Assaf Gavron - Almost Dead

I stared at her and said, ‘There’s one thing he could see that you can’t,’ and the memory of the night before flashed like a bullet train through my mind: the drive to the edge of the desert, her smile, our kiss, and what happened after; her long neck, her dark silky skin, the dark down on her forearms, and how, when I kissed my way down to her breasts, she’d held her breath for what seemed like a minute until my lips grazed her nipple and she breathed out. How she’d unbuttoned and pulled down her jeans and how I bent over to her ankle and bit the little crocodile crawling up it, and how I travelled with little butterfly kisses over her knee, her thigh, navel, ribcage, breasts, collarbone, throat, jaw, all the way to the mouth that was patiently waiting for me. How my finger found one of the cotton flowers embroidered on her underwear, began to circle it, wandered with the help of another finger under the stretched elastic where her wonderful skin was softest of all. I touched the soft fluff, the hollow in the tendons of her thigh, and then slipped inside her, and she was kissing my ear by now and whispering to go on and my other hand was everywhere, and she came with her head pressed deeply into the space between my jaw and shoulder, my left hand bracing her bucking shoulder. Then she was sucking in air, almost sobbing, and my wet fingers were resting on her silver thigh, and, mixed with the smells of sex and coconut air-freshener, a very faint tang of gun oil from Humi’s rifle — Humi, who only two days before had been sitting where Shuli was now catching her breath. She’d wanted to go home straight after. It was totally fine with me.

‘What are you thinking about?’

The bullet train disappeared. I looked up, caught red handed, and saw that she knew what I was thinking about.

‘Don’t embarrass me,’ she said, but she was smiling.

‘Well. “We’ll see tonight”…’

My phone intervened. Gili from work. I told her I was still in Jerusalem, and she told me that I was going to have some explaining to do to Jimmy. I said I’d explain everything. Shuli said, ‘Nike and Nokia. That’s who you are.’

‘And who are you?’

‘I cook for the Nikes and Nokias. Actually, I’m not sure. I never see them. I arrive when they’re still asleep, along with the vegetables from the market and the bread from the Angel bakery, in the dark in winter. I come in the rear entrance, with the tahini from Nablus and the pitas from the Old City.’

The sandwich was as good as it always was. Sliced hardboiled egg with tomato and mayo on brown bread. I always add lots of salt and pepper. Waste of time.

‘D’you want anything else?’

‘I don’t know. I want to go to Giora’s grave. To be with him a little bit on my own. And then maybe we’ll go again to the shiva?’

I reached over to touch her hand. I was prepared to do whatever she said. It wasn’t exactly because I’d fallen in love. I mean, something had happened, I’m not denying it. Something started growing there. But as much as anything else I was amazed by what had happened to time. It seemed to have stopped. I wasn’t chasing after it, I wasn’t running. Jerusalem was somewhere else. I looked at the people eating in the Café Europa: who were they? How come they had all this time? Didn’t they need to work? A beautiful black-eyed girl smiled at me from the other side of the table and excused herself to go to the Ladies.

Only when she’d gone did I hear the music: ‘Bab al-Wad’. First star’s light above Beit Mahsir . Some people were moving their lips to the lyrics. I turned away and looked outside at the electric pale blue. Jerusalem itself seemed to be sitting under the sky like a growth of mould. It looked coated in fear. ‘Gabi told the security guard to get the guy out of the restaurant. The security guard says, “My shift doesn’t start for ten minutes.”’ A group of guys on the next table. ‘So Gabi says, “OK. You leave it a minute, then,” leaves through the back door and runs a mile. So the guy pushes the button but he had a problem with the detonator…’ The listeners burst out laughing. I looked over the red bar stools, the red and black tables; I smelled the coffee and the tuna; I opened a newspaper and I read that Private Humi Glazer, aged nineteen, had been laid to rest yesterday in the military cemetery in Petach-Tikva. Maybe I ought to visit his family too…I ate the little chocolate cube you got with your coffee, and then I ate Shuli’s cube too. I wanted more coffee but didn’t have enough energy to go and get it. Though I shouldn’t overdo it with the caffeine: everything starts to feel as if it’s taking place at some weird distance away from me. I got so worried I looked into it once: the caffeine increases neuronal activity, which fools the pituitary gland into releasing hormones that tell the adrenal gland to get pumping. And then the pupils widen, the trachea dilates, blood vessels shrink, blood pressure rises, the liver releases sugar into your blood to boost energy, the muscles tighten and, oddly enough, your hands cool down.

‘Why are you looking at your hands like that?’

‘What? No reason.’

‘Let’s change places. I want to see the street.’

I rose and waited for her to move past me and when she sat down I touched her on her shoulder — a small but intimate gesture. I moved to the other side of the table. She said — or so I remember — she said:

‘I was thinking, Croc. I was sitting in the toilet and I was thinking that life really does go on. Life stays in this world. It doesn’t disappear. Giora’s gone, and you come and sit down at the same table, and life goes on. We’re still breathing. He was a good man, did you see that at all?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I think I could.’

‘He was a good man, and it is terrible. It hurts very, very much. I saw him every day. I touched him and talked to him. He had such a pretty voice.’ Her voice, pretty too, was higher than usual and trembling; a little strangulated. ‘But I was sitting there thinking that you just cannot stop this life. It’s like water finding its way over rocks and concrete and tarmac into the earth. You can’t stop it.’ She fell silent and I don’t think I said anything. Her eyes were fixed on some spot on the tabletop; possibly her fingers were stroking her Ice Europa cup. ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘I mean, it was a nice kind of thing to think. Maybe the nicest thought I’ve had in a while.’ And she smiled, with her mouth closed, more with one corner than the other, a hopeful, sad, wise sort of smile, and it seemed like the air trembled between us.

‘ The last thing in the world I need is those people with their Croc signs knowing I take care of you. Is it really true about what you did to him, Fahmi? I’d never have believed it in a million years. You look… ’

O country, O my country, O country of our fathers, I will sacrifice for you eternally, with determination and with fiery vengeance, made strong by my people’s desire for our homeland. I climbed the mountains, I fought, I strove mightily and untied the chains of bondage…

‘ You look so… ’

But the body won’t move, and the eyes won’t open.

‘ …I don’t know, good hearted. I can’t imagine you hurting a fly, let alone the Croc. ’

The Croc? What is all this about the Croc?

‘ You just don’t have a murderer’s eyes. I can tell. Maybe I should try and talk to them… ’

Where is the Croc? Not a bad guy. Five hundred shekels for a day’s work…

‘ But if they were here instead of me they’d have disconnected you. I could do it in a moment. The tube for your piss and the tube for your air, and then… ’