I caught a movie at Migdalor Theater and then went home. After showering, I stood before the mirror and pulled down my lower lip. Rivlin's punch had left twin lacerations across the inside of my lip. Both cuts looked red and raw, but neither was bleeding. I ran my tongue over them, but could not taste blood. I turned off the bathroom light and got into bed.
As I lay staring up into darkness, I wondered whether my getting punched by Rivlin would prove sufficient to keep the nightmares away, or if I had to draw blood for this to happen. I couldn't be sure, because it had been a very long time since I had been hit and not struck back, not since I was liberated by the Americans. I had closed all the windows as a precaution in case I screamed in my sleep. Two hours later, when the dark dreams came, I discovered I had acted wisely.
It was around nine in the morning when I flipped open my notebook and looked over the list of names I had gotten from the police report and Mira Roth, trying to decide who I should go see first.
Michael Shamir was the closest. He lived on Gadera Street, which was less than a ten-minute walk from my apartment. There was a good chance he'd be at work at this time of day, but I decided to risk it. In truth, I was curious to meet this man who had inspired such admiration in Mira.
I pulled on a white shirt, blue pants, and black shoes—the other pair I owned was brown—and headed out. The heat was back in force and the air was as still as a dead man's heart. The sun was ascending in the east, with not a cloud in the sky to muffle its scorching rays. I ambled so as not to build too much of a sweat. This worked only partially and prolonged the length of my hike to thirteen minutes.
Michael Shamir lived in a run-down three-story building with a facade that used to be a brilliant white but was now smudged black and gray from exhaust fumes and absorbed moisture. The front door was missing its handle and the corners of the lobby sported an accumulation of dirt and brittle leaves. The lobby smelled stale, as if it had not been washed in weeks. A dead cockroach lay on its back in the middle of the floor with its crooked feet sticking up, and a procession of ants were busy dismantling it. I stepped over both carcass and ants and went up the stairs to the top floor, my shoes making scuffing sounds against the dust on the steps.
I knocked on the door to apartment five and waited. No answer. I knocked a second time, a bit harder, with similar results. I had turned away from the door when I heard footfalls approaching on the stairway.
The first thing I saw was the top of his head. His hair was black and cropped very short. He was toting a grocery bag in each hand and climbed with his head bowed. Then, probably alerted by the landing light that I had flicked on earlier, he paused, eight or so treads from where I stood, and raised his head.
His face was familiar, and it took me a second or two to figure out from where. He was the second man in Mira's picture of the four young warriors—the other, Yohanan, had died during the prison raid. In that picture, he had been a youth of around twenty. Now he was thirty or so and showing the ten years that had passed.
His face looked longer and leaner than it had been in that picture, almost ascetic, giving him a monkish cast. His hair was receding at the temples, though the rest of it was dense. Perpetual frown lines furrowed his tall forehead. His eyes were set deep and the color of walnut and seemed captured in a permanent squint, as if he was staring into the sun. They were intense eyes, the eyes of a man who had seen and done things. Between the eyes began the slope of a Roman nose and beneath that was a mouth that seemed incongruously full. The chin was neither big nor small, neither protruding nor sunken. Chin and cheeks were dusted with black stubble. He had not shaved that morning.
He was five nine and had a wiry build. Lean muscle bunched under the skin of his outstretched, bag-wielding arms, and a vein stood out in each of his biceps. He looked fit, but not as formidable as I had expected him to be. All told, he was not a handsome man. Mira's admiration for him did not stem from his looks.
He stared at me for a long moment, not moving. "Looking for someone?" he said finally, in a soft, velvety voice.
"Michael Shamir. That's you, isn't it?"
"That's right."
"My name is Adam Lapid. I got your name and address from Mira Roth."
His eyebrows rose a fraction. "Mira Roth? Is that a fact?"
"Yes. She gave me a note to give to you."
