World Cup Wishes

14

I DROVE SLOWLY, very slowly. I thought it would be quite stupid for me to die in an accident when I was so close to making Ofir’s dream come true.

When you drive slowly, you notice the different shades of green in the fields between Netanya and Hadera, and the flocks of birds flying in rapid-shifting formations over the Maagan Michael fish ponds, and the new neighbourhood going up next to Neveh Yam, which has the water park with the the bluest slides in the country, and as you slide down the slope of your memories, other drives on this road — officially known as Road No. 2, but it’s number one in your life — float to the surface. Like the time Churchill helped you move your things to the apartment in Tel Aviv, following you in his Beetle, and a little past Wingate he called your mobile and said he was thirsty, did you have anything in the car to drink, and you said there was mineral water, but you didn’t feel like stopping now, so he drove up alongside the car, you passed him the bottle through the window, he took a few sips and returned it to you, driving the entire time. And there were those late Saturday night drives back from Haifa listening to the army radio station, your heart fluttering with the hope that a gorgeous girl soldier would be standing at the hitchhikers’ stop and you would pull over for her and ‘fall for her instantly’, like the words of the Eran Tzur song. Then there was the driver who gave you a ride to Gelilot when you yourself were a soldier, and he kept nodding off, until he actually fell asleep near the Havazelet junction and you lunged to grab the wheel hard and saved both your lives, and he thanked you effusively and took your address so he could send you an invitation for a free meal in his restaurant in Ashdod, which he hasn’t sent to this day. And there’s that enormous chair, God’s chair, on the cliff at Atlit. Once, driving past it, Ya’ara asked if you knew who had put it there and why, and you were embarrassed to admit that you didn’t, and she suggested that on the way back you both climb up and check it out, and if it isn’t a monument to the fallen or some other sad thing, you can have sex there, because unusual places turn her on, but on the way back, she fell asleep and her cheeks were so soft that you didn’t have the heart to wake her. And now’s the moment the road emerges from between the limestone hills and you can see the sea, not a narrow strip but the entire expanse of blue, the place where you always wanted to forget all your plans, all your important goals, and simply pull onto the hard shoulder, strip and run into the waves. Even on the way to Ilana’s funeral, you recall, Ofir’s glance occasionally moved to the left, and he said, look at the colour of the sea today, but you didn’t pull up because Maria’s jagged sobs were heartbreaking, and who goes to the beach on the way to a funeral anyway. Even now, you don’t pull up, you keep driving straight, because you must, you simply must talk to your father, and he closes at five on the dot on Sundays because he thinks the printing presses are more likely to break down on Sundays after having rested on Saturday, so you actually have less than an hour. And if you’re late, you’ll lose a day’s work. And every day counts, because the World Cup is getting closer.

*

When I went into the printing house, I looked around for my mother, out of habit.

For twenty-five years, she had worked alongside her husband, handling the pre-printing stage: photography, montage, plates. When business was good, there were four people working under her, but in recent years, the whole process had become computerised, making her and the four employees redundant. At first, my father tried to hold out against the change and delayed buying the modern equipment (perhaps he already knew in his heart what would happen?), but when long-time clients threatened to go elsewhere if he didn’t update his operation, Efroni finally entered into the new, less romantic, era of printing, and one day, a little before six in the evening, closing time since forever, my mother got up from her chair and began filling a cardboard box she’d brought to work with all the optimistic little signs that had always stood on her desk.

AN APPLE A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY

SMILE — IT’S A CURVE THAT MAKES EVERYTHING STRAIGHT

SMILE AND THE WORLD WILL SMILE BACK AT YOU

IN GOD WE TRUST. ALL OTHERS PAY CASH

My father watched her in silence. When she took the design books and magazines from the shelf behind her and put them into the box too, he added a raised eyebrow to his silence. And when she began to remove the series of pictures of Princess Diana (with Harry, with William, with both sons together), he could no longer control himself and cleared his throat.

She turned to look at him. For a brief moment, their eyes met, then looked away in embarrassment.

That’s it? he asked.

That’s it, she replied. There was no aggression in her voice. Or anger. Only the sort of silent determination that makes it clear there is no room for argument. And just like that, with two words, twenty-five years of joint creativity, joint failures, joint successes came to an end. The thread of their work that bound my parents together was cut, the bond that forced them to speak to each other in the printing house even if they never exchanged a word at home, that forced them to stand up and face life together after my little sister wasn’t born. That prevented them — even then — from taking more than a week’s vacation, because ‘it’s much easier to lose a client you have than to find a new one’.

*

After she left the printing house, my mother tried to make all her dreams come true at the same time.

She reconnected with her university friends after long years of not being in touch, when each was busy with her own family. They met once a week for breakfast, which lasted till evening, signed up for a series of lectures on the New Wave in French cinema and went on a heritage tour to Morocco, though not one of them was of Moroccan descent. Encouraged by her new-old friends, my mother dyed her hair blonde and wore it in a new style, and she still had the most beautiful face I had ever seen. She smiled more, wept more. And she took a course for local guides given by the Tourist Ministry, despite my father’s scepticism. He claimed that no tourist would want an old woman for a guide when he could have a young one.

But it turned out that most of the tourist groups that come to the city are made up of older people who actually feel more comfortable with a woman their own age who has perfect English and a sunny smile. And so, in less than a year, my mother became the star of local tourism. Every day, you could watch her striding along in her worn-green Teva sandals, trailed closely by an enthusiastic clutch of people wearing visored caps and carrying cameras. The route was always the same: from Yaffee Nof Street, through the Bahai Gardens, down to the German Colony and the port — and from there, a cable car ride back to Stella Maris. But my mother added a special stop to that regular route: 49 Haatzmaut Street. The official reason for the stop was that one of the Haganah’s gun caches used to be nearby, offering her an opportunity to relate the sort of hair-raising battle stories tourists from peaceful countries like so much. The unofficial reason for the stop was that the ground floor of the adjoining building, 47 Haatzmaut Street, was home to the Efroni printing house. My mother would appear there almost every day, stand with her back to the place she’d worked in for twenty-five years, turn on the small microphone attached to her collar and begin to talk about the history of gun caches.

She knew quite well that the owner of the printing house could see her from where he was sitting, and to be sure that he could hear her as well, she would raise her voice to almost a shout. Sometimes, when she was in the mood, she would end the visit by drawing the attention of her listeners to the fact that in the building next to where the cache had been was one of the first printing houses in the city of Haifa and an important local monument that had no peers.

Think about it, dear, she said to him with a laugh during a family dinner, there are now hundreds of people in Japan who have a picture of Efroni in their photo albums!

My father failed to see the humour. He thought that her public promotion of the printing house was meant to ridicule and remind him, in a particularly cruel way, that she now earned more money than he. Every day, he would swear to himself all over again that the minute he saw the front end of the tourist bus approaching, he would get up and go to the back of the printing house, behind the presses, to a place where the street wasn’t visible, and every day he remained rooted to his chair, watching her fragile back. And listening to her speak. How eloquent she was. And full of life. And knowledgeable. And how patient she was, and open to the group’s questions.

The truth is, your mother is a terrific guide, he admitted to me one of those Fridays after she’d gone off to bed. But he was not able to say it to her.

And she, for her part, never came into the printing house to say hello after she left. Not once.

And he, for his part, put pretty young designers in her chair, hoping that one day, she would come inside, see them and eat her heart out. But none of those young women lasted more than a month. He would pay them a pittance and tyrannise them regularly with tirades and complain that their work ethic was poor and they had no soul, no real love for the profession, and in the end they would simply get up and leave — which amazed him time after time, because ‘people used to know the value of a regular job’.

After four different designers had taken flight in a year, he ‘reached the conclusion that he didn’t really need a designer because he knew how to do the basic things himself, and what he didn’t know, he could always outsource’.

That’s what he told me when I asked why Mum’s chair was empty.

After a brief silence, during which he eyed me and the bundle of papers under my arm, he wondered aloud if someone like me, who had done a degree in lying-on-the-grass, even knows what outsourcing is.

I tossed out the Hebrew term, which I knew well from dozens of translations, and ignored the disdain inherent in his question (you didn’t drive all the way here to fight with him! I told myself).

To what do I owe this honour? he asked, browsing through some cheques lying on his desk. He always browsed through cheques when he was embarrassed, his large hands — the ones that had wrapped me in towels on that rainy day — sifting through them, straightening an errant crease.

I wanted to ask you something, I said and sat down.

I never thought otherwise, he said and signed a cheque. After all, you wouldn’t come here just to see how your father is, would you?

So how are you? I asked.

He looked up at me, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. Then immediately lowered his gaze to his desk again.

Business isn’t good now, not good at all, he said (when asked about himself, my father always gave an answer about his business. And business was never good. I can’t ever remember him being satisfied. Or happy. I once asked my mother about that, and she said, ‘Your father has many abilities, but the ability to be happy is not one of them.’).

These bloody terrorist attacks, he went on, people aren’t in the mood to spend money. And this street is deteriorating all the time. I got here one morning last week and found a fat junkie in the doorway. Tell me, aren’t junkies supposed to be thin? Three policemen could hardly move him!

So perhaps you should move up to the Carmel? I suggested the usual solution.

Perhaps I should, he gave the usual answer. Anyway, I have to find a buyer first. Rule number one, son, never buy with money you don’t have! he said, waving his finger at me. Rebuked, I said nothing. He, meanwhile, signed another cheque. All the printing machines were still except the ’72 Roland, which was plugging away. It was the first printing machine my father bought when he opened the business, and over the years, he refused to let anyone else get close to it. At the end of every day, he would oil it, clean it, wash it. And on several occasions, I even heard him talk to it.

Tell me, Dad, I said, trying to renew the conversation, how’s that writer, Miron-Mishberg?

Why do you ask? My father raised suspicious eyebrows above his glasses.

No reason, I said. I just suddenly remembered him.

Went mad, the poor bastard. I called him a few weeks ago. He didn’t come in with his book, like he did every year. So I wanted to see how he was. His wife answered. Told me that he was institutionalised in Tirat HaCarmel. She committed him. I had no choice, she said. He bought an aquarium the size of a wardrobe and decided he was going to live inside it. For two months, he lay there in the living room, in the aquarium, ate his meals there, slept there. Wrote there. Watched TV from there. Can you imagine? In the end, she couldn’t handle it any more and committed him.

Wow.

She says it’s because of what happened to him in the concentration camp. That he never managed to get over it. I don’t think so. I think that anyone who sits at home all day and does nothing but write, doesn’t go out to work and doesn’t see people, is bound to go mad in the end.

I nodded hesitantly and remembered what Ofir had said about the yawning abyss of fear lying in wait for every artist. I put my foot on the bundle of papers I’d put under the chair and squashed it down hard in the hope it would shrink. Shrink until it disappeared.

So what … what did you want to ask me? my father said, putting the cheques aside and starting to work on a stack of receipts.

The hero of an American TV series would probably have said, ‘Never mind’, creating the bitter-sweet effect of missed opportunity and stretching the plot out a bit more, another episode, even another season, if the ratings were high enough. But I–I had the World Cup on my mind.

I wrote a book, Dad, I said. And then I picked up the manuscript and put it on the desk.

And … You want me to print it for you? he asked without looking up from the receipts.

Yes … If it isn’t too complicated.

It isn’t too complicated, he said. His tone was suspiciously matter-of-fact.

I’ve spoken to the big publishers in Tel Aviv, I explained, and they just work terribly slowly.

And what’s your hurry, if I may ask?

I have to publish the book within a month and a half from today. I simply have to.

O-k-a-a-a-a-a-y, my father stretched out the short word as much as he could. And took out his order book. How many pages do you have?

One hundred and ninety-two, at the moment.

One-and-a-half line spacing?

Yes.

You’ve already done the copy-editing?

No.

I’m surprised at you, son. Didn’t you work here for an entire summer? You know I can’t start working before you finish the copy-edit. Give it to that friend of yours, the one who married Ya’ara. He must have a lot of time now since they threw him out of the prosecutors’ office.

They didn’t throw him out, he left.

Whatever you say, just ask him. It’ll save you money. How many copies of the book do you need?

Four.

You’re joking! What do you mean, four copies? Don’t you want your book to reach the shops?

Not exactly.

Then why … never mind. You know what, it’s none of my business. But take into account that the smallest edition I can print for you is the ‘poetry edition’ of three hundred copies. And yours isn’t a book of poetry, if I’ve understood correctly.

No, it isn’t.

Actually, it doesn’t matter. It’s your book and … you can do what you like with the copies you don’t need. For all I care, you can throw them into the rubbish bin.

OK.

How soon did you say you need it? A month and a half? That’s a bit tight. Textbook season begins next week. It’s going to be a madhouse here.

He wrote a few numbers in his notebook, humming to himself, then took out a calculator and resumed the calculations he had made in his notebook (he always did the numbers twice, to be on the safe side. And it was always the calculator that served as back-up to the more reliable by-hand reckoning).

The Roland continued working. I inhaled the thick, sweet smell of the print. When I was a child, I was ashamed of that smell that stuck to all my shirts, but now I realised that I missed it. I suddenly remembered our only family trip abroad, classical Europe in ten days. We walked along the streets of a large city — Munich? Vienna? — and he suddenly left us and began walking, then running, in the opposite direction. Later, it turned out that he thought he heard a printing press working, and he had to, simply had to, find where the click-clacking noise was coming from and see whether it was a Roland or a Heidelberg. Are you completely out of your mind? my mother had asked him when he came back. And he didn’t answer her. The silence between them lasted until we reached the hotel.

Now he shifted his glance from the calculator to me. I’ll do my best, he said, adding: it’ll help if you get the copy-editing done this week.

That’s great, thanks, I mumbled, finding it hard to understand his response. None of the cries of despair I had expected. No hair pulling. Strangely enough, he even seemed to be slightly pleased.

I also wanted to ask you for something, he said, leaning forward a little in his chair.

Here it comes, I thought, sighing silently in relief, here’s the price tag. He pulled out a small orange Post-it and wrote a phone number on it. I want you to call Yanke’le Richter. You remember him? He sat next to us at Ya’ara’s wedding. I want you to ask him where the best place is to retrain for a career in the hi-tech industry. And I’m asking you to enroll there.

I nodded in submission. My father is a businessman, and I had imagined that he’d ask for something like this in exchange for agreeing to print my book. I took the Post-it, hoping that because of the slowdown in the field, even if there were courses, they wouldn’t begin for a long, long time.

Then I stood up.

He took the manuscript from me and weighed it in his hands. Well done, son, he said and suddenly patted me on the shoulder. Writing a book is not easy, not easy at all.

That was the first time he’d had anything good to say about me since I left home, and another sort of pride, not about business, shone in his eyes.

I’m thirty-two years old. I have spent the last ten years desperately trying to be different from him. I went all the way to Tel Aviv so that I wouldn’t end up, God forbid, inheriting the printing house and becoming a replica of him, developing his suspiciousness, his asceticism, his open scorn for anything that yielded no monetary profit –

And yet, when he made that short, complimentary remark, I felt a rare flutter of satisfaction.

Writing a book is not easy, I repeated his words as I wound my way down towards the sea on Freud Street. It’s not easy, but I did it. I moved. I came out of my corral and galloped forward for two months. Without running out of oxygen. True, it was for Ofir. And true, it was for the matrix of the World Cup notes. But if I did it once — that means I can do it again. I can escape from the chains of myself. From the mire of my pessimism. From my scepticism and restraint. I can make new wishes for the 2006 World Cup, and, this time, make them come true. I can change. Find myself. Find a purpose. I can love a woman other than Ya’ara. I can — now that the sea is opening before me in all its sparkle — I can even keep being my friends’ friend in the future, not just freeze them in time in my writing. Yes, soon their lives are going to be very different from mine, but that doesn’t mean my book is destined to be a requiem.

*

When you drive fast on Road No. 2, which is the number one road in my life, the landscape races past the window and you don’t see the different shades of green or the fields on the way out of the city, you don’t see the flocks of birds flying in swift-changing formations over the fish ponds of Maagan Michael or Jisar a-Zarka, the wretched, depressed village where, a few months ago, someone threw a concrete block from the bridge that crosses over this road, but you don’t remember that block and, in fact, you don’t remember anything about the past because your thoughts are liberated from it and race confidently towards what has not yet happened, to what will happen, and between Zichron Yaakov and Hadera, you forget the road completely, forget you’re driving, because you suddenly think that, even though there will be only four copies of the book, you should still make a few changes and disguise a few things, change names and places and physical descriptions so people won’t be needlessly hurt, and perhaps you should even add relevant passages from the philosophy thesis, save it from total annihilation. The imperious Ikea sign rises high not far from the South Netanya junction, but you don’t see that either because at that exact moment, you suddenly realise that apart from the necessary disguising and additions and fact-checking, like for example, which teams played in the various World Cup finals, your book still needs an appropriate closing scene, and as you approach Herzliya, you amuse yourself with several possibilities for such a scene. One of them includes the timid girl, lying beside you on a towel on the beach at Gaash, and another takes place in the year 2022, in the stadium stands at the World Cup that Israel has finally managed to host, and all your friends drive there to watch the game together, but when you pass the Kfar Shmariyahu junction now, the only possible final scene, the truly appropriate one, crops up or blows in through the window with the wind. When you reach home, you turn on the computer and write:

*

During the summer holiday between junior and senior years in high school, I was supposed to pick up Churchill and drive down to South Beach with him. When I turned into his street, I saw from the distance that he wasn’t alone. Standing with him in front of the building were two other guys from school whose faces I knew, but not their names. I turned the car around and drove away. I didn’t feel like going to the beach in a big group. I wanted to go to the beach with Churchill, just the two of us, and I hated that he’d invited other people to come along without asking me. As if my being short made my opinion irrelevant. As if the fact that he was the great Churchill meant he could do whatever he wanted. So what if I was the only one who had a driving licence, I thought bitterly, that doesn’t mean I have to be the driver for the entire class.

Two traffic lights later, I turned around and drove back to his street. It’s not nice, I thought. He’s sitting there outside, waiting for me. And only yesterday we ran all the way to the university and he kept slowing down so I could keep pace with him.

The two guys whose names I didn’t know jumped into my back seat the minute I pulled up. The curly-haired one had too-long legs, and his knees were embedded in the back of my seat like spears.

Churchill sat down in the passenger’s seat, pointed to them and said to me, that’s Ofir and that’s Amichai. Then he pointed at me and said, this is Yuval, the guy I told you about.

Hi, I said coldly without turning my head. And started to drive. A pine tree twig got stuck in my wipers and I couldn’t get it out no matter how many times I turned them on.

So, ah … Yuval, the curly-headed one said, maybe you can help us with a little argument we’ve been having. What do you think is the right way to say it: Haifaite or Haifian?

Haifaite.

I told you so! the curly-haired one exulted and stuck his knees deeper into my back.

So how do you explain that the announcers on the Saturday afternoon football broadcasts always say ‘Haifian’? the other one grumbled.

Not all the announcers, curly-hair answered, only Zoher Bahalul. And he’s an Arab.

But Zoher Bahalul speaks the best Hebrew on the programme.

Bullshit.

You know what, I have an idea! Maybe instead of going to the beach, we should drive to the Academy of the Hebrew Language and ask them.

What a brilliant idea, curly-hair ridiculed. The Academy of the Hebrew Language is in Jerusalem. You want to drive to Jerusalem now, Amichai?

No, but they must have a branch in Haifa. They have branches all over the country, don’t they, Churchill?

Why didn’t you st-o-o-op? Churchill suddenly cried.

What? Where? What happened? I said in alarm.

Didn’t you see?! At the hitchhikers’ stop!! Noya Green and that girlfriend of hers, what’s her name, Eliana.

But, Churchill, I stammered, there’s no room … there’s no room in the car for them.

Yuval, Yuval, what is it with you? Churchill whacked the back of my neck. For girls like Noya and Eliana, there’s always room! They could always have sat on me.

The passengers in the back seat burst out laughing, but their laughter was cut short by Churchill himself.

You two, he said, turning his body towards the back, you two have nothing to laugh about. It’s all because of your stupid arguing. If it wasn’t for you, Yuval would have seen Noya Green at the stop.

Curly-hair and the one next to him were silent. So was Churchill. Perhaps he was imagining what might have happened if Noya Green had joined us –

As I kept driving down to the sea, I thought, that twig, the minute we get to the beach, I’ll pull it out from under the wipers, and I thought, if I step hard enough on the accelerator now, we’ll fly into the air and land in the water, a soft landing, and I thought, two more hours, two and a half at the most, with these three clowns, then I’ll go home and never have to see them again for the rest of my life.