Murder Duet: A Musical Case by Batya Gur

Author:Batya Gur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Published: 2020-10-13T00:00:00+00:00

8

Anyone Who Wants to Live Outside Life

The thought of Joanne Woodward’s face in The Three Faces of Eve assailed him again in the midst of the meeting, while Tzilla was standing at the table handing out, in order—first to Balilty and then to Michael, and to Dalit before Eli and Avram—the cups of coffee and omelet rolls Zippo had brought from the Yemenite’s stand on the corner of Jaffa Road. Puffing and panting, Zippo had returned from his mission and put the bags down in the middle of the conference table. He removed a small container from one of them, took off the cardboard lid with a flourish, and insisted that they all breathe in the smell of authentic Yemenite hilbeh. When Tzilla averted her face in disgust, he reminded her of the medicinal properties of the odoriferous spice, especially as an enhancer of virility. Part of Michael’s mind registered Tzilla placing the long roll wrapped in oil-stained white paper in front of him. As he looked at the stain he suddenly saw Joanne Woodward’s face filling the whole screen, an image he wasn’t at all certain was even in the movie.

The face twisted, altered, contorted, and transformed itself into something completely different. The woman in the movie didn’t know what was happening, he said to himself in a panic as the face disappeared and he again stared at the oil stain. Each one of her personalities was separate. They lived in one body, even in one soul, and the “good” one knew nothing about the “evil” one. He barely remembered the details, even though he had seen the movie again on television a few years back. But something about the way the woman spoke when she was in her vicious, evil role, the echo of her hoarse, mocking alto laughter, rang in his ears. He thought he remembered her saying: “She doesn’t know anything about me, but I know everything about her.” Only then did he notice that he was stirring the sugar around and around in his cup and sprinkling drops of the black liquid onto the notes Eli had prepared for them. Zippo ate noisily and praised the sharp green sauce, offering it around with a generous expression. He smacked his lips, chewed noisily, and wiped the edges of his mustache. Dalit sat between Michael and Balilty, who sat at the head of the table and ran the meeting. It seemed to Michael for a moment that she was sitting too close to him, that the gap between them was closing, that she was edging her elbow over to his, that her knee kept touching his, accidentally on purpose. And maybe it really was by accident, he rebuked himself as he peeked at her profile, which looked completely detached from these contacts. The coffee break had been a good idea, he thought as he unenthusiastically chewed the fresh roll soaked in the frying oil. It had done something to dispel the heavy atmosphere in the conference room after Eli Bahar’s outburst against Balilty.

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