I wasn’t lonely just in Colombia, but before then too.
What are you saying, she says, and now her tone is blatantly sarcastic. Distant.
You try to take her hand. To keep her from dropping away from you.
Don’t touch me, she says. And says, I was lonely too. And says, But it didn’t make me sleep with someone else.
After the last sentence, she stands up, her long hair tangled, brown snakes climbing over each other, one hand clenched into a fist, the other spread like a STOP sign on the road.
She asks you to leave the house.
She doesn’t care that it’s the middle of the night. Or that the neighbors can hear you begging for your life. Since the dysthymia, it’s been impossible to live with you anyway, she says, she’s been close to the edge because of all your trips, and Colombia—Colombia is just the last straw as far as she’s concerned. She pushes you out, actually puts her hands on your chest and pushes you out, and you stand outside your front door at five thirty in the morning, one foot on the morning newspaper, the other on the doormat, and you don’t know where to go. The last time something like this happened to you, you found shelter at your grandmother’s place. But she’s dead. Until a year ago, you could drive to Ari’s, because you had an unwritten agreement that, no matter what, you would always be there for each other. But Ari is dying in the hospital now. And they’re very strict there when it comes to visiting hours. Anyway, this isn’t the right time to dump this whole story on him. So you get on your bicycle and pedal to the studio. You’re no longer a partner in it, you left a few weeks ago because you couldn’t write even a short story there, but you remember that the lock on one of the windows is broken. When you arrive, you open that window, climb inside, and go to sleep on the psychologist’s yoga mat. In your clothes. Without a blanket.
In the morning, you buy toothpaste and a toothbrush in the grocery store, brush in the sink that’s in the coffee corner and wash your feet in the same sink. While you’re lowering your feet back onto the floor, your lower back goes out again, so you hobble to the yoga mat and lie down.
At nine in the morning, there’s a knock on the door.
You’re still on the mat. And you can’t get up to open it.
You shout, “Come in!”
A messenger enters and hands you an envelope.
You sign for it, lying down, to confirm that you’ve received it.
The messenger looks at you and says, I don’t believe it!
On second glance, you recognize him. A few years ago, he was in your workshop. And he was pretty talented too. He wrote an inflammatory story about euthanasia, about someone known as “the Angel” who went from hospital to hospital in Israel between two and four in the morning to help people die. You remember that this student standing in front of you now used to go out to smoke during breaks, and at the tenth and last meeting, he raised his hand and said defiantly: We’ve talked about a lot of things in this workshop, but we’ve ignored the most important question—why write at all?
Now he asks, Does your back hurt?
Along with other things, you say.
He suggests you phone a house-call doctor to give you an epidural.
You say, I’ve taken enough painkillers.
He says, Okay, but why suffer?
You promise to consider it.
After he leaves, you open the envelope, find the forms, and read them. Several seconds pass before you understand that you’re reading divorce papers.
The director asks the cameraman to do a close-up of you.
You don’t see a director. Or a cameraman. But suspect they’re there. Part of the convoluted scheme, the big, ingenious translation scam.
You think about your kids, who still don’t know—
And start to cry.
For the camera.
And then it slowly turns into real weeping. Does the line between truth and lies sometimes become blurred for you?
They took us for a polygraph test, all the cadets in the course for field security officers, they wanted us to learn about it up close, understand how it works. They put a small group of us, along with our commanders, into a room that contained a lot of instruments and a bearded researcher in civilian clothes. The bearded researcher asked for a volunteer to demonstrate. Without too much thought, I raised my hand. Just to stand out. He sat me on a chair and connected a few tubes and wires to my stomach and arms. Then he said, I’ll ask you several technical questions. He asked my name, my age, and my address. I answered succinctly, and then suddenly he asked me whether I’d ever used drugs. I said no. Without blinking an eye. The researcher didn’t blink either, and continued to ask me more questions that I don’t remember anymore. At the end, he thanked me, asked everyone to approach his Formica table, and explained how to read the graph. My heart was pounding and drops of sweat rolled down from the back of my neck along the length of my spine. The researcher said, Our volunteer spoke the truth all the way through, and he showed us how the various measurements the polygraph had recorded indicated that the responses of my body, even if there were big jumps in the lines, were still within the normal range. Later there were some questions, I think, and then we left the room and another group entered. We went to the canteen to wait until the bus took us back to the base. I bought a Coke, I remember, and when I opened it, the gas burst out all at once and sprayed everyone standing next to me.
For years, I hoped I’d accidentally bump into that bearded researcher again, on
