Марко Коскас - Goodbye Paris, Shalom Tel Aviv

“Really?” asks Manu, astonished. “That’s very nice of you.”

“I’m giving it to you for thirty-five hundred shekels,” Romy adds.

Manu doesn’t dare argue about the price, although it’s way too high. That’s the price of a new electric bike, not a secondhand one in who-knows-what condition. But as Diabolo already noticed, Romy always thinks she doesn’t have any money, whereas she doesn’t even have to pay rent on Dizengoff Avenue. Or else she thinks Manu is eternally in her debt, and she can tax him at will as a price for her silence. In any case, she wants 3,500 shekels for her crappy bike, and this isn’t the time to pinch pennies. Manu agrees to get it tomorrow, but Romy wants cash in advance right away, now, in front of the toilets.

“All I got is three hundred.”

“Give it to me,” she says, without a qualm. “All of it. That way I’m sure of the sale.”

She pockets everything he has on him, even two-shekel coins. She really should have made X-rated movies, Manu tells himself. She has all the greed of porn stars: their fake eyelashes flutter feverishly at the sight of the smallest banknote.

“Hey, lovers, things going well?” Dina throws out as she walks by. Even a quick glance must be enough to show that Manu is still just as mad about Romy, while she’s horrible with him.

“Where the hell’s that asshole Elias?” Diabolo trumpets as he walks by in his turn, with Jonathan Simsen at his heels.

“No idea,” Manu answers.

“Well, call him, for godsake! It’s midnight already!” And to Jonathan: “Bring up the champagne, Jojo, I’m bringing the sweets.”

Now, that night, after work, Elias finally goes back to Levinsky Street to sleep—or rather he falls asleep there, after lying down for a little twilight nap. He opens his eyes only the next morning, dazzled by the first rays of the sun. It’s Friday, the eve of Shabbat, his favorite day in Tel Aviv. There’s a sharp drop in the city’s tension and energy. From the Namal to Florentin, the bars are full of girls in high-heeled shoes, with dresses cut so low they go down to the navel whatever the weather. The appetite for life becomes almost palpable. On Fridays, people get up late and have breakfast in cafés, but as couples, families, or groups of friends. Nobody stays alone that morning of the week—except Elias, who feels like being alone. He makes a cup of coffee and goes to drink it on the terrace, still just as nauseous.

On the little balcony of his old apartment down below, he sees panties and bras drying on a line and it excites him a little, a woman now living in that tiny room. To be familiar with a neighbor’s underwear before knowing what she wears can arouse uncontrollable desires in him. It makes him want to go knock on her door.

But first he goes back to pour himself a second espresso, leaf through Zeno’s Conscience , and take a few notes for the novel he’s planning. Then he goes back on the terrace. His dilemma doesn’t leave him for a moment, and the pain of his breakup lingers like neuralgia. When it’s not Olga, it’s the two Bedouins who haunt him. One drives out the other. He’s so afraid of the snowball effect of that Reuters story! Already a reporter from Israel Hayom got his number and left him a message to learn more about it.

Then Elias sees that the girl who replaced him in the little room below has settled in for a sunbath, stretched out on her belly. He’s too high up to recognize Juliette, but he can make out that she’s blonde and has a soft, curved body like Olga’s. Or Juliette’s, in fact. A kitten climbs up on her behind, and she brushes it away with a simple gesture of her hand. The kitten makes a backflip but lands on his mistress’s butt and the game starts up again. A charming little scene that makes him think back to Jean-Pierre, of course, but above all distracts him from his two big problems.

He goes down and rings her bell under the pretext of getting his mail, and when Juliette opens the door, wearing only a little sarong, Elias shrinks back abruptly.

“Hell!” he says, stunned. “You’re the one who lives here?”

She’s holding the kitten in her arms to prevent him from escaping and squeezes him still more strongly when she sees Elias. Words don’t come to her right away, tears do. Elias is tempted to flee, but that would be too shoddy. On the other hand, facing a woman who’s crying is so disarming—a woman with whom you’ve behaved badly, above all, a woman you’ve humiliated. What’s more, Juliette doesn’t cry like some slut with her eye shadow melting and yelps that make you want to run away. She has her back to the wall, and she lets tears run down her cheeks in silence, like Kim Basinger in 9½ Weeks. She’s leaving the door open for him to finally come back, so she can touch him again. She missed the feel of his skin so much!

Elias finally goes in with his head down and closes the door behind him. As far as fun goes, forget it. But his old pigsty has become so stylish and cozy that it gives him a funny feeling. It even gives him some regrets. Juliette has really fixed everything up. A lamp, a jute rug, colorful cushions. Presto, it’s inhabited!

He’d have to fuck her to make her stop crying, but he has absolutely no desire to fuck. As long as he didn’t know it was her, he would have sex with any woman who happened to live there. Now that he knows, it’s a different story. She wipes her eyes and goes to make coffee, takes out a metal cookie box like a grandma and sets it in front of him. Juliette, so beautiful, so pure, and usually so rock and roll, becomes all maternal in his presence. It exasperates Elias, but he holds himself back. Still in silence, she sets breakfast out on the low table, slices some bread, makes toast. Butter, jam, orange juice. She’s not doing it on purpose, but instinctively she’s acting in a way that would oblige Elias to live a normal life with her. That’s it, that’s exactly it, the life she wants with him: shalom bayit , like the religious Jews. Like Mathilde, her sister, with her husband and seven kids.

The kitten doesn’t get it, of course. He frisks around, jumps, scratches Elias’s jeans.

“How did you know I was living here?” she finally asks, her voice still thick with sobs.

“I didn’t know. I just came by to pick up my mail,” Elias answers, playing absentmindedly with Jean-Pierre.

Naturally, he wonders why this cat looks so much like the one he gave Manu. But nothing looks more like a gray cat than another gray cat, right? Impossible to imagine it’s the same one. By what weird chance could she have inherited his cat? Manu isn’t even supposed to know she’s in Tel Aviv, Elias naively tells himself. But it becomes quite clear that it’s the same cat when Juliette orders the kitty to get off the low table and calls it Jean-Pierre . Now that makes his skin crawl, or maybe he’s having a terrible asthma attack or sinus trouble, but all those coincidences… it’s starting to not look like coincidences. Not. At. All.

“ You gave him that name?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

“Well, yes,” Juliette answers after a pause. Because even if she doesn’t know the total truth, she can sense there’s a connection between Jean-Pierre and Elias, and it goes through Manu.

“Y’know, it’s totally weird, you with a kitten called Jean-Pierre when I gave Manu a kitten whose name was Jean-Pierre too. And they resemble each other like two peas in a pod.”

The last thing Juliette wants is for him to use this pretext to leave her again in a burst of anger, so she takes still more time to answer as she butters his toast.

“Can you explain that?” he insists.

“First explain why you humiliated me,” she finally says.