The Devil in Jerusalem (32 page)

“Yes, and it was a terrible sin, and David was punished for it.”

“No, he wasn't. Because it was God's will. When David married Bathsheba, she was already a widow. And a man can take more than one wife. Our holy forefathers did: Abraham and Jacob.”

She looked down, still listening intently.

“And their union, was it not blessed? From Bathsheba was born King Solomon, the wisest leader the Jewish nation has ever known. And from that union, are we not told that the Messiah himself will be born?”

A lengthy silence descended on the room.

He broke it. “This is all God's will. It's not up to me or to you. Please don't resist what I am telling you! You feel trapped, but the door is open. God has heard your prayers and opened it for you, Daniella. And for me.”

“Please … don't…”

“If for once you would give up your very rational mind, and you would agree to feel deeply, I would not need to say another word. You would no longer need proofs. You would experience a truth that is stronger than any argument. You would see what I see. You would reach the highest level of purity, higher than your husband could ever reach.”

“But he tries so hard.”

Shem Tov shrugged. “Some are born short and some tall. As much as they try, a short man can never reach height. He will die short. Why should you let this hold you back?”

And then he did something thrilling. He reached out and touched her, holding both her hands in his, then bringing them to his lips. He kissed her knuckles, his beard tickling her arm.

The effect was electric, all her senses shocked into paralysis, her mind numbed.

 

28

In preparation for the meeting with the children, Bina replayed the tapes of their previous encounters, trying to gain some insight. What she saw was not encouraging. They were uniformly and hopelessly hostile. Duvie, especially, had to be physically restrained from attacking the officers. They cried, they kicked, they threw loud tantrums. It was impossible to talk to them. And yet … She thought of the interview with Eli. What a charming little boy: smart, articulate, polite, and basically scared out of his wits. Children like this, she thought, had been raised by good parents. Parents who cared.

Then what had happened to them to produce this kind of bedlam? Whatever it was, she sensed, it had taken place over a short time and hopefully had not obliterated their core, producing instead a thick, hard carapace under which was still hidden their true personalities. If she could only find a way beneath, Bina felt sure, she would find a bright, soft center that was still intact.

What was the way to peel back their armor?

A sudden light came into her mind. Armor. Unwieldy, iron clothing worn to protect a soldier from harm. And when did a soldier take off his armor? Only when he was sure that the
war was over.

But Shem Tov was still out there.

She called up Morris. “I have an idea.”

“I'm ready to listen,” he said, deeply frustrated, angry, and a bit hopeless. The clock was ticking away and no extradition papers had yet been filed. They needed a breakthrough, and they needed it now. He listened to what she had to say with interest. “We need to discuss this with Johnny.” With Morris's encouragement, Bina outlined her plan to the child psychologist.

“Brilliant.” He nodded.

Once more they gathered the children together, but this time without Duvie.

“We want our mommy,” Shoshana, the seven-year-old, cried.

“I know, I know, sweetheart,” Bina said gently, lifting her up in her arms. To her surprise, the child cuddled against her. She felt her heart melt.

“Shoshana, Gabriel, Yossi, Amalya, we know you all miss your mom—”

“And our dad!” Gabriel cried out.

“Yes, of course, your dad, too. And they miss you. We want to bring your parents to you as soon as we can.”

“You locked up our mom and won't let her see us!” Yossi, the twelve-year-old, accused. He looked miserable and on the verge of tears.

“Yes, we will. But we need your help,” Johnny said gently.

Their eyes were big and round and questioning.

“Duvie told us that you just want us to help you against our mom!” Amalya declared hostilely, her sweet face distorted with hatred.

Well, this is going just great, Morris thought.

“Duvie is mistaken. I'm a mom, too. I would never do that,” Bina tried.

“How many children do you have?” Gabriel, the eleven-year-old, asked.

Bina took a deep breath, encouraged by the question's neutrality. “I have two. Ronnie, who's five, and Lilach, who's two.”

“Do you play with them?” Shoshana asked suddenly, her small hand clutching Bina's shoulder.

“All the time.”

“What kind of games?” Gabriel wanted to know.

“All kinds.”

“Taki? Three Sticks?”

“Sure. I'm very good at Taki. Not so much at Three Sticks. I usually wind up falling down.”

The younger children laughed, imagining her no doubt sprawled over the floor trying to jump over sticks.

“It's lovely you're laughing. You're very good children,” she told them.

All of them suddenly went quiet, drinking in her words like milk.

“And I know you all want to help your mom. But if I was ever in trouble like your mom, I'd want my children to help the police.”

“Why is our mom in trouble?” Yossi asked, surprised.

Did they really not know? Bina wondered. “Because you children got hurt, and it's a mom's job to see that doesn't happen.”

“But it wasn't her fault! She never hit us,” Gabriel shouted.

“Yes, our mom loves us!” Amalya declared, and all the children nodded.

“Just, sometimes, she didn't see, she went away…,” Shoshana said hesitantly.

“Didn't see what?” Johnny pressed.

“Don't talk, don't talk!” Amalya reminded her.

“We'll get punished!” Yossi agreed.

The children froze into silence.

“I know they hurt you, Shem Tov the Messiah, and Batlan, Goldschmidt, and Hod. They punished you. But you didn't deserve it. You didn't do anything bad. They were the bad ones,” Bina told them.

A thaw came over their faces.

“Who told you?” Gabriel asked, astounded.

“Eli told us. He told us everything…”

“He wasn't supposed to!” Gabriel shouted. “He wasn't supposed to talk. Never allowed to tell!”

“We can't. Please don't make us. We'll get into a lot of trouble. You don't know what it's like!”
Yossi begged.

“He'll get really mad,” Shoshana said, her eyes filling with tears.

“Who, Shoshana?”

“The Messiah. Never allowed to tell. You get stuck in the suitcase.…”

“Shhh!”
Amalya hissed. “Remember what Duvie said!”

The children went silent.

“What did Duvie say?” Bina probed gently.

“He said we will all have to live in Shem Tov's house again, like before, and if we talk he'll do more tikkunim!” Gabriel answered.

She saw the horror in the children's eyes, the slight thawing disappearing at once and a new ice age brought on by acute terror taking its place.

“But he can't hurt you anymore, the Messiah or his Hassidim,” she told them flatly.

It took them a few moments to drink that in.

“Why not?” Yossi finally asked, unconvinced.

She looked at Johnny and Morris. They nodded. “Because they are all in jail!”

Gabriel seemed aghast; then his face broke out into a radiant smile. He looked at the others: “The Messiah is in jail!”

“And Kuni Batlan, Shmaya Hod, and Yissaschar Goldschmidt? Are they also in jail?” Yossi pressed.

“Yes. Every single one of them are in jail!” Morris told them. “And you have the key to keep them there. Just tell us the truth, tell us what happened. They are saying they didn't do anything to you … that they should be let out.”

“That's a lie!” the children chorused fiercely. Suddenly and miraculously, a cacophony of childish voices competed with each other to supply the details the police so desperately needed.

“When we moved into Shem Tov's house, everything changed,” Amalya began. “He said that we had ‘demons' inside us and we needed tikkunim to get rid of them so we could be tzaddikim. At the beginning, he left Menchie alone. He was only a baby. But then Menchie hid our mother's car keys so she couldn't go out and leave us. That's when Shem Tov started looking at him differently. He started beating him. Punched his face with a fist.”

“He told Batlan and Hod to do it, too!” Yossi added.

“He'd tie Menchie with chains,” Gabriel said eagerly. “He'd tie him to the chair and tie his hands behind him so he couldn't move.”

“And then Kuni and Shmaya would punch him in the face and hit him with sticks,” Amalya continued. “They'd slap one cheek, sending his head flying in one direction, and then they'd slap the other cheek, and it would fly back. They'd do it again and again and again.…”

“They slapped him thousands of times until his face got all swollen and square,” Shoshana said, bursting into tears.

“His eyes were almost swollen shut,” said Yossi. “He could hardly see. You could just see his nose sticking out of his face.”

“Then they'd make fun of him,” Gabriel added, his voice full of righteous indignation. “They'd call him an ‘ugly mongoloid.' Say he was retarded. They'd laugh. And when it was time for Menchie's
chalakah
—”

“That's when they're three and they get their hair cut for the first time,” Bina whispered to Morris. “It's a celebration. A party for the child.”

“—they took all of us to Meron to do it at the saint's grave. They made Menchie run at night through the streets. And then, on the way home, we stopped near a forest. It was very dark. They took Menchie out of the car and drove off. They hid in the forest and made noises just to scare him.”

Bina closed her eyes, wondering how much more she could stand to hear. Morris nudged her. “Go on; you are doing great,” she told them.

“Hod and Batlan would hold him by the shoulders and shake him so hard, his head swung back and forth like a rag doll's. A lot of the time, he'd faint, and they'd pour cold water on him to wake him up,” Amalya said with passion.

“All day long, the Messiah would make Menchie stand by him and jump up and down, up and down, for hours,” added Shoshana hoarsely, hiccuping.

“He'd tell Hod and Batlan to shove food into his mouth until he choked or threw up,” Amalya continued.

“And don't forget to tell how they hit his fingers with the wooden kitchen hammer,” Yossie added urgently.

Amalya nodded. “They'd hit his fingernails until finally they just fell off.” She took a deep breath. “And once they shook him so hard they broke his arm and—”

“But they didn't even take him to a doctor!” Gabriel interjected passionately.

“They'd just put on an elastic bandage,” Amalya confirmed bitterly. “They tied his arms behind him in the chair. He screamed and screamed for days until suddenly, he just stopped. After that, there was nothing they could do to make him scream,” Amalya said, choking up. “Nothing. The same thing happened to Eli. After a while, he just seemed not to feel anymore.”

Bina felt herself going faint. If only half of it were true! But as she looked into Amalya's innocent young face, she knew deep in her heart, it was all true. Where would an innocent, good Beit Yaakov girl like Amalya, and the others, even little Shoshana, be able to imagine such cruelty if they hadn't witnessed it? It was like the stories Holocaust survivors told about what had happened to them in the camps—acts so depraved only the sickest and most wicked of minds could have conceived of them, deeds so debased no decent person could imagine them.

But it was not without logic, she thought. In a very sick way, it all made sense. Shem Tov, the psychopath, was able to seduce and terrify the others so that they feared, believed, and worshiped him. But not Menchie. He was too little to be affected by any of the magic tricks and charisma that had so mesmerized the adults and older children. With a toddler's simple, true vision, he saw right through Shem Tov. And Shem Tov couldn't stand that. With his impulsive, violent, psychopathic personality, he viewed Menchie, the three-year-old, as a threat, an adversary to be vanquished. And Eli's only crime was looking too much like his father, the inconvenient husband Shem Tov hated for his good fortune and his gullibility.

“Are you all right? Do you want to take a break?” Morris whispered to her.

She shook her head. They mustn't. Having broken the dam, they must soak up every last drop of the evidence flooding through that they'd waited so long to gather. Besides, if the children had the courage and strength to continue, she could do no less.

“Go on, kids. You are all doing great,” Johnny encouraged them.

“Yes, your mom would be so proud of all of you,” Bina agreed.

Amalya took a deep breath, continuing, “With Eli, Shem Tov appointed Goldschmidt to be responsible for him. Goldschmidt would just look at Shem Tov and he'd wink or nod his head, and Goldschmidt would start torturing him.”

“What, exactly, did you see him do to Eli?”

“They made Eli stand in the corner for hours and hours with his face to the wall and his hands up.”

“He was like a piece of furniture in the house,” Gabriel said.

“And when he was standing there, sometimes Shem Tov and Goldschmidt would kick him until he fell on the floor,” Yossi added. “Then they'd put him outside on the porch in the freezing cold rain and snow in his underpants. A lot of times, they'd force arak down his throat until he gagged or threw up. Sometimes…” He hesitated, looking significantly at Amalya, as if asking permission. She nodded. He took a deep breath. “They wouldn't let Eli go to the bathroom so he made in his pants. Every time that happened, they'd beat him, then wash him off in ice cold water.”