Марко Коскас - Goodbye Paris, Shalom Tel Aviv

Without waiting for the rest of his sentence, she straddles Elias, and in that movement her skirt goes up to the top of her thighs. She wraps her arms around him and squeezes herself against him with her mouth plunged into his for a syrupy soup of tongues. Aside from the surveillance cameras, no one’s watching them, for the simple reason that no one’s there, and if it weren’t for the business with the two Bedouins still sticking around in his conscience, it would have been the best day in Elias’s life.

There remains the disconcerting and troubling coincidence between Amos Kirzenbaum, whom he’d imagined as the last Jew in Tel Aviv after the disappearance of the State of Israel, and the pro-Palestinian blogger who tried to reach him. Disconcerting and troubling not only because of their common name, but also because of what characterizes the Amos Kirzenbaum he had imagined. For that Amos is a traitor—a storybook traitor, paid by the enemies of Israel, a traitor without knowing it but still a traitor, paid by immensely wealthy Qataris. But the Amos Kirzenbaum who tried to reach him, is he the same type of guy?

Olga and Elias leave the offices of H24 and walk to her place on Derech Yerushalaim for a sleepless night of reunion. He holds her firmly by the arm, and that’s solid, not a hollow dream. And yet he still doesn’t believe in the reality of this miraculous return of the beloved. He tells himself she’s just acting on a whim that must have caught her by surprise because she was bored stiff sitting by herself in the newsroom, and tomorrow she’ll leave him again. So he doesn’t get carried away either. Or rather, yes, he gets carried away sexually, but his heart remains on the lookout. He doesn’t answer the little loving words Olga whispers to him in bed—not because he doesn’t want to whisper some others too. His mouth is full of such words. Besides, they’re more like shouts than words, a strange mix of coarse language and sobs he does well to swallow back.

Before she falls asleep, Olga returns to the question that brought them together again: “Eli dearest, answer me this time: What exactly happened with the two Bedouins?”

“Well, they tried to stab me, and it was filmed by my iPhone.”

“Tell me why, my love,” she stammers, closing her eyes, and she falls asleep without getting an answer.

Elias lies there with his eyes open, wondering what sixth sense this girl has to suspect he’s not telling her everything. Can he tell her that in essence it’s pretty much because of her that everything happened? Well, not exactly because of her, but because of the jewel he wanted to give her, because of the ambition of a starry-eyed lover and that desire to give more than you have to the woman you love. And blondes are supposed to be dumb! This one has the sharpest mind he’s ever known.

But he can’t manage to fall asleep and clicks through the Israeli information sites to see if they might possibly be talking about his affair. Now, that very evening, jihadists slaughtered people at the Bataclan, the Stade de France, and on sidewalk cafés. Paris is running with blood. At least 130 dead. The whole world’s attention is focused on France. His little affair isn’t mentioned anywhere, except for a brief item on Haaretz . He’s annoyed with himself for feeling relieved, naturally. But he’s relieved all the same. The tragedy in Paris has made him fall into oblivion, like an ill wind that blows somebody good. At the same time, he prays to heaven that Dani, his little brother who loves heavy metal so much, isn’t in the group of victims at the Bataclan and his father wasn’t in the Stade de France that night to see the French soccer team. And that none of his buddies had the bad idea of sitting down at the Carillon Café.

“Are you presenting yourself with your second?” Romy asks mockingly, seeing Manu has come with someone.

“No, no, she’s just a friend. Juliette, this is Romy.” Romy grants Juliette a vague nod and takes the stack of bills. She counts them, wetting her finger.

“There’s still a little missing,” Manu admits. “But I’ll make up the whole thing by Sunday. I couldn’t withdraw more from the ATM.”

“Sunday, final deadline for liquidating this business,” she warns as she pockets the money. Then she walks them to the door and locks it behind them twice without even saying goodbye.

“How about that?” Juliette says, once they’re outside. “She sure is tough, your ladylove!”

“She has a hard life, that’s why. It’s no fun cleaning apartments.”

“Huh! She really cleans apartments?” Juliette asks, taking Manu’s arm.

“Yes, this is her father’s apartment. She doesn’t pay rent, but she has to struggle to make a few shekels.”

“I understand.”

Instead of going through the Tayelet to go back to Florentin, they turn on Ben Gurion Street and walk up Ben Yehuda, while watching to see if there could be a sherut behind them. But when they get to the intersection of Frishman and Ben Yehuda, they see that Café Mersand is open that evening, whereas it’s always closed on the eve of Shabbat, so they cross the street and sit down. Juliette can hold her drink, but she still needs three glasses of Chardonnay before she dares ask Manu the question that’s obsessing her.

“Tell me where he lives exactly, please, Manu.”

“Who?”

“You know very well.”

“Across from your place, in the high-rise,” Manu answers, after some hesitation.

All sorts of situations that this proximity can create go through her head, but she doesn’t connect Elias’s sudden appearance that very morning to what Manu has just revealed to her. She still thinks it was a coincidence that Elias came by to pick up his mail. The worst would be to bump into him coming and going with one of his girls. The best would be to see him, if only to glimpse him, even a fleeting glimpse, but alone, taking out the trash or going shopping at AM:PM or Shuk Levinsky, who cares as long as he’s alone. She’d be so happy! Then she’d go demand an explanation from him, even though she does feel she’s not very important to him. She also admits she was wrong to want to impose her presence on him in Tel Aviv. He’s a pretty unsociable man, guards his freedom jealously. A kind of artist. Or a fanatical individualist. Certainly not a husband and still less the possible father of her future children. And then there’s the fact that he never did his military service, as she did. He’s not a true Israeli.

He doesn’t know what it’s like to risk your life at eighteen, go to sleep all muddy and exhausted after a twenty-mile march with a pack on your back, be one of nine conscripts in a tiny tent, share the little food you have, or lower your voice so a comrade in the unit can talk to her parents on the phone. They may drink the milk of the same mother tongue, but they weren’t raised in the same culture. Trying to contain the sorrow that’s devastating her, that’s Juliette’s reasoning. But the pain of love is always stronger, alas. It resists reason and analysis. Reason helps a little, but it’s just a crutch, not a cure.

The third big affair of her life and the third washout. Another man who doesn’t want her, while so many others grovel at her feet.

“I’m just cursed,” she sighs out of the blue and without even having followed her train of thought.

“Come on, stop the bullshit!” Manu says.

A funny Shabbat, no breaking bread or blessing wine, just drinking a glass of dry white in the melancholy of this windy night in Tel Aviv while Paris counts its dead. On Facebook, French tricolor flags are beginning to cover the outline of all the photos, and the slogan of solidarity—“I am Paris”—is proliferating on the social networks. But Juliette’s head is elsewhere. She doesn’t even know about the Paris massacres. As soon as she gets up the next day, she begins watching the people entering and leaving Elias’s building. For three hours, her staring eyes don’t leave the door that opens and shuts regularly, releasing its batches of the faithful with tallits on their shoulders, its yuppies with round Ray-Bans, its tattooed girls and guys in flip-flops despite the cold, families of Tel Avivian bourgeois bohemians with their dear blonde heads and their dogs. There are so many people in a high-rise like that.