Between one political prophecy and another, he also distracted me with advice in other areas: Start a family as quickly as possible, kiddo. Marriage isn’t a prison, the way people mistakenly think, it’s the freedom to stop searching for love. But you have to choose right, son, and the criterion is flexibility. A flexible partner is the key to happiness, and children—having children is the most creative thing a person can do in his life, children enrich your creativity, they don’t damage it, trust me—
I trusted him. I felt I was learning so much from him.
On one of those walks, he told me in the same arrogant, know-it-all tone he typically used that he had closed his New York office and fired all the employees. Meaningful Advertising, the company, was not very profitable. And he was up to his ears in debt. So now he worked alone, mainly giving workshops in order to pay his debtors. A person needs to take responsibility for his failures, he said, otherwise there’s no way he can succeed.
He didn’t see any contradiction between his collapse and the fact that he continued to give others advice. There was something both ridiculous and impressive about that.
—
A few months later, I left the ad agency and began to write. I paid the rent by writing speeches for Yoram Sirkin. I no longer needed an uncle in America, and he didn’t have any practical prospects for me anyway. Nevertheless, maybe out of habit or because we were both sociable people who, deep inside, felt chronically lonely, we kept meeting every once in a while to stroll along the beach promenade.
Now we’re walking toward Jaffa once again. He has just finished giving a workshop for the directors of human rights organizations in Israel, and he’s upset. It doesn’t matter how crappy your governments have been, he says, the people were always optimistic. That’s why I loved coming here. Your anthem is called “The Hope,” and that’s what there always was here: hope. But today—today I gave a workshop to a group of hopeless people. What happened to all of you?
Look, I begin—
And he interrupts me.
I read your last book, by the way. The translation is excellent. And the characters—they actually jump off the page. Forgive me for saying this, but I kept thinking, how can you write such a naïve love story that could take place anywhere, and be blind to the fact that the country you live in is causing so much suffering in the occupied territories? How can you write about a trivial love affair when women are giving birth at checkpoints?
Look, I try—
And he interrupts me.
You know what the problem is? That people like you go into art instead of politics. And people like—what’s his name? Sirking? Sirkind?—are government ministers and legitimate candidates to lead the country. Do you get it? Your government lets you write books, make movies. What do they care? You can walk on the red carpet in Cannes. You can win at fucking Sundance. You can sell formats to HBO. It’s all fine just as long as you don’t get in the way of their building settlements and destroying the Zionist enterprise, right?
But—
A person like you, with your family background, has to ask himself at every moment whether he’s doing the most meaningful thing he can. Write another best seller? Come on. You can do better.
I have an answer for him. But for the last few weeks, there’s been so much tension at home between me and Dikla that I don’t have the strength to argue with someone else now. And I think that, this time, there’s something else underneath his typical heat-of-the-argument reversal. Something more personal he’s going through.
—
It comes out as we pass Manta Ray restaurant.
His wife is leaving him.
They spent their lives waiting for this time to come. The kids left for college and now they would have time to make their dreams come true, the dreams they had to push aside in order to be parents. And now his wife does want to make those dreams come true. But not with him.
I nod in understanding. That was the first time in our history that he told me something really personal. I wonder whether I should put a hand on his shoulder. But I don’t dare. And I wonder whether to tell him that, last week, Dikla stopped getting dressed when I’m in the room, and doubts every little thing I tell her. Whether I really sent the advance payment to the hall we hired for the bat mitzvah, whether I’m really starting to give the creative writing workshop on Thursday evenings in Beit Shemesh, whether—
Right before Jaffa, he collapses totally.
On a bench.
I sit down next to him.
Surfers walk down to the sea with their boards.
Surfers come up from the sea with their boards.
Wild is the wind.
—
It happened so quickly, he says in bewilderment.
One evening—“We have to talk.” Then a confession. Well-phrased. As if she had polished it for weeks. Thank you for all the good years, but I think that we should separate before it turns really ugly, she told him. The next day, she took her things and moved into a rented apartment. Which means she rented the apartment before she spoke to him. Would you believe it?
A sixty-something American man is now leaving me space to say something wise that will comfort
