Soon, light will flood the living room. Soon, I will go to the bakery. Soon, the bat mitzvah will take place. Soon, it seems, my life will collapse.
But for a rare moment, I manage to see the big picture. What is the most unique response you’ve ever received from a reader?
He came up to me after an event in Germany, in a provincial town whose name I don’t remember. Nor do I remember what the auditorium looked like. Or whether there was a vase of flowers on the table or not.
He waited on the side until the last of those who wanted an autograph had gone, and only then did he approach and say “Shalom” in Hebrew. Eighty years old, at least. Tall but not stooped. A brown jacket. Watery blue eyes behind glasses. Life-experience blemishes on his cheeks.
After the “shalom,” he switched to German-accented English.
He said: I read your book and just bought another copy.
He said: I wanted to ask you to write a dedication to Paul in the new copy.
He said: Paul and I were together in the war.
My pen stopped in the middle of writing: Wait a minute, did he really expect me to write a dedication to his Wehrmacht buddy?
But he—perhaps understanding why I froze—added hurriedly: The War of Independence. Paul and I fought together for the entire war, and in the Battle of Latrun, he was wounded by grenade shrapnel and I did my part to help evacuate him. He kept saying he was going to die, and I calmed him down and told him that he had nothing to worry about, because in another week, we’d be drinking whiskey together. It continued like that until we finally reached the medic, he talked about the next world and I held his hand and promised him whiskey. In this world. Ever since, we meet once a week, he comes from Israel, and we drink a glass of whiskey together. Paul says I saved his life. I’m not sure it’s true. But I don’t argue with him.
So…he should be arriving soon? I asked, opening the book to the dedication page.
No, this time I’m going to him. He’s…very sick. In a hospital in Jerusalem, for a few weeks already. I’m not sure he’ll even be able to hold the glass of whiskey. But it’s okay. If I have to, I’ll hold it, bring it to his lips so he can take a sip, and then I’ll read him something from your book. Can you write the dedication in Hebrew?
Of course. What should I write?
I don’t know. You’re the writer. Maybe something about friendship? Do you use drugs or alcohol to help you write?
Twenty years have passed since then.
Many things have grown dim. Not that.
I never wrote about it directly, perhaps because I’m afraid I won’t be able to convey it in words. That instead of writing it, I should give each reader a bit of the potion the Israeli girls had brought from home and say: Taste it, you’ll understand.
There were two girls with us, I don’t remember their names. I met the curly-haired one years later at the photocopier in the Gilman Building at Tel Aviv University. We exchanged a few words and a glance—the deep, lingering glance of two people who had once been entwined in each other’s dreams.
She was the one who suggested bringing us a small pouch. I had just read The Book of Tao, which had imbued me with a spirit of adventure. And I didn’t have children at the time.
So I said, Great.
I had no idea what I was getting into.
The next day, they put the pouch on the threshold of the cabin I shared with Ari and went to eat breakfast.
Inside the pouch was a green liquid. Cactus juice. That was all I knew.
Later I found out that Indians use it to commune with their gods.
Later I read Carlos Castaneda.
Only later.
Ari slept late that morning. If one of us drank it, the other probably shouldn’t, he’d said when I told him the night before that the girls were going to bring us a small pouch. I knew that if he woke up, he would be the one to drink it and I would be the sober one, as usual. So I grabbed the pouch and my travel journal and hurried down to the creek. The small bridge that spanned it was made of wooden planks, with one missing.
It’s incredible how I remember everything.
I sat down on the damp ground beside the small bridge. The water flowed beneath me. The first sunbeams filtered through the huge leaves on the branches above me. I made a large hole in a corner of the small bag, like I used to do with the corner of the plastic bag of chocolate milk in camp, and sucked out a bit.
It was bitter. Terribly bitter. So I drank the rest in one gulp. Without stopping.
There were no usage directions on the small pouch. I had no way of knowing it shouldn’t be done that way.
—
A minute later, I vomited. I hate when characters vomit in stories, but that’s what happened.
I threw up some of the green liquid I’d drunk, and then came the first sign that my consciousness was changing. The green color of the vomit looked beautiful to me. I stared at it in astonishment, almost elation, while it was still spilling out of my mouth onto the ground.
The ground also looked beautiful to me. Brown and blazing. And those were the
