Марко Коскас - Goodbye Paris, Shalom Tel Aviv

“Just a detail,” the cop says. “How much did you pay for the jewel she reimbursed you for?”

“I don’t remember,” Elias claims.

“Please try.”

“Seven thousand shekels, I think.”

“You’re sure?”

“Well, no. I don’t remember very well.”

“Because the jeweler said you paid a lot more, but she only reimbursed you for part of it.”

“Yes, she’s a thief!”

“So by any chance, would you have wanted to recover the difference between what you paid for it and what she reimbursed?”

“Oh yes! But I didn’t have the bill, since it was in cash. I had no proof.”

“I mean, recover that money by force.”

“That’s absurd! I’m a journalist, not a holdup man!” Elias shouts.

“In fact, you paid eighteen thousand shekels for that jewel.”

“That’s possible,” Elias says distractedly.

“And in fact, that’s the sum of cash that was stolen from her.”

“So what does that prove? Confront us, and we’ll see!”

Another police officer enters the room, holding a piece of paper in his hand, which he gives to his colleague.

“Right, the judge issued a search warrant. Would you rather give me the keys to your apartment or go along with us?”

“I want my lawyer!”

“OK, I’ll notify him,” the cop answers as he gets up. “You have his contact info?”

He walks out of the room, leaving Elias alone on the chair again but free to move around. Aside from the table the cop cleared off, there’s absolutely nothing else in the room, not even a magazine to read. That’s a principle when someone is held for questioning all over the earth: between two interrogations, leave the suspect to himself to provoke introspection and get a confession out of him.

But Elias analyzes the situation differently. In fact, it’s more a revelation than an analysis. A terribly upsetting revelation, because he can easily see there’s poetic justice in it: he’s accused of a crime he didn’t commit, whereas he’s guilty of another crime that he’s not being blamed for at all. Is this just? Unjust? Or simply absurd? The truth is he didn’t hold up the jeweler, while he did swindle the Bedouins, but since the jeweler had swindled him and the Bedouins wanted to cut his throat, he tells himself that justice, real justice, consists in judging the whole business and the guilt of each party. For in this affair everyone is both guilty and victim, sort of like the wonderful song by Gérald de Palmas.

What would be just would be for Olga to be released and the jeweler arrested for fiscal fraud and making a false accusation. What would be even more just would be for the Bedouins to be released but remain accused of attempted murder. What would be still more just would be that since everyone is both guilty and a victim, they all be set free and the whole thing forgotten. Wipe the slate clean. Except for the jeweler, maybe. What a bitch! And then no, why not set her free, too, Elias tells himself. After all, he did like screwing her the first time. The second was unpleasant, but not to the point where he’d want to harm her.

Only, his indulgent daydream will remain a hollow dream, for the law knows only innocent people and guilty people, not both at the same time. But his strongest feeling is that immanent justice has finally found the right form for it. And it could thus cut the Gordian knot that was strangling him. All that took some time, but there you are. From now on, the two pans of the scale will be at the same level. Something fair is finally taking shape. He’ll no longer have a crisis of conscience. Elias is ready to pay for something he did not commit, since he was not able to pay for what he did.

Jérémie Azencot has obtained Olga’s release without a charge, since the police could not produce material evidence of a connection to Elias beyond professional. A real stroke of luck! For there actually was a piece of evidence—within their grasp, in fact: her WhatsApp voice mail. They would have found Elias’s announcement that they became a couple on November 13. The WhatsApp group they created when they got back together would have given them away. Not to mention the love notes they exchanged every day. But the cops would have had to get a translation, and they didn’t. Therefore, the judge ordered the accused to be released.

Always a bit of a braggart and protective, Jérémie holds her by the arm as they leave the courthouse in Mitzpe Ramon, but he doesn’t yet know how to tell her the bad news. Having to tell her Elias is accused of a holdup does spoil the moment he was so impatiently waiting for since the first hearing. It might be easier to tell her when they’re squeezed into the Cinquecento. And then the presence of Diabolo will give him a little courage, he hopes. Or else Diabolo will make the sacrifice.

But since Olga must first get back the twenty-seven thousand shekels and her phone and the rented Audi, he walks her to the police station, while Diabolo goes back to Tel Aviv alone, drawing on one of the last Montecristos from the cigar box. Good old Diabolo! As megalomaniacal as he is helpful, as much a godfather by nature as a good little soldier when circumstances require. The lawyer suggests that he drive the convertible, but Olga would rather take the wheel herself, claiming she isn’t insured for a second driver. Actually, it’s because after four nights in jail, she really feels like driving in the open air with her hair in the wind, through the blond ochre landscapes of the Negev.

Before she starts up, she tries to get Elias, but she gets his voice mail, and that upsets her a little. She misses him so much! She glances at the eighty text messages she got while she was held for questioning but doesn’t read them right away. In the bunch, there are at least twenty from her father. Increasingly alarmed messages as the days go by. So she calls him first to reassure him.

“You got a chip, darling?” her dad asks.

“No, why?”

“Elias told me you had to get one.”

“Oh yes, yes, of course, but… I don’t have the time to talk to you about it now. I’m on assignment,” she claims. “I’ll call this afternoon.”

“You’re calling from a new phone, that it?”

“Why new?” Olga asks at first, surprised, and immediately catches herself. “Oh yes, you bet, I have a brand-new, um, Samsung, really new, ultranew even, you know, the…”

“Galaxy 7?”

“Yeah, that’s it, a Galaxy 7… I had to change the… well, anyway, actually, I’ll explain everything to you later… love you, Dad.”

She starts the car, somewhat stressed but showing nothing, while Azencot is still trying to find the words to tell her that her man is in the prison of Ramla.

They drive along in silence for twenty miles or so after exchanging a few banalities about Audis, the desert, the best bars in Tel Aviv, and then stop for gas in the middle of nowhere, at the turnoff for Midreshet Ben-Gurion, leading to the Sde Boker kibbutz where the founder of the State of Israel is buried. A gas station on the moon would have approximately the same effect. Jérémie tells himself it’s the right moment and a fitting place to spill the beans, but first they go buy a bottle of mineral water in the store. As they walk out, just before getting into the car, Azencot takes Olga’s hand, looks her straight in the eye, and finally says: “Olga, I have bad news… be strong… you’re not going to see Elias right away. There… it is my duty to inform you: he is in prison.”

Not a word more at the moment, so Olga can take in the first blow, and in fact tears begin to flow down the young woman’s face. She doesn’t answer at all, doesn’t even ask a question, convinced as she is that it’s all her fault, the fault of her wretched expedition. She doesn’t know what happened to Elias yet. She still doesn’t know he’s been wrongly accused of holding up the jeweler on Dizengoff. She just imagines he turned himself in to free her, and she feels guilty—unforgivable, even.