Assaf Gavron - Almost Dead

‘Yochanan?’ I asked my father. ‘Wasn’t Sbarro the attack that the guy from the last targeted assassination was responsible for?’

‘Yes. Him too. And the one from the targeted assassination before that.’

Judging by the targeted assassinations, the Sbarro attack was planned by five dozen different people, in Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Hamas. Everyone had a hand in it, and now they’ve all got a hand missing. If they’re lucky, that is.

And on the TV the funerals processed. The sounds of bereavement. Funerals, eulogies. A race of red-eyed people.

‘Finding whoever is responsible for this atrocity…’

‘I don’t understand, don’t understand, don’t understand.’

‘He was a warm, kind person…’

‘When I heard the news on TV, my heart stopped beating, as if something had hit me…’

‘He will always be with me, as he always was. He was the biggest influence on my life.’

We cut and zoomed in to the prettily crying eyes of an attractive female soldier, and the reporter summed it all up and returned us to the Jerusalem studio. Danny Ronen raised his eyebrows. Father asked whether he could change to a documentary he’d read about.

Duchi sounded businesslike. She asked me whether this was it. Whether I’d left home for good. If so, she would like to know why, and when I intended to take my stuff.

‘Is that what you want to happen?’

‘Am I the one who left and didn’t make contact for twenty-four hours?’

‘No, I am. But I’m still asking: is this what you want to happen?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. But whether I do or not, I think it would be more sensible if we talked about it like grown-ups, no? After four years.’

‘I’m sorry…I have a headache. Yes, you’re right. What are you up to?’

‘Watching Channel Two. Where are you?’

‘Jerusalem. Mom and Dad.’

Silence. I felt she was trying to assess the import of this. At least, she probably thought, I was in a familiar place and not evading the question or making excuses. But I knew her: that wouldn’t be much comfort to her. The reflex towards catastrophic scenarios is intrinsic to the way Duchi’s brain works — her mother’s legacy. It came with a lifetime warranty — customer service and periodic software upgrades guaranteed even from beyond the grave.

‘Send my regards.’

‘They send theirs too.’

I imagined her on the other end, formulating her apocalyptic scenarios, holding back the tears. But instead I heard a chuckle.

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing. Bibi’s here.’

Bibi hates me; she told Duchi ages ago to get rid of me. Duchi told me that herself.

‘Ah. I guess you’re gossiping about me.’

‘You’d be surprised, your name hasn’t actually come up yet.’

I could picture Bibi, both thumbs up and suppressing her laughter at this.

‘I’m sure that when it does, my ears’ll be burning with the flattery.’ ‘OK.’ ‘What OK? That’s it?’ ‘Do you have anything else to say? When you’re coming back, perhaps, or when you’re going away?’ I was taken aback by her confidence. She wasn’t formulating disaster scenarios. She’d caught me on the back foot.

‘I was in the Shaar Hagai attack yesterday. The back windscreen was shattered. And my mobile.’

‘Croc. Call me when you have something serious to say and when you make up your mind what you want to do with yourself. You know where I am. I need to hang up now. When you decide, come back home and we’ll talk about everything like adults.’

‘OK.’ I hung up and imagined the awful Bibi bursting into applause.

Had I imagined it all? Duchi hadn’t even registered what I’d said. I ran my thumb over the unscratched phone display, then stepped outside and touched the Polo’s gleaming rear windscreen, feeling momentarily insane. But I hadn’t imagined the newspapers, had I? Or Humi, once a chubby soldier, into Zohar Argov. I started to walk, my legs unconsciously leading me down the old familiar route towards the kiosk by the park. It was closed, but nothing had changed in the twenty years since we were kids. The wooden kiosk was plastered with a new generation of Likud or Settler stickers. A Jew Never Expels A Jew. Hebron For Ever! Bibi: Strong Leader For A Strong People. And behind it, the little park of climbing frames and slides, where I smoked my first cigarette and coughed through my first joint, had my first kiss, touched my first breast. I crossed it and walked out on to the street on the other side and stood opposite Muku’s house. He still lives in the flat he grew up in. When his father died he bought his mother a smaller flat and stayed on with his own family. I could see light inside, hear the kids. And then there Muku was, momentarily, moving through the frame of the window, gesturing to someone out of view. I called him. I moved my phone a little distance from my ear and heard the mobile ringing in the flat, the kids becoming quiet. After half a dozen rings an answering machine came on. I hung up without leaving a message.

The last time we talked was September 11th. The day of the catastrophe; the day of the embarrassment. How many phone calls had I made that day to explain to people why they shouldn’t bother? What a mess Duchi’s mother arranged for us, both in her life and after! If they’d asked me to do the inscription on her tomb it would have gone:

Leah Neeman

A Total Mess

Do I remember the conversation with Muku on that day? It’s hard to unpick it from the rest. There were so many conversations that day it now seems like one long hallucination, like one endless red fog of humiliation. Mind you, we did have a world-class excuse. I suppose more embarrassing things have happened in the history of weddings. But never tell an embarrassed man it could have been more embarrassing. And with Muku, who’s been married for years and already has three children and an apartment in Rehavia and a job in the Supreme Court, there was a different dimension to the humiliation. I felt that he’d been waiting for me to join the real, bourgeois world and, on the very brink of it, I had failed again. Thirty-two years old, and I couldn’t manage to get married. That was the unspoken accusation behind our talk, and one of the worst memories of that day in general. After the phone calls I went to the place where the wedding was supposed to happen, to wait for the guests I hadn’t got through to. Duchi refused to come with me.

I sat on our bench. How many hours had Muku and Danny Lam and I spent in this park, playing marbles, tag, football, cards, puffs? Coming of age in a park. They did it before us and they’re already doing it after us. Danny Lam was killed the same day I almost died. I always felt it was a game of chance, either him or me, that I won in the end. Or lost, depending on how you look at life. I wondered how his parents were doing, and his sister, pretty Rachel Lam. His girlfriend Orit, who flew to New York a month after he died, in the middle of her national service, never to be heard of again.

An unfamiliar beeping in my pocket: Giora Guetta’s PalmPilot. Its blue internal light illuminated my hands in the dark.

A diary reminder, entered by Giora: S. — end of shift .

So I got up from the bench and drove to the hotel.

Why did I do it? I’d already fulfilled my mission. I’d delivered the message that Guetta had asked me to, or almost. Anyone would have done that. Anyone would have gone to the funeral. And OK, I stayed with the bereaved girl a couple of hours and listened to her when she needed to get a few things off her chest in a café. Up to that point it all sounds pretty reasonable. So why did I do it? You know why I did it. But it wasn’t planned. It wasn’t predatory . It just happened. And that moment in my childhood park in Rehavia when the PalmPilot beeped and I got up and drove to the hotel was the moment it happened. At the same time, it couldn’t have been more natural. The Palm beeped. I got up from the bench, I got into the car, I drove, and I arrived at the entrance to the hotel just as she was coming out.