The Last Interview

a writer isn’t writing, he’s lost and troubled, and when he is writing, he’s focused on himself and troubled. Not to mention the fact that everything that happens is material for him. Everything is exploited, immediately. You sprained your foot? So does his heroine. You had an ugly argument about money at six in the morning? The couple in his story will argue about money. But there’s no connection. Of course not. He lets you read the manuscript and you see everything there, including intimate details about your eldest daughter’s life, which he tells himself he has disguised well, and you have to pretend it’s not transparent. And pretend you didn’t notice that as the years have passed, he can’t make small talk anymore, he always has to tell you a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, even when he confesses to supposedly cheating on you in Colombia, the description is so vibrant and imaginative that you’re afraid it’s South American magical realism meant to catch your attention and arouse your jealousy. But it succeeds in doing the opposite. Then there’s the self-importance if his book succeeds. And the total collapse if, heaven forbid, it doesn’t. And the interviews to the media. The slips of the tongue that give away more than he thinks. And the compassionate looks of your co-workers after those interviews. And the women who come up to him in cafés as if you’re not sitting there. And flutter their lashes. And say how much his book touched them. And the fact that it’s legitimate not to listen to you when you’re sitting together in a café on Friday morning because he can’t decide how to move the plot forward, which keeps him from sleeping. And the fact that it’s legitimate to do research on strippers. Because there’s a stripper in the story. And traveling to Argentina for a week because, what choice does he have, the most important scene in the book takes place in Argentina. And of course, without actually being in Argentina, he can’t write about Argentina.

Really, Mr. Writer? I have no problem with your trips as such. Terminals and hotels are, after all, pretty sad places. So I don’t envy you. And sometimes, to be honest, I’m happy for the chance to have a short vacation from you. Especially since you started with that dysthymia, which has made you even more self-involved, because that’s one of the symptoms. The real problem is that you keep on telling yourself you’re a great husband, a wonderful father, and a man of principle. So I have news for you: A great husband feels it when his wife is on the edge and doesn’t push her over it. And a wonderful father doesn’t steal details from his eldest daughter’s life to put in his book. And a man of principle doesn’t still secretly write speeches for that fraud Yoram Sirkin.

Of course I know. You really think you can hide something from the woman who’s been living with you for twenty years? I swear, I don’t understand why you keep on doing that. Money? Power? Or are you jealous of your characters and do you want some action in your own life? Tell me, aren’t writers supposed to concentrate on writing? To sit at home every day and write, and pick up the kids from day care at noon like Garp in The World According to Garp? And then, when their wives come home—late!—from their important and interesting jobs, to welcome them with dinner and anecdotes they’ve collected for them—and only for them!—from the many hours they’ve spent with the kids?

That’s the movie I had in mind when I told you that I wanted to marry a writer. But you apparently imagined a different movie. Or you changed the screenplay. Or adapted it. I don’t know. Imagery is your field.

It’s not that I don’t love you anymore, I want you to understand that. Still hidden under the depressed, totally self-involved writer you have become is the sensitive, upbeat man I fell in love with—I just don’t love being with you anymore, that’s all there is to it.

I feel oppressed by you. I need some rest from you.

I need to distance myself from you now so I can remember who I am.

If you want, you can call this an investigative trip.

Rust. On one of the legs of the beautiful balcony table we bought at Moroccan Fantasy in the north. (That’s what we’re like. Or am I wrong? Maybe it’s just because of Ari and the long hours at his bedside, along with my uncontrollable tendency to connect various details into a weighty structure, that everything in my life and surroundings, in my home and my homeland seems to be rusty, eroded, portending their end, when actually—)

—

Maybe I should stop here. I’ve gone too far as it is.

You have to understand, it’s no accident that Dikla works in an information security company. In Ma’alot—she once explained to me—if you smoke with a girlfriend behind Ben-Naim’s grocery store, your parents know about it half an hour later. And that’s why, since she left the city, she’s been super-protective of her privacy. For example, she never allows photographers in the house. And here I am, letting the word-camera into the house.

She always claimed: The book is important. Not you.

And also: You don’t have to satisfy their voyeuristic urges. Leave them curious. Leave some things secret.

And also: The kids and I are not to blame that you chose this profession.

Before every interview, I check with her about what I can and cannot say. She would be horrified to read what I’m writing here.

She would be horrified, even though I’m doing a good job of using fabrications to conceal the real reason for our crisis.

She would be horrified, even though, for the time being, the kids are barely mentioned in this interview. (Actually, they are my entire world, my kids. And I dash around among them like a waiter serving