath. To that end, every Saturday, haredi hotheads blocked roads with noisy demonstrations, which police had no choice but to break up, thus ruining their own Sabbath rest. Resenting overtime on the weekend, the cops broke up the demonstrations a bit more roughly than was strictly necessary, at least according to the demonstrators.

Adding fuel to the fire was a challenging social upheaval in which the average Israeli was finally fed up with yeshiva students who not only had draft exemptions but were also being supported by monthly stipends from the public till, even though their families paid virtually no taxes. Police, who had all served in the army and sent their sons, and who paid a considerable amount in income taxes, were only human.

For all these reasons, police contacts with haredim were fraught. The result was a simmering public volcano ready to explode in which the police were given the impossible task of keeping order and preventing incidents that would trigger widespread tensions overflowing into violence. Yes, you could say the police loved going into haredi neighborhoods about as much as the haredim loved having them there.

“Look, Sergeant, I appreciate the difficulties. But just get it done, okay?”

He nodded. “What about the two we found?”

“We're talking to them. We'll talk to them some more,” she said evenly.

“No luck, huh?” He shrugged. “Now you know what I'm up against.”

Unfortunately, she did. She thought about her first session with Shmaya Hod.

He came in looking like a typical yeshiva student, but on steroids: side curls down to his shoulders, white socks pulled up over his pants, a long satin black waistcoat straight out of the closet of an overweight, medieval Polish landowner. The first thing he did was demand that Bina leave the room, because it “wasn't modest” for them to be alone together.

“Don't worry, we're not alone. You see that window? It's two-way glass. Two male detectives are out there watching every move you make—just in case you're suddenly overcome by irresistible lust.”

He sat down, his face reddening. He refused to look at her. “What do you want from me?”

“Tell me about Daniella Goodman and her children.”

“I was asked to help her, as a
chesed
, a good deed.”

“I know what the word ‘chesed' means,” she cut in. “Not only that, but I know what the word ‘tikkunim' means as well,” she said evenly.

He suddenly stared directly into her face. “What did she say? Did she lie about me?”

“Who?”

“The mother. Because whatever she said, she was responsible. She was the mother.”

“So why don't you tell me what happened?”

“I am a God-fearing man who was doing a mitzvah! I had nothing to gain from it. And now she accuses me of all kinds of evil! Such a lack of
hakarat tova
!”

“Oh, so you think she should be
grateful
for what you did to her children?”

She saw the color drain from his face. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette.

“No smoking.”

Reluctantly, he put it back. He closed his mouth, pinching his lips together, his fat arms enfolded over his heavy chest, his thumb and forefinger picking nervously at the mustache hairs around his twitching lips.

“Whose idea was it for you to move in with her and ‘help' her? And, by the way, if you are too
frum
to be in the same room with a woman, how is it you had no problem moving in with Daniella Goodman after her husband left?”

“It wasn't like that at all!” he sputtered in rage. “I am a God-fearing man!”

“Yeah, so you already said. So, I'll ask you again: How did it happen you moved in with her?”

“She asked us to come! I was never alone with her.”

“That's funny. She says you and the others were sent to her.”

“Did she say a name? Did she say who sent us?”