Eshkol Nevo - World Cup Wishes

In the end, Ofir cleaned up Churchill’s vomit. And carried him like a wounded soldier to the shower. And washed his face with cold water. And put him on the bed to recover. My bed.

It’s all my fault, Ofir apologised later on his way to the door, and I said, forget it, it’s Shahar Cohen’s fault. But Ofir insisted and said that he’d go to Jaffa the next day and find out what exactly they’d sold him there. I’ll let you know if it was something dangerous, he promised, and I thought, nice of him to take responsibility like that, and perhaps I’d been wrong to put him down, and Amichai also said he might drop round the next day to see how Churchill was and to bring him some clothes, because they’re more or less the same size –

So the next evening, when Churchill was in the shower and there was a gentle knocking at the door, I was sure it was them. And I forgot Churchill’s request to look through the peephole to see who was on the other side of the door before I opened it.

Ya’ara was standing in front of me. Ya’ara the First. The Ya’ara of my dreams.

He’s in the shower, I said. You want to wait for him?

I didn’t come to see him, she said and gave me an intense look over her glasses. Only then did I notice that she was wearing her blue cloche skirt, the one she knew I liked. The one I’d pictured her wearing dozens of times in the last three years when she came here just to tell me she’d chosen the wrong friend. And to ask if she could still change her mind.

I felt that thing begin to swell in my chest.

Wait a sec, I said with a dry throat, left Churchill a note saying that I’d gone out to play chess in the club, put on my coat and went out to her in the hallway.

Where should we go? she asked.

To Hagilboa Street, I said with uncharacteristic assurance.

Halfway down from the second floor to the first, the staircase light went out. I felt around in the dark to find the wall and press on it, when suddenly she was enveloped in my arms. And suddenly I felt her stomach pressing against mine. And suddenly I smelled her scent in my breath. And suddenly she buried her small, cold mouth in my neck and said: I made a mistake. I chose the wrong friend. Can I still change my mind?

1I think that, in this description, Mr Freed is trying, with his customary nobility, to preserve my honour. I am sorry to say that the actual scene he saw that night was not one of mysterious ear-probing, but of simple, unrestrained weeping. I must emphasise that, as an adult, I have cried only twice: the first time was that night at Mr Freed’s home when I first truly understood that I was about to lose the only woman, apart from my mother, who truly loved me. The second time was approximately a month ago, when Mr Freed’s father called and told me what had happened.

To the best of my knowledge, Mr Freed borrowed the image of feverish ear-probing from a boy he tutored as part of the Student Association project to help underprivileged children when he was at university. Though Mr Freed remained in close contact with that boy for years after the official project ended, he gets no mention at all in the book.

But that boy is not the only one given no mention: many other details of Mr Freed’s life are kept hidden from the reader — such as, for example, his daily telephone calls with his mother, the regular allowance he received from his father on the first of every month, and the fact that he wrote particularly acerbic talk-backs to Internet sites that posted remarks by army officers, and signed them ‘Major Kierkegaard’.

As editor of this book, I should, as a rule, respect this choice to conceal material, even if it is occasionally beyond my understanding (why did Mr Freed decide to conceal his regular chess partner? After all, that emaciated old man’s suicide by hanging was certainly one of the main reasons Mr Freed ended up in the situation he did later!). (Y.A.)

… And then, suddenly — at the last minute, in the appendix! — David Hume had a change of heart. After trying for dozens of pages in the body of the text to prove that there is no such thing as a permanent ‘I’, after working hard to persuade his readers that there is nothing beyond the flow of consciousness to which that flow can be attributed, and that our mind resembles a republic in which a series of entirely different people and perceptions exist side by side — after all those coherent arguments, Hume recants.

I have no way of explaining it, he writes with obvious embarrassment in the appendix. All my logical thought indicates something different — and yet, I am unable to deny that we feel that our changing bundle of perceptions is based on something simple and personal. What is that constant thing? Hume asks himself. This is too hard for my understanding, he confesses sorrowfully. And in the next two paragraphs — the last in the book — he attempts to meticulously correct two minor errors that appear on here and here of the book: if I have erred all along the way, then at least let it be a glorious error.

I KNOW IT sounds unbelievable. Almost too pat. What are the chances that Ya’ara would speak exactly the same lines I’d given her in my fantasies. But that is what she said. Word for word. And as we began walking in the street together, I really did start to wonder if what was happening now was really happening or whether it was taking place in a sort of purgatory between reality and imagination that you reach if you hang on to a false wish for a long enough time. Like Churchill after he drank the San Pedro, I urgently needed a human sign, someone I could call twelve times a minute, and he would come and assure me again each time that it was all real, tangible. But I could find no such sign, so I continued walking beside Ya’ara, struck mute by the fatefulness of it all, till we reached Hagilboa Street.

We walked side by side along the brick-paved path that wound around the houses, inhaling the different air that street has, our gazes wandering to the soft balconies, the tranquil trees, the cars that only here looked as if they were anchored in a safe harbour, while in the rest of the city they looked like ships that had crashed onto pavement reefs.

Ya’ara had shown me Hagilboa Street when we first began going out, and we used to escape there from time to time when we felt life closing in on us. We’d sit next to an adjoining stone backgammon table and stone chess table, and instead of the game pieces moving around on them, leaves jumped from square to square at the whim of the wind, ignoring the rules of the game.

Now too, we sat down on opposite sides of the chess table and she reached out over the black and white squares, took my hands and said, I thought you’d be happy.

I am.

You don’t look happy.

I’m absorbing it.

Good. So tell me when you’re finished.

She leaned back and inhaled the scent of the canopy of honeysuckle. She took off her glasses, cleaned them with the edge of her shirt and put them back on. For a long minute, she made a show of watching an old man walking slowly down the street, but in the end, she couldn’t carry it off.

I know what you’re thinking.

What am I thinking?

That I want to get back at Yoav. That I’m angry with him for that Keren and I’m not thinking clearly, and that when I calm down, I’ll change my mind again. But that’s not true. It’s just not true!

Her collar bone rose and fell with emotion as she spoke. I knew that lips brushing lightly across it excited her.

So what is the truth? I asked, already protesting less.

She reached over and took my hands again. Her touch was her touch.