World Cup Wishes

5

THE FOUR OF us are buried in sand, only our heads are sticking out. Ofir’s curly, unkempt head. Churchill’s wide, crew-cut head. Amichai’s round head. And my small, economy-size head. We worked for three hours on South Beach in the blazing July heat digging graves, and then it took the woman filming us another hour and a half to put the sand back and pat it down around our bodies so it’d look as if we couldn’t get out. I don’t remember what product it was that Ofir had to produce an ad for in his copywriting course. Life insurance? Nose drops? In any case, the four of us played people about to die (in the final edit, Ofir managed to include a shot of circling vultures he’d taken from some Western), and each of us had a short script, a sentence or two expressing regret for something he’d never managed to do during his life. I don’t remember my sentence. I just remember that Amichai had to say, ‘One woman. To have slept with only one woman since the age of twenty-two. What a waste, what a waste’, and that he couldn’t say it with the inner conviction Ofir was expecting, so they had to shoot that take over and over again, and my nose itched madly, and I had nothing to scratch it with because my hands were buried in sand, and the woman with the camera, someone from Ofir’s course, poured mineral water into our open mouths over and over again so we wouldn’t dehydrate. When I started to feel an unpleasant coldness spreading from my feet to my hips and waist, I thought, perhaps this is the coldness of death, perhaps this is what you feel when you die, and what would happen if I died now, in the middle of this day of shooting, and I was depressed to discover that I didn’t really care, I mean, I didn’t want to die, but at the moment, when my life wasn’t going anywhere, or more accurately, when it was going nowhere, I didn’t really care.

My thoughts must have been visible on my face because a week later, when Ofir ran the edited film in class, his teacher remarked that none of the men buried in the sand looked like they were about to die, except for the one on the left, the one with the small head, who was probably a professional actor.

*

Ofir was the one who told me.

Something terrible happened, he said on the phone. His voice was so salty that I didn’t recognise it at first.

But how? Churchill mumbled. It can’t … it can’t be.

There was some rare complication … with the anaesthesia … a blood clot … I explained to him what Ofir had explained to me.

The funeral’s tomorrow at one. We’re meeting at the gate to the Haifa cemetery, Ofir told us two hours later.

Can we call Amichai? I asked. Is he answering the phone now?

He’s not speaking. Not just to us, not to anyone, I explained to Churchill. Ilana’s brother has taken charge of making all the arrangements and he’s keeping Ofir up to date.

I’ll wait outside for you tomorrow at twelve, Ofir told me. I might come alone. Maria isn’t … Maria fell apart completely when she heard. I don’t know if she’ll be able to pull herself together by tomorrow.

*

We just passed Hadera, where are you? Churchill and Ya’ara called from their car the next day.

We just left Michmoret, I said. We’ll probably get there a little after you.

So maybe we should stop at the entrance to Haifa and buy something. What do you bring to a funeral? Churchill asked.

Ofir was sitting in my back seat, very close to Maria, who in the end had decided to come and whose body hadn’t stopped heaving with wracking sobs from the minute she got into the car.

Tell them to buy flowers, he leaned forward and said to me, one of those big round bouquets. And after a long silence, he added, tell me, do you also have the feeling that all the cars on the road are on their way to Ilana’s funeral?

*

Amichai didn’t speak at the funeral. We surrounded him on all sides, except the front, facing the grave. Ofir put his hand on his right shoulder, Churchill on his left, and I supported him from the rear. There were a lot of people at the cypress-studded cemetery near the sea. I only knew a few of them. The weather was strange. Hot and humid. Like in South America. To the left of Ilana’s open grave was one with a headstone in the shape of a guitar, and I thought to myself, that’s good, because Amichai won’t have a problem finding the grave even twenty years from now. My grandfather is buried in the huge cemetery in Holon, and every year when we visit his grave on the anniversary of his death, it takes us hours to find the plot, and last year, my grandmother fainted while we were searching, and the ceremony was cancelled. I’d like to cry now, I thought as the cantor rent the clouds with the El Malei Rachamim prayer, and remembered that Amichai once told me that Ilana had said to him that of all his friends, she liked me best. I never understood why. What I did to make her like me. We’d never had a conversation that lasted longer than five minutes. Perhaps it was that diary I wrote for her five years ago. She was doing research on ‘Depressive Thinking in Everyday Life’ and asked all of us to keep a diary for a week, documenting our most secret thoughts. I don’t have enough men for the sample, she said when she came into the living room carrying instruction sheets. Out of politeness, we each took a sheet, but I was the only one who really wrote in the end. I hadn’t kept a diary since I was ten — that one was written in English and Hebrew by turns to impress the potential reader with my bilingualism — but from the minute I put pen to paper, the words flowed with surprising ease. It was a few months after I came back from my big trip to South America with Churchill and I was still jet-lagged. I still hadn’t wrapped myself in those layers of impassiveness that allow you to reconcile yourself to life’s small compromises. So I wrote about it. And about the oppressive loneliness I always felt even during the warmest moments with the guys. And about the Friday night dinners with my family, when no personal remarks were made even though the atmosphere was very pleasant. And about the fact that — this was before Ya’ara — I had still never really loved a girl. And what was going to become of me?

I also wrote down my smaller thoughts. The stupid ones. Like: how come TV presenters never sneeze on air? Or: how come there’s more water under the sand on the shoreline? And also: does everyone have masturbation fantasies as detailed as mine, or do they make do with general plot lines?

I didn’t hide anything. Not my name either. It didn’t bother me that Ilana would read everything. Perhaps part of me even wanted that.

‘There was something about you that made people want to open up to you,’ one of Ilana’s students eulogised her. She read from a prepared speech, slowly, words carefully chosen, but after that sentence, she suddenly broke apart, like a cloud. She started to cry and couldn’t go on.

Ilana’s older brother spoke after her. He spoke directly to Ilana as if she were still alive, told her that even though he was the older brother, she had always been the one to watch over him, and he begged her to keep watching over him from up above.

Her mother stood up to speak, too. But her resemblance to Ilana was so unnerving — the slim figure, the bob, the nose — that I couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying. Only isolated, broken words reached my ears: mummy’s little girl … you were born out of love … and to love you will return … how … when you were small … why didn’t I say … your soul …

Then there was silence. Some people glanced at Amichai, expecting him to speak as well, but he didn’t open his mouth. Not then and not through the seven days of mourning at Ilana’s parents’ house in Haifa. He sat the whole time on a black plastic chair and stared straight ahead. If someone spoke to him, he didn’t answer. Sometimes he nodded. Usually, he ignored it.

There was something terrifying about his silence. Especially because this was Amichai, the guy gushing with brilliant ideas, the positive thinker. The weirdest dancer in the world, and it didn’t bother him in the slightest. The guy that thirty-year-old men who were healthy as horses bought Telemed subscriptions from just because he inspired their trust.

He’s in shock, Churchill said. His reaction reminds me of the way people on trial react when they’re sentenced to life.

He blames himself, Ofir hypothesised. He was against that operation, remember? Besides, his father died when he was a boy. And he never really had the chance to mourn him. So maybe now …

You don’t understand, Maria interrupted. You never really got along with Lana … So maybe that’s why it’s hard for you to understand … But he loved her. Theirs was a huge, beautiful love. I have never … never in my life seen a man love his wife like that.

Ofir put a hand on Maria’s shoulder. She didn’t move his hand away but she didn’t abandon herself to his touch either.

We hardly saw her during the week of the shiva. Without being asked, she took on the job of taking care of the twins. She talked to them. Explained, as much as it was possible to explain, what had happened. She stroked and hugged and massaged. She dressed and undressed and fed them. She cancelled all her appointments at the clinic and got up every morning at six at Michmoret so she could be in Haifa at seven-fifteen to get the twins organised and take them out for a while, to the beach or the playground or the shopping centre. Because it isn’t healthy for small children to be around black plastic chairs all day.

At first, Ilana’s family didn’t know what to make of all that giving of hers. But Amichai explained to them, his glance piercing, that he thought this was a good solution. And that he wasn’t open to discussion on the subject. So they had no choice but to accept it and explain to curious guests that the large, blonde woman was ‘a good friend of Ilana’s whom the children are very attached to’.

But Ofir wasn’t completely happy with the situation. You don’t have to do it, he told her over and over again. Until one morning, when he tried to persuade her not to take the trip to Haifa that day, to rest a little, see to things at the clinic — she blew up at him. You don’t understand anything, she yelled. You don’t understand anything.

What? What don’t I understand? he asked, alarmed. She had never raised her voice to him.

I want to die, she said in a strange, cold voice. I want to die, Ofi. And the only reason I don’t is the children. They need me, and I’ll stay alive till their father is himself again. After that, I don’t know, do you understand? I don’t know if I want to live.

*

Only twice during the shiva did Amichai come out of his deep, brooding sorrow.

The first time was when Shahar Cohen showed up out of the blue. Shahar Cohen had been one of our group till the army. When he was sent to a military prison for leaving his gun at a hitchhiker’s station, we went to see him, but later he was given a psychiatric discharge and moved to London to study law. At least that’s what his sister, who stayed in Haifa, told us. He himself cut off all contact with us. No letters, no phone calls, no emails. Later, Ofir’s mother told us that she saw him, his hair grown long, playing the harmonica in the Paris metro. But when she talked to him, he acted as if he didn’t know her. Then there were two objective sources that claimed he was a DJ at a party they’d danced at in Amsterdam. On the other hand, there were reports from people who’d been in Budapest and saw him, or someone who looked exactly like him, walk through the gates of the school of veterinary medicine there. On a ship in the Galapagos Islands, Churchill and I met a gorgeous German lesbian. The minute she heard we were from Haifa, she asked if we knew Shahar Cohen. We mumbled that we did, and she told us that he was one of the dominant figures in the Berlin gay and lesbian community, played bass in an Abba covers band, produced cultural events, designed subversive posters. We explained to her that Shahar Cohen is a common name in Israel and the Shahar Cohen we know can’t be gay, because that’s ridiculous … if he was … then we definitely would have sensed something … he was just the opposite … always talking about fucking … fucking girls, we mean. The German girl gave us a supercilious smile of forgiveness that made us shun her for the rest of the journey. But when we came back to Israel, it turned out that Amichai had met someone from high school who knew someone who claimed that Shahar Cohen had been in the country the previous summer and was seen walking hand in hand with an Aryan-looking guy. Just as we were getting used to the sensational news and remembered that, really, we never did understand why there were four different posters of Freddie Mercury hanging in his room, we heard a new story that shook our confidence once again. A former Haifaite, a woman who used to work at the prosecutor’s office with Churchill, went off to the Ramon Crater to be alone and took her dog with her so she wouldn’t feel too alone. After a few hours in the desert sun, the delicate city dog started to convulse and vomit, so she drove in a total panic to Mitzpe Ramon. There she was referred to Dr Luis, the local vet. But the person who opened the door to the clinic was none other than Shahar Cohen, who claimed he didn’t have the slightest idea who Shahar Cohen was, and as proof, pointed to his diploma from the veterinary college in Turin, where the name Ricardo Luis was written in large Latin letters. He treated the dog with outstanding professionalism and revived it. Then he invited both of them to spend the night in his apartment and touched the lawyer’s arm, as if accidentally, when he took her credit card, and mentioned casually the collection of aromatherapy massage oils he kept in his bathroom, and in other words tried to come on to her in a totally heterosexual way.

Excited by the possibility that the mystery of Shahar Cohen was close to being solved, we decided to take action and drove down to Mitzpe Ramon. When we reached the town, after having to stop five times because the engine of Churchill’s Beetle kept overheating, it turned out that the girl from the prosecutor’s office hadn’t misled us: yes, there really was a vet in Mitzpe Ramon, and yes, even though there was no trace of an accent in his speech, he called himself Ricardo Luis. But a few days earlier, he’d closed up his clinic — and vanished.

This is Mitzpe, the locals explained placidly. Things like that happen here all the time. But we’d had enough. After that miserable trip to Mitzpe Ramon, we decided once and for all to declare Shahar Cohen a myth. A symbol. An ideal. We stopped trying to find him and started using his name in our conversations the way you use a joker in a card game.

Why didn’t you come on Friday?

I went out for a drink with Shahar Cohen.

Where are you? The match starts in two minutes.

Sorry, Shahar Cohen held me up.

How many were injured in the terrorist attack?

Shahar Cohen and five others.

With time, and with the use of the name Shahar Cohen in even more contexts, the Shahar Cohen label moved so far from referring to the real person who inspired it that we almost forgot there’d been such a person, and that he’d once been our friend. That’s why, when he suddenly walked into the living room during the shiva, even Amichai couldn’t hide his shock. He didn’t say a word, but his eyebrows rose in astonishment.

Bro, I heard what happened and came right away, Shahar Cohen said, leaning over and crushing Amichai in a hug. Then he went from one member of Ilana’s family to the other and hugged them too, the way you hug people you love very much, mumbling, what a tragedy, what a terrible tragedy, and he even shed a tear.

Then he sat down, straightened his light-coloured tie, smoothed his dark suit and asked a few questions about Ilana. At first, he directed them to Amichai, but when he realised that he’d get no answers from him, he turned to the others. He wanted to know exactly what had happened. What was the chain of events that led to her death. And he wanted to know what kind of person she was. The people in the room answered quite willingly. In great detail. They laid out their complaints to him too, as if he represented the government or the law, and had the power to right the terrible wrong. Or at least give it meaning.

We followed the exchange of words. And tried to reconcile all the stories we’d heard about Shahar Cohen over the years with this new person wearing good clothes and speaking in such a moderate, measured way.

So how are you? Churchill asked, the first to break (if he hadn’t asked, I would have. The suspense was unbearable).

I … I’m good, Shahar Cohen said in an ingratiating stammer, as if he were uncomfortable talking about himself.

And where … I mean what … what are you doing these days? I asked.

Business, he said offhandedly.

What kind of business? I persisted.

International, he said, and looked with embarrassment at the people in the room again, as if he wanted them to see that he was being forced into speaking against his will.

I didn’t want to let him off the hook. I had no intention of missing the opportunity to find out what had really happened to him. But then a huge delegation of relatives from Kibbutz Givat HaMacam burst into the living room, and for a long time, the room buzzed with ‘I’m so sorry for your loss’ and the noisy moving of chairs in order to provide all the heavyset kibbutzniks with places to sit.

When the tumult died down a bit, Shahar Cohen leaned over to Amichai and said, I brought you something, but it’s downstairs in the car. Can you come out with me for a minute?

We waited expectantly for Amichai’s response. Since the beginning of the shiva, he hadn’t moved from his permanent place on the black plastic chair closest to the kitchen. At night he slept on the living room carpet and even vetoed suggestions to put a mattress under him. But to our great surprise, he didn’t turn down Shahar Cohen’s suggestion. He got up and went out with him.

We followed right behind them, curious but worried. From the way Amichai was walking, it looked as if his legs couldn’t carry the weight of his loss and he might collapse at any moment.

Shahar Cohen led us to his car, and contrary to what we might have expected from an international businessman, it was just a Subaru station wagon. He opened the boot, revealing an impressive sight: dozens of small, red inhalers were arranged in small, white cardboard boxes. They reminded me of Ventolin inhalers. So what do you do, import medical equipment? I asked.

You could say that, Shahar Cohen said with a phoney smile. There’s laughing gas in those inhalers. It’s a big hit now at parties in Europe. It’s just starting to come into Israel.

He took one of the inhalers out of its box and said, I buy one like this for two dollars in Lubliana and sell it for fifty shekels in Tel Aviv.

And what … what does it do? What kind of an effect does it have? I asked.

Try it, he said. And handed me an inhaler.

Thanks, I apologised, but I have asthma.

I’m more into natural substances now, Ofir hurried to say.

I’d love to, Churchill said sadly, but I work for the prosecutor’s office now and … we’re here in the middle of the street … and … this business of yours, it’s not completely legal, is it?

Amichai reached out and took the inhaler.

Take three short drags, Shahar Cohen explained. Wait a little while. Then take a long one the fourth time, deep into your lungs.

Amichai did what he said. We waited with bated breath for the results, but even after a long minute, we couldn’t see any change in the mourning wrinkles of his face.

Shahar Cohen didn’t miss a beat. How do you feel, a little dizzy? he asked and Amichai nodded. That can happen the first time, it takes the brain a while to get used to the substance. Take another few of these and try again in two hours. It’ll definitely work in the end. That stuff never fails.

Amichai accepted another few inhalers from him and nodded in thanks.

Shahar Cohen took out a business card with gold edges and drew a circle around one of the phone numbers written on it. That’s my private number, he told Amichai, and surprised us by getting into his car. Call if there’s a problem. And you guys, he said to all of us through the window, don’t be pricks, keep in touch.

A few days later, we called him to complain that Amichai still wasn’t laughing.

A metallic voice message informed us that the number had been disconnected.

A few months later, there was a picture in the papers of someone who looked exactly like him, and the caption said that a vet named Ricardo Luis had been convicted of dealing in illegal medical equipment and was sentenced to two years in prison.

But then, six months later, Amichai received a postcard from Sydney, Australia. Shahar Cohen had written to him in the crooked handwriting we remembered from high school, saying that he was thinking about him a lot and hoped he was good. He ended the card with, tell the guys I miss them. See you soon.

The second time Amichai got up from his black plastic chair was when Sadat came in.

There had been a terrorist attack that day. The third that week. And the visitors who streamed into his house brought not only their condolences, but also updates on how many were injured and how the hunt for the terrorist was going.

That’s why, when Sadat arrived — shoulders stooped, cheeks sunken, eyes frightened — the instinctive reaction of the people in the room was to straighten up like a military squad on alert.

The fears grew when Sadat — without shaking hands with Amichai or any of the other family members, as is customary — sat down on one of the chairs, stared at his shoes and didn’t say a word.

Excuse me, who … who are you, sir, if I may ask? Ya’ara dared to be the first to speak. Her voice shook slightly.

I … I’m sorry … I … This is the shiva for Ilana, isn’t it? I … at the checkpoint … I heard from her friends what happened … And I said … I have to go … to talk … so they gave me the address …

What’s your name? Churchill asked. His tone was aggressive, as if he were questioning a witness.

I’m sorry … I didn’t say … My name is Sadat …

And your surname?

What? Ah … Sadat Khuria.

And … what’s your connection to Ilana, Sadat? Ya’ara asked quickly, before Churchill could continue with that tone of his (and she put a restraining hand on his thigh as she spoke).

I … I have no connection — Sadat said, shifting his eyes from Churchill to her in relief — I mean … there is a connection … we are not friends or anything … no … just once … Ilana, she helped me, she helped me very much.

Everyone in the room moved their black chairs closer to hear better. The ones working in the kitchen left their work for a minute and came into the living room. Even Amichai leaned forward.

I should have … Sadat began to speak and stopped, choosing his words again. I … I have cancer. And I need to go for medical treatment … to a hospital in Israel. They have the medicines only in Israel. And the army lets me out for a month, two months. And then one day comes the checkpoint, and a soldier doesn’t let me out. Why? My cousin from Gaza was mixed up in hostile actions. That is what they call them. And the soldier says because of that I have no permit to go out. I go to the officer. The officer says no too. And it was like that for three weeks, every day I go there and they don’t let me out. Sometimes I sleep at night in a workers’ van. Sometimes I sleep on the ground, near the checkpoint. To be the first in line. But they don’t let me out. And, meanwhile, cancer. Till Ilana … Ilana is standing there. She sees me … gives me a bottle of water … to drink … asks what happened … I tell her … and she says, I will take care of it … and she does.

How? Churchill asked. How did she take care of it? And his tone was already less interrogating and more interested.

I don’t know … One day I come to the checkpoint and they tell me it is all arranged. And that she takes me to the hospital now.

What she? Ilana took you to the hospital?

Yes … she … what she tells me … that she checked in court and they are not allowed to do that … and besides … she tells them … she is responsible to take me and bring me back to the checkpoint the same day.

Did you know about this, Amichai? Churchill asked. Amichai didn’t answer.

Sadat looked at Amichai with interest. You are Ami … I remember she talked on the phone to you … when we were driving … you … ya’ani … you are her husband?

Amichai lowered his head in confirmation.

You … you had a very special wife … because of her I don’t go to the hospital today … I come here … so you will know … that she was for me … not just for me … for many … like an angel.

Amichai didn’t speak. His eyes glistened with tears about to fall.

Then he stood up from his chair, walked towards Sadat and threw his arms around him. He let out a huge, chilling sob, and he continued to tremble in his arms, soundlessly, for a long minute.

The entire time I had the feeling that it wasn’t real, Ya’ara said later. That Arab … the way he suddenly showed up. It was like a scene from a movie.

There’s something about a shiva that’s … I said. And I couldn’t find the word.

Yes, she said.

*

I gave her a lift back to Tel Aviv. She’d come to Haifa with Churchill, but half an hour later, he was called back to the office because one of the prosecution’s main witnesses had decided to retract his testimony.

She’d asked me, in front of everyone, if she could go back with me, and I felt uncomfortable refusing in front of everyone. So at five in the afternoon, we left the mourners’ house and she stopped for a minute at the entrance to the building to change her normal glasses for her prescription sunglasses, and I stopped with her, well practised in that change, and she smiled at me, and we both knew why. The muscles of my mouth stayed tensed till we reached the car, and I opened the door for her with the key, like a gentleman, even though I could have just pressed the remote. Then, inside, I said excuse me when I leaned over to release the security lock, and even though she moved her leg, my hand brushed against her thigh. So I said excuse me again.

As we drove slowly down Freud, I looked at the sea. From the Carmel, the sea looks so enormous that it reminds you that land accounts for only one-quarter of the planet. The sun hadn’t set yet, but it was close. There wasn’t a cloud on the horizon. I thought about the fact that actually, I hadn’t been alone in the same space with Ya’ara for two years, and that even though she’d changed her perfume, under it her smell was the same. A clean smell.

We didn’t speak until the palm trees at Atlit.

Then she talked about the Arab. And how terrible it was, what was happening. And how, for years, there’d been a feeling that there was hope for change, and now we were back in the same vicious circle. And worst of all, no one cared any more.

For a quick second, I thought of that horrible 1990 World Cup, in the territories, and I said, it’s not that no one cares, it’s just that we don’t know how to deal with it, so we’d rather forget about it.

And she said, it seeps inside you. We ignore it, but it seeps inside and comes out in other things.

And I thought about an article I was translating then that dealt with the years-long denial by Soviet scientists of the existence of chromosomes. The writer of the article claimed that Soviet scientists had disregarded chromosomes for decades because research into heredity didn’t fit the Stalinist line, which maintained that environment, not heredity, is solely responsible for human change. I thought about mentioning that article then, but I wasn’t sure exactly how to connect it to the conversation.

So I kept quiet.

And Ya’ara said, sometimes I don’t understand why we insist on staying in this damned place. Why we don’t move to a more normal country.

Because … our friends are here, the response came out automatically.

Yes … But when I hear about cases like Sadat’s … I ask myself … if friends are a good enough reason.

I don’t know, I said. Because I didn’t.

And Ya’ara said, it’s a good thing that there are people like Ilana who save our honour. And she also said, I feel like I missed her completely, that I didn’t know her at all. I don’t know, I always had the feeling she couldn’t stand me.

She really couldn’t stand you, I said.

And we laughed.

And we were silent.

And I felt that thing begin to swell up in my chest.

After the Zichron junction, she said, I forgot how much fun it is to drive with you. You’re so calm behind the wheel. When I drive with your friend, all my muscles cramp from the tension. He has this thing where …

He always has to brake at the last second, I said, finishing the sentence.

At the last hundredth of a second, she said with a smile.

He’s insanely busy now, isn’t he? I asked in an attempt to continue the complaining-about-Churchill line.

Yes, she said, shifting in her seat. It’s completely taken him over, that case.

Well, it really is an important case, isn’t it? A corrupt land deal and sexual bribery. Each of those is heavy enough in its own right.

Yes, but … I don’t know.

What? I asked, giving her a long, sideways glance.

Keep you eyes on the road, she said.

Then stop being so pretty, I almost blurted out the familiar next line of the regular dialogue we’d had when we were together.

Sometimes I think … she said, you know, those slips of paper, the wishes you wrote during the World Cup … He told me what his first wish was.

So?

It’ll sound stupid to you, but sometimes I think he’s obsessed with making it come true by the next World Cup. And he’s even said it to me a few times: I’ll be very disappointed if I don’t keep my promise to myself.

But that’s how you succeed in life, right? You set a goal and work towards it.

Yes, she said, turning her head to the window, but there’s also something obsessive about it.

We passed Hadera. I slowed down slightly. So our drive together wouldn’t end so quickly.

She was silent, looking out at the dark landscape.

Obsession is the name of a perfume, I said.

What?! she said and turned her head.

There was once a book called Obsession is the Name of a Perfume.

You read it?

No, I just remember the name.

She turned her head back to the window. What a fool I am, I flogged myself. I thought she’d remember. We’d once played a game when we went down to the Sinai desert together. One of us said the name of a book and the other had to answer with the name of a book that began with the last letter of the first one. East of Eden, she could have said. Or Emma. There are plenty of books that begin with the letter ‘e’. But she didn’t remember the game at all.

You’re such Haifa boys, she said suddenly (the car had just crossed that point — a bit after Hadera — after which Tel Aviv is closer than Haifa).

Why? What do you mean? I said defensively.

That whole idea … of the wishes … during the World Cup … and how you all are now … with Amichai … it’s so Haifa.

Be more specific, I said. What does that ‘Haifa’ mean?

I don’t know, Ya’ara said and stopped speaking. It wasn’t till Netanya — when I already thought she’d forgotten — that she said: you all care.

What?

You wanted me to define that Haifa quality you have. So here’s the definition: you all care about each other. And there’s something sort of old-fashioned about it, you know. These days, no one really cares about anything. Except money.

Now that’s a huge generalisation. There are also a few people in Jerusalem who care.

No, it’s just the Haifaites. And you know what? Actually, it’s only the four of you. The world around you has become more and more cynical and violent, and you four hold on to that closed group of yours, where people care about each other.

But that’s exactly the definition of friends, isn’t it? An oasis that lets you forget the desert … or … a raft whose logs are glued to each other. Or … a small country surrounded by enemies. Don’t you think?

I have no idea, Ya’ara said. You know I never had any friends.

I didn’t say anything, and changed the radio station. I knew very well where that I-have-no-friends complaint was leading and I didn’t want to have that conversation again where I lie to her that it’s bad luck or a sorry coincidence that she has no friends except for her boyfriend, when it was clear to both of us that she just wasn’t ready for the commitment that friendship with someone not in love with her demanded.

Tell me, she said, turning her whole body towards me after a brief silence (the strong fragrance of citrus trees filled the car, even though the windows were closed), what did you write?

Where? I asked, feigning ignorance.

On those World Cup slips of paper. What was your wish?

Churchill didn’t tell you?

I couldn’t get him to tell me.

So you won’t be able to get me to tell you either, I said and stepped on the accelerator.

It’s OK, she said with an old, familiar gentleness. If you don’t want to, don’t tell me. I was just curious … You talk so little about yourself. So I thought … you know what … Just tell me this. The wish you made, are you close to fulfilling it? Do you think you’ll fulfil it?

No way. Every day that passes just takes me further away from it, I said.

That’s sad … It makes me sad to hear that, she said. And then she touched me softly on the shoulder and smiled: but it’s a long time till the next World Cup, right?

Yes, almost two years.

So who knows.

Who knows, I repeated her words and kept driving. The shoulder she touched was burning. And continued burning, the way your body feels after you get sunburned at the beach, till we were in Tel Aviv. At their flat.

You’ve never actually been in our place, she asked-said.

No, it’s just never happened, I said and thought that, even without having to be physically present inside it, I knew exactly what their flat looked like: hanging on the living room wall was that red cloth he’d brought from Bolivia and had moved with him to all of his previous flats. In the corner was her small dressing table that impossibly bore the enormous weight of all the objects lying on it. Above it was her collection of old posters of London theatre productions. In another corner were, of course, a few wretched plants (he always put plants in his flats and then didn’t have the energy to look after them). In their fridge was Diet Coke, Diet Sprite and low-fat cheese slices because he was afraid of getting as fat as his father had become lately. And in their medicine cabinet was a packet of sleeping pills because she was afraid she wouldn’t fall asleep at night. They had one small TV because he thinks that having a large TV is corrupt. And above the TV was a large picture of London because she’d been there with her parents when she was a child and was planning to go back to study when she had ninety-one thousand dollars. There was a huge bed in the bedroom, the kind she liked. And under the bed, next to his wide, bursting shoes stood her small, delicate ones. And the smell of her had collected between the tight, light-coloured sheets, the smell of her skin and hair and sweat and juices –

You want to come up for a drink? she interrupted my thoughts. Her tone was mainly polite.

Yes, I thought. I want to come up. Of course I want to come up. And on the steps, I want to grab you hard around the waist. And give you a small, fluttery kiss on the back of your neck. Where your spine ends. And then, inside the apartment, I want to bury my nose in your hair and smell your scent, smell you until the smell turns into taste, and then, still from behind, I want to unbutton your white blouse. The first two slowly, and the others, I’ll rip open. Because I just can’t any more. Because I can’t any more can’t any more can’t any more –

No, thanks, I said. I think I’ll go home.

*

(Once, on a school trip, I wrote to a girl on her back. My fingers meandered over her thin blouse and, letter after letter, I wrote her name. I didn’t have the courage to write the real thing.)

*

I called Hani while I was still on the road, and as I was punching in the numbers, I already knew I was making a mistake. That this wasn’t a good time. But still I asked her to come over. And she said yes, as usual. And she knocked on the door, as usual, two tentative knocks, even though I’d told her a thousand times that she could come in without knocking. I opened the door for her. And she stood there in the doorway with her beautiful hair loose because I liked it that way. And her deep, secular neckline. And waited for me to hug her. So I hugged her. Tightly. Especially because I wasn’t feeling anything, I hugged her very tightly. And she said, wow, it was worth stepping out of the fold for that hug alone. And suddenly, that ‘stepping out of the fold’ annoyed me. Why can’t she say ‘I stopped being religious’ and leave it at that? Suddenly everything about her annoyed me. The beautiful Hebrew, the naivety. The transparent dreams of homesickness about her mother that she dreamed at night, then asked me to interpret in the morning. And the two charming little stories about her day that she dredged up for me — the taxi driver who listened to meditation chants, the guy who fell asleep in the library with his head on Maseket Baba Metzia from the Talmud — those two stories annoyed me too. And I didn’t know what to do with this irritation, not a familiar feeling for me, and she didn’t deserve it. So I touched her and started to undress her, perhaps the contact would make me forget it. But it was all so bland and ended quickly. Even though I was horny, I came in a minute. And she was fine about it, really nice, which just annoyed me even more. And suddenly I wanted her to go. To get up and go and take all those things of hers that had messed up my neat flat: her shampoo. Her soap. Her shirt. Her hairbrush. Those childish loose-leaf binders with the hearts on the covers. I wanted her to put them all into large rubbish bags and go and let me be quietly alone with Ya’ara’s sock.

And she felt it. She felt that something was going on inside me. And tried to ferret out what it might be: how was it in Haifa? How’s Amichai?

The same, I grumbled.

It’s nice of you to go there every day, she said. And I said, almost shouting, what does nice have to do with it? He’s my friend. That scared her, of course, and she said, that’s what I meant. After a short silence, she added, is everything all right? You’re a bit distant today. And I looked her straight in the eye and confessed bravely that I was still in love with another woman. And it left no room in my heart for someone new.

I’m putting a nice face on things again.

I didn’t confess anything to her. I said I was tired, that’s all. And we’d talk tomorrow. But the next day, I didn’t answer her calls and didn’t reply to her messages. And the day after that too.

I took the cowardly way. With velvet cruelty.

And on the morning of the third day, she reached me. You’re on the way to Haifa, she said.

Yes, I admitted.

Today’s the last day of the shiva, right?

Right.

Would you like me to go with you?

No, I don’t think so.

She was silent on the other end of the line and I thought that if this conversation gets any longer, I’d leave too late and get stuck in traffic.

I wanted to ask … she hesitated.

Yes? I urged her.

My girlfriends tell me that you’re trying to break up with me. That this is how it works with you secular people. You know I have no experience in such things.

I felt a warm affection for her rising inside me despite myself. And perhaps that was why, wanting to suppress that warm, mutinous affection, I gave her a particularly nasty answer.

Perhaps your girlfriends are right, I said. (It would have been bad enough to say, ‘Your girlfriends are right.’ But by prefacing it with ‘perhaps’, I planted a slight doubt, something to hold on to, the way you hold on to a drifting plank of wood in the middle of the ocean until you freeze to death.)

*

That day, the road north looked more beautiful than ever. The wind blowing through the window was just cool enough to keep me from having to turn on the air conditioning. I felt as if I’d done the right thing. I’d said no to concessions. No to compromise. No to cold love.

Although around Hadera, perhaps because of the electric power station, my feelings got completely turned around and for a few minutes I felt I’d missed an opportunity with Hani. That there’d been a moment there, on New Year’s Eve, when my heart almost opened to her. And that it’s easier to fantasise about old loves than to truly embrace new love. But when the song on the radio ended and the ads started, that temporary feeling was replaced by the previous one. The more comfortable one.

I pondered this reversal of feelings until Atlit. And how hard it is to know something for sure. And how almost everyone close to me finds it hard to know what he really feels, and fools himself endlessly, and perhaps that’s only a generational thing, perhaps the number of distractions and options our generation has confuses us so much that we lose our inner path, unlike our parents, who knew what they wanted because they didn’t have many choices, although who knows whether there wasn’t a great sadness concealed behind all that, or at least a vague sense of missed opportunity we couldn’t make out because we were children and unable to see what they were really like (or we could see and preferred, for our own good, not to?).

From Atlit, all those theoretical musings were replaced by a much more practical question: would Ya’ara be there on the last day of the shiva?