The Missing File Page 17

  Michal looked at him excitedly, expectantly.

  “Well, what do you write there?”

  “Just a moment, let me explain.”

  She was impatient. “Does the instructor give you assignments? How does it work?”

  “In principle, yes. Michael gives the students a writing exercise on a particular subject, and they bring their work to class and discuss it. But that’s not what I’m doing. I’ve simply come up with my own idea—from outside the workshop, though maybe inspired by it—and I am working on something longer and more serious.”

  Michal smiled at him, as if it was clear to her that he wouldn’t be wasting his time on routine writing exercises.

  “So, can the author kindly tell me what it is that he is writing about?”

  “I’m not sure,” Ze’ev replied.

  His indecision was sincere; it wasn’t a means to pique her curiosity. He hadn’t been able to see the reactions of his previous readers—not of Ofer’s parents, and not of the police—and could only imagine. But he’d be able to see Michal’s face while she read.

  “It’s up to you,” she said. “I’d really love to read it. And maybe we should celebrate in some way.”

  “Celebrate? There’s nothing to celebrate just yet. First you’d have to read it and tell me if you like it.”

  Should he give it to her or not?

  He placed the open notebook on the desk in front of her. Her excitement had won him over.

  “I haven’t typed it up on the computer yet,” he said. “It’s all in the notebook for the meantime. Right now there are three letters, or three chapters.”

  “Ah, okay, it’s a story in letters,” she said and began reading.

  Elie was sleeping soundly, but Ze’ev could feel his son’s slumber weighing heavily on him. More than anything else, he feared Elie would wake crying and that Michal would have to stop reading to go see to him, or that he’d have to get up for the boy and would not be there to see her reactions. He followed her eyes as they moved from one word on to another, not missing a single expression on her face. If Elie were to wake, they wouldn’t be able to discuss the text right then and there, and would have to wait until the evening. By then, the excitement would have waned.

  The third letter was the longest—and the most complex, he thought, because it was reflexive and referred to the process of reading the previous ones and to the possibility that whoever had received them may be questioning the identity and credibility of the author. Like the first two, the third letter opened with “Father and Mother,” which Ofer then followed up with a series of direct questions relating to the previous correspondence.

  Where did you read the two letters I sent you? In my room? In the living room? And what thoughts went through your mind when you read them? Did you tell yourselves that it isn’t me, that it can’t be me, in order to protect yourselves from what was written in them? Did you try to convince yourselves that someone else wrote them in my name so that you wouldn’t have to deal with the pain in what I was trying to say? And what did you do with them after you read them? Did you destroy them so that you would never again have to read those words that you don’t want to hear? But I will never stop writing.

  Wearing a pair of thin leather gloves he bought at an automotive supply store, he had placed the third letter in the mailbox in the middle of the day, quite brazenly.

  Ze’ev tried to guess Michal’s thoughts as she read. She looked solemn. At one point, she was unable to make out the words “when I was buried,” and asked him to help her, and there was also a moment when she lifted her head from the page and gave him an odd look. “What?” he asked, and her eyes returned to the black notebook.

  After she had finished, she just said, “What is this?” and Ze’ev asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Are these our Ofer’s letters? Ofer our neighbor?”

  He knew she’d be a perfect reader—precisely because Ofer’s disappearance and the fruitless search for him had seeped deep into her thoughts and her dreams.

  “Yes,” he said, “they’re letters he writes to his parents, explaining what’s happened.”

  She didn’t respond. He waited a moment before asking, “What do you think?”

  She still didn’t say a word about the letters themselves, neither their content nor their style. “What do you mean by ‘explaining what’s happened’? How do you know what has happened?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m trying to imagine. That’s the whole point—I’m trying to see things from his perspective and to understand what happened there.”

  “But how can you write such things without knowing what really happened?”

  “Of course I can. It isn’t a true-crime novel or a newspaper article. I’m not interested in what truly happened. What interests me are the emotional processes he underwent—or, rather, that I imagine he underwent—and that led to his disappearance.”

  She went silent. This was not the reaction he had expected. He wondered if their conversation could be heard on the floor above them. She flipped back through some of the pages in the notebook, and reread the first letter.

  “So, what have you got to say?” he asked quietly.

  “That it frightens me.” There was no enthusiasm in her voice.

  He tried to smile. “Frightening is good, right? That’s what literature should be.”

  “I don’t know what literature should be.”

  “The only question is how it affected you, from the point of view of the reading process. Were you focused? Did you want to read on, or did you get bored? Did you feel that there was an authentic voice of a teenager speaking to his parents?”

  “I think so.”

  “That’s the important thing! I agree that I’m doing something a bit frightening here. Getting into the mind of a sixteen-year-old, and writing in the first person—which can be pretty dangerous for a writer. The question is whether I’m going in the right direction or not.”

  She stubbornly refused to answer. “Why did you choose Ofer, of all people?” she asked.

  “Because I know Ofer, and because I consider him to be an intriguing character. His story fascinates me. But, you realize, of course, that it’s not just about Ofer, right? That there are other characters, other people, maybe even me, combined there in him?”

  “Aren’t you afraid that someone will read it and think you’re mixed up in what happened to Ofer?”

  “Are you serious? Of course not. Besides, I think I really was involved somehow in what’s happened to him, even though we don’t know what it is yet. I did have an influence on him and his life, and that’s also why I feel close to the character and his story.”

  He didn’t know quite how to interpret the strange look she gave him.

  She suddenly asked, “What did they say at the workshop?” and he said, “They haven’t said anything yet. I haven’t presented it. And I’m not sure I will, either. I may give it to Michael Rosen to read. But the truth is, I’m afraid to reveal the idea—I mean the idea itself, and the structure of the book. Just think about it; it’s going to be a novel comprised entirely of a missing boy’s letters to his parents. I don’t think anything like that has ever been written—not in Hebrew, anyway.”

  “It frightens me,” she said again. She still held the black notebook, looking at the black handwriting, the correction lines and arrows on the page. She was not reading.

  “Frightening is good,” he repeated, wondering if he should read her the quote about the ax and the frozen sea from Kafka’s letter that he had found on the Internet a few days earlier.

  “If you decide to publish it, you have to change the names,” Michal said. “Do you know how his parents would react?” and without thinking twice Ze’ev said, “I may find out soon enough. I sent them the letters.”

  Was it a mistake to tell her? Later, whil
e waiting for her call, for a sign that she hadn’t abandoned him, that he hadn’t been left all on his own, he thought he should have continued to hide it all from her, that there was a lesson to be learned here. But things had never been like that between them.

  Michal didn’t believe him; he could still take back his words.

  “You did what?” she asked.

  “I sent them the letters,” he simply said again. “In fact, I put them in their mailbox.”

  She refused to believe it.

  “Don’t worry. They aren’t signed or anything. And I had no choice; the letters are addressed to them. The person writing these letters has specific addressees in mind whom he wishes to terrify.”

  “I don’t believe that you put them in their mailbox,” Michal said, her eyes welling with tears.

  Once again he had a chance to take his words back and say, “Just kidding, of course I didn’t put the letters in their mailbox”—but he didn’t.

  Michal stood up and walked away.

  He found her in the kitchen, sitting with her elbows resting on the table and her hands covering her eyes. He was at a loss for words. He tried to hold her, but she shrugged him off.

  “Ze’evi,” she said, “you didn’t really put the letters in their mailbox, right? You’re just trying to mess with me, right?”

  He didn’t answer her.

  “I can’t believe you did this. How could you have done such a thing? Have you lost your mind?”

  Her sadness startled him—and overcame him too.

  “They don’t know it was me,” he said.

  “What does it matter if they don’t know it’s you? Do you realize what you have done?”

  Of course he realized what he had done. That’s precisely why he had sent the letters.

  He tried to play with her hair. She continued to speak with her hands still covering her eyes and her head bent over the table. “You have to go to the police and tell them it was you. They must be looking for the person who sent the letters. They may even think that Ofer sent them.”

  “What do you mean, go to the police?” he asked, and Michal suddenly lifted her head and dropped her hands from her face, uncovering her brown eyes, which were now wide open and fixed on him. “Ze’evi, did something happen between you and Ofer?” she asked.

  Her question stunned him. It was the second time someone had implied something of the sort—and Michal, of all people.

  The most difficult moment of that terrible afternoon was when they heard Elie had woken—probably because of the pitch of their raised voices. The fact that he hadn’t woken to silence but to the sounds of his father and mother, however, meant no crying. They could hear him in his room, babbling to himself in words that only he understood, perhaps trying to imitate their conversation in his infant fashion. Michal wiped the tears from her cheeks before going to see to him, but on returning with the infant in her arms suddenly broke down sobbing, deposited the surprised baby in his father’s arms, and went into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. She hurried out moments later, snatched Elie from Ze’ev’s hands, and went with him into the bedroom. Ze’ev followed and sat down on the bed. Elie was oblivious to the situation; he looked happy to be on his parents’ bed, crawling back and forth between them.

  “Do you really want me to go to the police?” he asked, and she said, “Ze’evi, you have a child. How could you have even thought of doing such a thing? I just don’t get it.”

  He tried to move closer to her. Elie grabbed hold of his hands and pulled himself up onto his feet for a moment, before flopping forward onto his father. The literary discussion was over and they were not going to have one again. In an instant, once Michal realized that the letters she had read were intended for real recipients, they were transformed from true writing into something immoral, even criminal, a heavy rock that had been thrown at someone and injured him.

  “That’s the best thing to do,” she said. “Do you think it’s better to wait here for them to burst into the apartment, turn it upside down, and arrest you right here in front of Elie, in front of Ofer’s parents?”

  He couldn’t understand why she was so sure the police would be able to arrest him. She was mixing up totally unrelated reasons and causes. He quietly tried to explain to her that there was no chance of anyone connecting him with the letters. He had taken care to write them on standard sheets of paper, and he used regular envelopes; he hadn’t left any fingerprints, and no one had seen him slipping them in the mailbox. A week and a half had passed since he sent the first letter, and no one had found out. But now she infected him with her anxiety and roused his own fears.

  “We can’t hide it,” she repeated, and he kept saying, “But why not? Why the hell not?”

  “Because the police will find out in the end, and it would be best if they did from you. You go in and explain it all. And we can’t hide it because it’s a terrible thing. Ofer’s parents may believe he’s alive and well only because of these letters. We have to tell the police. And if you go to them and admit it, maybe they will agree not to tell Ofer’s parents that we did it. What would we do here in the building? Do you think we’d be able to stay here after they find out that you were the one who wrote those letters?”

  “And what do we do if they arrest me?” he asked.

  “Well, first thing we do is talk to a lawyer. After all, you didn’t do anything, you just wrote letters. And if you go and tell them the truth, and show remorse, then they won’t suspect you of being involved in what happened to Ofer. Explain to them that you know nothing about his disappearance. That it was nothing more than a writing exercise.”

  Despite her trying to sound calm and to protect him, her last sentence was meant to hurt him.

  Ze’ev said, “I don’t need to consult with a lawyer. If need be, I’m willing to speak to Avi Avraham, I’m sure he’ll understand,” and she said, “So call him, then. Let’s not wait. This needs to be done right away.”

  It was so odd.

  He eventually found Avraham’s card tucked into the black notebook, between the cover and the first page. He remembered placing it there only after looking first in his wallet and bag and then in the desk drawers.

  Michal followed him to the balcony and was standing beside him with Elie in her arms when he heard Avraham’s voice on the other end of the line. He told the inspector that he wished to speak to him about a certain matter, and Avraham replied that it couldn’t be before Sunday or even Monday, as he was abroad, and asked if he had urgent information regarding the investigation. He said no, and that he was calling about a somewhat different matter. Avraham suggested that he call the police, but he explained that he was willing to speak only to him. The inspector sounded different, far away, as if caught up in some internal storm.

  “I’ll wait for your call on Sunday, then. You’ll let me know when it would be convenient for me to come to the station,” Ze’ev said, ending the call.

  Michal went to her parents’ house to do some thinking, leaving Ze’ev alone in the apartment.

  He dared not approach the balcony overlooking the street, from where passersby who lifted their heads to look up at the windows would be able to see him. Only then did it dawn on him that it was all over. Everything that had opened up two weeks earlier had closed. Doors and windows, the other person inside him, the birth, Michael Rosen, the writing. The writing for which he had waited so long. Michal’s emotional response and the conversation between them had turned the idea that had thrilled him into something sordid and frightening. He was done with the workshop. He was done with writing letters. The black notebook lay on the desk, closed, as repellent as a leprous hand. He didn’t open it, and didn’t read the opening paragraph of the fourth letter, which began with the sentence: “Father and Mother, do you keep reading the words I’m sending you from where I am now?”

  Ze’ev felt like leaving the ho
use and walking for hours in the dark to tire himself out, to exhaust his legs, and his fear—but it was impossible. His mind conjured up images of cold eyes staring at him from every corner, every balcony. Everyone knew by now. But knew what, for God’s sake? The thought of having to go to school the next day as per usual and meet up with his students and the other teachers was unbearable, and he decided to again call in sick and ask the secretary to have a substitute teach his classes. He’d soon be losing his job, anyway. There was no reason for it, nothing in the world had changed, yet the slightest sound now startled him, as if a police siren was being set off in his head. He tried to calm himself. He drank a large mug of chamomile tea with no sugar. He felt nauseated and wanted to throw up. He kept telling himself that Avraham would understand. He’d have harsh words for him, no doubt, but he wouldn’t arrest him. He was sure of that, despite not having much to back up his certainty other than the understanding that existed between them. And what was he doing abroad in the middle of an investigation? Was the trip related to the search for Ofer? Could Ofer have managed to leave Israel?

  He thought again about Michael Rosen, about his bloodshot eyes and pungent odor. About his legs that barely managed to fit into the space in the small car. He was sorry they wouldn’t meet again. He couldn’t remember if he had left his telephone number and address with the secretary at the library, and thus didn’t know if Michael would be able to contact him to find out why he had disappeared halfway through the workshop. The thought that people he knew, particularly distant relatives and old acquaintances from his university days, would read about what had happened in the newspapers was paralyzing. Would Michael Rosen read it too? He wished he could stop thinking. If he were to lose his job, it would only be for the best.

  He’d told Michal that he would leave the apartment and go to a hotel for the weekend, until he had a chance to speak to Avraham, until things got cleared up. “Maybe you’ll feel calmer without me here,” he had said to her—and meant it. Instead, however, she had left, and he wondered if she’d ever return. He fell asleep on the sofa in the living room, with the TV on, and unlike other nights, that night he dreamed of things that he vaguely remembered the next morning.