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him in the middle of the night to talk about a parchment. That’s what Irene said. He caught a flight the next morning, and …’ He left the rest unspoken.
    ‘Where?’ the priest wanted to know.
    ‘Paris. An old refrigerator warehouse on Saint-Ouen.’
    Rafael continued to look at him steadily and then headed for the exit.
    ‘Paris it is.’

9
    Shimon David was a conscientious old man, or at least he liked to think so. His neighbors didn’t use that word, but substituted another, less complimentary one, but he didn’t know about that, so he wasn’t hurt. For them Shimon was an old busybody, always attentive to the smallest movement on the street and in the neighborhood. If someone wanted to know if a particular person was home or arriving late, Shimon was the person to ask. He would even know whether the delay would be long or short. The limit of his knowledge stretched from one end of the street to the other, and nothing else mattered to him. A widower, he had lived there for more than two decades. All his life he had been a mailman. He could tell a lot about a person from the mail he received. Shimon knew many things about his neighbors, more than they sometimes imagined, because no one wanted to know about him.
    The street was in the suburbs of the Holy City. In the distance in the midst of buildings and stores, someone who knew what to look for could make out the gold cupola of the Dome of the Rock, within the walls.
    From the same window from which he kept track of his neighbors, Shimon could see his beloved city of Jerusalem, the center of the world.
    This afternoon Shimon didn’t appear at his window. His neighbors came home from work tired and didn’t spare a glance to check his absence. They entered their houses as always without looking back, so they didn’t notice whether Shimon was at his window or not.
    Movements inside the house of Marian, an old woman of ninety who had died two months before without heirs, caught the zealous Jew’s attention. Perhaps someone had bought the house, which was next door to his. Certainly there had not been any changes or repairs. The three men who arrived in a white van entered the house and installed themselves as if they’d always lived there. The situation didn’t inspire confidence in Shimon. Information was everything.
    He knew Marian’s house well. He’d been inside many times when she was alive, crotchety and very gossipy. But he liked to talk to her. She was always someone to talk to. Shimon’s first mistake was not knocking on the front door and, instead, trying a sneaky approach. He circled the house by the first-floor patio, one step in front of the other, careful not to make a noise. The first window was for the living room, and he dared not look in. It was shared by too many people to be empty, and Shimon didn’t want to risk being discovered. Not because he felt he was doing anything wrong, but to fulfill his duty to his neighbor’s belongings that should be passed along in perfect condition to the next owners, whoever they might be. The second window was Marian’s room. She’d moved down to the first floor when she realized she would die earlier if she had to climb the stairs every night. She was worn out by the effort. Marian was a very practical woman. But now was not the time to think about her. His mission was to find out who the intruders were. If they were intruders. They could be just three nice young men to add to the list of new neighbors. It would be a change, since the neighbors were starting to disappear as they moved out or died.
    Shimon took another step toward the window, which by coincidence was across from his own, separated by a wall. When he got to the window, the curtains were closed. Damn. He couldn’t see anything. There was light inside, but the curtain was thick. He went to the corner in back. The sun was setting elsewhere. Already it was dark. His heart beat faster. He was too old for this. He heard a muffled noise.