Murder in Jerusalem Read Free Page A

him, tell him I’m with you people on the production.”
    â€œHe won’t let you in, why should you come in? Don’t let him in,” Max instructed the guard. He walked in and waited until Avi’s face had completely fallen, and only then returned, smiling, and said something in Hungarian to the guard, who pushed his long, straggly hair back from his eyes, answered Max, and let Avi pass.
    â€œIggen miggen?” Avi said as they passed inside the building, mocking the Hungarian he had just heard. He lit the way with the sun gun.
    â€œIf I were you I wouldn’t spit into the well you are drinking from,” Max said. “Especially if Benny is waiting for that sun gun of yours. If I were you I wouldn’t be making jokes at all.”
    â€œTell me something,” Avi said. “Tell me what all this is about. Fetching this and fetching that at one in the morning. You’d think he was the king of England, with all due respect…and what about you? What are you doing here at this hour?”
    â€œA blue horse,” Max answered. “I have to bring him a blue horse. Come here, shine that light into the storeroom, there’s not enough light in there,” Max said as he stuffed his rotund body inside the enclosed space under the metal staircase.
    â€œI don’t understand anything anymore, nothing at all,” Avi the lighting technician said, as if to himself. “Where you got a plug here? Think you can find it in the dark?” As he spoke he felt along the wall, unraveling the cord. He stuck the plug into a socket he had located and aimed the sun gun toward the inside of the storeroom, turned it on, and pointed it at the black shadows cast on the low walls by blurred objects. “I don’t understand how they keep shooting when there’s no budget, and how he can send us to bring things when Matty Cohen’s on his way here.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about, on his way here?” Max asked, alarmed, as he extricated a large blue wooden horse from the storeroom. “Now?! You think Matty Cohen would show up here at this hour?”
    â€œYou talk as if you don’t know what Matty Cohen’s capable of,” Avi said, lowering the sun gun to his side. “What’s with the horse, anyway?” He did not wait for Max to respond. “I heard in the canteen. Someone leaked to Matty Cohen, whispered the big secret to him about them filming at night, and he wants to catch ’em red-handed. Maybe it’s already too late, maybe there’s nobody to bring your horse and my sun gun to, because maybe Matty Cohen already shut the whole thing down and everyone took off. That’s what I heard in the canteen.”
    Max looked at Avi; there was a half-smile on the lighting technician’s face. “What are you so happy about?” Max scolded him. “This is Israel Television’s most important production, and to you it’s a laughing matter.”
    â€œWhat’s the big deal? What’s so important about it, huh?” Avi protested. “Everyone’s tiptoeing around here, going on and on about Agnon. I mean, it’s just Agnon! Tell me, who’s gonna watch it, anyway? The ratings’ll be zero.”
    â€œYou’ve been working on it for six months, and you don’t even know what it’s about? Shame on you.”
    â€œWhat is there to know, huh? It’s just about some broad from India.”
    â€œNot from India,” Max explained. “I don’t read Hebrew all that well and Agnon is difficult language, and what’s more, everyone says this story, Iddo and Eynam, is impossible to understand anyway, but she isn’t Indian, that much I’m sure of. She’s from an oriental Jewish tribe.”
    â€œLike Ethiopian?” Avi reasoned.
    â€œSomething like that, I guess, some ancient Jewish tribe,” Max said. “She’s a somnambulist, which means she walks