Марко Коскас - Goodbye Paris, Shalom Tel Aviv

So she gives the keys of the car to Jérémie and sinks into the passenger seat with her head in her hands. The lawyer sits down behind the wheel, clearing his throat, but doesn’t start right away, leaning over her. Seeing her in tears moves him like all hell. Why is this client’s emotion so communicative, for godsake? Usually he doesn’t give a flying fuck. He never has the slightest desire to cry over the fate of his clients, and when it does happen, he swallows his tears easily. Now, and not only now, but since the first hearing, since the first time he saw her, Olga has made a great impression on him. Whether she’s unmoved or in tears, something powerful emanates from her and touches him.

He takes her hand again without taking his eyes off her for a second. “I’m going to get him out of there, don’t worry,” he promises, reluctantly, for actually if Elias were out of the picture, it would suit him just fine. Mind you, he likes Elias—but he’s so attracted to Olga! Yet Jérémie’s twenty years older than she is. All the same, she makes his heart beat like a teenager’s.

“Start the car, please,” she asks him with a sob.

Her unhappiness crushes all her thoughts for miles, like a concrete screed laid over flowering water lilies. Nothing emerges, and nothing comes to mind except that she won’t be seeing Elias. Not right away in any case, and she seems to see an endless road opening up before her. But little by little, she orders things in her mind. She thought herself too strong, too crafty, by imagining that all she had to do was entrap Kirzenbaum to turn the situation around. Yet her stratagem worked. It was well thought out, well conceived, and well executed. What went wrong was luck, the little grain of sand that jammed the whole machine. If they’d gotten to the trail three minutes later, just three minutes later, they wouldn’t have crossed paths with the cops, and that would have changed everything. Not even three minutes, in fact—just a minute later. But chance counts too. It saves or dooms an enterprise, transforms a dream into a nightmare, a defeat into victory, a good deed into a crime. Fucking chance! One time it’s on your side, another time it’s against you. So unpredictable and so unreliable! “Leave nothing to chance”—that doesn’t mean a thing. Chance remains the unpredictable master of all our acts. The deus ex machina. That’s what she realizes on this day. It doesn’t prevent her from being unhappy, but it helps her to see more clearly.

After Be’er Sheva, the gateway to the Negev, she recovers her confidence and asks Jérémie to let her drive again. The lawyer immediately takes the passenger seat. He senses that she’s already out of her affliction and she’s now thinking of her next move. She’s quick and synthesizes well, this girl—impervious to emotionalism. But she doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t have all the cards in her hand, and it would be too cruel, too risky, to tell her only now why Elias has been incarcerated. She might crack all at once this time, go into a tailspin. Can’t think she’s made of reinforced concrete. So he lets her drive to the outskirts of Tel Aviv without saying much, just with Israeli rap on the speakers, promising himself to tell her when they get there. But once they’re in front of his office on Frishman Street, he still can’t find his words, while Olga takes the twenty-seven thousand shekels out of her purse and gives them to him. “Here, that’s all I have,” she says, but the lawyer pushes away the money.

“We’ll see about that afterward,” he says grandly, and he leaves her without having been able to tell her the reason Elias is now behind bars but vowing to tell her on the phone a little later. He’s still staring at her rather pointedly, while she’s impatient to leave.

Decidedly, this girl is making him lose the exact science of seduction. Never has he felt like such a klutz.

Olga returns the Audi to the car2go agency on HaYarkon Street and then walks back down toward the Tayelet and grabs a cab to go to Florentin along the coast. She gets off on Abarbanel Street in front of the Moins de Mille gallery even before going to take a shower. She wants to see Juliette. The trauma of their arrest created an exceptional feeling between them. Something strong—unbreakable, no doubt. Juliette already experienced that in the army with her girlfriends in the regiment. For Olga, this is the first time she’s felt such a surge of emotion for another girl.

As soon as she sees her, Juliette drops the sale she’s concluding and throws herself into her arms. Their hug is so long, so tender, that everybody in the shop is stunned: owner and clients alike, the artists who’re there, and even the passersby outside. They all look at them wide eyed. All of them are choked up, without understanding why. In Tel Aviv, a hug is more frequent and banal than a handshake or a kiss on the cheek, but this one is so intense they can’t stop watching it, even if there’s a bit of voyeurism in that. It’s just beautiful to see, that’s all, and you can’t turn your eyes away from what is beautiful—such tenderness, the impression of a truly unique love. People like to see great emotions expressed freely and, what’s more, by two such beautiful girls. And it lasts, it lasts, it lasts like something that’s too much, a wait that was too long, something that was inexhaustible and refused to be slaked. Hardly do they let each other go, to laugh and cry for a moment, than they hug each other again and kiss each other like good bread, saying, “Oh, wow,” while around them the people remain smiling, indulgent, won over.

They have to go outside and walk away from the gallery to be alone, with no witness, with a bit of vocabulary now and not just the little sounds and reflexive cries that leak out of their throats.

“It’s just unbelievable… they released you!” Juliette says, beaming. “I’m so, so glad! Come on, we’ll go to the French Bakery.”

“No, no, let’s go to the Landwer Café,” Olga suggests, taking her hand. “I love their Limonana.”

“I really thought you wouldn’t come back, I swear! I was sick over it.”

“I don’t even have your number!”

“And I don’t have yours!” Juliette answers in a burst of laughter.

They sit down hand in hand, like two little Tel Aviv lesbians, on the glider of the Landwer Café, at the foot of the Beans and Abarbanel Street. It’s the seat reserved for lovers, that glider. And they order a café Affour for Juliette and a Limonana for Olga.

“I don’t smell too bad?”

“It’s sort of OK,” Juliette confesses, giggling.

“Isn’t that just meshugga, they prevent you from washing when you’re held for questioning?” Olga says, hugging her and squeezing her hard against her body.

“OK, but tell me, how’d you get out?” Juliette whispers into her ear.

She doesn’t have time to answer the question, Jérémie’s calling her back.

“Chhhkh,” she sighs. “Can’t get rid of this guy.”

“Who is it?”

“The lawyer, Jérémie.”

“It may be important,” Juliette says.

“I’ll call you back,” Olga says, cutting him off. “Well, I lucked out,” she continues, putting her smartphone away. “Madame Benshimoun was marrying off her daughter, so she didn’t have time to do the job.”

“Huh? What is this business?” Juliette guffaws. “Who’s Madame Benshimoun?”

“The translator. They asked her to translate my WhatsApp, but she didn’t turn in her work in time.”

“Oh, brilliant! She saved your life. You should send her a little present.”

“But I don’t know her. It’s the cops who told me.”

They hug again, hold hands, smile at each other, kiss without embarrassment or afterthoughts, but both of them can feel they’re only avoiding and postponing the subject that’s brought them so close but could make them angry too. Loving the same man is a very bad idea, whatever Jules and Jim might say. Elias is an explosive subject. They hardly touched on it before they were separated by the Mitzpe Ramon cops, but they’ll certainly have to talk about it and really talk about it this time. All the time she was in detention, Olga never stopped thinking about it: Why did Elias never tell her about Juliette?