World Cup Wishes

2

IN THE FIRST picture on the right on my living room wall, Ofir and I are standing back to back, holding petrol hoses as if they were rifles. As if, in another minute, we’d take ten paces, turn around suddenly and start to duel. We’re both wearing petrol company uniforms and, in my case at least, it looks like a costume. The Carmel Mountains are in the background, but that’s not unusual: almost anywhere you take a picture in Haifa, the Carmel or the sea will be in the background.

A week after being discharged from the army, I started working with Ofir at his father’s petrol station. Ofir said it was considered ‘essential work’, and if we stuck with it for six months, we’d get a grant from the army. Besides — he tossed another reason at me — loads of women in red cars came to the station, and sometimes, if they liked the way you looked in your attendant’s uniform, they asked you to check other things besides oil and water. That’s how his father met his second wife. And the third. And, in fact, that’s how he met Ofir’s mother — when she came in to put air in her tyres.

After two weeks, we were fired in disgrace. Ofir’s father said we worked too slowly and talked too much. And work like that was for real men, not for the kind raised by their mother.

To tell the truth, I was relieved. The petrol fumes didn’t do my asthma any good. And the only woman with a red car who came into the station during those two weeks got pissed off with me for not cleaning her windscreen.

But Ofir took it hard. He said that what bothered him most was the army grant. He’d been counting on using it for his trip to Thailand, but I knew that the whole story of working in the petrol station was just an attempt, another attempt, to get closer to his father.

He never gave up on that. A year after the petrol station fiasco, he took all the money he’d saved for Thailand and invited his father on a man’s tour of eastern Turkey. He laid out the plan for me the night before they left: we’ll sleep in tents, cook in the field. Finally we’ll have the chance to really get to know each other!

The first worrying signs appeared at the airport. His father thought it wasn’t appropriate to board a plane wearing jeans torn at the knees. Ofir said he didn’t get it, why people feel the need to dress up for a flight. You know what, do what you want, his father grumbled, but I want you to know that your trousers are a personal insult to me. Ofir went into the bathroom and changed, consoling himself with the thought that all beginnings are hard. But later on, when they started their trip through the mountains, things just got worse. Ofir’s father didn’t understand why they needed such long breaks that disrupted their walking, and Ofir thought that those moments, when you take off your rucksack and you sit back and enjoy the scenery while the wind cools the sweat on your back, were the best moments of the trip. You know what, his father said, we’ll take turns deciding when the break is over. Great, Ofir said, thinking that at long last it was starting to happen. But later, when they went down to the city to buy supplies, the problems began again. His father didn’t understand how you could walk around a new city without a map. Ofir thought that all the magic was in walking around a new city without a map, without knowing where you’re going, just walking around and absorbing the sounds, the smells, the colours. You know what, if I’m getting in the way of your ‘absorbing’, then carry on without me, his father grumbled, and after a week of petty arguments, Ofir’s nerves were frayed, so he said, you know what, Dad, that’s exactly what I’m going to do, and they spent the last day of their trip, in Istanbul, apart.

They didn’t go to the airport together either, because Ofir wanted to take a taxi and his father said that his mother always spoiled him, and that a taxi was a waste of money, and Ofir said it was his money and he’d decide what to do with it. And it continued like that on the plane — insult, silence, insult, silence — till Ofir’s father got up and moved to another seat.

But even the failure of the trip, however much it hurt, didn’t break Ofir. After a short recovery period, he tried again, armed with a new insight: the mistake on the trip was — he explained to me — that I tried to force my father to do things with me that I like to do. Tomorrow I’m buying a model aeroplane and on Saturday morning, I’ll join him down below, you know, on Freud Street.

Every Saturday morning, in an open field at the entrance to the city (where today, a retail park has blossomed), fathers and sons would get together to fly model aeroplanes. When Ofir was a boy, and his father was still married to his mother, his father asked him to go there with him a few times. But Ofir would always want to stay at home with his mother and play Scrabble, and later too, when the third wife had already given birth to two girls, Ofir’s father continued to go down to the open field, alone, to fly his model plane, alone, and heard the cries of excitement coming from children who were not his.

That would be an amazing way to close the circle, Ofir told me. I’m not even planning to tell him I’m coming, so it’ll be a complete surprise. It’s a great idea, don’t you think?

Definitely, I said supportively. I wondered why he was always the one to make the attempts to get closer, but his enthusiasm was so innocent, so touching, that I was carried away by it. And I hoped for him.

You should have seen my father’s face when he saw me walking over with the model plane, Ofir said emotionally when he called me on Saturday night.

He was surprised?

Shocked.

And how was it later?

Later?

With the planes?

Good … it … there was a small collision between my plane and his, which is worth ten thousand shekels. And they both crashed onto the road. Then he said that perhaps I’d better leave. He didn’t need me to help him pick up the pieces. But I’m telling you, the expression on his face … when he saw me coming … he said he appreciated it. He said he appreciated it very much. And this morning I had a great idea. A fantastic idea. You know, they opened a new petrol station across the street from his, and they’re stealing his customers. That’s a classic problem that advertising can solve. I talked with the art department in our office and they volunteered to do everything, free of charge. I’m telling you, in another month, I’ll be in his office with a campaign that’ll bring back his old customers and get him a lot of new ones too!

Ofir mustered all the creative talent he had and worked for a month and a half preparing that winning campaign for his father’s petrol station, including stickers, posters, flyers and banners, but a day before the formal presentation –

His father had terrible pain in his lower jaw, asked his secretary to make a dentist’s appointment for him, and an hour later, collapsed on his office carpet and died.

A heart attack.

If he’d had a subscription to Telemed, we might have been able to save him, Amichai whispered to me at the funeral.

And Ofir was left to glide like a model aeroplane over the chasm that had always existed between him and his father, doomed to wonder whether the great campaign might have succeeded where all other efforts had failed, and why did he need a campaign, dammit, why didn’t his father just love him?

*

When I reached the ward where Ofir was, the others were already there.

Churchill. And Amichai, holding a huge tape recorder, and Ilana the Weeper, and someone from the ad agency, talking on his mobile.

There was a pungent smell of chicken soup in the air. And on the TV, someone wearing a white apron was explaining how to make steak fillets in teriyaki sauce. My legs wouldn’t budge. Couldn’t move forward. Couldn’t move back. I was flooded with warm happiness at the sight of my friends, but along with it, the affront that had been growing in me over six months rose in my throat, as well as a feeling of cold, uncontrollable aversion towards Churchill.

Amichai took the initiative and came over to me with the huge tape recorder. Churchill, behind him, kept a safe distance.

His mother’s inside, Amichai explained. When she comes out, they’ll let us go in.

How is he? I asked, careful to look only at Amichai.

Looks like he’ll live, he replied.

But what … how … what does it mean, he had a breakdown?

Two months ago, they offered him a promotion at work. A managerial position. He didn’t want it. He told us a few times that he didn’t want to be a manager. That after working in eight different agencies in seven years, he finally came to the conclusion that all advertising does is manipulate people into buying things they don’t need, and if he doesn’t believe that what he does is important, then how can he persuade other people that it is?

OK, I said, swallowing my frustration at not having been a part of that whole process of trying to decide. So how did we get from that to …

That’s just it, Amichai said playing with the tape recorder buttons, it was a bit weird. Two weeks after non-stop talking about that whole manipulation business, he calls Churchill one day and says, hey man, congratulate me.

So I said, congratulations, Bro, Churchill continued — speaking to me for the first time, but not looking me in the eye — but it would be nice if you told me what for. And then he said to me, like he was really proud of himself, you’re speaking to the new creative director of Sheratzki-Shidlatzki.

That’s Ofir for you, I said.

Churchill and Amichai nodded in agreement.

Wait a minute, I said, so when did he have a breakdown? And what is a breakdown anyway? What does it mean?

In professional jargon, they call it ‘a psychotic episode’, Ilana the Weeper said. Almost five per cent of men in the United States experience breakdown at least once in their lives. And you have to remember that we’re talking about men here, so there are an awful lot more who don’t report it.

That’s actually your field, isn’t it? I said, turning to her. Her eyes lit up. A flush spread across her cheeks. I thought that even her breasts rose slightly.

Look, she said with quiet authority, there’s been a lot of pressure on Ofir recently. And when you add that to an unstable emotional make-up that stems from his childhood, it’s only logical that this would happen to him.

Of course, we all agreed. Except I saw that Churchill was actually taking a breath to object, and I knew exactly what he was going to say, that ‘every petty criminal blames childhood abuse for his actions, and that’s how determinism has become the last refuge of every bad guy, and if you take Australia, for example, which was settled by prisoners and the children of prisoners, then contrary to what you would expect based on the deterministic theory, crime rates are actually lower than the average —’

But he held back on his usual rant and let her keep talking.

The good news, she said, is that the kind of breakdown Ofir had is over in most cases after only a few days of rest. There’s no reason it should be any different with him.

Ofir’s mother came out of his room, straight over to me, to me, of all people. A year ago, after years of working as a medical secretary, she decided to take a course in facilitation. The man she was living with tried to put her down, he laughed at her, claimed there was no point in starting something new at her age, and there were no jobs to be had in that field anyway. But she didn’t give up. Not even when she found out that the only course opening then was all the way in Tel Aviv. At Ofir’s request, I helped her make her way through the bureaucratic labyrinth of academia, and ever since, she has been particularly fond of me.

It was nice of you all to come, she said.

We’re worried about him, I said (how quickly you’re back to saying ‘we’, the thought flashed through my mind).

You can go in, she said. He’s waiting for you.

*

Ofir was lying in his bed, as white as the penalty spot in the eighteen-yard box. His feet, as flat and long as fins, were sticking out from the under the blanket. Those light-brown curls of his, which always made girls think he was a moshavnik who was going to inherit his parents’ farm, were drooping. There was a new sadness in his cheeks.

I bent down to hug him. The last time his bones had stabbed me like that was at his father’s funeral.

I’m a mess, he said when I let him go.

A little bit, I said and smiled.

Something in me is fucked up. Something basic in me is fucked up.

That’s crap, Amichai said.

Don’t be an arsehole, Churchill joined in.

We’re all a bit fucked up, aren’t we? I said. Just because we’re human beings.

I missed those remarks of yours, Ofir said and gave me a tired smile.

I missed you too, I said.

You know, he said quietly to me, you went a little too far. It’s OK to be angry with us, but six months?

I nodded in surrender.

It’s a shame you don’t really appreciate what you have, he continued rebuking me, and he seemed to be talking about himself too. It’s a real shame, because you have no idea … he said, and then, a second before he could finish that trademark sentence of his, he fell asleep.

There’s nothing new about people falling asleep while listening to other people talk. Once I myself fell asleep in the middle of lecture in the army on ‘Working in Parallel’, and because of that little doze, I was automatically kicked out of the officer training course, putting an end to the brilliant army career my father, and only my father, had predicted for me. But I never saw anyone fall asleep while his mouth was still forming words.

The nurse, a tall woman, skinny as a test tube, explained that he was exhausted. And that more than anything, he needed rest now.

Amichai put the tape recorder on the bedside table and asked her if it was OK for him to play something for Ofir.

I don’t think that’s a good idea, the nurse said, giving the tape recorder a hostile look.

Maybe just this once, Amichai pleaded. It’s something we put together especially for him. To cheer him up.

No, I’m sorry, the nurse stuck to her guns, it’s against hospital policy.

Amichai took the tape recorder off the table, looking very embittered. Perhaps that’s where the seed was planted for what, in less than two years, would turn him into a familiar face in every Israeli home. It’s hard to know.

But Ilana the Weeper and Churchill looked enormously relieved.

Only later, in the café in the hospital basement, did they explain what the nurse had saved us from. In a box he kept stored away in the house, Amichai had found an old tape recording of songs from our high school graduation play, and he had the idea that we’d all stand next to Ofir’s bed in the hospital and sing the ballad he’d written to the chemistry teacher to the tune of that year’s hit song, ‘Big in Japan’ (Oh, Shimon my man, tonight, Shimon my man, all right, Shimon my man, give me oxygen?).

We’ll do it after he’s discharged, I said (only because Ilana the Weeper was there and I didn’t feel comfortable laughing at the idea).

Two weeks later, Amichai called me. Ofir was home. The four of us would get together on Thursday to watch the Maccabi game. Oh, and he was sending me an email with the words to ‘Shimon My Man’, in case I didn’t remember them. And I should practise it once or twice alone. So there won’t be any slip-ups.

There were no slip-ups.

Because, in the end, we didn’t sing to Ofir on Thursday.

On Tuesday, he handed in his resignation, took out all the money he’d saved over the seven years he’d been working in advertising, bought a plane ticket, borrowed a big rucksack from Churchill and called to reserve a place in a hostel for the first night.

In the airport terminal in Lod, he checked out the adverts to see if they were effective.

In the Amman terminal, he did it less.

And in the Delhi terminal, almost not at all.

He told us all that excitedly, on the phone. But on the other hand, he said, India is full of Israelis high on weed. And it reeks of cow shit. And fried food. And the noise. You can’t believe how much noise there is here. Listen, he said, and held the receiver out towards the street. The rumble of motor scooters reached us from across the ocean. Hear that? It’s nothing. You should hear the cows. And there are children here that they raise inside urns, can you believe it? They raise children here in urns so their pelvises get twisted and they can earn more begging. Isn’t that horrible?

Horrible.

For the life of me, I can’t see anything spiritual in that, or in diarrhoea, he said, and that if it keeps on like that, he’ll go to the Thai islands. Or come home. He had no idea. But it was very important for him to keep in touch with us in the meantime. Because actually, we were the closest thing to family he had. So he promised to call every first Thursday of the month as soon as the Maccabi game was over. And it would really mean a lot to him if all three of us were there.

Churchill and I were sure he wouldn’t call. You can’t stick to a strict schedule of obligations when you’re travel ling. Especially in India. But Amichai insisted that we give the guy a chance. So on the first Thursday in question, we watched the game together, and ten minutes after it was over, the phone rang.

And that’s how the ritual that lasted almost a year was established. Every first Thursday of the month, we got together to watch the Maccabi game. Amichai would buy peach-flavoured ice tea for me, Churchill would stop on the way and buy too many nuts, and I would bring one of my bottles of booze (a student who worked in the family alcohol-importing business paid for my translations in kind). We didn’t have weed because that was traditionally Ofir’s job, and now that he wasn’t here, no one had the energy to bother. Anyway, Amichai was tired of arguing with Ilana the Weeper about the nauseating smell, as she put it, that lingered in the house afterwards. I didn’t like the fact that rolling joints had turned from an underground act into a social obligation. And Churchill, even though he wouldn’t admit it, breathed a sigh of relief. Whenever we’d pass around a joint, he’d be torn between his strong desire to get high and his constant fear that the police might break in and catch him in the criminal act of smoking weed, thereby putting an end to his promising legal career.

During the game, we were divided into three camps: Amichai rooted for Maccabi because ‘they represent our country in Europe’, Churchill rooted against Maccabi because ‘they’re a monopoly and a complaint should be filed against them with the Anti-Trust Commission’, and I was indifferent. Basketball, unlike football, always seemed to me like a too-planned, too-polite, too-much-like-me game, and I could never get excited by it. So I drank my ice tea quietly, poured everyone a drink and waited for the broadcast to end. And for Ofir to call. Amichai had gone out and bought a phone with a speaker, partly so the three of us could talk to him together, but mainly so we could listen. Ofir had a tremendous need to share, to tell us everything, otherwise he ‘wouldn’t be sure that it happened’, and he didn’t care if the call cost him a fortune because ‘why did he work in advertising for seven years if not so he could enjoy the money’.

And so, conversation after conversation, month after month, we heard him change.

Funny. When a friend’s with you and you see him every day, the changes taking place in him are so small that you don’t even notice him changing. But from a distance –

It started with the rhythm of his speech, which became slower. More drawn out. As if every word had a profound meaning worth lingering over (along with the natural delay of a trans-oceanic call, it sometimes had a confusing effect: he would pause between every word. We were sure he’d finished his sentence, and stick in one of ours, which would reach him after a delay and get jumbled together with the continuation of his sentence, which reached us after a delay).

Then he started talking a lot about nature. Told us he’d spent two days sitting next to a lake in the Parvati Valley looking at a single lotus. Only when you’re close to nature, he said, can you grasp the true frequency of the world and connect to it. In Haifa, he added, at least we had the Carmel, the sea. Since we moved to Tel Aviv, we have no connection to the earth. The air. The trees. And moving away from nature, that’s against our nature. There’s something sick about big cities, he claimed. A kind of background noise that doesn’t let you hear your inner voice.

Oh come on, really, Ofir, Churchill said, unable to control himself, cities serve the human need to gather together. Besides, if cities were such a bad idea, they wouldn’t be such a success.

Even though I agreed with Churchill, we all went hiking on the Carmel that Saturday, with no apparent connection to that conversation. We walked down the Kelah riverbed to the stone bridge, then back up to Little Switzerland, something we hadn’t done in years. The soles of our shoes filled with pine-needle mud, we made up legends about how the strawberry tree got its name, we breathed in pine and oak air, and were amazed to find that autumn isn’t just a word, but a real season.

*

After another long season of wandering, Ofir settled in one place and decided to take part in a series of workshops en — titled ‘Touch Meditation’. The idea behind touch meditation, he explained, is that the best way to attain the greatest inner clarity is actually to devote yourself completely to giving to someone else, through the body.

We weren’t too excited.

We were sure that in one of our next conversations, he’d tell us that he’d left those workshops for totally different ones. Even back in high school, he was the one who talked us into leaving good parties for other, seemingly better ones by saying that his flat feet hurt him and it was hard for him to stand in one place for too long. And in the army, he routinely submitted transfer forms from his first day in a new unit, and that’s how, in three years, he managed to be a tank driver, an aerial photograph interpreter, an army meteorologist, a command-post gardener, an NCO in charge of religious soldiers and also an NCO in charge of women soldiers. He would never buy return bus or train tickets, despite the discount, because he thought that was too big a commitment. And he always did the same dance with women: two or three weeks of blazing passion, then annoying, nagging questions about whether there might be someone better past the shoulder of the girl he was dancing with. Over time, we developed an almost scientific method of predicting the changes in Ofir’s life: the minute he started talking enthusiastically about something or someone fantastic, we knew that he was about to leave it. Or her. We knew that the gushing words of praise were his final attempt to keep his flat feet on the ground before they sent him elsewhere.

*

My touch meditation teacher says I have natural talent! he told us proudly. Even the other people in the workshop say there’s electricity in my hands, that I just touch them — and they already feel better!!

Terrific, we told him. But we had our doubts. Of the four of us, Ofir was the least anchored. His hugs were always the most evasive, his handshakes the limpest. And if you reached out to pat him on the shoulder and came too close to his face, his whole body would instinctively draw back, as if you were about to slap him. Or as if someone had already slapped him in the past.

Ofir? An alternative therapist? Amichai protested. But that’s my dream! That’s my World Cup wish!

Forget it, don’t get worked up, he’ll drop it in a day or two, Churchill pronounced. And reminded us of his ‘360-degree theory’, according to which anyone who changes too drastically usually makes a full circle and comes back to himself. And you know something else? he added, I don’t buy into all that talk about the urban man who ‘doesn’t connect with his body’ either. What is that bullshit?

I agreed with him. But still, as if it had nothing to do with that, I went for a run on the beach promenade on Saturday morning after years of not running there. Just before Frishman Street, I saw a familiar, broad face running towards me. Run with me, Churchill said, running on the spot as he spoke. I was running on the spot too, panting pretty hard, and it frustrated me that he wasn’t. Even that came easily to him. Come on, he said, looking me straight in the eye, run with me.

We’d met quite a few times over the past few months, but our eyes never had. I thought of staring back at him till he lowered his glance. I thought, those are the eyes that blinked me the right answers on the university entrance exam (one blink, question one; two blinks, answer number two). I thought, those are the eyes that enticed Ya’ara into sitting in that café with him.

Are you coming? he asked. And his tone was ingratiating and arrogant at the same time.

No, we’re not going in the same direction, I said. And continued on towards Jaffa.

*

After a few weeks of touch meditation, the name Maria started popping up in Ofir’s conversations with us.

They met in one of the workshops, he told us. He was treating her and she started to cry in the middle. That scared him and he apologised. Thought he’d hurt her. She said, of course not, those were tears of joy. He was surprised: how can you cry with joy? She was surprised that he was surprised. What? He’d never felt so happy that he couldn’t stand it any more? No, he admitted. So let’s swap places, she said. He spread his long legs on the mattress and she started treating him. After a few of her touches, he felt his spirit soar. As if something that had been dammed up inside him for too long was finally breaking free. The problem was that it wasn’t only his spirit that was soaring. And he was wearing a sharwal. A thin one. So he asked her to stop. And she was hurt. Wasn’t she good enough? No, it’s not that, he said, and explained to her quietly, in a whisper, what had happened. She looked in the direction of his groin and burst out laughing, and at that moment, because of her wild, free, unapologetic laughter, he fell in love with her.

It’s incredible, he tried to explain to us. There’s something … clean about her. Maybe because she’s from Denmark. Maybe because it’s her. I don’t know. But she has this ability to be happy that I’ve never seen in any Israeli girl. And she’s an amazing mother too. You should see her with her daughter.

Her daughter?!

Seven years old. A little genius. She calls me Ofi.

Ofi?

You know, a kind of pet name.

Ah, a pet name. What’s her daughter doing there?

They’re travelling together. Like two girlfriends. The father left when Maria was pregnant, and it’s been just the two of them ever since.

Touching.

Very. OK, ya’allah, I have to hang up now. I promised the girl I’d buy her some burfi.

Burfi?

It’s a kind of cake, made of biscuits and caramel and banana.

Yuck.

Why yuck? How do you know it’s yuck?

*

OK, so it’s a classic case of holiday romance, Churchill said after we’d hung up.

I have to agree with my learned colleague, Amichai said. Knowing ‘Ofi’ the way I do, at some point, he’ll see what kind of burfi he’s got himself into.

You got that right, Churchill said with a snigger. In our next conversation, he’ll be with someone else.

That poor little girl, I said. Never mind Maria, but that little girl …

And I think you’re wrong, all of you, Ya’ara said. You always make the same mistake.

Please, dear, tell us how we’ve erred, Churchill said and put his hands together in a gesture of fake pleading.

Your problem is that you all refuse to recognise the possibility that Ofir might have really changed and that something good is happening to him on this trip. You’re so fixed in your ideas of him that it’s funny. You know what you remind me of? A bunch of old labour party guys who meet in a café in Ahuzat Hacarmel in Haifa on Fridays, talk down to the Russian waiter and act as if they’re still running the city.

There’s no such place as Ahuzat Hacarmel, there’s Ahuza or Central Carmel, Churchill corrected.

O-o-kay, Ya’ara said, and threw a pillow at him. Which hit me.

*

The first time Ya’ara joined our conference calls with Ofir was by accident.

Usually, whenever Churchill watched basketball with us, she would go to see her only girlfriend and he would pick her up at the end of the evening. But once, her girlfriend went out, she just forgot that Ya’ara was supposed to come, and Ya’ara called up from downstairs to say she’d been walking around the streets for two and a half hours already and asked Churchill to ask me if she could come upstairs to pee. I said OK, for humanitarian reasons. And when she came in, I acted as if I wasn’t the one who’d vetoed her for the last year. I went over to her, kissed her on both cheeks, asked her to join us in the living room and pretended that her presence filled me happiness. Not pain.

Wait a minute. Why am I lying?

My creative writing tutor says that honesty is one of the most important things for a writer. Especially if the text is written in the first person. ‘Take a light and illuminate the inside, the dark places. Expose the ugly things. The un-presentable ones. There’s nothing more off-putting than an “I” who tries to put a nice face on things,’ he warned us. And here I am, doing exactly that. Acting like a true product of the Anglo-Saxon home I grew up in, hiding the pathetic, embarrassing truth: I didn’t have to pretend I was glad to see Ya’ara. Because, really, I was happy to see her, to kiss her on the cheek, to smell her hair, to hear her unwavering opinions on every issue, to listen to her shoot clever ripostes in all directions, machine-gunning words in that rapid-fire, confident speech of hers, and to know that all those niceties concealed a huge vulnerability, and that when she comes, sob-like sounds emerge from deep in her throat, as if her orgasm makes her sad, and afterwards, something completely unravels inside her and she loves to curl up next to you like a little girl, fold her legs against your stomach, rest her head on your chest –

To know all that and to speak to her quietly, while the others are focused on the game, to ask her how she is, to hear again that she ‘just needs to get ninety-one thousand dollars together’ and then she’ll ‘finally go to London to study theatre direction’. To wonder again why ninety-one thousand and not ninety. And why she has to be in London. Not to say anything to her about that, of course. And not to say that I noticed the new burn on her thumb and I know that means she’s gone back to holding lit matches a second too long. But to say that I was sure she’d be a great director. To see her raise suspicious eyes above her glasses: you do? Really? You really think so?! To say yes, I think so. To tell her how my delightful father is, to lie about how I am, to see her forehead listening, to see her soft, left earlobe shining through her hair, to feel something, to feel something real after all the dull dates I’ve had since she left –

But that isn’t the whole truth either. I still have to do some peeling. With a knife. And talk about the humiliation. And the pleasure in humiliation. About the moments that followed it, when Ya’ara’s presence at our get-togethers became permanent. And Churchill, assuming that it didn’t bother me any more, allowed himself to touch her. And my eyes would follow his hand as it stroked her knee. Or her thigh. And I’d be filled with a sweet, fucked-up feeling.

You know you don’t have to take it, Ilana once said to me quietly, at the door, and touched my arm suddenly. I was surprised at her concern and played dumb, take what? And she said, I’m sure that if you ask Churchill, he’ll control himself. And I bit my lip and kept quiet because how could I explain to her that it was like watching a sick, exploitive reality show on TV, and even though you know that it’s sick and exploitive, you can’t help watching.

And I can still keep peeling.

Digging to get to the core.

And in the core, I nurtured a shameful hope. That the whole Ya’ara and Churchill thing was temporary. That the small cracks I saw at those evenings — like her tendency to bicker with him about everything, or his tendency to blatantly check out every woman who appeared on the screen — would widen, they had to widen, into the Afro-Syrian fault, and one day she’d knock on my door, wearing the blue skirt she knows I like, or her light-coloured jeans (I had a few scenarios like that in my head and I’d reconstruct them and fix them up and add details), and I’d open the door and she’d bury her small, cold nose in my neck and say: I made a mistake. I picked the wrong friend. Can I still change my mind?

Ofir, in any case, didn’t change his mind.

Contrary to our predictions, he was still talking about Maria in our next conversation, and in the one after that, and when we demanded it, he put her on the phone and her voice sounded pure and happy, just as we could have expected from his descriptions, but we explained to him that a charming voice isn’t enough and he should bring her here so we could give our final approval. He laughed and said that he wanted to, he wanted to very much, but it was a problem because of the girl, and he was thinking now that he’d go back to Copenhagen with them. And try living with them there.

What? Churchill blurted out. You’re sure that’s a good idea? Two months ago, you didn’t even know each other.

And I asked: tell me, ‘Ofi’, when we wrote down our World Cup wishes, didn’t you have a dream about writing a book of short stories? What language will you publish it in there? Ancient Danish?

That’s just the problem with the Western way of life, Ofir explained in a calm voice. We set goals for ourselves and then we become slaves to those goals. And we try so hard to achieve them that we don’t notice that, in the meantime, they’ve changed.

Nice, Ya’ara said.

The Indians, he went on, have an expression they use all the time: sab kuch milega, which means ‘everything is possible’. At first, it drove me crazy. Then I realised that that’s life here. You get up in the morning and there’s a terrible monsoon, and all of a sudden the monsoon stops and in seconds, the sky is blue without a single cloud. You get on a bus in the yellowest desert ever, and six hours later, you’re in the greenest valley ever. Not to mention that the bus never leaves on time. And when you ask someone at the station when it’s supposed to come, he’ll answer, ‘After some time’, and he isn’t lying. Because the whole thing about time works completely differently here.

Differently? How?

Isn’t it true that in Israel it’s really hard to catch flies? So here, the flies move so slowly that there’s no problem catching them. And if there’s a small accident here between two cars, or between a car and a rickshaw, no one gets road rage. They just keep driving. And there are always these weird meetings that you feel a second before they happen. Let’s say, yesterday morning I suddenly remembered the secretary who was with my father the day he had the attack, and I thought, I wonder what’s happening with her, and half an hour later, her daughter shows up in the guest house where I’m staying. And when stuff like that happens, you realise that instead of trying to force yourself on reality, it’s better to accept what life dishes out and be open to its natural flow. Because, anyway … sab kuch milega.

Nice, Ya’ara said again.

What’s so nice?! Churchill said, getting angry. Leaving your friends like this is nice? A year ago you said we were like family to you, and now you tell us in that flow of yours that you’re leaving Israel?

I’m not leaving Israel. But I have to admit that I don’t really miss Israel. Or Israelis.

And I have to remind you that we’re Israelis, Churchill said.

Well, I miss you.

So what’s your problem? I don’t understand.

Forget it, it’s complicated. It’s not for the phone.

But the phone is all we have right now.

It’s just … I’ve had a lot of time this year … a lot of time to think. And I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing happens by chance. You know why I had that breakdown that day in the office? Because I looked down into the abyss.

What abyss?

Every creative person walks on a very narrow bridge over a river of fear — fear that one day, it won’t come any more.

What won’t come?

The ideas, the inventions — one day, all your creative juices will dry up. And the only thing left will be a cold stone that has no copper or gold under it. And the thing of it is that you can’t let yourself think about that day. You can’t look into the abyss.

So why did you?

Because … Wow, just thinking about it depresses me. I can’t believe I’m standing here across from the Himalayas talking about this –

Come on, spit it out.

That day in the office, I was supposed to fire one of my team — an unattractive woman — because one of our big clients told the boss that he didn’t like having to look at her every time he came to the office. And a minute after she walked out of my office in tears, I was arguing with the production manager and yelling at him like an animal to lower his price, or else I’d make it my personal mission to see that he never worked in the business again. And then I was supposed to go into a meeting and come up with a brilliant idea for a campaign for our biggest client. And all of a sudden, I couldn’t. I was terrified that this was it. It was all over. My well was dry. So I locked myself in the toilet to think quietly, to concentrate, perhaps an idea might still come to me, but I heard my heart pounding in my temples and I heard my heart pounding in my temples and my forehead and I heard my heart pounding in my temples and my forehead and my eyes and my neck and I heard them paging me, again and again and again, till at some point … at some point, I stopped hearing.

You never told us that.

I didn’t tell you because I … I didn’t understand the big picture.

And what … what’s the big picture?

I fell apart because I’d reached the end of my tether. And I reached the end of my tether because they sucked everything out of me. And they sucked everything out of me because I was part of an aggressive system that uses words only to sell. And that system … it doesn’t work alone, you see? It’s part of a whole society … that’s pure aggression. It starts from the occupation, from the fact that we rule another people, and it goes on to … the smallest things, like how we drive. Or how we queue.

And there are no things like that in Copenhagen? Or other annoying things?

Pata-nahi.

Pata-what?

Pata-nahi. Maybe yes and maybe no. How can I know what’s in Copenhagen if I’ve never been there?

*

I’m telling you guys, it’s that Maria, Churchill said after we’d hung up. ‘Aggressive system’? ‘It all starts with the occupation’? Since when does ‘Ofi’ talk like that? She’s brainwashed him. She’s probably one of those bleeding-heart Europeans who switched from being anti-Semitic to being anti-Israel.

But what he said is pretty accurate, Ya’ara said. Quietly.

Of course it is, Churchill said angrily. But the solution is not to run away. It’s to stay here with his friends and fight. To be involved. To influence, to do things that have meaning.

That’s your solution, Ya’ara continued to put herself in danger of getting a pillow in her face. You can’t impose your solution on other people.

We fell silent. The commentator on the field was interviewing a Maccabi player who was trying to find a reason why the team lost. Ilana’s fingers were still typing her doctoral dissertation in the den. One of the twins began crying in his sleep. Amichai got up to settle him and I thought, there’s always been something about Ofir that projected: I’m here temporarily, I’m a freelancer. And there was that propensity of his for small, totally unnecessary exaggerations. Like when he told us that the salary he was getting at the ad agency was net, when it was actually gross. And when he didn’t feel like going out, he’d say he had a high fever and ask us to come over to his. And once, we saw a really gorgeous girl walk across the square in front of the cinema, and he claimed he’d gone out with her, and later, Amichai met her when he went to sell her father a subscription to Telemed and it turned out that she’d never heard of Ofir. And after years of more and more of that needless, ridiculous shtick, I felt I couldn’t completely trust him (or, as Churchill put it once: there are people you trust enough to shoot odds and evens with over the phone. Ofir Zlotochinski wasn’t one of them).

But I did admit to myself that life without Ofir Zlotochinski would definitely be a lot more boring: without that regular Saturday night phone call when we tried to guess the headlines in the Sunday sports section. Without those phone calls that burst into the middle of our days, hey Bro, turn on the radio, there’s a new song by … Without those group outings to see bands whose names — ‘Circus Video Art’, or ‘Sunrise Jam at the Heriya Garbage Dump’ — were enough for us to know they’d be rubbish. Without those weird moments like the time he talked me into going with him to sketch nude models even though neither of us knew how to draw, or the time he asked me to sit at a table next to him and his date in a café and pretend I was reading a newspaper, then tell him later what I thought, because that was already their fifth date and he couldn’t make up his mind.

It won’t be the same without Ofir, I thought. But on the other hand, we’d been without him for almost a year. And there’s always something in us that adjusts.

*

I have an idea, Amichai said when he came back from the twins’ room. Let’s take out a personal ad titled, ‘Friend Wanted’. Under that, it’ll say: ‘Three childhood friends seeking a replacement for the fourth guy who went to live abroad.’

‘A Haifa past — essential. Love of football — an advantage’, Churchill said with a laugh.

Terrific! Ya’ara said enthusiastically. I’ll help you audition the candidates.

We’ll ask them to sing ‘Shimon My Man’, Amichai suggested. First a solo, then together with us.

We’ll check his family background, I said, faking enthusiasm. The more sisters, the better.

Ya’ara gave me a long look. I thought perhaps she was disappointed to see that there were women besides her I might be interested in.

What you guys really need, she said, is a friend with technical skills. You all have two left hands. You know what Mr Churchill, our senior attorney here, does when the sink drain is blocked?

What?

He calls me.

A mechanic, Churchill said, agreeing. We need a friend who’s a mechanic. That would really set us up.

‘A Haifa past — essential. Love of football — an advantage. Preference to mechanics’, Amichai summed up and said that in his opinion, a small ad shouldn’t cost a lot, and if we split it, it’d come to less than a hundred shekels each. And if it turned out to cost more, we could always advertise on the web, that’s free.

Go for it, we told him. And perhaps we really would have taken out an ad, just because laughing about it made us feel better, if a week later, Ya’ara and Churchill hadn’t made the surprise announcement that they were getting married, and two weeks before the wedding, Ofir hadn’t made the equally surprising announcement that he, Maria and the girl were coming for the event.