But in this case—I had a goal.
So I asked. And she named the same city we were going to.
And I asked again. She replied that she had a readers’ meeting at the Literaturhaus to discuss her book.
What a coincidence, I’m a writer too.
I don’t believe you.
I only lie in books, I said.
I don’t believe you, she repeated. You’re too suntanned to be a writer.
So I suggested that we google each other.
While she was googling me, I googled her.
It turned out that she writes about vampires, and that her bloody books are huge best sellers in Germany and outside it. On one site, there was a picture of her lying on a piano, wearing a slit-to-the-thigh wine-colored dress, her expression simultaneously defiant and shy.
She looked up from her phone, examined me skeptically, then looked down at her phone again, then looked up again—
It’s all fiction, I wanted to tell her. Don’t believe a single word written there—
But before I could say anything, she spoke: You’re pretty photogenic, eh?
Coming from her mouth, it sounded like an insult. But I didn’t have time to waste on that. I was in the middle of a mission: to find out the small, specific things she does that so enthrall Gili Arazi.
I asked about her books. And while she answered, I observed her hand movements, which told a different story, and sometimes actually undermined her words; I observed her bangs, which moved slightly when she spoke; I observed the rare moments when something embarrassed her. She seemed anxious to project the image of a strong, liberated woman whom nothing could embarrass, and that was why, when she suddenly bit the nail of her pinkie finger, there was something moving about it.
When we got off the train at the station—how lovely it was, the way she hopped off the step onto the platform—I felt that I needed a bit more time with her. A bit more information.
So I suggested that we meet for a drink after her lecture. You must know all about it, I said, the better the lecture is, the lonelier you feel after it.
I don’t remember what we talked about in the bar. I mean, there was a text, but I remember the subtext better. And I remember that I said to myself while we were sitting there, No no no, absolutely not, she’s definitely not your type, Dikla is your type and you don’t want to risk what you have with her—
But when she pushed her blond bangs aside, leaned over, and whispered in my ear, My hotel…it’s right around the corner—
She was definitely Gili Arazi’s type. And there are things you can know about a character only if you sleep with her. So I went to the hotel with her. Which was much more luxurious than the dumps they put me up in. I followed her into her room, her suite. Before I could do anything, she pushed me up against the wall.
She grabbed my arms with both hands. And held them over my head in an iron grip. Her pelvis trapped mine so that I couldn’t move, and her mouth headed toward my neck.
I fought to free myself. But she was stronger than me. I must have cried out, which only caused her teeth to dig deeper into my neck. Then the pain lessened. My resistance weakened, my neck abandoned itself to her mouth, and she sucked my blood and everything that flows in it. I actually felt how she sucked out entire memories: the bag of apricot pits I’d collected in fourth grade that left me deep in debt at the end of recess when I lost the game; the kid from camp we ostracized because he didn’t play soccer well enough; the squad exercise during the officer training course when an accidentally discharged bullet scratched Gal Miller’s left ear; Tali Leshem standing very close to me on the Stella Maris promenade and I didn’t have the courage to kiss her; Dikla and I throwing eggs at each other in a no-holds-barred fight in the apartment on Raban Street, and then making passionate love on the floor, mixing yolks with whites; Dikla saying hurtful things to me during an argument in the apartment on Yaldei Teheran Street, and then waiting hours for her to apologize, which she didn’t, because she doesn’t believe in apologizing—
After the German writer removed her teeth from my neck and released my hands, I thought it would be natural for us to continue to the large bed in the middle of the room.
But she thought differently. She called reception. To order me a taxi.
—
Sitting in the backseat, I closed my eyes and felt empty. Not empty. Hollow.
The driver drove with the window open, and the freezing wind blew into the taxi, but I didn’t have the strength even to ask him to close it. I didn’t have the strength even to open my mouth.
That bitch had sucked the life-force right out of me. All of it.
And didn’t deign look in my direction when I left the room.
—
Six months later, she sent me her book. In German. The gold letters on the cover were embossed, as befits a book meant to be a best seller, and in the neat handwriting of a perfect little girl, she had written me a dedication on the first page:
To the suntanned writer from Israel
Thank you for helping my investigation. There are a lot of extramarital affairs in your last books. Do you think all married people are ultimately destined to have affairs?
I think that all married people are ultimately destined to imagine an affair. How much of you is in your characters?
They are melded into me and I into them. So much so that sometimes it’s hard, in all that amalgam, to see who is who. In this interview as well, it’s time to admit:
Some of the things I supposedly revealed really happened to me.
Some I am terrified will happen to me.
Some I desperately hope will happen to me.
And
