—
When Ari fell asleep for the night, I walked around other departments for hours. I pretended to be a waiting relative and tried to find the path that would take me to Nimrod’s room, with zero exposure and a minimum of doors that opened only from the inside.
At four in the morning, I reached my destination.
When I entered the room, I saw Iris sprawled on a chair, sound asleep.
Her hair was speckled with gray. Her brow plowed with wrinkles. After all, the passing years had left their mark. On her and on me.
I walked over to the bed. The machines beside Nimrod gave off a dim light, illuminating his face. The stubble on his cheeks. His slightly drooping lips, giving him that old, offended look.
Gingerly, I climbed onto the bed and hugged him from behind, the way I had then. His body curved, abandoning itself to the embrace as if it remembered. His long lashes quivered slightly, as if he were about to wake up. But he continued to sleep.
I listened to his breathing to make sure it didn’t stop and waited for first light to appear in the window. Then I got out of his bed and headed home. I drove through the deserted streets and switched stations on the radio, maybe one of them would broadcast an update or at least play “Waiting for the Messiah.” But the Messiah didn’t come.
I waited in my living room for some news, occasionally getting up and patrolling the other rooms. Sunbeams had begun to penetrate the shutters in my kids’ rooms, illuminating their delicate faces, the dreamcatchers that guarded their sleep, and the furniture in their rooms, painted pink or blue. Your grandfather, Levi Eshkol, may he rest in peace, was the second president of the State of Israel. How does it feel to be named after him?
Not the president, the prime minister. Your grandfather, Levi Eshkol, may he rest in peace, was the second prime minister of the State of Israel. What memories do you have of him?
Not the second. The third. And he died before I was born. Your grandfather, Levi Eshkol, was the third prime minister of the State of Israel. What legacy did he leave you?
Sugar cubes.
During the official memorial service in the Har Herzl cemetery, the family would stand in the first row facing the black marble headstone. After the chief military cantor chanted the final prayer—which always filled me with a general sense of deep sorrow that was unrelated to my grandfather, who died before I was born, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t mourn for him personally—each of the politicians would place a small stone on the grave and then stand in line to shake hands with the entire family. I remember that Shimon Peres’s handshake was limp, that Gad Yacobi was handsome, that one of the last people to shake my hand was a thin-haired man named Shalhevet Freier. Then everyone—by that, I mean all the members of the Mapai party, friends of the family, and Shalhevet Freier—would drive to Ramban Street, to my step-grandmother Miriam’s house, and stand in the small living room holding glasses of soda, analyzing the situation of the country as if it, the country, was their private possession, even though, in the years I’m writing about, Menachem Begin, the head of the opposition party, was already the prime minister.
We children, cousins, would retreat into a side room where there were thick files we were not allowed to open, and on the table that had once been his desk was a Scattergories game. For the letter L, in the category Famous People, it was obvious what everyone would write. So I chose Lincoln or Leonardo da Vinci to score more points, and every few rounds, my cousins—who were all older than me—would send me on a mission to the rear, which was the living room, to grab a handful of sugar cubes from the silver bowl and bring them, without incident, to the children’s room. I remember the taste of those sugar cubes in my mouth: First they were hard, like sucking candy, and after a few small bites, they softened on the tongue and crumbled into tiny bits. I remember that Doron, my eldest cousin, taught us how to drink tea, holding a sugar cube between our teeth and letting the hot liquid flow through it. And I remember that once, Shalhevet Freier caught me red-handed in the living room. He intercepted my hand on its way to the silver bowl, held on to it, and said in a heavy German accent: It’s not candy, son. I must have looked very frightened, because he quickly let go of my hand, offered me a box of bitter chocolate, and said, Take this instead. I hated bitter chocolate, but I took it. Something in Shalhevet Freier’s tone told me not to argue.
He died a few years ago, and the obituary that appeared alongside his picture in the newspaper mentioned that he had been the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. And so, after a certain delay, I realized where the force of his deterrence came from.
Over the years, sugar cubes disappeared from the world. Like fireflies. Every once in a while, mainly in the Carmel Center and in the cafés populated by German Jews, they still put a bowl of sugar cubes in the middle of the table, and I take a few, suck them as slowly as possible to keep them from crumbling right away, and think about the grandfather I’d never known, saddened that I had never known him. They told me that he
