A long silence was what I was hoping for.
Finally, he said: This conversation never happened. Text me your friend’s number. Not by WhatsApp. Then immediately delete it. He and I will make all the arrangements. Don’t talk to me. Don’t ask me what’s happening or what’s going to happen. You won’t have any way of knowing exactly when the angel will visit. There’s no way of predicting. It could happen tomorrow or in another month. Depending on the circumstances. In any case, from now on, you’re out of the picture. Is that clear? Forgive the technical question, but what is your record? What is the largest number of pages you wrote in one sitting?
Sometimes, one exactly right sentence is preferable to dozens of ineffective pages. That, by the way, is why I suffer from poet envy. It’s like the famous bridge scene in Indiana Jones: While I’m scrambling around in the ruins of characters and plot for so many pages, poets, in one good line, fire a shot and hit the bull’s-eye.
Nonetheless—once, on the roof of a hostel in Peru, I wrote for two straight days. Twenty-five pages of a single letter to Dikla. The night before, I’d called her from the pay phone in the local post office. We spoke, and for the first time since I’d left for South America without her, she sounded distant. Trying hard to show an interest she didn’t really feel. Also, the name of a guy from the university, Mickey, came up twice in the conversation, and something about the way she said it…I don’t know. It stressed me out. In those days, there was no texting or WhatsApp you could use to allay your fears. So I told Ari that I needed a little time for myself and wrote Dikla a letter. I told her about the cactus juice and what happened to me when the effects of it didn’t pass. I described how, when the crab claws came down from the ceiling and threatened to close around my neck, I shut my eyes and tried to think of her. Only her. I knew that if I could focus on her hugging me, it would stop the claws, but I couldn’t. Her image faded in my mind every time I tried to stabilize it. And of all the things that happened to me that day and night, that was the most frightening.
Don’t fade away from me, I wrote her. I love you. I’ll propose to you as many times as it takes, with helicopters and billboards and everything, but you should know right now that I want to have children with you.
For many pages, I continued to imagine what our children would look like. Two boys and a girl, of course, I described each one and the relationships between them, and what a happy pandemonium our family meals would be in our home in the Galilee. I described that home. The herb garden. The hammock hung between two grapefruit trees. The small soccer goals. The hanging speakers playing Meir Ariel and Alona Daniel alternately.
—
We had two girls and a boy. And we didn’t move to the Galilee.
But I was right about one thing: That was the perfect moment to send Dikla a love letter.
—
Months after I came back to Israel—we were living together by then—she confessed: I was just about to crack. That guy Mickey called and asked me to go with him to the Student Day celebration at the Dead Sea. And I almost said yes. But then an envelope from you arrived. It was so thick. As if you’d sent me dollars. I had to open it.
—
I wrote another letter to Dikla during these past few months. More accurately, I tried to write. By hand. On the computer. Dozens of drafts. All beginning with “Don’t fade away from me.” And they all faded away. I didn’t know how to continue. I tried switching to poems. To songs. I tried quoting from Agi Mishol and Jacques Brel. But I couldn’t find the passionate, stirring words that could really tip her inner scales in my favor. Maybe because there was too much past between us that didn’t promise her a future. Maybe because I’d become too much of a writer to write something from my heart that would go directly into hers. Or maybe because the real story here is not about a man who has to mollify the wife he’s afraid he’s losing but about a man who understands too late that he has already lost her.
In any case, tomorrow is the bat mitzvah. All the preparations have been made. The album of her photographs is ready. The deejay has been given the official list of the definitely-yes songs and the definitely-no songs. Her dress has been bought. Tried on at home. Removed with bitter weeping. And tried on again. The cake has been ordered and I only need to pick it up from the bakery in the morning. The final visit to the hairdresser is planned for tomorrow at noon, and tomorrow night, the five of us will get into the car and drive to the hall. When it’s over, we’ll drive home, and after the kids have gone to sleep, Dikla will say, I want to talk to you about something. How do you know when you’ve reached the end of a book?
In my workshop, I teach a lesson called “The Body and Erotica.” First, I ask my students to cover their eyes with a handkerchief, then I spray perfume in the room and ask them to imagine the woman wearing that scent. Then I spray aftershave around the room and ask them to imagine the man wearing that scent. After they remove their blindfolds, they have to write about the man and the woman sitting in a room, longing to touch each other but unable to.
The period of time the students are blindfolded is the only time in the ten meetings of the
