World Cup Wishes

11

I KNOW IT sounds unbelievable. Almost too pat. What are the chances that Ya’ara would speak exactly the same lines I’d given her in my fantasies. But that is what she said. Word for word. And as we began walking in the street together, I really did start to wonder if what was happening now was really happening or whether it was taking place in a sort of purgatory between reality and imagination that you reach if you hang on to a false wish for a long enough time. Like Churchill after he drank the San Pedro, I urgently needed a human sign, someone I could call twelve times a minute, and he would come and assure me again each time that it was all real, tangible. But I could find no such sign, so I continued walking beside Ya’ara, struck mute by the fatefulness of it all, till we reached Hagilboa Street.

We walked side by side along the brick-paved path that wound around the houses, inhaling the different air that street has, our gazes wandering to the soft balconies, the tranquil trees, the cars that only here looked as if they were anchored in a safe harbour, while in the rest of the city they looked like ships that had crashed onto pavement reefs.

Ya’ara had shown me Hagilboa Street when we first began going out, and we used to escape there from time to time when we felt life closing in on us. We’d sit next to an adjoining stone backgammon table and stone chess table, and instead of the game pieces moving around on them, leaves jumped from square to square at the whim of the wind, ignoring the rules of the game.

Now too, we sat down on opposite sides of the chess table and she reached out over the black and white squares, took my hands and said, I thought you’d be happy.

I am.

You don’t look happy.

I’m absorbing it.

Good. So tell me when you’re finished.

She leaned back and inhaled the scent of the canopy of honeysuckle. She took off her glasses, cleaned them with the edge of her shirt and put them back on. For a long minute, she made a show of watching an old man walking slowly down the street, but in the end, she couldn’t carry it off.

I know what you’re thinking.

What am I thinking?

That I want to get back at Yoav. That I’m angry with him for that Keren and I’m not thinking clearly, and that when I calm down, I’ll change my mind again. But that’s not true. It’s just not true!

Her collar bone rose and fell with emotion as she spoke. I knew that lips brushing lightly across it excited her.

So what is the truth? I asked, already protesting less.

She reached over and took my hands again. Her touch was her touch.

Truthfully, it was never good with Yoav. It was interesting, it was annoying, but never good. I wasn’t happy. And it wasn’t only because of his infidelities … OK, they probably helped … but even without them … I never had a moment’s peace with him. We argued all the time. Not about major issues, but about stupid little things. And that’s … exhausting. Every argument like that injects more poison into your blood, until you …

She coughed lightly, as if the poison she was talking about was real and now it was burning her throat.

A phone rang in the ground floor flat of the building we were sitting near.

I don’t want to cry any more, Ya’ara said. I cried too many times this last year. And I felt lonely too many times. And unwanted. I felt that our house was a prison too many times. And I lay beside him in bed and couldn’t fall asleep too many times. And that’s not how it should be. Love should be a good thing, right?

I nodded hesitantly. What did I know about love?

When I was with you, she went on, there was a kind of flow between us … a harmony. I remember our Saturdays together … When evening came, I didn’t know where the time had gone. You remember those Saturdays?

(Her tanned, naked body on my bed. Her glasses open on the bedside table. A newspaper left on the bed, the edge of the page touching her foot. The ends of her unruly caramel-coloured hair curled on her cheek like a garnish. The smell of a freshly baked roll rising from her drowsy body. And I am lying beside her with my eyes wide open, thinking: you have to stop. You have to stop being afraid and wanting her to leave you.)

And the sex between us was so good, Ya’ara continued. I’ve never had such good sex with anyone.

So why did you leave, Ya’ara? If everything was so great, why did you leave? I asked in a hoarse voice and remembered that terrible conversation. She’d said she needed time to think. It’s taken her three years to think?

The phone in the nearby flat rang. And rang.

Ya’ara stood up, walked around the table and sat down next to me.

Hug me, she said in the voice of a little girl with white sandals and pigtails.

I hugged her.

Tighter, she said, till it hurts.

I hugged tighter, but not so much that it hurt. I couldn’t hurt her. Not her.

I’m fucked up, she said. Something basic is wrong with me. Her body trembled in my arms.

We’re all fucked up just because we’re human beings, I told her, just as I’d once told Ofir.

But I’m more so, she said. You don’t understand … except for you, all the men I’ve been with have always treated me badly … There must be something in me that asks to be treated that way. That wants it.

I remembered all the times I was even slightly mean to her — I teased her, moved a sweet out of her reach, refused to tell her my World Cup wishes — and how much she loved it.

But I want to change, I want to break that pattern, she said, moving away from me slightly and giving me a serious, almost determined look. And I think I can! I’m sure I can!! she added, and for the second time in that conversation, she reminded me of Ofir — with him, when the exclamation marks began to appear at the end of his sentences, we knew he was unsure of himself.

Anyway, she said — as if she sensed my doubt — you’ve changed too.

Me? I said in surprise. (I still translate articles into English. Still eat an apple with a knife like my father. I’m still short. Still in love with you. Where’s the change?)

She unbuttoned the top button of my shirt, threaded her hand inside and began to play with the hair on my chest. First of all, I see you’ve grown some hair.

A little.

A little is good. Besides, when I helped you all with the NPO and we talked on the phone, you were different from before.

Different?

Rougher. More together. Three years have passed, you know. Things have happened in your life.

(After all those conversations when I sounded so rough, I would go and take your sock out of the closet. And I dated a girl just because she had your name. And every time you sat next to me at those meetings with the guys, I felt as if my insides wanted to fly out of my body to you, and there are whole parts of the city I avoid because they remind me of you, and I’ve had enough. Keep. Stroking. My. Chest. You know how much I love it. Nothing happened during those three years. Except you. I got up in the morning and met people and bought fruit for the weekend and raw tahini and new shirts and the only thing I felt was longing for you. The only reason you thought I was rougher and more together during our conversations is that they were on the phone. And I could be calm, cool and collected because you weren’t in the room with me and you had a ring on your finger, but now that you’re touching me, I can’t, keep doing it, keep doing it, everything’s on fire, and this is the only way I can love you, the only way. Perhaps I could love another woman differently, but with you, it will always be boundless, with you I melt, and yes, I’m beginning to understand that you might never save up ninety-one thousand dollars, and I’m beginning to realise that you make all those incisive comments about other people to hide the fact that you’re simply lazy and very much afraid of change, but now, as you unbutton another button on my shirt, all my good judgement and all my insights and all my caution melt into bubbling, liquid love, and that’s exactly what you couldn’t stand, that’s exactly what sets off the fucked-up part of you and will keep setting it off till you get up and leave me again and take that clean smell that makes me want to lick you and now I’m licking the inside of your ear and you abandon your neck to my lips and I kiss it and bite it gently the way you like it the way you liked it and you seek my lips and now we’re kissing and you taste of fake vanilla fake vanilla everything’s fake but so lovely so lovely and in another few seconds another few seconds less a second there will be no more words so perhaps I should use my last ounce of strength to stop and try to stop to say enough keep on doing it enough my God it’s too much perhaps —)

Stop.

Stop? Ya’ara said and moved away from me, surprised.

I want to tell you something. I have to tell you before …

So, come on, tell me, she said, moving away a little more, her neck flushed.

It’s not … What you said before … I haven’t changed … When it comes to you … I’m exactly the same.

So?

So maybe your expectations … are too high.

Maybe, Ya’ara said pensively.

And I immediately wanted to convince her of the opposite.

It could be that you’re right, but let’s leave that for later, she said and resumed stroking my chest. Now — she gave me that look over her glasses — my only expectation from you is another kiss like the last one. Is that expectation too high?

A Hollywood hero would have got up and left at that point, proving he was morally superior to the other characters in the movie and showing in no uncertain terms how much he had changed: from adolescence to maturity. From irresponsibility to responsibility. From being an idler living on the fringes of society to being a successful media tycoon.

But I’m too short to be a Hollywood hero anyway.

And I wanted to taste that vanilla on her lips again.

And after I tasted it one more time, I wanted to taste it again and again.

After we fooled around like that for half an hour beside the chessboard, I suggested that we go to my flat, and she reminded me that Churchill was there and took me to their place, which was three blocks from there, and on the way, we stopped twice and squeezed into the dark spaces between buildings to kiss, and I kissed her on the back of her neck just as I’d wanted to that day when we came back from Ilana’s shiva in Haifa, and she stood motionless and said that the waves of pleasure reached all the way to her big toe and she was probably going to be the first woman ever to come through her big toe.

*

Somehow, sex written in Hebrew always leaves the characters unsatisfied. As if something about our Jewishness will not allow us to let them enjoy it fully, or perhaps writers are afraid their descriptions will turn out pornographic, so they take it to the opposite extreme. And I might have done that too if it hadn’t been a lie.

It’s hard for me to go into detail. I’m not Churchill.

So I’ll make do with saying that the body is a wonderful thing. And in one night, two bodies can express such a wide range of feelings: regret, apology, despair, hope, hurt, pride, loneliness, abysmal loneliness, deep understanding, gratitude, and simple, pure joy. And revenge. And love.

Perhaps I’ll quote Ya’ara, who said later that now she knows for sure that I am the best she ever had. And if only all men were so intent on giving pleasure to the women with them.

And perhaps, having no choice, I’ll add that words can deceive, thoughts can drive you insane, but the body — the body knows. The morning after that night, we both knew there would never be another one like it. That I could never hurt her as she needed to be hurt without faking it, and even though she might want to believe that she could, the truth was that she couldn’t live more than a few hours with the unconditional love that I have to give. Because after a few hours, she begins to feel slightly annoyed. And tries to hide it. But with my sharp senses, I pick up that evasive look. And the shoulder growing colder. And that makes me insecure, makes me afraid that in another minute, I’ll lose her. And then I become even more unconditional. Love even more. I’m not like that with any other woman. Only with her. And she simply cannot accept it. Not from me. Not for very long. And I can’t live with insecurity for very long. That is our vicious circle. The circle that will always remain closed no matter how we spin it, trapping us inside until we have to break out of it. And escape.

*

The next morning, we devoured a huge meal, in silence.

I put on one of Churchill’s shirts (at the time, in my flat, he was probably wearing one of mine) and Ya’ara didn’t put on anything.

I forgot how you eat cornflakes, she said.

How?

Funny. Every spoonful you put in your mouth has barely one cornflake in it.

And I forgot how you eat cornflakes, I said.

How?

Funny. Every time you raise the spoon to your mouth, your right breast moves a little.

She raised the spoon to her mouth to check it out, and laughed. You’re right, she said.

After a brief silence, she said, I think we could really be a great couple.

I agree.

We could have such a great relationship. A healthy one.

With a lot of intimacy, but space for each of us to grow individually.

And good sex.

Great sex, I said. And reached out under the table and began sliding my hand between her legs.

She abruptly squeezed her knees together hard on my hand.

Ow! Ouch!! You broke my fingers!!! I pulled my hand away and waved it in the air as if it had been burned.

Let me see, she said, leaning across the table and taking my hand between hers. She kissed my knuckles, one by one. January, March, May, July.

Actually, why not? she asked. The eyes she fixed on me were innocent, but at the edge of her voice was a note of seriousness, as if she herself knew the answer but wanted my words to express her feelings.

Why not what? I asked, feigning innocence.

Come on, she said, dropping my hand impatiently.

Because if we were together, I said with a sigh, we’d have to be happy.

Happy? she said, backing away from the table dramatically. My God! Anything but that!

You see, I said.

And we both smiled a smile whose happiness stopped at our cheeks. And a drop of sadness dripped from it into the small delta between the two neck arteries.

I love you, she said, don’t you know that? She moved her chair closer to the table. And again took my hand with a kind of solemnity.

Yes, I said.

How?

Your body told me, I admitted.

And last night … Yuval … I’ll never forget it … It was … very special for me … I want you to know that, OK?

We kept eating our cornflakes, each in our own way, and then she spread some white cheese on black bread for me, and I told her that she was losing out if she didn’t taste the avocado salad I’d made.

You’re going back to your flat now? she asked.

Yes, I said. I have a translation to finish by tomorrow.

What’s the article about? Ya’ara folded one naked leg over the other. I suddenly noticed that her legs were short.

The title is ‘Back to the Future’, I said. Actually, it’s an abstract of a speech given a few years ago by the chairman of the Canadian Psychologists Association, Jeremiah Miller, at their annual conference. His thesis is that there’s an underlying struggle in modern psychology between the American school, which has an eye to the future, and the European school, which is focused on the past in a big way. When an American psychologist looks at a person, the first question he asks is: where does this person want to go? When the European psychologist looks at a person, his first question is: where has this person come from?

But they’re interconnected, aren’t they?

That’s exactly what Miller says. That you have to find the synthesis. More accurately, that the Canadians have to find it.

Why the Canadians?

He claims that the United States is a relatively young country with a short past, and there are large parts of its history — for example, what happened to the Indians — that it’s not interested in looking at. But he believes that the Europeans, on the other hand, cling to their glorious past and the days when they were the cultural centre of the Western world, and that’s why they find it difficult to look ahead. It turns out then, that only Canadians, in whom both cultures are combined, are free enough to offer a true synthesis.

A bit pretentious, don’t you think?

It sounds OK in English, somehow.

I don’t know, Ya’ara said and put her finger in her mouth to lick off the remains of avocado salad.

What don’t you know?

I’m with the Europeans. You can’t escape the past. Look at that idiot friend of yours. He acts just like his father. Last year, he and Michel even started looking alike. The same receding hairline. The same swaying walk he swore he’d never adopt. He talked so much about being different from his father and, in the end, he’s just following in his footsteps.

Determinism is the last refuge of …

The scoundrel. Ya’ara completed Churchill’s famous remark. And Australia was settled by prisoners expelled from England, I know. And yet …

She was silent. And so was I. I crumbled black bread. I crumbled the crumbs of black bread.

How is he, she said. There was no question mark at the end of her sentence, as if she wanted it to sound as casual as possible.

Shattered, I said, telling the truth.

Good, she said, her tone indifferent. But you could tell from her eyes that she cared.

Then I offered to wash the dishes, and she said, just leave them. So I dressed in my original clothes and put on my shoes the way I had taken them off, without untying the laces and, meanwhile, she went to the bedroom and came back with a plastic bag full of shirts for him and said, how long can he wear that stupid Berkovic shirt?

I thanked her in his name and took the bag. We hugged for a long time, a concluding hug, and I felt something different begin to swell in my chest, and I kissed her on the cheek and left. I walked lightly, almost floated down the street, feeling at least five centimetres taller, feeling that everything around me was tiny in comparison, that my life was going to be different from now on in a way I still couldn’t grasp. I didn’t know whether I felt that way because it was over, I was finally free of the hope that had taken over my life since the last World Cup, the hope that one day, against all odds, the three Ya’ara-wishes I’d written down would come true, or that I felt that way because my body was simply happy about the night it had enjoyed with her body. Happiness that, by its very nature, would be brief.

As I walked happily, I thought about Major Kierkegaard, the melancholy Danish philosopher, and the night of his metamorphosis: on 19 April 1848, he spent a long, dramatic night falling in love with God again. The next morning, he wrote with intense emotion in his diary: ‘My whole being is changed. My reserve and self-isolation is broken — I must speak … Dear God, shed your grace on me!’

But what happened after that morning? Did the joy of inner clarity suffusing Kierkegaard last for more than a few hours? Did he formulate a coherent doctrine? Was he able to leave behind the melancholy nature he’d had since childhood? Reading his writings provides several answers to those questions, some of them contradictory.

Apparently, I summed up for myself, it will take a few days before I know what this euphoria means.

And so it was. A few days later, Ya’ara called and told me she was pregnant.