The Last Interview

few beers, that she agreed to tell us that a week earlier, in Rio, she met an Israeli guy named Oren. He always told her unfunny jokes, she said, but she was extremely lonely and hadn’t had sex for six months already, so she invited him to her room. But then, in the middle of getting it on, she said, out of nowhere, he slapped me. What the fuck? the Dutch girl asked, as if we were the ones who had slapped her. What a nutcase, I said. According to the law, that’s assault, Ari said. And the Dutch girl said he told her it was because of some trauma he had in the army. That he couldn’t control it. Bullshit, she said, slapping her open hand down on the bar. Fucking bullshit.

So…what does he look like, that guy? Ari asked. The Dutch girl almost broke the bottle over his head. Come on, man, that’s what you care about? After everything I told you, that’s what you’re interested in? What he looks like? If you describe him to us, Ari persisted, we can slap him when we see him. You would really do that? she asked, looking at him hopefully. Ari nodded. So she described the guy, who sounded as if he looked like our Oren: A receding hairline, like a forty-year-old. A kid’s smile. Happy eyes. Bargains like a crazy man with the street vendors.

I would have liked to say that when we came back to Israel we went to Hadera to look for Oren. Or that we at least went to the newspaper archives in Beit Ariela to check whether, while we were in South America, there had been a report about an Israeli trekker urgently flown home from Peru because he’d caught malaria. But the truth is that we left the story behind us. Just like we left Oren behind us.

He didn’t appear in our photo album of the trip. Or in the letters from the trip. I was ashamed to talk about him to Dikla when we came back, and I was ashamed to write about him when I wrote about South America.

Over the years, the shame faded. Because it’s the way of shame to fade. Only the curse was left. Ari and I still blame it for every bad thing that happens to either of us:

The engine died on the way up to Jerusalem? The Oren from Hadera curse.

Hapoel lost right at the final buzzer? The Oren from Hadera curse.

Ari has pancreatic cancer? The Oren from Hadera curse. (That’s what he said when he called to tell me about his tests. I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what a person says in such a situation. And he said: The Oren from Hadera curse strikes again, bro.) Do you dream about your characters?

Wait a minute, there’s one last thing I have to get out of my system. But I just can’t write it. You know, in the first person. There’s a limit to honesty. Even in this interview. So I’ll do what I usually do.

HARASSMENT

It takes him a few seconds to recognize her. And even then, he isn’t sure she recognizes him. Whether she recognized him earlier from his name or only when he came into the room. Or maybe she’s embarrassed. You can’t tell anything from looking at her. She doesn’t blush. Doesn’t stammer. She continues asking him questions and typing as he replies.

She had been one of his soldiers. He was an officer, a first lieutenant. A small unit in the Intelligence Corps. Four huts. A tile path connecting them. A broken drink machine, long lunch breaks, long nights of work during operations.

On one of those nights, he thought he saw a flash of invitation in her eyes. Or maybe there really had been a flash of invitation in her eyes. What difference does it make—

Now the look in her eyes is all business.

She asks: It says here that you’re studying for your master’s. You haven’t completed it yet?

He replies: I’ve already submitted my thesis. Now I’m only waiting for official approval.

Where do you live? she asks. What’s that zero four area code?

Binyamina. It’s less than half an hour away from here by train, he replies.

She nods slowly. As if his answers are unsatisfactory.

—

He began to drive her home on Fridays, to Beit Hanan. Told her it was on his way, but both of them knew it wasn’t. On the drive, they spoke in a totally different tone from the one they used the rest of the week on the base. She told him that she wrote poems and short stories, but she didn’t think she wanted to be a writer. It was such an egotistical profession. He told her that since his mother died, they no longer had Friday-night dinners at home, and his father had become addicted, really addicted, to Coca-Cola. The time in the car passed quickly, too quickly, and when they arrived at her house, she would linger in the car another few seconds, as if she were waiting for something to happen, and then she touched his arm lightly and said, Wait a minute, and disappeared. When she came back, she held a bag of blood oranges from their orchard. Food for the road.

—

She still has long hair, even if some of it is silver now. But she no longer winds the strands around her finger when she stops to think.

Your age, she says, are you aware that it’s a disadvantage? Most of the marketing staff is in their thirties. And I should prepare you for the fact that we almost never take on people over fifty. It hardly ever happens.

Her inflection—he thinks—is almost the same.

There are also advantages to my age, he tries.

She touches the bridge of her glasses, pushes them back into place, and doesn’t ask him to list them.

Besides, I’m young at heart, he says.

She doesn’t smile.

—

She was nineteen and he was twenty-one. A two-year difference, that was all. But he was the chief