Eshkol Nevo - World Cup Wishes

Shahar Cohen never belonged to that group of admirers, even though he always hovered around near them. The secret rancour between him and Churchill continued to simmer all those years without any of their friends knowing why. And it wasn’t till that night, on our way home from our unsuccessful search for the vet, Ricardo Luis, in Mitzpe Ramon, with Ofir and Amichai asleep on the back seat and Radio Amman the only station we could get on the radio, that Churchill looked out into the vast darkness on our right and told me everything, and in the end, said, I want you to know, Freed, that no one in the world knows about this but you, and I kept quiet and felt lucky and important and special.

*

Fourteen years later, I got a first-hand report of the ‘embarrassing personal circumstances’ from the source.

Churchill knocked on my door a few nights after the story broke on TV.

He was dressed strangely. The bottom half — black trousers and polished shoes — was lawyerly. But above it was an old Maccabi Haifa T-shirt with Eyal Berkovic’s number on it. A small Israeli paunch protruded from the T-shirt. I wondered whether he’d got fatter recently or I only just noticed it now.

Can I come in? he asked. Sorry about the late …

No worries, I said, inviting him in.

I made him a cup of strong instant coffee, carefully stirring in one and a half teaspoons of sugar the way he liked, and brought it to him in the living room.

Thanks, Baba , he said, and left the cup on the table.

That was a hell of trip, he said, pointing to the framed picture of our trip to the Sinai that was hanging on the wall.

I haven’t seen that picture for years, he added when I kept silent.

You haven’t been here in years, I said dryly.

Yes, he said, and looked down at his shoes. He usually sat with his legs spread wide, as if he were having sex with the air, but now his knees were pressed together.

I know, he said, that for the last two years, you and I haven’t … I mean … we’ve grown distant … after what happened … rightly so, of course … He stopped and looked at me.

I nodded like a judge, giving him permission to continue along the same lines. For the time being.

But as far as I’m concerned … you’ve always remained my friend … and now, I’m in trouble … and I have no one to talk to, no one to ask for advice … Ya’ara, she won’t any more … and Amichai, he has enough on his mind … and Ofir … he called and starting telling me how every mistake is a lesson, and maybe he’s right, but those clichés of his drive me mad … and my parents … my father doesn’t understand these kinds of things, and my mother … I’m ashamed to talk to her about it … you know, she started law school this year? She said that seeing me succeed gave her courage, you see? So how can I tell her what happened, disappoint her this way …? But still, I need to talk to someone … someone who thinks clearly … because I can’t do it alone any more …

Your coffee’s getting cold, I interrupted him. I still didn’t know what I wanted more: to help him or to throw him out.

Anyway, he said after a few quiet sips, you’re the only one who can understand me in this thing. Because you’re the only one who knows who Keren is.

Keren?

Keren from Cusco. You remember when you were sick and I took care of you? And that’s exactly when I met a girl who … The one with the secret?

Yes. The one I asked to wait till you recovered, but she left, saying that ‘whatever is supposed to happen …’

Happens. And if you’re supposed to meet — you’ll meet. I remember. But how is she connected to the ‘embarrassing personal circumstances’?

She is the ‘embarrassing personal circumstance’, Churchill said. And began to tell me.

Churchill had a special tone to his voice when he talked about his conquests. When he talked about women he’d been able to seduce, his voice would become slightly deeper, rougher, a bit like the voice-over in a Hollywood trailer, and his gestures were sweeping, illustrative, and he always went into the most intimate detail. Where he touched her. And how, at first, she wouldn’t. Then suddenly she would. Wow, would she ever, she was dripping from every opening. And the sounds she made, oh God! And the smell of her breath. And the taste of her lips. And her lips down there. When we were teenagers, there was something very provocative about it, and I usually had a hard-on when he spoke that way, but later, when we were older, we grew tired of it and just found it embarrassing. And gross. But I still had a hard-on sometimes when he spoke that way.

Now, in any case, his tone was different. Hesitant. Hurt. And occasionally, he stopped and rubbed his head where his hairline was receding (I wondered whether it had receded a great deal more recently, or was I simply noticing it only now. And then a thought flitted through my mind: if he already looks so much older, do I as well?).

She came up to me after a court session, he explained. And, idiot that I am, I didn’t ask myself what she was doing there. I was just glad to see her.

You recognised her?

Immediately. She looked exactly like she had then. Actually, not exactly like she had then, better. More womanly. She was wearing a long, wine-red dress slit up the side. In retrospect, I know that everything was planned, but at the time, I didn’t suspect a thing. She said she’d just happened to be nearby and had come inside, and that sounded reasonable to me. She said I looked good in a lawyer’s robe and then, when we were sitting and talking outside in the museum plaza, she said that a day didn’t pass when she didn’t think about me.

Since Cusco?

Yes. So I immediately said that I … I hadn’t stopped thinking about her either since then.

I didn’t know that.

I never told anyone. I thought it was pathetic to keep thinking about her all those years. Who was she anyway? Just a girl I spent two days with and …

Kept thinking about. What’s pathetic about that?

I don’t know. I thought that if I talked about it, if I said it out loud, it would just grow larger in my mind.

Or if you told anyone, I thought, your image would be tarnished.

Shall I tell you something else that no one else knows? Churchill went on. A few days before I got married, I went to Ashdod. I remembered Keren telling me she had family in Ashdod. So I went down there and drove in circles around the city. Looking for her. I drove slowly. For hours. Ashdod has grown into a large city over the last few years. It’s divided into quarters. So I drove from one quarter to the other. I told myself that if I saw her, it would be a sign.

A sign of what?

I don’t know. But it had become really urgent that I find her. Talk to her. Before I got married.

And you didn’t find her.

No. Then she suddenly shows up with that slit up her dress, still radiating the sense that she has a secret she’s keeping to herself, and she tells me that not a day has passed that she hasn’t regretted not waiting with us in Cusco, because there was a special magic between us. A one-time thing. And no matter how hard she tried to recreate that magic with other men, it was never the same.

Wow.

It was nothing, just clichés. But I didn’t get it then. And she kept touching me as she spoke, light, fluttery touches. First, only on the back of my hand. Then on my knee. And in the end, there was one especially long one here, on the inside of my thigh.

So you slept with her.

More or less … Churchill said and stood up. Usually, at this point in his stories, came the detailed descriptions. But now he stood up, sighed an old man’s sigh, went over to the window, pushed the curtain aside and stared down at the street.