When Jonathan got to his office one day, two months before their departure, he found a small metal plaque on the carved wooden door bearing the name of Samuel Goldberg, his senior partner’s son. The door was not locked, so he pushed it and walked in. The scene that greeted him made him gasp; the wooden cabinets were empty; dozens of files of companies he’d created lay in a heap on the floor. The Chinese carpet had been rolled up and dumped in the comer, and the oil paintings by Reuven, Guttman, Steimatzky and Streichman that used to adorn the walls had been replaced by blown up photographs of South America’s rain forests, the part of the world Goldberg Junior had been based and had conducted his arms deals.
Talia was already aware of the rift between Jonathan and Manfred Goldberg. Jonathan’s financial successes, that had paved the way to the old tycoon’s heart, made Samuel jealous; it was the jealousy of a son, ungainly and chubby from adolescence, who had been rejected by both his parents. Jonathan’s purchase of a small industrial bank, which he later improved and modernized and eventually sold to an overseas investment firm for double the original price, was named “The deal of the century” by the newspapers. They often reported the numerous companies bought and sold by Jonathan, whom they dubbed “the whiz kid of the stock exchange;” they reported the mergers, the consolidations, the enterprises, and the contributions to charitable causes. Samuel read all this and was green with envy.
As long as Jonathan handed Manfred Goldberg the heads of his financial rivals on a platter and, in particular, after he purchased the Israel-American Company for him, an extremely profitable deal of international proportions, his position was unshakeable. He represented Goldberg’s company to investors and to the public, he traveled with his senior partner all over the world in his private plane equipped like a hotel. All of Samuel’s machinations, all this attempts to malign and discredit Jonathan, fell on deaf ears; as it happened, one of the old man’s ears was, in fact, deaf. When he did not want to hear something, or when he wanted to torment his son or any other interlocutor, he would simply turn his deaf ear toward them. Not even his closest aides were sure which ear it was. But as soon as there was a slump in the stock market and bonds hit rock bottom, after a decade of unprecedented prosperity, Jonathan lost favor in the old man’s eyes, as if the market’s collapse was his fault.
Talia was unable to follow Jonathan’s explanations. Even Ditty could only supply her with shreds of information, suffused with sarcastic commentary and with barely disguised gloating over the vagaries of fortune. It had taken a great effort on Talia’s part to restore their friendship. After repeated pleas, overtures and explanations, ditty finally granted her forgiveness, despite the open enmity that now existed between their husbands. The rift between them was mended, but only superficially. Ditty seemed to derive pleasure from the new state of affairs. Sometimes it sounded as if Micah’s voice was coming out of her throat. “This is a divorce. A real divorce. And it isn’t easy to divorce. Jonathan won’t get out so easily.
Micah was now Samuel’s personal assistant, and the two gave numerous interviews in which they disparaged and vilified Jonathan mercilessly. In Talia’s mind, they were beasts of prey—vultures, hyenas, cold-eyed hawks, feeding on Jonathan’s flesh. For the first time ever she saw a vulnerable side to him, and this shocked her to the core of her being.
But Jonathan was not about to give in to his former partners. Nahum Rimmon, a close friend and editor of the economic publication “Capital,” of which Jonathan was co-founder and financial backer, gave him an office in the newspaper building. He conducted his campaign from this office and gave interviews in an attempt to stop the devil’s dance going on around him. “If Goldberg wants war, there will be war!” he thumped his fist on the breakfast. “First of all, I demand what is mine by right—half the value of the companies that I bought for the central company, and fifty percent of all our common enterprises. And I have no intention of giving in.” The economic correspondents quoted every word. Talia read and watched the interviews, examining each reporter according to one criterion: is he on our side or theirs? She was like a seismograph recording the sympathy or hostility emanating from the reports.