I choose from various options I’m given, not to mention that I drive the designers crazy until there’s an option I like. But in the unlikely event that this interview is turned into a book, I wouldn’t need options. And I wouldn’t drive anyone crazy. A photo of my aunt Noa Eshkol’s wall carpet, the one in our living room, will appear on the cover: layer upon layer upon layer. And under them, a wound.
On the first inside page will be a warning completely opposite to the usual one:
The plot of this book, the characters mentioned in it and their names have been taken from the life of the writer. Any resemblance between the plot of the book and real events is not the slightest bit coincidental. Any resemblance between the characters and their names, and real people, living or dead, and their names is not the slightest bit coincidental either. Nevertheless, given that the writer is a compulsive storyteller, every statement made in his name, including this one, should be taken with a grain of salt.
Only one word will appear on the dedication page: Dikla.
(This will be either a gift of love or a memorial to love. It’s too early to tell. Yesterday, she packed a small bag and drove off. To an ashram in the desert. She said she needed time to think. She didn’t say for how long.) There are a lot of dreams in your books. What role do dreams play in your real life?
My dreams are embarrassingly simple. Sometimes, when I wake up and remember how crude and direct my dream was, I say to myself: From you I would expect more.
Dikla’s dreams, on the other hand—
She forgot to take her notebook with her when she went to the ashram.
She left it on her bedside table.
A stronger person might have withstood the temptation.
—
My mother calls me. In the dream, it’s clear that she has found a technological solution that enables the dead to have a direct phone connection with the living, and such conversations are routine. She tells me, I’m proud of you, Dikla, and I ask, Why didn’t you tell me that before? That’s what’s good about dying, she replies, you get perspective. What exactly is it that makes you proud of me? I insist on knowing, I manage to hear her sigh, and then the call is cut off, leaving the rhythmic sound of dialing that grows louder and turns out to be his alarm clock.
—
No one comes to Noam’s bat mitzvah. Which, for some reason, takes place in the school gym in Ma’alot. We sit in the gym and wait and wait, but no one comes. The deejay keeps playing songs to get people dancing, but there’s no one there to dance. Yanai bursts the balloons with a pin. I cancel the pizza order. Noam is too shocked even to cry. We leave the empty gym and walk to the huge parking lot where there are only two carriages. He goes to one and we go to the other. When we start driving, Shira says: Couldn’t you control yourselves?
—
I’m in Colombia, in the city called Cartagena, looking for that woman. I follow a smell that leads me to a club I’m sure she’s in and as soon as I see her, I’ll ask her, yes or no, a story or reality, but the music in the club is really good. There’s an Enrique Iglesias song, “Duele el Corazón” (“My Heart Aches”), so instead of looking for her, I start dancing, and in the dream, I know that it’s only a dream and I’m sorry it’s only a dream because I feel so so so good, and then there’s a cut. And I’m in a desert, maybe in Colombia, maybe in Israel. The sun is so strong that my shadow looks completely different from me, as if it’s someone else’s shadow.
—
I win the Man Booker Prize in the “writer’s wife” category and refuse to accept it. They call me up to the stage in English, and I stand up and answer in Hebrew, No thanks, and only after I sit down again do I see that the man sitting beside me isn’t the man I’m married to but Eran, our assistant director of marketing.
—
I perform Watsu with the baby, Shira, not at the pool I usually go to but in the moshav Beit Zayit pool, which I have never been to. I cradle her in my arms and glide her through the water the way Gaia does with me, singing the melody of Billy Joel’s “Honesty” to her without the words, but then suddenly there’s a kind of hole in the pool like there is sometimes in rubber pools, and the water drips out slowly until we’re left sitting on the exposed bottom surrounded by coins that people threw into it when they made a wish.
—
I forgot to dye my hair and all the cats in the neighborhood come to me to be fed.
—
I’m in that damn sentry booth in the Arava desert. But I’m at the age I am now. And I’m not wearing a uniform. Darkness, howling jackals, and again that terrible fear rises up in me that I have no one and I’m alone. Completely alone in the world. My heart races with the all-alone anxiety. I try to tell myself that I’m already a mother and I have the kids, but that doesn’t help the pounding of my heart, which is growing stronger, so I call ERAN, the suicide hotline, like I did then, ashamed that after twenty years, I’m back to where I was then, but instead of ERAN, the suicide hotline, Eran, the assistant marketing director with the broad shoulders, answers, and in the dream,
