World Cup Wishes

13

MY FATHER SHOWED great respect for the writers who came to his printing house in the lower city.

There weren’t many of them. Most tried their luck in the large Tel Aviv publishing houses, and when they were rejected, gave up on the dream. Only a few were persistent enough or desperate enough to self-publish their books and, except for one, none ever came back to my father to publish their second book. Anyway, they had only one story to tell — the story of their lives — and the indifference with which that story was received by readers weakened their resolve.

Not even anyone in my family read the book, they would complain to him, not even my children! And he would console them, placate them, put a hand on their shoulder and explain that books tend to make their way slowly, and he’s even heard of some of our own writers, from Haifa, who received emotional letters from readers in distant lands — even Scandinavia! — many years after their books were published. Scandinavia? Really? the writers would say, their eyes shining, and my father would nod confidently and compliment them on the unique quality of their writing, surprising them with an exact quote from the book. (It was only when I worked for him before the army that I noticed the quotes were always taken from the first page.)

OK then, they would say with pleasure. A wise man has been found in Sodom! A true literary connoisseur! And my father would smile humbly and lead them gently towards the door and send them on their way with a pat on the back and an invitation to come back and visit, no need to call in advance, because now, after reading their wonderful book, he feels as close to them as if they were friends.

He would wait a few moments till the happy, mollified writer was out of earshot (I had a kind of hobby the summer I worked for him — counting to myself how many seconds passed from the minute the writer walked out the door of the printing house until my father said what he really thought of him), and then he would say with profound disdain, Good for nothing! Then, when he was already at his desk, he would say to my mother, spitting out the words, Every nobody thinks he can write a book. Every nobody! It wasn’t like this in England. In England a writer was a writer. And here, every little piss artist thinks he’s Bialik! (In grim situations, if the writer made him especially angry or asked, God forbid, to pay in instalments, he would end with, Every piss artist thinks he’s Agnon.)

*

The only one of my father’s writers who survived the crisis of the second book (and the third, and the fourth) was Yosef Miron-Mishberg. An old man with light-coloured, almost insane eyes who every autumn would burst into the printing house, a new manuscript under his arm.

Here he is, the great writer! my father would say as he went to greet him, his voice free of ridicule.

My father would introduce him excitedly to his employees, most of whom already knew Miron-Mishberg quite well, but they still stood up to show him respect, and he would walk among them as if he were Moshe Dayan in the Yad Eliyahu basketball stadium, shaking each one’s hand. When the lengthy round of handshakes was over, he would close his eyes, take a deep breath through his nose and say: ah, the fragrance of printing presses. There is no fragrance more intoxicating in the entire universe!

Well then, perhaps you will put our small printing house into one of your books, my father would suggest again every year. Now that’s an idea! An excellent idea! Miron-Mishberg would say enthusiastically again every year, and the two of them would sit down at my father’s desk and drink whisky from small, glass coffee cups.

So, what is your book about this time? my father would ask.

To know that, you have to read it, Miron-Mishberg would scold.

Still, my father would explain, in order for us to design the cover … as soon as possible, of course … still, you should tell me what it’s about. A love story? A thriller? Murder? An historical mystery?

There is only one thing worth writing about! Miron-Mishberg would say, raising his voice and slamming his fist on the desk, frightening the glasses.

Certainly, certainly, my father would say in apology … So I understand that … again …

Again and again and again! And I still haven’t said anything!! Miron-Mishberg would shout, his light-coloured eyes threatening to burst out of their sockets.

Of course, I understand, my father would try to calm him down, and immediately shift the discussion to the technical aspects of the printing process and to the schedule, fully aware that the moment those practical matters were on the table, his interlocutor would begin to stare into space, his thoughts would wander, and his righteous indignation would fade.

Miron-Mishberg would sign his contracts distractedly. Unthinkingly. Even though my father would caution him over and over again to read everything, even the fine print. I trust you, Miron-Mishberg would tell him. You English, your word is your bond. You have self-respect. You didn’t collaborate with the Nazi persecutors. What did Churchill say? Blood, sweat and tears! Tell me, will you, what are today’s leaders compared to Churchill?

There is no comparison, my father would agree, hand him a copy of the contract and stand up to indicate to Miron-Mishberg that the meeting was over.

I apologise, but I must return home to write, Miron-Mishberg would say, as if he was the one who had decided to end the meeting. We have to complete as much as possible before the angel of death comes to snatch us away.

Good for you! my father would say, patting him twice on the back, the first time to encourage him and the second to push him forward, towards the door.

So, Miron-Mishberg would say as he shook my father’s hand, we’ll talk again in three weeks?

God willing, my father would conclude, pat his back one more time and watch to make sure he was going. Then he would go back to his desk and sit down. And get up. And sit down. And wait another minute –

And erupt into a stream of invective.

The loathing he felt for Yosef Miron-Mishberg behind his back was as profound as the reverence he showed him to his face.

That invective wasn’t the usual ‘good for nothing’, ‘nobody’, and ‘piss artist’. It was much more personal.

That poor wife of his, he would say to my mother as the employees of the printing house lowered their heads in embarrassment. Those poor children of his, to have such a father. They’re starving and he — he’s a writer! A writer? A hack! A graphomaniac! He got one good review in the local rag — even that was less than a hundred words — and ever since, he thinks he’s God’s gift. And he quit his job. Sent his wife with her back problems to work, and ‘devoted himself’ to writing. Writing my foot. He writes the same book every time. The name changes, but the book — exactly the same! And he isn’t even ashamed!!!

Norman, dear, aren’t you overreacting a bit? my mother would say, throwing a spanner into his blind rage.

Overreacting … overreacting … my father would mutter, circle his desk searching for an appropriate answer, and then he would pick up the pile of papers Miron-Mishberg had left and slam them onto her desk in despair. You know what, Marilyn, you print his book if you think I’m overreacting.

*

For years, I attributed my father’s dual attitude towards writers to the same duality that characterised my parents’ attitude towards people in general. With them, words were always a cover to hide the truth. They were nice to all the neighbours on the stairs, then at home, I’d hear what they really thought of them. They were quite cordial to all the employees in the printing house — right up to the day they fired them.

They had three couples they called ‘friends’ (as Wittgenstein said, the same word, in the mouths of different people, can serve to describe a totally different essence) — and they saw them twice a year for conversations on politics and cars and lounge suites, on nothing painful or real, and there was an ever-growing list of unpleasant subjects they simply ‘preferred’ not to speak of, even between themselves. You know I prefer not to talk about that, my mother would say every time my father mentioned the rift between her and her sisters. I prefer not to talk about that now, my father would say every time my mother suggested making changes around the house. And so, gradually, they vetoed every subject of conversation except other people’s lives, which they always analysed with haughty disapproval.

I understood, therefore, that behind the words my father spoke to writers was contempt, and that all his compliments had one purpose only — to get them to give him their money. It wasn’t until that summer, after high school and right before the army, when I worked as a messenger in the printing house and saw it all close up, day after day (and perhaps it wasn’t the closeness that enabled me to see, but my eyes, which had matured?) — it wasn’t until then that I began to suspect that my father’s attitude towards his writers was absolutely real, including the respect. And the contempt. And the condescension. And the avarice. And the generosity. And that all those contradictory passions could wrestle with each other within the same person.

*

That summer, for the first time in my life, a writer gave me a signed copy of his book.

I’d been sent to take Miron-Mishberg the first copies of his new book. He opened the brown package and ran his hand over the cover, flicked through the pages from the end to the beginning and gently separated two pages that were slightly stuck together, lowered his face to the book and inhaled the smell and said, to me or to himself, Every book has its own smell.

I said nothing. I thought about my father, who claimed that all of Miron-Mishberg’s books were the same and I actually had no idea whether my father was right or not, because I didn’t read them.

Miron-Mishberg fixed his pale, disturbing eyes on me and said, you have thinking eyes, boy. Do you know that? I looked down. Thoughts are always running through your mind, through your little head, he said, giving me a crooked smile. Is it true? Tell me, am I right or not? There was something frightening in his tone, so I didn’t answer. And he burst into strangled laughter that quickly deteriorated into a paroxysm of phlegm-filled coughing. When the cough had subsided a bit, he picked up a copy of his book, opened it to the first page, wrote something in large, messy letters and handed it to me. I said, thank you, mumbled something about other deliveries I had to make and got out of there while I still could.

It was only two days later, in the light of my bed lamp, that I dared to open that book.

It said, ‘To the boy with the thinking eyes, in friendship, Yosef Miron-Mishberg’, and under it was his curlicued signature, which looked like the flames of a camp-fire.

That night, I tried to read his book — and gave up after twenty pages. It was very beautiful, but I didn’t understand a word. I mean, I had a clear sense that the story had internal logic, it was just that I couldn’t follow it.

I blamed myself, of course. He was a great writer, that was obvious. The problem was mine — a small body, a small mind. Handicapped.

*

That was the feeling I walked around with for years.

There is a lofty, noble, frightening world of writers.

And there’s my world. The simple one. And a high fence separates the two. When I translate, I can climb that fence and peek into the other world, but in the end I always have to return to my world. Because I’m just a dull, ordiary person. And who am I to write anything?

*

For the first few weeks after deciding that I wanted to write a book and publish it before the World Cup, that was the voice that echoed inside my head: who are you to write anything? Who are you to write anything? Who are you to write anything?

I sat in front of the computer for a week, fingers frozen, refusing to move.

After a week, I decided that my problem was the computer. There’s no inspiration in trying to write on the computer. So I switched to a notebook. And to the fountain pen I’d received as a gift from one of my old clients.

Two days later, I realised that there was also a problem with a pen. There was something pretentious about it that impeded movement. And the black ink — it was ominous.

I went to the shop and bought a simple Pilot. Blue.

That didn’t help either. The page — remained white.

As white as the part of the body that’s covered by a bathing suit and doesn’t get tanned. As white as paleness. As white as emptiness. White — white.

*

True, I had no idea what the hell I wanted to write about.

My first thought was to call Ofir and ask if he had an idea. After all, he was the one our literature teacher said had talent. He was the one who wrote all those songs for our graduation play. And even the ads he created for banks and biscuits always had some kind of spark. And writing a book — writing a book was originally his dream, not mine, so let him take some responsibility, that sharwal!

But I stopped myself: you’re not writing for a Nobel Prize, you’re writing to complete the amazing symmetry and surprise your friends at the World Cup final. How can you surprise them if you ask for their advice?

While I was staring at the notebook, I remembered that one of my clients had told me about a writing workshop he goes to. I called him and he gave me the phone number.

The slip of paper with the number on it rested in my pocket for four days. A clear and determined inner voice objected strongly to the idea: who needs a workshop? A workshop is a group, and except for my friends, I don’t like groups. Besides, writing is one thing, but reading? Out loud? To other people? I simply won’t be able to do it. And another thing, the tutor — I categorically do not like his books. Too many descriptions. And it all tries to be so symbolic. I definitely wouldn’t want to write like him, definitely wouldn’t want him to guide me in that direction, definitely not –

A small item in the sports section silenced that determined inner voice of mine.

‘South Korean president personally supervises the logistical preparations for the World Cup and promises: we’ll be ready on 31 May.’

31 May? That means that the final will be at the end of June! And that means that I have less than eight months to write a book and publish it! And what am I doing? What do I always do! Nothing!!!

The first meeting of the writing workshop confirmed all my fears.

From the minute I walked into the host’s flat, I had the feeling I’d already been there in the past, and that feeling only grew stronger as the meeting progressed. Besides, after so many weeks of being home alone, I’d forgotten how to behave with other people. When to smile. When not to. When to look them straight in the eye. When to look down. What the proper distance is between your bottom and the bottom of the person sitting next to you on the sofa. When it was my turn to introduce myself in the round of introductions at the beginning of the meeting, I was at a loss for words for too long, and in the end, I stammered that I was a translator … well, not really a translator … I mean, not books … more like student papers … I mean, not really papers … just articles … that they can use later to write papers, if they want … themselves …

The hostess’s tangle-haired dog nibbled from one of the snack plates and everyone burst out laughing. It took me a minute to realise that they were laughing at the dog, not at me. But I felt that if they were laughing at me, they’d be right to do it. The round of introductions kept moving clockwise, and everyone — so I thought — had a more fascinating life than I did, wider writing experience than mine and happier clothing.

The only exception was a rather timid girl who had arrived late, from Jerusalem, and when she was asked to introduce herself, she said in a barely audible voice that it was a bit too soon for her to talk about herself. Perhaps later, if she felt comfortable.

The tutor let her be and told us a bit about the first workshop he’d participated in as a writer, twenty years earlier, and about how cruelly people had reacted to the first piece of writing he’d read to the group. In his group, he told us, there would be no cruelty. In his group, there would be honest but respectful criticism.

His tone was soft when he said that, and, all in all, he made a much warmer impression than the male characters in his books.

See? I said to myself, restraining the urge to get up and leave that I’d been feeling from the minute I’d sat down. Stop being so reserved. For once in your life, try to give yourself over to something.

I gave myself over to it for about half an hour, till it was my turn to tell my true story and my false story. When no one but the timid girl believed my story about the kidnapping I’d witnessed with Ofir, I withdrew into myself and was filled with the desire to see my friends. It would be enough for one of them to be here, I thought, and I’d feel a bit less odd. A bit more understandable.

After the instructor asked us to write one of our stories and everyone but me hustled to put pen to paper, I made my final decision: I would never come back to that workshop.

As I leaned back on the sofa with the relief that an admission of defeat brings, I suddenly remembered why that flat was so familiar to me. I’d sat here once, in this living room, on the last Independence Day before the army, when Churchill went into the bedroom with Atalya, the artist, and Ofir and Amichai, tired of their arguments, fell asleep beside me on the sofa.

Even that flat had changed since then, I thought. And I? Thirteen years had passed and I was in exactly the same place, sitting in the living room and waiting for everything to be over so I could go home.

At the end of the workshop, when the tutor handed out printed pages of homework, I took one out of politeness. I planned to throw it into the bin the minute I got home — it and the list of the participants’ phone numbers. But the minute I got home, I was seized by a bitterness blacker, more despairing, more intense than any I’d felt before: I would never be able to write the book. I had nothing to write about. And if I found something, I had no idea how to write it. I doubled over in pain. At the next World Cup, I’d read my three Ya’ara-wishes and laugh at myself together with everyone else. In fact, it would be better to end it, to end the exhausting, humiliating thing called life before the next World Cup. That way, I’d save myself a lot of embarrassment.

Closer to the window ledge than ever before, I took the homework page out of my briefcase.

*

The first exercise was to describe a picture.

‘Take out your photo albums’, the tutor had written. ‘Browse through them. Choose one picture you find interesting, that reminds you of something. Look at it for a while and describe, in writing, everything that you see. After you have described it, try to step out of the description into the story behind the picture.’

I looked up from the page and the large picture on the wall caught my eye: the four friends on a trip to the Sinai desert mountains. I looked at it for a several moments — and then, the pen heavy in my hand, I began to write.

*

The four of us are leaning on a stone fence, and on each other. We’re all wearing blue Telemed visor caps that Amichai got for us. We’re all smiling at the Bedouin snapping the picture, except Amichai, who at that point in the trip was already suffering from a serious case of missing Ilana and the twins, and every time we stopped to drink, he searched desperately for a spot that had mobile reception. That was the last trip we took as a foursome, and a week later, I met Ya’ara. I’m easy to spot in the picture: I’m the shortest one. I can’t really say more than that (is anyone able to see himself? Truly see himself?). A girl I dated once claimed I had a baby face. Here, in any case, my face is distorted because of the sun, my eyes are very squinty and my skin roasted. I’m standing at the right edge of the frame, and standing next to me, a head taller, is Ofir. His large, light-brown curls make him look taller than he actually is. If you ironed them, he’d be half a head taller than me, that’s all. It’s funny how pictures deceive. He’s smiling more broadly than any of us. A true advertising smile. But during the actual trip, he didn’t smile at all, and kept complaining that he couldn’t ‘get into the Sinai spirit’ and suggested we head for Ras-el-Satan because it was ‘probably a lot more fun there’. To the left is Churchill, his hands clasped behind his neck. Clasping your hands behind your neck is a great, masculine pose. I’ve always admired it, and there was a brief time in the army when I managed to adopt it for myself. There’s a large sweat stain in the middle of his shirt and the logo, ‘STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS’. Churchill sweats easily. When the four of us used to go dancing together at the Muse after the army, he’d turn into a dishrag after two songs, which never kept him from hitting on every girl who entered his radius. And succeeding. Amichai, standing next to Churchill in the picture, never hit on girls at the Muse. He always believed that girls didn’t want him because of the birthmark on his neck, which had the shape of the map of Israel. In the picture, you can see that it’s more in his mind than in reality. He has a solid body, all his stability projects the message that you can lean on him, and he has earth-coloured eyes, eyes that many women could have loved. But he always loved only his Ilana. He’d loved Ilana the Weeper even before he met her, and he would continue to love her with the same quiet loyalty even when she was no longer alive, and the night after that picture was taken, I got up to pee and saw him in his sleeping bag, smiling as he shone his torch on a snapshot of her and the twins.

The story behind that picture is the story of our friendship. The four of us. It’s not clear exactly how it began. It’s not clear what keeps it strong to this day. And it’s not clear whether it will continue to exist now that our lives have changed. I think friendship is a strange thing altogether. I’ve been translating English academic articles in the social sciences into Hebrew for five years now, and still haven’t come across an article that studies the subject in depth. Yes, everything today has to be statistical and empirical, and it really is difficult to quantify and calculate distance and closeness and loyalty and betrayal and love and longing. And perhaps it’s not necessary.

*

I was fairly satisfied with what I’d written. Mainly with the last paragraph. I decided I’d go to the second meeting of the workshop to hand in the exercise and hear what the tutor had to say.

He returned the exercise a week later. He’d written on it in his long, narrow handwriting:

The description of the picture itself is rich and detailed, but the paragraph that comes later, the one that’s supposed to tell ‘the story behind the picture’, explains and analyses and does everything but tell the story.

I think that this exercise could be the opening into a larger story about the characters that appear in it, but you still need to find the narrative path along which you wish to lead yourself and your reader.

*

What does he want from me?

That was my first response when I read his comment.

Idiot, I thought a few hours later. How can he say that the last paragraph isn’t good?

The next morning, I reread what I’d handed in. Perhaps, I thought. Perhaps there is something in what he says.

A week later, while shaving, I suddenly had the general idea for a plot that would grow out of the earlier World Cup wishes and end with the approaching World Cup.

With racing, burning fingers, I began to write the book.

*

The flow that swept me along as I wrote the first pages bore no resemblance at all to what I felt when translating, and, in fact, it bore no resemblance to any other state of consciousness I’d known in the past (except perhaps for my especially successful masturbation fantasies — the ones I invested so much in that my fingers could actually feel the nipples of the girl I was fantasising about).

But after the first explosion of enthusiasm, I realised that writing is not a leisurely sail down a river –

I discovered, for example, that apparently unimportant physical handicaps also handicapped me in writing. Since I was colour blind, for example, there were too few colours in my descriptions, as if I were afraid to mistakenly call red green and green red.

But on the other hand –

A few of my shitty traits actually worked to my benefit in writing: the obsessive memory that would not let me forget Ya’ara, even for a minute, over the last four years helped me when I had to recreate a situation. I remember everything that was said. Everything that was worn. Every song on the radio playing in the background. And if there is something I happen not to remember, I invent it. And how wonderful it is to invent. As a translator, you’re bound to the original text by chains of fidelity, but here — here you can be unfaithful. Replace an uncle with a father. One friend with another. Invent entire conversations you’ve never heard. Lie. Take revenge on people through your words. But you can atone as well.

I also discovered that never losing sight of the great goal of finishing the book is both a blessing and a curse. It makes me sit down in front of the computer every morning, but there are days when nothing gets written and I have no choice but to go outside, sidestep the renovation pits and walk all the way to the northern wall of Yarkon Park where the paved path ends. And lie down there. And simply stare at the shifting clouds.

Though it’s so easy to get confused between days like that and days when you’re just being lazy. The dishes were always clean during the ten months I was writing. The laundry was very nicely folded. And my translating business revived. Every now and then, I tried to escape into reading other people’s books, but I soon discovered what a problem that could be. This, for example, is what I wrote after I finished reading Lips — a collection of erotic stories by foreign women writers. I couldn’t fall asleep all night, and in the morning, the following scene wrote itself:

Ilana runs her fingers over Maria’s lips, flutters over her upper lip and continues the imaginary line that stretches from the corner of her mouth to her cheek, to the large artery in her neck, to her collarbone. Slowly, like a fine brush, her finger moves under her shirt, raising it slightly, and climbs up to her shoulder.

Ilana presses her ear against Maria’s breasts. Maria’s heart has a three-beat rhythm: oh-my-love, oh-my love. Or perhaps: Oh-my-God. Oh-my-God.

For a moment, Ilana imagines them dancing a tango to that rhythm.

The word ‘tango’ also flickers in Maria for a moment. It’s not clear where it’s coming from.

Ilana presses her lips to the coffee stain, two fingers from Maria’s navel.

Maria asks soundlessly: how many sugars?

They transform. On the first transformation, they’re scorpions. Then tortoises. Then it’s their souls that are transformed. Maria feels no guilt.

Neither does Ilana. At least not while they’re doing it.

Pain has collected in Ilana’s back. Spots of pain. Maria presses gently on them and feels how each spot tells a story.

Ilana’s thighs are poignant. A bit scratched, a bit wounded. Maria kisses them, then kisses them again, slightly higher up.

How strange. Maria kisses her thighs but she feels the pleasure on the back of her neck.

And suddenly she’s embarrassed by her nakedness and wants to cover up with something.

There is no blanket, so Maria climbs on top of her and covers her with her large, blazing body.

Where, in all that, was the point of no return? The point when it was still possible to stop.

Before. Long before all that. The moment, three weeks earlier, when Maria suggested that, if Ilana had back pain, she would treat her. The moment her touch was soft. The moment they went to the sea together and their hands touched accidentally, under the water. The moment Maria pulled her onto the dance floor, at the wedding. The moment she told her, with simple frankness, about her winter depression. The moment she expressed an interest in her articles. The moment she came into their apartment for the first time, with Ofir. The moment Ilana met Amichai.

Their first time in the living room. On the sofa. Later, in the bedroom. On the carpet. And after that, in the kitchen, when Maria sat on a chair and Ilana sat on her, her hands wrapped around her neck, her stomach pressed up against her, her glance direct, evasive, frightened, bold.

Ilana moves on Maria’s muscular leg, back and forth, back and forth, until …

Maria looks at her, how beautiful she is when she’s enjoying herself. Her lips.

Lana, Lana, Lana, she says her name silently.

Writing those lines was a joy, I won’t deny it.

But more than that: suddenly, as I was writing, I began to feel that the encounter was actually taking place, and when I finished writing, I was absolutely positive that it had happened and that Ilana had taken the secret with her to the grave.

In any case, I couldn’t go on writing like that. It was too horny and too necrophiliac, and, even worse, the tips of my fingers itched with a sense of falseness.

And that’s what happened every time I tried to write ‘like’ someone. It didn’t matter whether that someone was a foreign woman writer of erotic fiction, or Garcia Marquez, or Tolkien. My fingers would freeze after a few sentences. I realised time after time that they would agree to tell the story about my friends in only one voice: the natural, primal voice that had written itself when I’d described the picture of us in the Sinai desert for that first exercise.

*

I barely spoke to my friends while I was writing. They were all caught up in their pregnancies, and I — in my literary pregnancy. The few times we spoke left me with a strange feeling. Not quite natural. And even worse was the fact that carrying on a real conversation with the imaginary characters I was writing about confused me so much that for several days after every conversation with my actual friends, I was unable to write.

So I tried to talk to them as little as possible. There were a lot of terrorist attacks during the months I was holed up in my apartment. People left their homes and never reached their destinations. Rivers of blood were spilled. Distant ambulance sirens wailed, then less distant, and then close by. But even when the shock waves actually shook the windows of my flat, I made do with the general knowledge that my friends were alive. I didn’t feel the need to hear from them how they were supposed to have been on the bus that blew up, or how exactly a week earlier, they’d been sitting in the café that had been destroyed. And when Ofir called and left a message that Yoram Mendelsohn the genius had committed suicide and left a letter explaining that his suicide was an experiment aimed at strengthening his scientific theory on reincarnation, I didn’t go to the funeral with them. And when Amichai called to ask what was happening with me and did I want them to buy me a ticket to the Chameleons’ absolutely-definitely-final performance, I called him back when I knew he wouldn’t be home. And left a message that, unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to join them.

But on the other hand –

Throughout all the months of writing, I felt as if my friends were with me. Totally with me. Like they had been once, in high school, before the jobs and the ambitions and the Ya’aras came and caused us to grow distant from one another. True, they had no choice: I was the writer. I pulled the transparent strings and moved them from place to place and decided how they’d look and what they’d feel and when they’d speak and when they’d only bite their lips. And I gave myself the best, the cleverest lines in compensation for the fact that, actually, when we saw each other, I was silent most of the time, thinking my bitter little thoughts, or my generous little thoughts, and now all those thoughts had thrown off their restraining shackles, had broken out of their prison and were dancing the freedom dance on the enormous, white expanse of the page.

My sense of taste gradually returned. Hummus tasted like hummus again. Tahini like tahini. And my wave-pursuing-me nightmares ceased completely. I dreamed instead about letters and commas and full stops flickering on the walls, and I didn’t go near the window ledge any more because I knew that I had to live, had to stay alive another few months at least, to finish that book so that the matrix of World Cup wishes would be complete and beautiful and harmonious, like the Bahai Gardens.

And then, we’ll see.

*

In early April, three months before the World Cup final, I finished writing.

Due to time pressure, I gave the first version to two readers only: my tutor and the timid girl from the workshop.

The tutor came back to me with two major comments.

The first depressed me, but I had to admit that he was right: no matter how hard I worked on my Hebrew, no matter how much I improved it in an effort to uproot what my parents had planted inside me, there would still be many passages where vestiges of English syntactical structures echoed. The tutor marked twenty-two such places and recommended that I go to a copy-editor who would uproot all the rest. After going over what he marked, I realised that I had no choice but to follow his recommendation.

On the other hand, I utterly rejected his second comment. He claimed that the narrator has many blind spots, and he was particularly bothered by the one related to the wider context in which the events take place. ‘You write about changes in your characters, but almost completely ignore any dramatic changes occurring in the time and place you’ve chosen to write about. It can’t be that none of that seeped into the friends’ world!’

But that’s the whole point with friends, I argued with him (not to his face; he himself had gone to the Sydney Writers’ Festival). Friends are like a desert oasis where you can forget the desert … or like a raft in a stormy sea … or like …

Still — he interrupted me in my imagination — the ‘harmony’ your narrator is always trying to achieve, all that ‘Bahai symmetry’ — I ask myself, considering the disharmony in which he and we live, whether such an attempt isn’t inevitably doomed to failure.

Doomed to failure? Now I was really pissed off. Why?! Because in his books, which I didn’t like at all, every little personal moment always has to be symbolic of some great national issue? I don’t write to symbolise something national. I write to fulfil Ofir’s wish and complete the picture by the World Cup final. That’s all. And don’t nod at me now with that know-it-all, prophetic forgiveness, OK?

*

What bothered the timid girl most was the character of Ya’ara.

I don’t understand what she has, she said. Why are your protagonists so crazy about her?

I didn’t answer, as if admitting my guilt. Outside the workshop, the timid girl wasn’t so timid. Perhaps she’s one of those people who shrink into themselves in groups, I thought. In the workshop, her shoulders were always stooped, and now, in the café, they weren’t. In the workshop, her gaze was always cast down, especially when the tutor asked who wanted to read, and now her eyes shone at me. In the workshop, she hardly said anything, and now she leaned towards me, gesturing expressively with her hands as she spoke.

There’s something annoying about that Ya’ara, she said (her long fingers scratching the air). OK (her palms turned upwards in a ‘there’s-no-denying’ gesture) she’s beautiful (her hands drew cascading hair), so what? I personally felt (her hand moved to the top of her breasts) that your men deserved more.

Could be, I said, and thought: the fact that women don’t like Ya’ara is nothing new. Ya’ara has a sexual aura that women simply can’t feel, a way of making men feel very strong beside her, and then, all at once, she nails them with a remark that immediately sets their loins quivering. She’s always two contradictory things. And there’s something about her … there was something about her …

In any case, the timid girl said (and placed her hands firmly on the pile of pages), thank you for letting me read it. I mean, I’m glad I was the one you called.

She didn’t smile when she said the word ‘glad’. In general, there hadn’t been a drop of affectation in her voice during the entire conversation. From under her hand gestures flowed a sort of inner quiet, as if she already knew something very basic about herself and needed no confirmation of it.

And what about you? I asked after a brief, awkward silence. What about your writing?

I’m always writing in this notebook (a hand takes a notebook out of her bag and places it on the table), but they’re such personal things (two hands move in circles, as if around a crystal ball or as if throwing a pot on a wheel) that … I don’t think anyone would be interested in them.

I’m interested. And … I’d be very happy to read them, I said, remembering the only piece she’d read in the workshop. It was a secular description of Yom Kippur eve in a Jerusalem synagogue, and there was something so lucid and unpretentious about her words that even the tutor had no criticism when she’d finished reading.

Read them? No, no (a small smile, a large gesture of dismissal), thank you. Of course not, I’m a conservative girl. I don’t do things like that on the first date. Besides, sometimes there’s power in keeping things to yourself, don’t you think?

I liked the timid girl more every minute. There was something provocative in the contradiction between how withdrawn she was in the workshop and how open she was with me. She never tried to charm or impress me while we were talking, and that in itself was charming and impressive. So impressive that I can’t remember a single detail about the café we were in. Not the menu. Not the waitress. Not what I ordered. Just her lovely shoulders and her hands constantly speaking to me.

When she finally grew silent and put her eloquent hands on the table, I wanted very much to stroke them, to stroke her forearm from her elbow to her wrist. Not since Ya’ara had spoken to me in the campus cafeteria four years earlier had I felt such an intense need to touch a girl. To know her. To resolve her contradictions.

But I stopped myself. I didn’t pick up the lacy gauntlet she’d thrown down by calling a work meeting a ‘first date’, and I didn’t ask her out on a second one.

Only two months were left till the World Cup final and I couldn’t allow myself to get caught up in that maelstrom called love.

I promised myself that the day after the final, I’d call her, and as we stood at the door of the café, I gave her a long kiss goodbye on the part of her cheek closest to her mouth.

Good luck with your manuscript, she said, tenting her hands.

Thank you, I said, and tented my hands too.

She walked away towards the car park, and I wanted to run after her, grab her by her shirt and promise she wouldn’t lose me.

But at that moment, my desire to complete the wonderful symmetry — however suspicious it might sound — was stronger.

*

Two months seemed enough time to publish a book: to copy-edit, typeset, design a cover. But during the first talks I had with publishers, I discovered that their pace was slightly different from that of the Efroni Printing House.

Send the manuscript, you’ll receive an answer within a year, the first publisher I contacted told me.

A negative answer within nine months, a positive one — up to two years, the second place told me.

What is the book about? a senior editor at the third publishers asked.

It’s about a group of guys, friends who … I began to explain.

Men friends?! she interrupted me. Men aren’t in these days, but send it, you never know.

Two weeks were left before the opening of the World Cup, and only a month and a half till the final.

With a heavy heart, I printed out the manuscript, put it into a transparent plastic bag and drove to Haifa.