“It wasn’t very wel publicized. The army is sending these gay and lesbian soldiers to the High School Pride Club to convince the kids that the army is gay-friendly.”
“They must real y be get ing desperate.”
“There’s going to be a protest outside, a drag carnival, they’re going to parody army uniforms and hand out free tickets to the Hague or the military cemetery. So that’s going to be colorful. But the condolence cal seems more important. Are you going to that?”
“No, I can’t, I have a soccer game with my after-school kids. And I want to spend some time with my daughter today. Cal me when you get home.”
I walked him to the door.
“Wil you be okay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He kissed me one last time, and left. I returned to my flat, our flat, mine and Daniel’s, and sat cross-legged on the unmade bed.
Everything had changed: I had betrayed Daniel. I had held someone else, loved someone else. I would not have believed it possible and I stil didn’t understand exactly how it had happened, or why.
At the start, during the rst few seconds of sex, I had not been able to stop thinking of Daniel; it was as if Ra and Daniel shared one body.
I remembered dreams in which people I knew had merged into one person: Daniel and my mother, Tanya and Odelia, El a and the woman at the photography store. In my dreams the transformations seemed natural, as though al humans had shifting identities and were continual y exchanging one for the other. In waking life the confusion was frightening.
But Daniel faded almost immediately, because Ra ’s style in bed was very di erent. Daniel was funny, playful, imaginative. He joked, he entertained me. Ra was quiet and intense. It was a serious undertaking for him, sex. Serious and complex, an exploration of another person and of himself. Daniel and I talked about what we wanted to do as though discussing some trip we were going to take and what hotels we would stay at. Ra did say a few things, but they were not in the category of discussion. Remembering those things now made my stomach lurch, and I longed for him to come back.
What would I tel Daniel when I saw him? It was distressing to think that I would have a secret from him, but the idea of hurting him was unbearable. Maybe I could telescope the years of his absence and make them vanish, make them inconsequential; maybe we could start over.
But I wanted to know about his life over the past eleven years and I wanted him to know what had happened to me. It occurred to me that maybe this was the reason I’d started taking photographs: I wanted a record of my life for him. I would show him the photographs, and he would know what I’d seen and, if the photo was good, what I’d felt.
What would I say when I reached the one of Rafi?
I quickly pul ed out the shoe box that held the photo of Ra and removed it from the box. I stared at it and wondered what to do; I felt like a fairy-tale hero who has to find a clever way to dispose of a magic object without activating some dreadful curse.
First I would find Daniel, then I’d decide. In the meantime I placed the photograph on my work table.
I showered, slept for two hours, had a container of yogurt, and set out for the condolence cal . It would be a lot harder than the drag carnival, but it was more urgent. I took a taxi to our meeting place at the train station. The taxi driver was in a good mood and whistled cheerful y as he sped down the empty streets. “Where are you of to this early?” he asked conversational y.
“A condolence cal ,” I said. “Two children were kil ed.”
“Good for you!” he exclaimed. He’d misunderstood, and I didn’t have the energy to correct him and get yel ed at. Maybe he wouldn’t yel at me, maybe he’d only shake his head and sigh, but I didn’t want to take a chance. Once a taxi driver had thrown me out of the car because of my views. That was the only time, though, that I was banished altogether, and it was because the driver had narrowly missed being blown up that afternoon, had seen body parts flying through the air.
“You’re an asset to the State,” the happy driver told me. “Please give them my condolences, too.”
“I wil ,” I said.
He whistled al the way to the train station. He’d probably had sex the night before. Just like me.
There were two minivans at the train station, waiting to col ect everyone. We were a smal group: sixteen people in al . The condolence cal was in Hroush, which normal y would have been a short drive from the city, but it took us nearly eight hours to get there because our two vans were stopped and held up so many times. At one point we were told we had to turn back altogether. Desperate, we climbed out of the vans and sat on the road so that other vehicles would not be able to pass either. There were only two soldiers at this isolated road-stop, and they couldn’t drag us al away.
A furious taxi driver who was delivering a group of set lers to their burgundy-roofed homes in the territories ew out of his car and started shouting at us. “What have I done to you?” he cried out, his body tense with rage. “I might like you, if you didn’t do things like this. Now you’re just making me hate you more!” He turned to the soldier. “Why don’t you do something! Why don’t you make them move?”
“I’m just waiting to hear from the commander, take it easy,” the soldier said. He looked very depressed.
“I can’t wait! I have a car ful of people here. They need to get home. Idiots!” He meant us.
“He’s right, just let us through!” shouted a white-haired man who was sit ing next to me. I knew him a lit le; we had spoken several times
“He’s right, just let us through!” shouted a white-haired man who was sit ing next to me. I knew him a lit le; we had spoken several times on buses or marches. His name was Ezra, and though he was in his eighties he never missed an activity. He wore plaid hiking shorts and his thin, muscular legs were covered with white hair. I pictured him on a farm; I pictured him pushing wheelbarrows for several decades. “Just let us through,” he repeated, this
