And he said, Not patient. Just worried about you.
—
The rain finally weakened. And daylight died. From behind the clouds, the lights of the city of the gods turned on.
Curly Hair said, I’m hungry. And sat up. As soon as she said that, I also felt hungry. Very hungry. And terribly thirsty.
Let’s go to the restaurant, Ari said. You can keep looking at things there too.
I think now about how much wisdom there was in those words. About his ability to understand that our true desire in those moments was to look. About the patience needed to sit there beside us in the pouring rain—who knows how much time really passed—until we agreed to leave. About the fact that he didn’t ridicule us even once. Despite his tendency to turn everything into a joke. Even though I’m sure we looked ridiculous.
The change came in the restaurant. It’s hard to pinpoint the precise moment. I’m not sure there was a precise moment.
I remember that the four of us were sitting at one table. That in fluent Spanish, his native language, Ari ordered soup that was like a stew. He took pictures of us. From several angles. And I couldn’t follow the conversation.
I managed to hear the beginnings of sentences, but then my attention wandered and I couldn’t hear their ends.
I remember that Curly Hair said, I think it’s starting to pass—
And Straight Hair said, It’s supposed to pass after—
I remember thinking: It’s not passing for me. It’s not passing for me. And as Ari’s conversation with the girls grew more relaxed and logical, my thought changed: It won’t pass for me. It will never pass for me.
I felt that something wasn’t right with me, that everyone in the restaurant could see it and they were all sending pitying, get-him-to-a-hospital looks in my direction.
In the four pictures Ari took in the restaurant, I really do look like someone to worry about. My hair is plastered to my forehead as if I’ve just finished a triathlon. My head is tilted, as if my neck can’t hold it up. And something in my eyes is totally shattered.
I can’t look at those pictures. I saw them only once, after we’d returned from the trip, and I asked Ari to keep them and never show them to anyone. I didn’t have to explain why. He’d been there when everything went out of control.
—
I said, My head hurts, I’m going to the cabin.
Curly Hair said, Feel better.
Straight Hair said, I told you that stuff was spoiled.
And Ari asked, Should I come with you, bro?
—
He came, even though I didn’t ask him to, and lay down on his bed.
I said, It’s not passing for me, Ari.
He said there was nothing to worry about. It was because I drank the whole bag without eating first, and that’s probably why the effects were lasting longer. That’s all.
I wanted to believe him. But the fear, which had been on a low flame in the restaurant, turned into real anxiety as the minutes passed. It’ll never go away, I thought. I’ll never be able to have conversations with people. Or continue the trip. They’ll have to fly me home. Hospitalize me in the cuckoo’s nest. They’ll inject me with sedatives that will screw me up even more.
But my greatest fear was sleep, I was afraid to go to sleep. And then wake up and not know whether I was in a dream or in reality. That was my feeling: that falling asleep was an enormous danger.
—
So I won’t sleep, I decided. A day, two days, a week, however long it took.
But what’ll happen if I fall asleep for even a few seconds without realizing it?
When I open my eyes, how will I know where I am?
—
Years later, during one of the first interviews I gave, the journalist told me—maybe as a way to create intimacy—that he was bisexual.
That’s great, I said, you can enjoy both worlds.
Enjoy? he grimaced. You don’t understand how disconcerting it is not to be sure about something that should be axiomatic.
That night in the cabin, I wasn’t sure about one of the axioms of our existence: That everything that happens really does happen. And not only in my imagination.
Were the clouds gathering on the cabin ceiling real?
Were crab claws actually emerging from them?
Was the cabin even real?
Did the bed I was lying on exist?
I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see the claws and tried to think about Dikla. About my mom. About my sister. I tried to hold on to them. But picturing them allowed my mind to do weird things to them. Exchange their faces. Connect one’s limbs to the body of the other. Make them shorter. Make them taller. Distort them.
Like an ATM telling you that it’s not working, my long-term memory was saying, to my horror: Don’t trust me now.
My heart was pounding. My awareness of that only made it pound faster. The crab claws were coming for me. They descended and moved slowly closer, threatening to sink into my throat.
The only sure point of reference in all that chaos was Ari.
He was clearly lying on his bed. Two meters from me. Wearing the striped sharwal he’d bought in the Indian market in Otavalo. One arm was tucked under the back of his neck, as usual. He hadn’t taken off his socks. As usual. He clearly smelled like Ari. And his voice, when he spoke to me, sounded like Ari’s voice.
With a heart threatening to explode, I explained to him that I was like a strand of hair. And that he was holding the end of it.
I asked him to stay awake. And every time I called out, Ari! he should reply, Here!
He didn’t laugh at me or hesitate. He just said that if he should happen to fall asleep anyway, I should shout louder or throw a shoe at him.
—
Shoes were not needed. He stayed awake all night.
I shouted: Ari!
He replied: Here!
I
