Legends

“That’s the problem,” Stella said. “In Israel a religious woman needs to have a divorce handed down by a religious court before she can go on with her life. The divorce is called a get. Without a get, a Jewish woman remains an agunah, which means a chained woman, unable to remarry under Jewish law; even if she remarries under civil law her children will still be considered bastards. And the only way a woman can obtain a get is for the husband to show up in front of the rabbis of a religious court and agree to the divorce. There’s no other way, at least not for religious people. There are dozens of Hasidic husbands who disappear each year to punish their wives—they go off to America or Europe. Sometimes they live under assumed names. Go find them if you can! Under Jewish law the husband is permitted to live with a woman who’s not his wife, but the wife doesn’t have the same right. She can’t marry again, she can’t live with a man, she can’t have children.”

“Now I’m beginning to see why you need the services of a detective. How long ago did this Samat character skip out on your sister?”

“It’ll be two months next weekend.”

“And it’s only now that you’re trying to hire a detective?”

“We didn’t know for sure he wasn’t coming back until he didn’t come back. Then we wasted time trying the hospitals, the morgues, the American and Russian embassies in Israel, the local police in Kiryat Arba, the national police in Tel Aviv. We even ran an ad in the newspaper offering a reward for information.” She tossed a shoulder. “I’m afraid we don’t have much experience tracking down missing persons.”

“You said earlier that your father and you thought Samat might head for America. What made you decide that?”

“It’s the phone calls. I caught a glimpse once of his monthly phone bill—it was several thousand shekels, which is big enough to put a dent in a normal bank account. I noticed that some of the calls went to the same number in Brooklyn. I recognized the country and area code—1 for America, 718 for Brooklyn—because it’s the same as ours on President Street.”

“You didn’t by any chance copy down the number?”

She shook her head in despair. “It didn’t occur to me …”

“Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t know this Samat character was going to run out on your sister.” He saw her look quickly away. “Or did you?”

“I never thought the marriage would last. I didn’t see him burying himself in Kiryat Arba for the rest of his life. He was too involved in the world, too dynamic, too attractive—”

“You found him attractive?”

“I didn’t say I found him attractive,” she said defensively. “I could see how he might appeal to certain women. But not my sister. She’d never been naked in front of a man in her life. As far as I know she’d never seen a naked man. Even when she saw a fully clothed man she averted her eyes. When Samat looked at a woman he stared straight into her eyes without blinking; he undressed her. He claimed to be a religious Jew but I think now it may have been some kind of cover, a way of getting into Israel, of disappearing into the world of the Hasidim. I never saw him lay tefillin, I never saw him go to the synagogue, I never saw him pray the way religious Jews do four times a day. He didn’t kiss the mezuzah when he came into the house the way my sister did. Elena and Samat lived in different worlds.”

“You have photographs of him?”

“When he disappeared, my sister’s photo album disappeared with him. I have one photo I took the day they were married—I sent it to my father, who framed it and hung it over the mantle.” Retrieving her satchel, she pulled a brown envelope from it and carefully extracted a black and white photograph. She stared at it for a moment, the ghost of an anguished smile deforming her lips, then offered it to Martin.

Martin stepped back and held up his palms. “Did Samat ever touch this?”

She thought a moment. “No. I had the film developed in the German Colony in Jerusalem and mailed it to my father from the post office across the street from the photo shop. Samat didn’t know it existed.”