Eshkol Nevo - World Cup Wishes

I stood on the bridge for another few minutes, then took out the slip of paper on which I’d written the number of the entrance where the Tanuri family lived.

*

Hanging on the living room wall was a huge picture of the father in uniform, and he didn’t resemble Amichai in the slightest. He had light hair and dark self-confidence. And shrewd, crafty eyes. I remember that there were no other pictures in the living room, just plaques of recognition the father had received from the various units he’d served in. In appreciation for. In acknowledgment of. Wishing you success in your new post. From your friends in the company, the battalion, the division . I remember that it wasn’t his mother who served the food at the table, but Amichai, and that her plate was empty throughout the entire meal. She looked like someone who hadn’t eaten for a long time, and when a strong wind came through the window, I was afraid for a minute that it would blow her out of her chair and swirl her around the room. Every once in a while she took a quick glance at the blank screen of the TV that stood in the middle of the living room, and I was sure she had asked for it to be turned off because of me, so I wouldn’t get the impression that the Tanuris needed a TV to keep them together. She tried very hard to have a conversation with me. She asked me about school and my father’s printing house and my plans for the future, and I felt how much effort every question, every word cost her.

I wanted to console her. That woman with the large brown eyes and the freckles that gave her a slightly childlike look. I wanted to shake her. To save her (me? twenty years younger than her? I was the one who would save her?).

But I just kept answering her questions.

At a certain stage, two of Amichai’s brothers started fighting (perhaps to rescue her from having to continue asking the guest questions?). Amichai let them push each other for a few seconds, then said in a quiet voice, ‘Guy and Shai, that’s enough.’ And they stopped immediately and sat up in their chairs obediently.

I looked at him, amazed. I couldn’t make the connection between the insecure, inarticulate guy who hung out with us, and the mature, authoritative person I was suddenly seeing.

*

Later, during the first few years in Tel Aviv, our friendship was constructed slowly with brick after brick of small deeds. Every time I asked him to help me move, for instance, he was right there. Not three hours late, like Ofir. Not trying to convince me, like Churchill, that hiring a removal company would be cheaper in the end.

Whenever he needed an emergency babysitter — usually when Ilana was in one of her moods and he felt he ‘had to take her out for some air’ — I would go there and read the twins stories and change their nappies and feel pangs of longing for children of my own, which would turn into sharp stabs of impatience the minute one of them started to cry, then back into pangs of longing again when they fell asleep.

Once a week, between meetings with one Telemed client and another, Amichai would come to visit me. Always with delicious cookies Ilana had baked. Always insisting on making the coffee himself. Always collapsing on my sofa with the same old Yiddish cry of pleasure, a-machayeh .

The conversations that came after the coffee were excruciatingly predictable: he would tell me about the new treatment he was trying to remove the blotch on his neck, and I would say that no one noticed it but him and that if he weren’t with Ilana, a lot of women would want him. And then I would tell him about another awful date I’d been on, and he would agree with me too quickly that the girl wasn’t worth it anyway. And interspersed were updates on Ilana’s latest successes in academia and the twins’ latest antics, complaints about work at Telemed, empty words about the possibility of leaving everything and signing up to study shiatsu that same year and circular debates about the new line-ups of Maccabi Haifa or the Israeli national team.

Quite a few times, I stole a glance at the clock while he was there.

But even so, I was filled with light when I saw him through the peephole of my door a week later.

There they were, the broad shoulders. There they were, the earth-coloured eyes. There it was, that feeling that everything would be OK.

*

After Ilana died, he kept coming once a week. But he didn’t talk any more. Not about the blotch, not about Maccabi Haifa, not about the Israeli national team. He would hug me limply at the door, then go into the living room, sit down on the sofa and remain silent.

At first, I tried to get him to say something.

Do you want to talk? I asked.

Yeah, but … he slowly dragged the words out of his mouth … it hurts.

Want something to drink?

No.

Eat?

No, Bro, thanks.

So what … what can I do for you?

Nothing. Sit … Sit here with me.

*

So I sat with him. Once a week, on the sofa. And we were silent together. On the wall across from us hung framed pictures of the guys. In front of us, on the table, the cookies he bought at the grocery shop. Sometimes, as I stared into space, I’d start thinking about a word I’d come up against in a translation, or about clients’ cheques I had to cash, or I’d try to concentrate and read his thoughts, or I’d try to wordlessly pass a thought of my own to him, let’s say a thought like, Bro, stop feeling guilty, you did what you could to prevent the surgery, and anyway, who could have known that such simple surgery could suddenly go so wrong? Or a thought like, you’re so strong, Amichai, so much sorrow would have turned anyone else, including me, into a well a long time ago, like it did to Egeria in Metamorphoses .

*

But it didn’t matter what thoughts I tried to pass on to him. After half an hour, he would get up and walk to the door.

Usually, he would give me a quick hug and leave without saying a word. Only once did he linger a bit at the door and say, this stays between us, OK, Yuval?

Of course, I promised. Even though I didn’t understand what was supposed to stay between us.

And he would lean on the wall of the staircase, smile mournfully and say, you’re … you’re a friend.

WHEN AMICHAI OPENED the door to us two weeks later, we were shocked to see that his blotch had almost completely disappeared. Ilana’s death had succeeded where all the salves and cosmetic treatments had failed, and now not only had the Galilee been erased from his neck, but also the Negev and Jerusalem and the Judea Plains and, in fact, except for a small spot left where the greater Tel Aviv area had been, there was nothing left of that Israel-on-the-neck that had screwed up his self-confidence for years.

He was also very thin. His shirt was hanging on him, his chin had sharpened, his cheekbones protruded, adding a tragic, Jacques Brel dimension to everything he said.

I have bad news and bad news, he announced at the beginning of our meeting.

At least you have no problem about what to start with, I said. But that didn’t make him smile.

The bad news, he said, is that we don’t have enough money at the moment to set up a serious NPO, and we need donations from foundations. The worse news is that we can’t get donations if we don’t establish an NPO that looks like it’s active.

Ilana watched us from the wall with bitter disappointment. Predictable, her expression said. It was so predictable that in the end you guys wouldn’t do anything.

Unless, I said, we manage to reach people personally.

But how? Ofir wondered. None of us is Teddy Kollek.

Through Ya’ara, I said. Her parents lived in Miami for twelve years and they have close ties to all the rich Jews there.