I stood up and went to Shira’s room. That is, the room that had been Shira’s and now was a kind of playroom no one played in. When Shira lived at home, she never went to sleep. At night, after I came home from my talks, I used to go into her room, sit on the edge of her bed, and listen to the dramas she had lived through during the day. She said she wanted me to “advise her,” but I knew that if I really dared to give her advice, she’d throw me out. So I would nod. And nod again. And sometimes even share with her the victories and defeats I had experienced when I was her age. I noticed that knowing that I too had wondered and blundered calmed her down. Now I sat on the edge of the bed. I stroked the blanket for a while. And nodded into the darkness.
Dikla woke me when she came home and said to me: Come to bed, sleep normally. I followed her. In bed, I told her about Ari. She was silent and groped for my hand. I stayed awake all night, holding her hand. I didn’t want morning to come. When was the last time you cried?
It was in the seventh grade. Or the eleventh. I’m not sure.
There was a grammar test. Before the class, I went through the textbook and memorized the exceptions to the rule for the last time, and when the teacher walked in, I forgot to put the book back in my bag.
She handed out the test papers and when everyone began to write, she walked around from desk to desk. I remember the clack of her high heels. Her Farrah Fawcett hairdo. The smell of her perfume. Older women’s perfume. When she reached my desk, she stopped, picked up the book, and shouted: What is this supposed to be? She waved the book around in front of my eyes and I said: Sorry, I forgot it was on the desk. Oh come on, she said, you think I’m stupid? No, I replied, adding: Please believe me, it was an accident, I just forgot to put it in my bag. Her answer was to take my test, tear it in half, and put it back on my desk. Other kids giggled. Obviously at me. At my far-fetched explanation. I stood up, walked out of the classroom, and slammed the door behind me. Hard.
There are moments in life when you’re bursting with love or mortification, and all you can do is walk and keep walking. So I left school and kept walking, and in Haifa in the eighties, if you walked long enough, you would reach the Carmel forest.
I leaned against a tree, slipped down into a sitting position, and wept.
There is nothing more humiliating than when someone doesn’t believe you. Even if you’re not telling the truth.
Actually, there was another time I cried after that.
I had come back from Ari’s place. It was before he got sick. We watched Barcelona play Chelsea. But there was another reason I’d gone to see him that evening. One of my books had just come out, and those few weeks before the first reviews appear are pretty much a nightmare. What has been internal for so long has suddenly become external, and you feel like you’re exposed. Like you’ve shown more than you intended to show. And no attempt to cover yourself with your hands can ever hide it.
I knew that, at Ari’s place, there was no chance we’d talk about it, for one simple reason: He wasn’t crazy about my books. He tried to read the first one. Two months later, he returned it to me and said: I tried, bro. I really did. But I just couldn’t get into it. You’re not angry, are you? When I gave him the second one, which I had signed with a very personal dedication, he complimented the beautiful front cover, read the blurb on the back cover, and said, It’s pretty much like the first book, right? The same mindset?
—
Aren’t you a little offended? Dikla asked when I told her.
Just the opposite, I said, it’s great.
What’s great about it?
Everyone I’ve met since I started writing books treats me too much like a writer. He just treats me like me.
—
That evening, he made chili con carne with black beans that he bought especially in a Mexican store in the central bus station. After Iniesta scored the winning goal for Barcelona at the last minute, we ate. I mean I ate. He devoured. And we drank, I mean I drank and he emptied one and a half bottles of Bitter Lemon.
We talked about the decision of the district attorney’s office not to indict Yoram Sirkin for fraud and breach of trust. Ari, who had just become a partner in the law firm where he worked, said more than once that the decision didn’t prove that Sirkin hadn’t defrauded, only that they hadn’t found a smoking gun. Then we talked about the girl Ari was dating at the time, and there was a feeling in the air that maybe this time it would finally happen.
The drive home from Tel Aviv was short and relaxed. No traffic jams, twenty minutes tops. There was happy music on the radio and a spring breeze drifting through the window, so nothing prepared me for what happened when I tried to get out of the car.
Moving from sitting to standing is something you do a hundred times a day without thinking about it.
The pain was so sharp that I almost fainted. I grabbed the side mirror with both hands to keep myself from collapsing on the street, and I closed my eyes until the dizziness passed. Then I took a few deep breaths and tried
