Assaf Gavron - Almost Dead

‘Duchi!’ he shouted. ‘Couldn’t you have found yourself someone a bit more serious than this?’ He punched my shoulder with his large suntanned hand. In the end he stuck his million into a new mobile phone company called Wa-Wa. A year later his million was in the sewer.

In truth, Duchi’s parents did not share a hate-hate relationship. Ever since Noam Neeman left her, Duchi’s mother had been lost. She loved him in secret until the day she died. Loved? She worshipped the ground he walked on. She was completely obsessed with him, but she didn’t have him: all she had instead were his two children. And whatever move they made, whatever direction they set off in, they could be sure that Leah Neeman would be standing there, feet planted, wagging a warning index finger. Because Leah was a fountain of bitterness. She just didn’t like life . There was nothing she wasn’t suspicious of; there wasn’t a decision Duchi or Voovi could make, or even think about making, that Leah wouldn’t respond to with gloomy prophecy, biblical wrath, stricken horror; not a step they ever took without having to hurdle the leg she would stretch out to trip them up.

I thought — and I believe many others thought the same — that there was something fitting in her pulling a heart attack on the eve of her daughter’s marriage. She deployed the ultimate weapon in her arsenal, her Judgement Day weapon. And it worked, God knows how or why. The ring I bought (‘Diamonds are for ever,’ said Duchi, ‘so don’t buy me one’) is still hunkered down at the back of some drawer, waiting.

Anyway, I was standing there with my head in the refrigerator, lying it off. I tried to move the conversation on.

‘So how was your day, Duchki?’

Her gesture said, leave it, don’t even go there. Another crazy day. In the last few months she’d been coming back home whacked from a case of insider dealing and fraud that was dragging on and on. She would curse the other lawyer, the fool Gvirzman, and the ill-tempered and exhausted judge and her salary and her boss Boaz, who after years of her working her soul out for him was still ignoring her hints about being made a partner.

I ate cold pasta salad for a few minutes without speaking while she watched TV from the sofa. ‘Well?’ I pressed. She made a face and muttered, ‘That son of a bitch.’ ‘Who, Boaz? Gvirzman? The judge? Who now?’ She shrugged. ‘Yes. No. All three of them are huge sons of bitches, for sure. I don’t know; I don’t know what I’m doing . Why am I killing myself like this? Gvirzman asked to postpone again without consulting me and when I tell him out of court that it’s out of order, the son of a bitch tells me I’m an overgrown baby.’

‘Oh, come on.’ Sometimes I think Gvirzman’s right, but I don’t say so.

‘What does that mean, “oh, come on”?’ She was sharpening her claws for combat. I like her instincts.

‘You’re in a good company, on a good salary, you work with prestigious clients, handle big cases…’

‘That’s not the point, Croc. I’ve been stuck in the same place for a year. Even if you think it’s a good place — and it isn’t — I still haven’t made any progress for a year. This case…’

I shook my head. How much can you moan? How much can you be unhappy with what you have when you have so much?

‘Don’t make that face. You’re not going to convince me I’m having a wonderful time at work — though you’re making this great effort to convince yourself. You could just be a tiny bit understanding and supportive, couldn’t you? I deserve a little support from my boyfriend after a day like this.’

A day like this. Wow. They asked to postpone without consulting her and called her an overgrown baby. Dear oh dear oh dear. She deserves support. She always deserves it. She’s so pitiable sometimes her tone can really flip my switch.

‘You know, I did take the Little No. 5, not a taxi.’

Why did I say that? Maybe I needed to have a row.

‘Liar.’

‘Liar? What reason do I have to lie?’ Apart from the obvious.

‘Croc.’

‘What?’

‘You’re having me on, right?’

This was the point of no return. I could have hushed it all up and lied my way out of it, or remained loyal to the truth — not something I insist on day to day — and start the world war that was dying to be declared between us.

I gave her a heavy-lidded look (my crocodilian look) and said: ‘Not right. I am not having you on. I went on a Little No. 5.’

Duchi’s hair is brown and her skin is a colour I used to call caffè latte in the days when we still found the time to lie side by side, stroking each other for hours. The coffee is from her Yemeni grandmother — the one from the night of the incident in ’35. The milk comes from her grandfather and father. When Duchi is on the brink of explosion, the skin on her face grows visibly darker and her luminous eyes cloud over, but it’s not the colour so much as her expression, like a child’s in the second before it cries — only with her it’s not tears but fury.

‘Why the hell didn’t you take a taxi like I asked you to?’

‘Because I had this weird premonition that I wasn’t going to get blown up. And you know something? I wasn’t blown up! And you know something else? I didn’t hear on the news that any other Little No. 5 was blown up today either.’

‘Not the point.’

‘So what is? You wanted me to ride in a taxi for a specific reason. I thought you were wrong. I was proved correct. And now I don’t understand what we’re arguing about.’

‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing. You really, truly, honestly travelled on a Little No. 5?’

‘Of course! Why take a taxi?’

‘Maybe because I asked ? That’s not a reason?’

‘Not if there’s no sense behind it.’

‘I don’t believe this.’

I took a chair from the dining table and sat in front of her. She lowered the volume on the TV, which was on Channel 2: Danny Ronen rambling on and on, his eyebrows conspiring together like a couple of sidekicks pretending to be shrewd.

‘What reason do I have to lie?’

‘I don’t believe this,’ she repeated. ‘Tell me, is there nothing left between us? Not a little appreciation? A little consideration? A little trust?’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘What it’s got to do with it?’ She shook her head and covered her face with her hands. She said, ‘I should have listened to Uri a long time ago.’

Oh, here we go: Uri. I was beginning to wonder when his name would crop up. Her therapist. Duchi told me a long time ago that he thought she shouldn’t stay in our relationship, although he would never come out and say it directly. I argued with her then. She quit therapy and we decided to get married. A few weeks after the wedding that never happened, though, she went back to him. And now he’s telling her the same thing once again.

‘Uri doesn’t know anything.’

‘He knows more than you think he does.’

‘How could he know anything on the basis of your stories alone?’

‘But what’s important is the way I see and experience things.’

How many times have we had this conversation?

‘But he’s talking about your relations with me . The experience belongs to both of us, no? How could he say anything truthful about it after hearing only your side? I know how you distort things sometimes. The version he gets depends on the way your mood swings on the day you tell him. And your mood’s about as reliable as Danny fucking Ronen! You…I can’t…How can you believe a single word of it?’

After that neither of us said a word for several minutes. She turned up the volume. Danny Ronen was saying that the security forces had some leads pointing in the direction of Nablus. Terror cells in Nablus had targeted Tel Aviv in the past and they were the only ones with the capability to stage such a destructive attack. That was what a senior military source had told Danny Ronen. The explosive belt used by the suicide bomber, Shafiq somebody from Nablus, weighed 25 kilograms. The IDF was preparing an operation in Nablus in response.