World Cup Wishes

3

THERE’S THIS DREADFUL custom of giving close friends pictures taken during the wedding and writing something warm and personal on the back. Ya’ara and Churchill were considerate enough not to do that in my case. So the only picture I have of that occasion was taken secretly by Maria’s daughter, and Ofir gave it to me, in a sealed envelope, two weeks later. I look fine in it, that’s what’s so weird. I have eyes and a nose and ears and skin and a shirt and buttons. And you could never guess what was going on inside. I’ve looked at that picture dozens of times, trying to find a sign. Lowered eyelashes. A double chin. The slightest paleness. And nothing. I’m standing with a tall cocktail glass in my hand, smiling broadly at the camera. Wishing them well.

*

The ‘alternative area’ at the wedding included two treatment beds, and was located in an excellent spot: between the buffet table and the artificial lake. Ofir, wearing loose white clothes, stood at one of the beds. Maria stood at the other, a big woman with a big smile and a big necklace of big beads on her chest. Her daughter stood at the entrance pouring strong, hot chai from a clay pitcher for everyone in the queue.

I queued like everyone else. I could have signalled to Ofir to let me go ahead of the others, but that’s not how I was brought up.

When it was my turn, Ofir pointed to his bed (I breathed a sigh of relief. I kept picturing what happened the first time Maria treated him. And I was afraid that if she treated me, the same thing would happen).

Lie on your stomach, Yuval-ji, he said. And take d-e-e-p, l-o-o-ng breaths.

You do remember that I have asthma? I asked, alarmed. This treatment is OK for people with asthma?

It’s not a treatment, he said, laying both hands gently on my back. It’s just a light massage to release tension. Looks to me like you could do with some tension release, am I right?

Yes.

*

That wedding hit me like a supersonic boom on a clear day. Usually, such things follow a certain order of events: you get to know each other. You go to parents’ houses for Friday night dinner. You spend a weekend in a cabin in the Galilee. You move in together. Raise a dog. Or a calico cat. You think seriously about splitting up. You drive the whole world mad with feigned indecision. And only then do you start making the rounds of wedding venues and caterers and fighting about the guest list.

And here — it all happened too fast. The Maccabi game ended, Ofir called, and at the beginning of the conversation, Churchill mentioned that he had something important to say, and that he was really glad Ofir had called because now he could hear the news at the same time, or at least with a delay of a second and a half, and –

So?!! we all groaned in expectation. We were sure he was going to tell us that he’d been appointed district attorney. Or that he’d shot straight up to supreme court judge.

Then he took Ya’ara’s hand. And entwined his thick fingers with her delicate ones.

And even before he spoke, an air pocket had already formed in my chest.

*

After they left, I questioned Amichai and he swore by the twins that he hadn’t known anything, and, from where she was sitting in the den, Ilana the Weeper said that they don’t even sound happy about the announcement, and that Churchill was too childish to get married, and it could only be that she’s pregnant and doesn’t want an abortion, and if that’s the story, then it’s very stupid of her, though not surprising, considering her personality construct, which contains an element of self-destruction.

It wasn’t until the stag night, which took place a couple of nights before the wedding, that we found out what had really happened.

Churchill didn’t want us to organise a proper party. He said it wouldn’t be the same without Ofir. Anyway, he reminded us, the last stag night we had did not end well.

That party had been for Amichai, and was in a dimly lit club in a dimly lit industrial area. From the outset, we weren’t too happy about the idea, but Amichai said that his friends at work had been there and had enjoyed it. We sat at the table reserved for us near the stage, just the four of us. We were surrounded by table after table of serried ranks, clapping enthusiastically. An ultra-Orthodox guy was standing at the back of the hall, masturbating, swaying back and forth like a lulav in the wind. We’d ordered a lot of alcohol and were trying hard to be happy for Amichai, but the music was terrible and there was something depressing about the whole thing. Especially the dancers. Their eyes were empty, their movements predictable, and the most embarrassing moment of all was when they sat on our laps and started listing their prices in business-like voices: fifty shekels to stroke their arse. One hundred for touching their breasts. Two hundred for going into the back room. We didn’t touch and we didn’t pay, so they went off to another, more profitable table. And after a quick exchange of glances, we asked for the bill, paid and got up to leave. To escape. But two bouncers blocking the exit asked us where we were going. Churchill, speaking for all of us, said it had been a great evening, thanks, but we were leaving. They said we didn’t give any money to the dancers. Churchill said we didn’t give anything because we didn’t want anything. And that’s our right. They moved a little closer to him and said that no one goes out of the club without leaving money for the dancers. They didn’t seem angry, and that’s what made the situation ominous. I remember my fists clenching in my jacket pockets and I was horrified to realise that, even though I wanted to get out of there in one piece, I wanted a fight with those guys just as much. I hadn’t felt that little thug since the Intifada, when I first discovered he was hiding inside me (and perhaps inside every man?), but I don’t want to talk about what happened then, during the Intifada. This time, Churchill conducted negotiations that led to a quiet agreement: we’d leave three hundred shekels with the bouncers and they’d let us out of there. It was either that, or a brawl, he explained afterwards in the street. And it’s not that I’m scared, but when fists start flying, you can never know how it’s going to end. The police could come and charge us all, and if they charge me, that’s the end of my job in the prosecutor’s office.

Right, we all nodded in agreement. And swore never to have any more stag dos, and we wouldn’t have had one for Churchill if Ofir hadn’t called to say he was coming home. Maria insists, he said. She says it’s my best friend’s wedding and that’s something I shouldn’t miss. Anyway, she’s dying to get to know all of you. And Israel. She says that even if we decide to live in Denmark, she wants to see up close where I was born. Where I grew up and what the conditions are in the Palestinian refugee camps.

Terrific! we said happily. And Amichai said they could stay at his place while they were in the country. He assumed they’d understand that he was just being polite, but a couple of weeks before the wedding, they just knocked at his door.

Ilana the Weeper hid her shock as she looked at the three people standing at the door, hoping to stall for time till Amichai came out of the bathroom and she’d have to ask them in. She managed to see that they had too few suitcases, that the girl looked like the little angels in church paintings, and that Ofir, taller and more handsome than ever, his light-coloured eyes smiling out of the tangle of his curls, was leaning gently on the child’s mother as if he were having a hard time standing.

A rickshaw drove over my foot, he explained before Ilana asked. On our last day in Delhi, three hours before the flight.

How terrible, Ilana said, still holding the door, blocking the way in.

Sab kuch milega, he said, embarrassed. And she didn’t understand why he was speaking Hungarian to her.

Bro-o-o-o!!! Amichai came running out of the bathroom and threw his arms around Ofir in an enormous bear hug. You’re here! I don’t believe it! It’s so great that you’re here!

When the hugging and back-slapping and teasing and rejoicing were over, Ofir walked into the house and spread his arms to hug Ilana too. She hugged him and his girlfriend, who for some reason also insisted on hugging her, and after she helped them unpack, she pushed Amichai into the twins’ room, closed the door behind them and said: one night, that’s all. And that’s only because it’s not nice to throw a limping person out on the street. I’ve put up with your friends and their nonsense for ten years, but this time you really went too far.

One night, Amichai agreed submissively.

In the end, they stayed for two weeks.

*

The first evening, when Ilana the Weeper sat far away from everyone — a hardback English book entitled Depression as a Predictor of Anxious Thoughts separating her from us — we ignored it because we were used to it. But Maria thought it was a bit strange that someone who was sitting in the living room with us was never included in our conversation, so she went over and sat down beside her, tried to get her to talk a bit about the book, then told her that as a teenager, she had suffered from permanent winter depression because in the winter months there are very few hours of daylight in Denmark. She was strongly affected by it, especially as a teenager, and in fact, why was she saying ‘as a teenager’? Until she went to India, those symptoms would recur with varying degrees of intensity every year. Every winter, she would seriously consider suicide, she said with a light-filled smile, and Ilana the Weeper put her hand on Maria’s arm and said with glistening eyes, that must have been so hard, and Maria didn’t move her hand away as she said, yes, when you’re teenager, you can bear those thoughts, everyone around you is flirting with death, but as a mother, it’s more complicated. You have responsibilities. Yes, Ilana the Weeper nodded, I know exactly what you’re talking about. And at that moment, while we were arguing about what songs the DJ should play at the wedding, the spark that turns people into friends was suddenly ignited between them.

Maria’s daughter also turned out to be a treasure. It seemed that, for years, she had longed for a younger brother or sister. And now the rare opportunity to have two brothers at the same time had come her way. She and the twins became a threesome. They both fell in love with her, of course, and vied for her attention with the eagerness of six-year-olds, and she was always kind to them, first to one, then to the other, making sure each was left with a bit of hope, so he could keep idolising her.

The mothers, finding themselves suddenly free of the need to occupy their children, spent the time excitedly discovering each other. Maria taught Ilana the Weeper the secrets of vegetarian cooking, and they spent hours in the kitchen concocting wonderful dishes based on tofu and red lentils. Ilana the Weeper took Maria on a personal tour of the university and introduced her to the most up-to-date research methods in her field. Maria persuaded Ilana the Weeper to come to the beach with the children (Amichai couldn’t believe it was happening. He’d been begging her for years and she’d absolutely refused, arguing that the sea was too polluted), and they came back happy and covered in tar. Ilana persuaded Maria to come to the meeting of a support group of teenagers suffering from depression and to tell them about her own personal experience. Then she took her to a Women Go All the Way event. And then to a meeting of Women Against the Occupation.

Don’t you feel a bit superfluous? Ofir asked Amichai during one of their joint dinners around the extended dining table, after Ilana the Weeper had tossed Maria another complicated English sentence full of professional jargon they apparently both understood. We’ve been feeling a bit superfluous here lately, Amichai said to his wife, his lips set in complaint.

That’s because you really are superfluous! Ilana the Weeper said and roared with rolling laughter. Maria’s laughter.

Amichai looked at her in amazement and thought, really, laughing suits her. And he also thought: incredible. I’ve been trying for years to make her happy, with no success, and this Maria suddenly lands in our house, and without the slightest effort, brings out this joy in her.

Maybe you should do something with yourselves, Ilana the Weeper said, a hint of a smile still hanging on the corners of her mouth. Your friend is getting married in two days. Perhaps you should take him out to celebrate? Just the boys, I mean.

Great idea, Amichai said. And the two of them called me, and we went together to pick up Churchill, who said he’d come only on the condition that there’d be no strippers or dancers, and that we didn’t let him drink too much because he’s getting married the day after tomorrow and doesn’t want to get in trouble. We promised to take care of him, even though it was clear to us, even as we promised, that if he wanted to drink, it would be very hard to stop him. He has a strong will that’s very easy to bend to, and in fact, when Ofir tried to say something after the third drink, Churchill gave him a look that drained us all of the desire to argue with him. And he went on to the fourth drink. And the fifth.

With the sixth drink, his secret came out.

It seems that even after he and Ya’ara became lovers, he’d secretly continued to see Sharona, the law clerk he’d occasionally slept with over the last few years. I don’t even know why, he said and looked deeply into our eyes, one by one, as if we were a jury and he wanted to convince us to acquit him. It’s not because of the sex. Absolutely not. The sex with Sharona is a total nothing compared to what I have with Ya’ara. I don’t know, maybe I got scared. You all understand, he said, his eyes lingering on me, that sometimes, when I’m with Ya’ara, I can’t believe there’s someone like her in the world. And that I’m the one she chose. So maybe I wanted to leave myself an escape hatch, in case she changed her mind. Or maybe I’m just fucked up, like my father.

We didn’t know what to say. In all the years we’d been friends, we’d never seen Churchill confused.

In any case, he went on, Ya’ara found out. She was sitting in a café eavesdropping on a conversation two girls were having at the table next to her. It was just my luck that those girls were Sharona and her best friend. And that was the day Sharona had decided she couldn’t hold back any more and had to tell someone about our Sunday Culture Club, as she and I called it.

Oy, Amichai blurted out.

It’s a small country, Churchill said with a nod. When I got home from work, there was a message from Ya’ara: come over, we have to talk about Sharona. She didn’t sound upset on the answering machine. Just the opposite. She sounded like she’d already come to a decision. I went over to hers, and on the way, I decided to go for a plea bargain. I confessed to all the charges against me and asked for leniency. I told her it was a vestige of the old Churchill. That since I met her, I’m a different person. A better person. And Sharona — Sharona is just a vestige I’ve been dragging along with me. She said she couldn’t care less, vestige or no vestige, after the guitarist who’d played with her heart for five years, she’d sworn that she’d never let another man treat her like that. No matter how much she loved him. So she was asking me to go.

That’s when you proposed? Ofir asked and scratched his forehead. The whole story seemed to astound him. As if in his new world of purified energy there was no room for that kind of deception.

No, of course not, Churchill said. You should have seen her when she opened the door. There was absolutely nothing to say. And when I showed up at her flat the next day without calling first, with a ring, and got down on my knees, she said, are you kidding? and turned her back on me.

Very good, I blurted out.

Amichai gave me an angry look.

If she had said yes right away, it would have been less interesting, I tried to explain. I felt as if I were sticking my foot deeper into my mouth.

Wait a minute, so how did you finally convince her? Ofir asked quickly, to get me out of the sticky situation.

You’ll be surprised, Churchill said, pouring himself another drink. It has to do with you.

Me? Ofir said, drawing back. The story was astounding him more and more.

Yes, Churchill said. She argued that if it was my nature to cheat, a wedding wouldn’t change me. So I said, people can change completely. Just look at Ofir. Who would’ve thought a year ago that he’d be wearing loose, white clothes and that he’d be so calm.

Amichai and I looked at each other. As far as I remembered, of all of us, Churchill was the most sceptical about the changes in Ofir.

Are you telling me that’s what convinced her? Amichai said doubtfully.

No, Churchill said. But that was when I saw that look in her eyes for the first time, the look that says a person is ready to be convinced. Then came a week of crying and begging. And small gifts. Till she finally agreed, on two conditions: the first, that we have a reform ceremony performed by a woman rabbi. And second, that I don’t say a single word to my friends about the circumstances that led to the wedding. I want them to think you’re so in love with me that you just couldn’t wait. That’s what she said. And I kissed her on the lips and said that was the truth.

So why are you telling us? Why are you breaking your promise?

It’s your fault, Churchill accused us. I didn’t want a stag do. I knew this would happen if I drank. But you insisted.

We were silent. Amichai and Ofir looked down. I didn’t.

So that’s it, now I’m in your hands, he said and looked at me. His eyes already had that alcohol glaze. If you want, you’ll keep this conversation to yourselves. If you want, you’ll tell me — I mean her.

Why should we tell? Amichai quickly reassured him. We’re your friends.

It would be stupid to tell her, Ofir said. It’s against the direction of love.

I didn’t say anything. I thought about the raven in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which was given its black colour after it informed on one of the gods.

The three of them looked at me expectantly. As if the bill had already come and they’d all put cash on the table and I still had to add my share before we could give the little plate with the money to the waiter.

Do you love her at all? I asked.

Of course, Churchill said, taken aback. What do you mean? What kind of question is that?

Because the way you tell the story, I persisted, it sounds like you’re talking about one of your cases. It sounds like the whole point here was to win.

Churchill looked at me sadly. It’s because I talk like that, he said. Everything with me always sounds calculated. But you’re my friends, you all should know that … I mean … you especially … his eyes on me.

He poured himself another beer. His hand shook and a few drops fell onto the table.

I’m lost without her, he said, and a tear glistened in the corner of his eye. I’m completely lost without her.

Amichai and Ofir looked at him in alarm, unable to accept the new Churchill.

I couldn’t tell if something had really cracked in him or whether this was just another prosecutorial trick meant to guarantee that we’d keep his secret. But still, the ‘you especially’ managed to touch me. So I made a zipped-up gesture across my lips and said, it’s OK, Churchill, you have nothing to worry about from me.

*

On the other hand, I politely refused the offer to be one of the four people to hold up the poles of their wedding canopy. There’s a limit, right? I stood at a slight distance, a bit cut off, while the woman rabbi performed the ceremony, and I thought, what a shame that Ya’ara is wearing contacts, because she looks better in glasses. But even so, she’s breathtaking. Outward beauty isn’t the thing with her. It’s those contradictions between innocence and keen intelligence, between assertiveness and gentleness, between playfulness and seriousness. That’s what makes her so Ya’ara. And I thought, I’m the only guy at the wedding, except for the groom, who’s slept with the bride. And I thought, that’s no consolation. It’s pathetic that two years later, I’m still in love with her. It was a mistake to come. An unavoidable mistake. And I thought, that rabbi thinks she has a sense of humour, but she doesn’t. And I thought that the congratulatory message from all of us that Ofir read aloud was written beautifully, and that it was a shame that those years in advertising had left him fed up with words.

I thought and moved around and thought and moved around, my face expressionless, from the table where I was sitting with the guys to the table with the ‘we-don’t-know-where-to-put-them-so-we-sat-them-with-other-people-we-didn’t-know-where-to-put’ guests, where my parents were sitting.

Churchill had also invited Amichai’s mother and Ofir’s mother, but my parents were the only ones who showed up because ‘if you’re invited — it’s impolite not to go’. As usual, my mother charmed everyone with her glowing optimism, preparing the ground for my father’s questions about the occupations of the others at the table — questions meant to provide him with the natural opportunity to hand out the family printing house’s business card. They both tutted in perfect synchronisation about the increased security (what a sad state of affairs if we have to be afraid at weddings!), and both watched me the entire time: my mother with an expression of blind admiration, and my father with a look of disappointment bordering on despair.

It’s always been like that. When I brought home my school reports, she was always thrilled with my marks in literature and history and he would resign himself to the ones I got in physics and maths. She thought it was mag-ni-fi-cent when I decided to study liberal arts in Tel Aviv, and he didn’t understand why liberal arts, for crying out loud, what are you going to do with it? How will you make a living? What’s going to become of you?

‘What’s going to become of you’ was the regular question he asked me from the living room armchair as he cut a pear or an apple into small, precise slices — but at the wedding, I thought I saw a new, more burning question in his eyes: how could I have lost him Ya’ara?

From the minute she set foot, in her bouncy walk, into our house in Haifa, he was captivated by her. Two hours later, at the dining room table, the unbelievable happened, and for the first time in his life, he told a joke. She laughed at his joke. She rolled with laughter. And he blushed. I’d never before seen him turn red with anything but anger.

Then he asked her if she were cold. Perhaps she wanted him to turn on the heating? Or get her a blanket? Or perhaps one of Marilyn’s sweaters?

I’m fine, it’s very pleasant here, she said with a laugh, but now I know where your son got his gentlemanliness from.

Later they became engrossed in a conversation on how wonderful British theatre was and how Israeli theatre couldn’t hold a candle to it (my father worked as a stage hand in the West End? Exactly when was that? How hadn’t I known that till now?), and when they broke into a duet from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, my mother and I decided we’d had enough and stood up to take the dishes into the kitchen.

What was that supposed to be?! I asked her.

You know how your father always wanted a daughter, she said, supplying the convenient, pleasing explanation, as usual.

Yes, I know, I said, and thought: perhaps a daughter really would have freed that man of all his tightness and restraint, and I–I would have enjoyed the leftovers.

(Once, on the way home from grade school, I was caught in the Haifa rain, which falls more densely and in bigger drops than the rain in Tel Aviv. I didn’t have an umbrella, and by the time I got home, my clothes were stuck to my skin like a diver’s suit. It was a Tuesday, the day the whole city closes up at noon, and he was home. When I opened the door, his face broke into an oh-my-God expression, but his mouth said only, it’s a bit rainy today, isn’t it? Then he sat me down in front of the big kerosene heater that broke down at the beginning of every winter, peeled off my layers of clothes carefully, without hurting me, and wiped my whole body with the thick green towel he fetched from the bathroom. His movements were long and measured, and his large hands were gentle. Not a single wet spot was left on my body when he was finished, and yet, even though I was already burning from being so close to the heater, he insisted on wrapping another large towel around me, so that, God forbid, I wouldn’t catch pneumonia or anything like that.

For weeks afterwards, I’d deliberately forget my umbrella on Tuesdays, in the hope that it would rain.)

*

Come here, he dug his nails into my arm during one of my stops at their table, let me introduce you to Yanke’le Richter.

A guy my age, wearing a suit and tie, shook my hand so hard that it hurt.

Yanke’le works in hi-tech industries, my father explained. He tells me they have a special programme for people who want to change career, like you.

Like me?

You know, the ones who studied lying on the grass, my father said, winking at Yanke’le Richter, and went on, I told him that you’d probably want to hear details about this programme.

What I wanted was to get away from there. Very much. Or, alternatively, to jump into the artificial lake and turn into something else, like in Metamorphoses: a swan, a water lily, a man with a purpose. And perhaps I would have gathered enough despair to jump into the lake if it hadn’t been for Ofir’s touch meditation.

There really was electricity in his hands.

All he did was put his palms on my shoulders. OK, he might have moved them a bit. And touched the back of my neck at some point. But no more than that. In any case, when I stood up from the treatment table, I felt the bitterness that had been weighing down on me all evening disintegrate, my body became light and an oceanic love of the world rose up in me.

Man, I said and hugged Ofir, you have to open a clinic. You’re really good at this.

Really? he said, smiling. You have no idea how important it is to me to hear that from you. I mean, hearing it from strangers is not the same as hearing it from friends.

Your boyfriend is phenomenal! I said to Maria, to underline what I’d said.

I know he is, she said and looked at Ofir with moist eyes (perhaps it was the treatment that influenced my perception of reality, but for a minute, it seemed as if their love had a material presence, that I could actually see it floating in the air between them).

I’m happy for you, Bro, I said after a short silence.

I know, he said.

And we didn’t have to say any more. Because it was clear to both of us that beneath that happiness were sad, past moments in Ofir’s life that we had been through together. The nervous breakdown, his father’s death. But it was actually those moments that gave the happiness its validity.

Will the two of you come to dance later? I asked.

Of course, he said.

And after a few songs, he and Maria and the girl joined us and we all danced together in a non-circular circle, winding around each other in figures of eight, touching lightly, cheering, sweating love, drinking as we moved, dripping onto our shirts, hoisting Churchill and Ya’ara onto our shoulders and letting them join together in a kiss, doing a perfect imitation of Amichai’s famous, one-and-only dance move — patting his stomach with his hand — screeching with dry throats, ‘Shimon My Man’ and the ‘Yehudim’ song, ‘If you go, take me with you, listen, it’s me’, which Ya’ara had requested, and a series of Bruce Springsteen songs that Churchill had asked for, which drew a few representatives of our parents’ generation onto the floor, but they took off as fast as they could the minute the trance started. I’m not usually too crazy about that kind of music, but that night, when Ya’ara kicked off her high heels and began dancing in front of me, occasionally whipping me with her hair, I couldn’t help being carried away into it, feeling the heartbeats of the music competing with my own heartbeats, closing my eyes, not to think, to forget where I was, for a few minutes to be only rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm –

When I opened my eyes, Ilana the Weeper was dancing in front of me. For a moment, I wasn’t sure whether I was hallucinating or not. Most of the time when we went out dancing, she didn’t come along, and if by chance she found herself at a party, she would sit self-consciously on the side till Amichai took pity on her and left us, with an apologetic look, to take her home.

At the wedding, she didn’t dance at first either. She sat alone at the friends’ table, picking up cheesecake crumbs with the pads of her fingers. And thought how much she hated that music. And thought she wanted to go home. To her children, to her research. And thought: why did Amichai insist on coming with one car? She sat alone at the friends’ table and no one went over to her because we were all used to the way she was at parties. But Maria wasn’t used to it. She went and sat down beside her, close. And asked her about the people who were sitting at the table next to them. And Ilana the Weeper told her all the relevant gossip down to the smallest detail. Her tone was still bitter as she spoke, but her posture was a bit less droopy. Then Maria said, I’m a bit shy about dancing on my own out there with the guys, will you come with me? And Ilana the Weeper said, no, I don’t think so. And Maria put her hand gently on Ilana’s arm and said, maybe just this once, for me?

*

It’s funny how certain images remain burned in your mind.

A few months later, in Haifa, when all of Ilana’s university colleagues would talk about how serious and earnest she was, and her students would talk about how she was always ready to help, even after her office hours, and her mother would say, even as a child, she was responsible, sometimes I thought she was a little too responsible –

All I would think about was that moment, at the wedding, when I opened my eyes and saw Ilana the Weeper in front of me, jumping around with charmingly clumsy movements, a smile on her freckled face, her shoulder straps fallen onto her arms, and her always perfectly straight bob swinging wildly.