World Cup Wishes

8

WHEN AMICHAI OPENED the door to us two weeks later, we were shocked to see that his blotch had almost completely disappeared. Ilana’s death had succeeded where all the salves and cosmetic treatments had failed, and now not only had the Galilee been erased from his neck, but also the Negev and Jerusalem and the Judea Plains and, in fact, except for a small spot left where the greater Tel Aviv area had been, there was nothing left of that Israel-on-the-neck that had screwed up his self-confidence for years.

He was also very thin. His shirt was hanging on him, his chin had sharpened, his cheekbones protruded, adding a tragic, Jacques Brel dimension to everything he said.

I have bad news and bad news, he announced at the beginning of our meeting.

At least you have no problem about what to start with, I said. But that didn’t make him smile.

The bad news, he said, is that we don’t have enough money at the moment to set up a serious NPO, and we need donations from foundations. The worse news is that we can’t get donations if we don’t establish an NPO that looks like it’s active.

Ilana watched us from the wall with bitter disappointment. Predictable, her expression said. It was so predictable that in the end you guys wouldn’t do anything.

Unless, I said, we manage to reach people personally.

But how? Ofir wondered. None of us is Teddy Kollek.

Through Ya’ara, I said. Her parents lived in Miami for twelve years and they have close ties to all the rich Jews there.

But what exactly will we say to those rich Jews when we meet them? Amichai asked.

That’s easy, Ofir asserted. You tell them your own personal story. That always works. And then there’ll be a presentation that I’ll write …

And I’ll translate, I said, finishing the sentence.

But what’ll the presentation say? Amichai persisted. I mean, what’ll it be about?

We scratched our heads in puzzlement. More accurately, each of us scratched the place he scratched when he was stumped: I scratched my cheek. Amichai his upper neck. Ofir his curls.

Where is Churchill when you need him? the question ricocheted from one mind to the other. He would know how to turn our muddled, general ideas into a coherent, reasoned plan.

*

Churchill was busy. Very preoccupied with ‘one the most important trials in Israel’s public history’, as described by Michaela Raz, the legal correspondent for TV’s major channel. Every once in a while, his face would flicker in one of her reports, and black-and-white drawings of him, with an unflattering emphasis on his wide nose, appeared in the financial papers,

It was very hard to get him on the phone. And when he did answer, he was always in the middle of something. Or a minute before something. And always in a hurry to end the conversation. So I decided to take action, to go to his office and grab him by his starched collar and issue him an injunction: habeas your corpus down here, your friends need you.

When I arrived at the prosecutor’s office — it took me an hour to find the entrance, which was squeezed in between dark buildings as if someone were ashamed of it or wanted to appear unassuming — I was told he was not in his office. I learned from a more thorough enquiry that at that very moment he was making a court appearance in his big case. That didn’t stop me, and I walked quickly to the court, a few pedestrian crossings from there, determined to ambush him when the session was over and let him know just what I thought of the way he was treating Amichai.

I had never been in the temple of justice before, and in the first few seconds after I went into the entrance hall with its very high ceiling, I felt guilty. Very guilty. I wasn’t sure what my crime was — perhaps the ’90 World Cup in Nablus? — but as I stood there, I had the strong feeling that in another minute a lawyer would come and ask me politely but firmly to accompany him to my hearing.

No one came up to me. Dozens of people crossed the hall from all sides, diagonally or in a zigzag. Walking. Walking rapidly. Running. Some of them were moving so fast that I was afraid they’d trample me. Others limped. In fact, many limped. One leaned on a cane. One clutched his waist. A third dragged a recalcitrant leg. I had never noticed before how few people walk straight. Some were dragging small suitcases on trolleys — only later, when I went into the courtroom itself, did I realise that that was how legal documents were transported — but the suitcases didn’t lend the place an air of foreign travel. Just the opposite. There was something very local, very Israeli about that entrance hall. The expression on the lawyers’ faces was one of urgency. And on the faces of the ordinary people, the workers, the ones who weren’t lawyers, there was an expression of restrained Israeli concern. A few metres from me, near one of the large columns in the centre of the hall, was a sculpture of hands spread open to the sky. I moved closer and saw that the name of the sculpture was ‘Senna Bush’. I never thought of a bush as something that could feel pain. Someone standing near the bush was yelling into his mobile: ‘I can’t trust him any more!’ And then he yelled, ‘He’ll pay for this.’ The thought passed through my mind again that ‘he’ was me. And that I would pay for my original sin. A woman passing behind me, her high heels clacking rapidly, said, ‘It would be much easier for them to turn over from their stomachs to their backs than from their backs to their stomachs.’ As far as I could tell, she was talking to herself. I looked to the right and to the left. I didn’t know which way to go. Where was my hearing? Or where could I find Churchill here? So I did what he would have done and went up to the prettiest woman in the place, a young, lawyerly-looking attorney whose white blouse perfectly suited her chocolate skin. She knew immediately what I was talking about and said that Churchill’s trial was being held in Judge Dovev’s court. District court.

District court? Where’s that? I said in alarm. ‘District’ sounded like a grey building near the Tzrifin army base.

It’s here, third floor, on the right, she said reassuringly, and pointed me to the lift.

*

Churchill didn’t notice me entering the courtroom.

I sat down quietly in the last row, next to the wall.

He was speaking. His normally broad back looked broader under the robe, and his arms were spread to the sides like large, eagle-like wings. I tried to follow the discussion, something about a certain document that Churchill claimed was admissible by virtue of its existence, but not as evidence. Or the opposite. After a few minutes, I gave up trying to understand the big picture and started trying to grasp the small details: the way Churchill responded and lowered his voice to add authority to his words, or repeated the same word over and over and over again, or suddenly asked rhetorically: what are we talking about? The way he touched his finger to his tongue before he turned a page, a gesture he had copied, simply copied, from Ya’ara, and how phrases like ‘actus reus’ and ‘derivative liability’ and ‘a priori’ were suddenly interspersed into his speech. Though I had never heard him use them when we watched football together, he didn’t sound phoney or as if he were trying too hard because under all those beautiful words and gestures you could feel the quiet, inner conviction I knew so well from arguments in our group, an inner conviction that left the listener with no alternative but to submit, or at least to doubt, for one fateful moment, the rightness of his own view.

The defence attorney at his right rubbed his chin in confusion, as if he were wondering how to deal with the cascade of words Churchill had thrown at him, and with the slightly amused, slightly condescending tone in which they were spoken, and perhaps he was already regretting his choice of profession, and he was probably regretting having underestimated this young attorney, thought by everyone to be too young for such a case. That’s what the court reporter, who was sitting at the foot of the judge’s raised table, must have thought, and perhaps that’s why her eyes were focused on Churchill, especially on the way his neck muscles expanded when he spoke, and she lost concentration for a few seconds and didn’t notice that she had to insert more paper, and the judge reprimanded her and asked Churchill to wait for her to insert the paper, and Churchill said, yes, Your Honour, of course, Your Honour. Then he looked away and his eyes caught mine for a moment. A fraction of a moment. Then went right back to his papers. He didn’t smile at me. Didn’t say hello. Of course not. He wouldn’t let anything get in the way of achieving his goal. He’d known he wanted to be a lawyer from the time he was in high school. And after a year in the army, he’d wrangled a transfer to the intelligence base at Gelilot so he could have time to polish his Hebrew by writing intelligence reports and also take some night courses in law at the Open University. Yes, while we were eating stones in Nablus, he was accumulating credits for his bachelor’s degree and sleeping with half the girls on the course and, naturally, with the woman lecturer too. Then he was accepted into the Tel Aviv University Law School, like he wanted. And he graduated on the Dean’s List, like he wanted. And arranged to intern at the prosecutor’s office, like he wanted, and perhaps — the thought passed through my mind — it was because of that sense of mission that drove him, and not only because of Ya’ara, that I was secretly jealous of him and wished, as I watched him, that he would flounder in the middle of his speech, that he would stumble, that he would fall.

The defence attorney stood up to address the court. But even as he spoke, Churchill continued to work. Every time he argued something Churchill didn’t accept, he waved his hand dismissively. And when the defence attorney used three foreign words in a single sentence, Churchill wondered aloud, ‘Why don’t you speak Hebrew? We’re in an Israeli courtroom. The defendant is Israeli. Why all those foreign words?’

After several minutes of calculated restraint, during which he read through his binders and straightened his robe on his shoulders, letting the poor defence attorney believe he was allowing him to develop his argument quietly, Churchill suddenly said, ‘What the defence is trying to argue here is diametrically opposed to the ruling in the State of Israel versus Aharoni, in which the court was asked to hand down a verdict on a similar matter.’ Aharoni? the defence attorney repeated, trying to gain time, perhaps recall the case. But Churchill’s words were flowing again, demonstrating and proving, jesting and serious, all of it in that elegant Hebrew, ‘erroneously accused’, ‘quite the contrary’, ‘in my humble opinion’.

Far from me, on the other side of the courtroom, sat an old man with a plaster on his bald head. He didn’t look as if he were connected to the case. Perhaps he came just to enjoy the Hebrew that people used to speak once, in his youth, and that now lived only in books and inside courtroom walls?

For a moment, I thought that the silver-spectacled judge was also enjoying Churchill’s Hebrew, because he leaned forward a bit, a thin smile on his lips — perhaps Churchill reminded him of himself when he was young? — but a few minutes later, as Churchill’s speech grew longer and longer, the soft smile of pleasure was replaced by a small, jerky twitch in his cheeks and a quick drumming of his finger on the table till he finally interrupted him and said, Mr Alimi, you have made your point quite sufficiently. I think I am prepared to make my ruling.

Ah … Your Honour … if you will permit me … The defence lawyer tried to address the court. But the judge cut him off too and dictated his decision to the court reporter, who was sitting on his right. The judge spoke so quietly that it was difficult to hear him, but from the way Churchill clasped his hands on the back of his neck, I understood that the verdict was going his way, because when Churchill is pleased, for instance when Maccabi Haifa wins, he clasps his hands on the back of his neck in exactly the same way.

He wasn’t in a hurry to come over to me after the judge sent the sides out for a recess, as if it embarrassed him to show signs of friendship in the courtroom, and he just signalled to me with his eyes that he’d see me outside. Tightly pressed clusters of lawyers and clients spoke together and lowered their voices when I walked past. I looked for a quiet corner without lies or secrets, and found one next to the vending machine. Churchill came out of the courtroom and walked straight to me as if he knew I’d be waiting for him there, as if ten years of friendship had enabled him to guess exactly where I’d choose to wait for him, and suddenly he hugged me, something he hadn’t done in two years. Ever since Ya’ara, the most we did was nod hello, and on several occasions, when he approached me with that pre-hugging look in his eyes, I drew back. But he must have thought that here, on his home turf, I wouldn’t feel comfortable pushing him away. And the truth is that I hugged him back, though not as tightly as he hugged me, and also, my right hand got tangled in his robe, making it hard for me to give him a full hug.

Did you see? he asked me when we’d disentangled and moved away from each other. Did you see me pull the Israel versus Aharoni case on him? He didn’t know what hit him.

I saw, I confirmed. And reluctantly mumbled: way to go.

Churchill put his hands on the back of his neck and said, yes, but what you saw is only one battle in a long war. And my defendant, he’s no sucker. He’s a powerful man. Rich. Connected. That’s why it’s so important to nail him. Because if he falls, it’ll make a real change. People will think twice before they take sexual bribes. They’ll say to themselves: if a big shark like him could fall, then perhaps we should be careful.

And then you’ll have exactly what you wanted, right?

What do you mean?

That was one of your World Cup wishes, to be responsible for the ruling on a big case, for something that would bring about social change.

Yes, that’s true, Churchill said in a tone that feigned deep thought, pretending he’d forgotten those World Cup wishes, never imagining that Ya’ara had told me that he hadn’t forgotten them for a minute.

Tell me, he suddenly wondered, why did you actually come here?

We’re getting together this Thursday at Amichai’s place to talk about his NPO.

So?

So, do the right thing, come round, even for half an hour. It’s really important to him.

I don’t have half an hour, if you can believe it? I don’t even have a quarter of an hour.

A sudden sunbeam that emerged from between the clouds sliced through the large window and hit him directly in the eyes, and he shaded them so he wouldn’t be blinded.

You don’t have a quarter of an hour for your friend? I persisted.

He lowered his hands from his eyes and put them on his waist. Then dropped them to his sides. Then put them back on his waist.

I’ll tell you the truth, Freed. Doctors in hospitals may not be saints, but they do sacred work. And who are we to trip them up? Anyway, I’m not too keen on that whole NPO thing. I think … there’s something fucked up about it. The things you’re talking about, they’re things that, in a properly run country, the public institutions should be handling. So why should a private organisation take on the responsibility? It just perpetuates the existing distortions.

Properly run, improperly run, what does it matter?! I wanted to shout. Your friend needs you!! Aren’t you the one who, right before we were drafted, got us to sign forms — funny ones, written in a mishmash of legal jargon and football-fan language — that we promised to stay friends in the army and do whatever it took to see each other. To talk. And to write as often as we could. So what happened? When did you change your mind?

Before I could ask, Churchill said he had to go back to the courtroom now. And we’d talk in the evening.

*

I waited for his call that night the way you wait for a call from a girl. I put the phone close to me so that, God forbid, I wouldn’t miss it. I took the phone with me to the shower. And the toilet. And my bed.

But the call — never came.

*

So we met without Churchill. First, once every two weeks, and then, when things started getting on track, once a week, in Amichai’s living room. Across from the large picture of Ilana.

Every now and then, Amichai’s attention would wander and he’d stare at her picture for a long time. We would keep on talking and wait for him to rejoin the conversation when he was ready.

Every once in a while, Ofir and I would also look up at the picture for Ilana’s approval of one decision or another that we’d taken.

As a start, we gave the organisation a name: Our Right (Ofir suggested more provocative names like Antidoctor or It’s My Body, but we decided, with Ilana’s silent support, to go with a positive approach).

Then we wrote a brief description: the non-profit organisation to advance human rights in the health system.

And after several surprise visits to hospitals and research on similar bodies abroad, we outlined the future structure of the organisation:

Mediating Arm — that will have a representative of the organisation present in accident and emergency departments throughout the country.

Educational Division — that will act to instil human rights principles among doctors and patients.

Legal Division — that will provide initial assistance to those whose rights have been infringed.

Amichai suggested adding a Doctors’ Rights Division to those three. All the problems stem from the fact that doctors work inhuman shifts, he claimed. You can’t expect a person who slept one hour at night to preserve the patient’s human rights.

Ofir objected strongly to the new division. It blurs our message, he said. People don’t have the ability to absorb more than one message in a campaign. And if we try to convey more, no one will understand what we actually want.

Why do you call it a campaign, it’s not a campaign at all, Amichai said angrily. Drop the ad-man shtick. We’re not trying to sell Coke here.

It doesn’t matter, Ofir insisted. You can’t, you just can’t cover all the issues in the world. Why don’t we set up a special division for women’s rights and a special division for controlling prices in hospital cafeterias?

*

They kept that argument going for a whole week and, because of it, cancelled their weekly squash game for the first time ever.

Every Tuesday night at ten, they would sweat rivers on the number two court of the university’s sports centre, smashing the small black ball against the wall, against the glass, hurrying, their soles squealing, to get at it before it bounced twice, bumping into each other accidentally, or deliberately.

Then they would sit in the upholstered stands that looked down on the courts, drink water (Ofir) and chocolate milk from the vending machine (Amichai), watch the female students coming back from their aerobics class, and argue about which one looked hot.

Argue about whether it was better to rent on property or buy one.

Argue about whether jogging on tarmac damaged their feet or not.

Argue about whether the name of the boy who was abducted once by the ultra-Orthodox was Yoss’ele Shumacher or Yoss’ele Tzurbacher.

Amichai and Ofir never agreed on anything, ever. And even if at a certain moment in a conversation, there was, God forbid, the chance they might agree, one of them would immediately harden his position so there would be tension. When I first met them, I thought it was a matter of time before those endless arguments destroyed their friendship, but as the years passed, I began to understand that those arguments were exactly what held them together, and when Ilana died, Amichai asked his brother to call Ofir first, and that says a lot, because the decision about who to call first after a very happy or terribly sad event comes from your gut, not your mind. You call the person you feel closest to, your best friend, and that was what Amichai must have felt towards Ofir, perhaps because they had those weekly squash games of theirs, which allowed them to be as nasty as they wanted to each other, no explanations needed, to channel all the tension that had built up between them into scoring points, into winning, into the satisfaction you get from beating a person who has something basic that lights a fire under you.

Over the years, those Tuesday squash games managed to survive everything — even the time when Ofir, back from India, announced that he wouldn’t play for points any more because competitiveness is the mother of all sin, and also the time when Amichai lost on purpose as another way of punishing himself after Ilana’s death.

And now it was that petty argument about the Doctors’ Rights Division that suspended the institution we had all been sure would last for ever.

Without the squash, there was no place where they could vent their anger at each other. And from one meeting about the organisation to the next, their tone grew sharper, closer to the one they had used with each other before Ofir had donned his sharwals.

In the end, they deteriorated to the lowest point of any argument: historical generalisations.

That’s always been your problem, Amichai said. Everything with you has to be black or white.

No, that was always your problem, Ofir countered. You always have to insert something way out in your ideas so they can’t be put into action.

I listened to them sorrowfully. I knew that if it continued that way, our NPO would fall apart even before it was established. And then there would be nothing to keep Amichai from falling apart.

I didn’t know what to do. Usually, Churchill would get them out of those skirmishes: he’d quieten them down, sometimes reprimand them, and they would retreat to their corners of the ring till the next round. But Churchill was busy and there was no one to stop their mad dash down the slippery slope of anger and resentment.

I have an idea, I said after another bitter argument about the Doctors’ Rights Division ended with Amichai going out to the open balcony to work on the Titanic puzzle and Ofir putting his papers into his briefcase and threatening to leave.

They both looked at me unenthusiastically.

What do you sa-a-a-y … — I tried to stretch out the time in the hope I’d get an idea — What do you say about instead of having a Doctors’ Rights Division, we have a Doctors’ Rights Unit.

What do you mean? they asked together. My suggestion was so vague that there was no way to explain it except by repeating it with nicer phrasing.

I mean … that alongside the three main arms, there’ll be a smaller, secondary unit to handle doctors’ problems.

Ofir put his briefcase on the floor. Amichai came back from the balcony into the living room, but remained standing.

I think I can live with that for the time being, Ofir said without looking up from his briefcase.

Look, it’s not ideal … Amichai said tentatively.

Think of it as just a declaration of intention, I encouraged them. Things will still change when the organisation is actually established.

OK, if it’s just a declaration of intention, he said.

*

After that huge hurdle had been removed from the agenda, the way to finishing the presentation was open. At the same time, we gave Ya’ara the green light to arrange meetings with potential donors.

At her suggestion, we limited our search at the start to people who might have a personal connection to the subject: someone with a relative who recently died of a disease or, even better, someone who personally suffered from an infringement of his rights or from medical negligence. It wasn’t easy to find people among the wealthy of Miami who fitted that description. Most of them had private doctors who had extended their lives and those of their relatives time and time again. Another difficulty we faced was Amichai’s restriction: a potential donor had to be someone who occasionally visited Israel, because as much as he might like to, he couldn’t go abroad with the presentation and leave his children here, without their father.

In the end, with massive help from her father, Ya’ara succeeded in arranging a month of appointments for us around Passover time.

On the phone, she dictated to me the names of the hotels and the exact dates, and when she finished, she said, don’t get your hopes up too high. Those people didn’t become millionaires because they spread their money around, you know.

Still, I said, you did a great job organising this.

I think that what you’re all doing to help Amichai is very … moving. The way you’re helping him to keep busy.

Honestly, I admitted, it’s fun. Since our high school graduation play, we haven’t done anything together but watch football. And there’s something … bonding about it. You should see Ofir. The way he enjoys sitting with us, thinking, creating. You can see how much he misses it. It’s just a shame that Churchill …

Yes, I think it’s a shame too, she agreed.

How much longer will that trial of his go on? I asked. Isn’t it supposed to be over already?

Are you joking? she said. Only on TV do trials start and end in the same episode. It’s not like that in real life. Even so, she added, I don’t think it’s right that he’s not helping you. I told him I don’t buy all that crap about ‘a well-run country’.

And what did he say?

I’m not sure he was even listening. He’s so preoccupied with that trial. He works every day till midnight, and there are nights when he sleeps in his office so he doesn’t have to waste time going back and forth.

So how do you manage to fall asleep? I asked. I remembered that she hated sleeping alone. A week after we started dating, she was already sleeping at my place regularly because there were ‘noises’ in her apartment.

I don’t, she said. I get up ten times a night to check whether there’s a burglar. I keep a canister of pepper spray under my pillow, but that just stresses me out even more. Sometimes I fall asleep for half an hour or an hour. And then I have nightmares that …

Someone is chasing you down the street with a huge kitchen knife and your shoes aren’t right for running. You try to take them off while you run, but you can’t, so you try to turn yourself into a rabbit so you can move faster, but you can’t, and then, when he catches up to you …

I wake up. I can’t believe you remember that.

(I haven’t forgotten anything, I thought. Not your nightmares and not that, under your expensive skirts, you wear plain knickers you buy in the open-air market, and not how horny you are the day before your period, and not that you turn off the alarm clock three times before you get up, and not that you think that your bum is a bit too big, but there’s no way you’ll diet because you don’t have the self-control it takes, and not that you’re jealous of your older brother who, for some reason, you think is cleverer than you, and not that you feel a bit agitated when you don’t manage to come, and not the way your eyebrows contract when you’re listening hard, and not the special way you say the word l-o-o-ve, and not that the only time a producer, your brother’s friend, made you a concrete offer to be the director’s assistant on a play, you declined, saying that the play didn’t interest you, and not that, hidden under your self-confidence is a lack of self-confidence, and hidden under that lack of self-confidence is a hard core of conceit. I haven’t forgotten anything, Ya’ara, as hard as I’ve tried.)

It’s hard to forget, I said, when someone wakes you up in the middle of the night twice a week to tell you the same story every time.

Incredible. I’ve been stuck with that dream since I was twelve. So many things have happened to me since then, and only that stays constant.

Like a loyal friend.

Exactly. You know, you’re one of the only people in the world who knows that I’m afraid to sleep alone.

Why, are you ashamed of it?

Yes. Anyway, people don’t believe me. It doesn’t fit with the image I project. Admit that you were surprised the first time I told you about it.

Yes, but there’s something so appealing about that contradiction … between the way you are during the day … and at night … All the contradictions about you are appealing …

It’s nice of you to think that.

Nice is a word you can use on your sister.

I don’t have a sister.

Shame. She could come to sleep with you.

Bastard.

*

The last, arrogant words of that dialogue were never spoken. I have a tendency to make myself sound overly clever when I recreate conversations with Ya’ara. But in fact, we all rewrite our lives when we tell them to ourselves, don’t we? Besides, those lines that I made up aren’t very far from the truth. Ya’ara and I really did talk a lot during that period. Amichai and Ofir appointed me liaison with her. I protested mildly, but they insisted, claiming that she had a weakness for me. Perhaps guilty feelings. In any case, it was worth exploiting for the good of the organisation.

There was always a legitimate excuse for her night-time phone calls: an update on the changed time of an appointment. Inside information on a donor that we should keep in mind when preparing the presentation for him (this guy’s a right-winger, that one’s a left-winger. This one has a weakness for the Russian immigration, and that one is interested in the Ethiopians. This one has a heavy Texas accent that’s very hard to understand, and that one, who insists on meeting in Jerusalem, is used to having people agree with everything he says and show enthusiasm for every idea he has, so it isn’t enough to say ‘of course’ after his every remark, say ‘absolutely!’).

Great, that’s important to know, good work, I would say to Ya’ara, and write down all those tips in the organisation notebook — and then we’d slip into talking about other things.

Like in the past, I’d tell her about interesting articles I was translating (for example, an article claiming that four times more women suffer from depression than men because they have a different brain structure from men). And, like she used to, she would offer subversive interpretations of the research data (different brain structures? Bullshit. Men just aren’t willing to admit that they’re depressed. Not to themselves and definitely not to the researchers).

Like in the past, she would tell me about especially grotesque moments that occurred during business meetings she attended as her father’s constantly reprimanded assistant. (‘And then the marketing vice-president, who’d said five minutes before that he strongly objected to that strategy, began to explain why it was inevitable’, or ‘You wouldn’t believe it, we’ve been sitting for three days with the management consultant to create a vision for our company. What’s the deal? Everyone knows that the only vision is for my father to make more money.’)

As in the past, I believed her with all my heart when she said that working for her father was only temporary, till she gathered the courage and ninety-one thousand dollars and did what she truly wanted to do: go to London.

Unlike in the past, I didn’t stop the conversation every five minutes to tell her how much I loved her. And how magical she was. The fact that everything was taking place on the phone, and the fact that she was married to my friend, enabled me to keep a proper distance between us, the kind that would let me tease her. Mock her. Even be slightly disappointed by her.

I hated those conversations with her. And so looked forward to them.

And I took out her sock over and over again from where it was hidden in the closet.

*

The first presentation of the Our Right non-profit organisation was in the Hilton Hotel. A small surprise was waiting for us at the entrance. The security guard who checked our briefcases was none other than Yoram Mendelsohn, the school genius. In the ninth grade, they promoted him to the tenth. And in the middle of junior year, he disappeared and they said that he had moved to Jerusalem with his family and joined a secret national programme to train the country’s future scientists. We all knew that one day, he’d win a Nobel –

And now he was standing in front of us at the entrance to the Hilton with a wispy moustache, asking if we had any weapons.

Mendelsohn! Yoram Mendelsohn!!! we said happily, but he kept his expression blank and scanned us with his wand.

What are you doing here, Mendelsohn? Ofir asked.

Working, he answered curtly.

But … aren’t you supposed to be at … the Weizmann Institute or something like that?

I quit. They wouldn’t let me keep working on my research.

They wouldn’t let you? Why not?

They said it wasn’t practical, he said with contempt. It was so predictable that they’d say something like that.

Predictible?

If I prove what I set out to prove, it would undermine everything they believe in. All their axioms. People are very attached to their axioms, you know.

What exactly are you trying to prove?

It’s complicated. I’ve been working on it for three years already. That’s why I took the job here, because it’s mindless and doesn’t interfere with my thinking.

About what? What do you have to think about?

Sorry, I’m keeping that to myself, for the moment.

OK, we won’t press you. Even though … we’d very

much like to hear.

I’m really sorry, Yoram Mendelsohn said with a shrug, and we took our briefcases from him and were about to walk into the hotel, but as we took the first step, he suddenly began to speak.

OK … if you’re so interested … I’m trying to build a physical, mathematical model that will explain reincarnation.

Reincarnation?

Look — he ran a finger across his moustache as if he were wiping milk off it — the separation between the world of life and the world of death is an axiom that the Western world accepts. But think about how much death is an inseparable part of life in this country, for example. So why can’t life also be a part of death? Not to mention that reincarnation is an accepted concept in many places in the world. And here too, if you go to the Druze village of Dalit-al-Carmel, they’ll tell you stories … that will make your neurons jump.

And in India … Ofir began to say.

Not only in India, Yoram Mendelsohn interrupted him, everywhere in the world people report on reincarnation, and to this day, no scientist has ever tried to deal with that scientifically and thoroughly. Don’t you think that’s suspicious?

It’s more than suspicious, it’s a conspiracy, I said, looking at my watch to signal that we were in a hurry.

So you’re still friends, Yoram Mendelsohn said, looking slowly at the three of us (whenever we met people we went to high school with, they always had the same surprised-envious expression when they saw that we had remained friends after so many years), good for you. I don’t have friends. I had some at the Institute, but the minute I started talking about reincarnation, they kept their distance from me as if I were a leper.

Well, that’s how it is with work friends, Ofir said.

Don’t worry, Amichai said, putting his hand on Yoram Mendelsohn’s shoulder, you’ll have other friends.

And if you don’t have friends now, then maybe in your next life, I said.

Yoram Mendelsohn was quiet for a moment, as if he were going to feel hurt, but then he let out the wild, uncontrollable, hiccupping laugh of a seventeen-year-old.

We said goodbye to him with a promise to ‘get together sometime’ and went into the lobby.

A young man in an old man’s tie came over to us and told us in English to wait a few minutes till Mr Eisenman called us up to his conference room.

Eisenman?! There must be … a mistake … I said. We’re supposed to meet with Mr Goldman (likes young girls. Likes nightclubs. Is looking for passion in the eyes of the person proposing a social project, so it’s a good idea to use the words passion or passionate or passionately in every sentence during the presentation).

Sorry, but there’s no mistake, sir, the guy in the tie said in a forgiving tone, Mr Eisenman will meet with you to hear your proposal, and only then will he recommend to Mr Goldman whether to consider it.

OK, sir. Of course, sir. Absolutely.

*

We sat down in the armchairs that overlooked the sea. Soft carpets throbbed under our feet. A Japanese waitress asked us in Hebrew what we’d like to drink. A mix of foreign languages surrounded us on all sides. English, French, German, Russian.

Don’t you think that what people say in a foreign language sounds more intelligent? Ofir asked.

I smiled, but Amichai didn’t. He was looking out of the window at a flock of birds approaching us. Perhaps he was thinking about the possibility that Ilana’s soul had reincarnated into one of those birds, and now she was flying towards us to wish us good luck. And perhaps he wanted to join the flock and fly as far away as he could from his own life.

It’s unbelievable that of all the places in the world, people decide of their own free will to spend their holidays in this ugly city, Ofir said, and neither of us had the strength to answer him any more. Amichai kept watching the birds, and I was picturing the luxurious chandeliers over our heads falling from the ceiling and crushing us. I was almost sinking into my why-not-end-it-all mood again when the guy in the tie suddenly appeared and said that Mr Eisenman was waiting for us.

*

You can call me Ron, he said when the meeting began.

None of us dared to call him Ron then, not during the rest of the meeting either, but even so, everything went beautifully. First, Amichai spoke a few words. Then Ofir continued with the PowerPoint presentation, elegantly interspersing illuminating examples from his personal experience and from the newspapers. I watched him from the side. His curls were bristling, his eyes were shining with an inventor’s glow and the suit he was wearing, I had to admit, looked a lot better on him than the traditional sharwal.

When he finished, I took over for the last stage of the presentation: Mr Eisenman asked questions, expressed a few reservations, and I replied. I could see that he was very impressed with my English. In general, I had a strong feeling that he was taken with our idea.

Look, he said when we’d finished, I think your idea is important. And I’m impressed by the fact that you’re so committed to it. It warms my heart to see that there are young people with a vision in Israel, and I have no doubt that it’s important to support this kind of project.

*

Two hours later, he called Ya’ara and told her that he’d decided not to recommend us to his boss.

But how can that be? we cried. He was so …

American, Ya’ara said knowingly. They have a completely different way of communicating. With them, yes is no and no is perhaps. And even that isn’t a rule you can always rely on.

So what now? we asked.

The next meeting is the day after tomorrow. Do what you can to improve the presentation. And pray that it works.

We did what she said. We added a biblical verse to the top of every page to show that our idea was firmly grounded in Judaism and its values. We took a home-video camera to the shopping centre next to the hospital and interviewed people about the treatment they’d received. We put two of those testimonies into the presentation and decided to use them if needed. We added the words ‘empowerment’ or ‘sustainability’ at least once to every slide, the way we’d seen it on the home pages of other human rights organisations in the US.

We also came to the conclusion that the division of labour among us at the first presentation was too stiff, and we practised a different division that would look more spontaneous.

And again we went to the Hilton. And again met Yoram Mendelsohn at the entrance (who told us that he’d had a huge breakthrough in his research, we’d all be hearing about it soon, and we’d be proud to know him).

And again the presentation went off without a hitch.

And two hours later, the donor told Ya’ara that he wasn’t interested.

Bastard, we hissed.

Who needs his money.

Did you see the way he looks? Like the Jews in those Nazi caricatures.

I hope the neo-Nazis take power in America. I’d like to see him then, looking for refuge here.

Hey guys, Ya’ara said, trying to cheer us up, you have a few more meetings. Don’t give up now.

We didn’t give up. Why should we give up? We kept wandering from hotel to hotel, from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, hearing ‘no’ over and over again. Like mice in a maze that get slapped down time after time, at some point we even stopped trying to understand why we were failing. And we continued to go to meetings at Amichai’s place simply because we were afraid to leave him alone.

What’s he like? we asked Ya’ara tiredly before the last meeting.

Who?

The one we’re supposed to meet the day after tomorrow.

He’s … Ya’ara stammered, he’s … not easy. He hasn’t contributed a single cent to anyone for thirty years. Since his wife died last year, he’s been liquidating his businesses one by one. He only agreed to see you as a personal favour to my father. But Dad made it pretty clear that we shouldn’t count on him. That’s why I scheduled him last.

*

The day before the final presentation, Amichai called me. It’s Noam, he panted into the phone, I can’t find him. He didn’t come home from school … he told Nimrod he was staying in the library to do his homework, but the librarian says he wasn’t there at all.

Have you called the police?

They say not enough time has passed for them to start looking. But meanwhile … I have no idea where he is … and he’s only a kid … a little boy …

I’ll be there in five minutes, I said, alarmed. And called Ofir.

*

On the way to Amichai’s, I tried to think about where, where could a little boy be? When I was his age, I always wanted to run away from home. My mother had a miscarriage then, I think. To this day, I’m not sure. But for a few months, they talked to me about the new little sister I was going to have, who’d be ‘like a friend to me’ — and then, all of a sudden, my mother was taken to the hospital because of a ‘throat infection’, and when she came back, the little sister wasn’t mentioned any more.

My mother then became engrossed in arranging the collection of photos of the royal family she’d inherited from her mother and kept adding to it in Israel, with the help of subscriptions to magazines like Royal Romances or Monarchy at Work.

My father vanished into his proofs.

As for me, I was a child and didn’t understand anything. I just felt that there was no oxygen at home, especially when my parents were both there together. And that even Queen Elizabeth, whose picture hung on the living room wall, looked as if she wanted to step out of it and escape back to England.

I wanted to run away too. I even picked a place to run to: the playground on Einstein Street. And I made up an imaginary friend named Ofir (that was his name, as if I were prophesising) so I wouldn’t be all alone when I ran away. But at first, Ofir wouldn’t come with me, and by the time I persuaded him, the courage to pack a bag, go out of the front door and hide in the space under the roundabout as I’d planned had trickled away — so instead, I had my first asthma attack.

*

Is there a playground around here? I asked Amichai when I got there.

A playground? In the middle of Tel Aviv? There’s only one, on Carmiya Street, but that’s far from here. And Noam has never been there.

So let’s start searching the area near his school, I suggested.

I’ve already done that, Amichai said impatiently. His hands were shaking. His hair was in a panic.

Let’s do it again, I insisted. Now there are two of us. And Ofir will be here. It’s completely different when you search in a group.

During the long minute we waited for Ofir, Amichai laced his fingers on his stomach and fell into a tense silence. I remembered that one night, when Ilana was still alive, I babysat the twins and Noam woke up. I was sitting in the living room watching a replay of the league championship game when all of a sudden a little person in pyjamas was suddenly walking towards me in small steps. Hi, Noamon, why’d you wake up? There’s a lion in our room, Uncle Yuval, he said in a pretty calm voice. You dreamed there’s a lion in your room? I said, trying to dilute his fear. No, I didn’t dream it, he insisted, there really is a lion in our room. Come and see. OK, I said, and went into the children’s room. I took a quick glance inside, then turned and said, I think it’s already gone, the lion that was here. No, it’s not gone, Noam said, shaking his head. You just can’t see it because it’s black. Black? Yes, that’s the special camouflage colour it has so nobody can see it in the dark. Then maybe we’ll turn on the light and it’ll leave? I suggested. No, Noam said, scolding me. We can’t do that, Uncle Yuval. We’ll wake up Nimrod. Every little thing wakes him up. So what do you suggest we do? I asked, stroking his head. I have an idea! he said — with the same intonation his father had — maybe I can watch some football with you? No problem, I said, and made room for him on the sofa. He climbed up and sat down next to me, and after a few minutes of watching the game, his head dropped onto my right thigh, and a few minutes after that, I carried him back to his bed. How light he was in my arms, I remembered as Ofir got out of his car and walked worriedly towards us. How soft his pyjamas were.

*

An hour later, the university called. It seems that Noam took a bus to Ramat Aviv, got off at the right stop, passed the security check, went into the psychology building, walked up to the third floor and knocked on the door to what used to be Ilana’s office.

It seems that somehow he still harboured the suspicion that his mother was at work. That she just hadn’t come home from the office.

It seems that this is a common phenomenon. Think about how much we adults refuse to recognise death, explained the psychologist who put him back in our arms. It’s totally normal for each of the twins to react differently to loss, she said. Each one has probably developed his own way of coping as a reaction to the other’s.

She offered these analyses to me and Ofir. Amichai was too agitated to listen to her. He was hugging and stroking Noam as if checking to see that all his limbs were in place, and he kept repeating the same words over and over again.

My little boy. My little boy. My little boy.

On the way back to the city, Amichai asked me to drive. He sat in the back kissing Noam on the cheek and the forehead, on the cheek and the forehead, saying, you and your brother are all I have left, all I have left are you and your brother, we’re all that’s left.

*

I tried not to listen. The longer he kept talking, the less air I had in my lungs. And I thought, it’s a good thing this is a relatively short journey, otherwise I’d have an attack.

When we reached their place, he said he was sorry, but he didn’t think he’d come to the presentation tomorrow. It was too much for him.

Ofir said that if he didn’t come, there was no point in having the meeting. Even if you just sit there without saying a word, Ofir tried to convince him gently, it would be OK. And I added that tomorrow was that American’s last day in the country. And that if we cancelled the meeting, we’d blow our last chance to get funding.

I don’t know, Amichai said. I don’t know if I can.

But I insisted, amazed at myself for doing so — where does all that determination come from? Ofir I could understand. That NPO had come along just in time for him, a minute before his flat feet started bothering him there, in Michmoret. But me? Since when had I become emotionally involved in the project?

You remember what you asked us at the beginning, I heard myself say. That we shouldn’t let you give up?

Yes, Ofir joined in. This is not the time to retreat, Amichai. It goes against the flow.