The Last Interview

would compromise until he got what he wanted. That he had a warm, wise Jewish sense of humor. That not only his supporters but also his opponents loved him. That he was not a member of the conservative party, made up of people who had only one great love in their lives. That he stuttered at the wrong moment. That he was responsible for the Six-Day War victory but was never given credit for it. That he died before he understood how much trouble that victory would cause us. That even though he was almost never home, he managed to instill in my mother, it’s not clear how, a strong sense of his presence as a father. That, the older I get, the more I resemble him physically, so much so that, over the last few years, I avoid looking at pictures of him, because more and more they seem like a prophesy. Does your grandfather’s political legacy influence you as a writer?

I had a real grandmother. Not famous. On my father’s side. Who lived in Holon.

She was an almost-Holocaust-survivor, having emigrated from Poland to Israel alone right before World War II broke out.

When I was fifteen, my grandfather died and there was no one left to argue with her in Yiddish.

She had two or three close friends, but most of the time she watched TV, went to the clinic, and cooked.

In her house, lunch was at eleven thirty. Dinner at six. And there was an entire shelf for medicines in her fridge.

When I was twenty-three, I split from Tali Leshem for good.

Since I was the one who left the apartment we lived in together, it was clear that I needed a new place.

It was 11:30 at night, and I had nowhere to go with the two garbage bags I had filled with my clothes.

I caught the last bus to Holon. I knocked on my grandmother’s door, where my grandfather’s name still appeared on the nameplate, and when she opened it and saw me, she asked in alarm: What happened, sheyne punim?

I told her.

She made me a cup of tea with three teaspoons of sugar and added a metal straw that had a small teaspoon on one end for mixing it. As I sipped, she opened the sofa bed in the small room near the bathroom and spread a flowered sheet on it. Although she was a very small woman, her arms seemed to grow miraculously long when she spread a sheet. I had already noticed that when I was a child.

When we went back to the kitchen, she didn’t say a word about Tali. Or the breakup. Nor did she mention what had happened when Tali babysat at my sister’s place. All she asked was whether I wanted a piece of cake with my tea. When I shook my head, she sat down across from me and remained silent in solidarity until I finished drinking.

In the morning, she woke me too early because she was afraid I’d be late for work.

I lived with her for three months. The longest stay of a grandson at his grandmother’s house in the history of the family.

I ate a lot of compote, sweet carrot salad, and instant tomato soup she enriched with real, home-cooked rice.

Every time I paid attention to a particular food on the table, she asked why I was ignoring the other food.

Every time I left a light on in the house, she turned it off.

Every time I wanted to watch soccer on TV, she gave up her programs without my asking.

Only when I lived with her did I realize what a sad person she was. A deep, fundamental sadness, like another organ in her body. And that somehow, that sadness of hers had transformed into concern for others.

Only when I lived with her could I see in her face the young girl who left her parents and siblings to move to Israel without knowing that it would be the last time she saw them.

Only when I lived with her did I understand how attached she had been to Grandpa Itzhak, and that when he died, a kind of countdown had begun inside her.

—

Two years ago, I went to Warsaw on a book tour.

My father gave me the address of the house my grandmother had lived in as a child, and I asked my hosts to take me to the Praga district. On the way, we passed bare trees and huge apartment complexes that reminded me of Kieślowski movies, and my mind was already arching to close the circle.

I didn’t know that Warsaw had been totally destroyed in the war, that not a single building had been left standing in the Praga district after the Allied bombing, and that it was so cold in that city that even gloves couldn’t save your fingers from numbness when you got out of a vehicle. I wandered the streets of the district for a while, trying hard to ask for help from the few people I saw, but the address written on the slip of paper no longer existed, and a man wearing a high hat, who, for a fraction of a second, I thought might be Hagai Carmeli, claimed that the street I was looking for had been in a different district altogether and no longer existed. Hailstones began to fall, hard as rocks. My pinkie turned to ice. So I decided to close the circle in a different way: to send my grandmother a postcard from Warsaw.

I sent her a postcard from every place in the world I’d been.

She never understood why I traveled so much—now that the Jews finally have a country of their own!—but she was always glad to receive a sign of life from me.

Near the ghetto, I found a small souvenir shop that still sold old-fashioned postcards and chose one with a picture of the reconstructed royal castle. I wrote to my grandmother that in the lobby of my hotel, they serve cremeschnitte and tea. And that yesterday,