Eshkol Nevo - World Cup Wishes

Truthfully, it was never good with Yoav. It was interesting, it was annoying, but never good. I wasn’t happy. And it wasn’t only because of his infidelities … OK, they probably helped … but even without them … I never had a moment’s peace with him. We argued all the time. Not about major issues, but about stupid little things. And that’s … exhausting. Every argument like that injects more poison into your blood, until you …

She coughed lightly, as if the poison she was talking about was real and now it was burning her throat.

A phone rang in the ground floor flat of the building we were sitting near.

I don’t want to cry any more, Ya’ara said. I cried too many times this last year. And I felt lonely too many times. And unwanted. I felt that our house was a prison too many times. And I lay beside him in bed and couldn’t fall asleep too many times. And that’s not how it should be. Love should be a good thing, right?

I nodded hesitantly. What did I know about love?

When I was with you, she went on, there was a kind of flow between us … a harmony. I remember our Saturdays together … When evening came, I didn’t know where the time had gone. You remember those Saturdays?

(Her tanned, naked body on my bed. Her glasses open on the bedside table. A newspaper left on the bed, the edge of the page touching her foot. The ends of her unruly caramel-coloured hair curled on her cheek like a garnish. The smell of a freshly baked roll rising from her drowsy body. And I am lying beside her with my eyes wide open, thinking: you have to stop. You have to stop being afraid and wanting her to leave you.)

And the sex between us was so good, Ya’ara continued. I’ve never had such good sex with anyone.

So why did you leave, Ya’ara? If everything was so great, why did you leave? I asked in a hoarse voice and remembered that terrible conversation. She’d said she needed time to think. It’s taken her three years to think?

The phone in the nearby flat rang. And rang.

Ya’ara stood up, walked around the table and sat down next to me.

Hug me, she said in the voice of a little girl with white sandals and pigtails.

I hugged her.

Tighter, she said, till it hurts.

I hugged tighter, but not so much that it hurt. I couldn’t hurt her. Not her.

I’m fucked up, she said. Something basic is wrong with me. Her body trembled in my arms.

We’re all fucked up just because we’re human beings, I told her, just as I’d once told Ofir.

But I’m more so, she said. You don’t understand … except for you, all the men I’ve been with have always treated me badly … There must be something in me that asks to be treated that way. That wants it.

I remembered all the times I was even slightly mean to her — I teased her, moved a sweet out of her reach, refused to tell her my World Cup wishes — and how much she loved it.

But I want to change, I want to break that pattern, she said, moving away from me slightly and giving me a serious, almost determined look. And I think I can! I’m sure I can!! she added, and for the second time in that conversation, she reminded me of Ofir — with him, when the exclamation marks began to appear at the end of his sentences, we knew he was unsure of himself.

Anyway, she said — as if she sensed my doubt — you’ve changed too.

Me? I said in surprise. (I still translate articles into English. Still eat an apple with a knife like my father. I’m still short. Still in love with you. Where’s the change?)

She unbuttoned the top button of my shirt, threaded her hand inside and began to play with the hair on my chest. First of all, I see you’ve grown some hair.

A little.

A little is good. Besides, when I helped you all with the NPO and we talked on the phone, you were different from before.

Different?

Rougher. More together. Three years have passed, you know. Things have happened in your life.

(After all those conversations when I sounded so rough, I would go and take your sock out of the closet. And I dated a girl just because she had your name. And every time you sat next to me at those meetings with the guys, I felt as if my insides wanted to fly out of my body to you, and there are whole parts of the city I avoid because they remind me of you, and I’ve had enough. Keep. Stroking. My. Chest. You know how much I love it. Nothing happened during those three years. Except you. I got up in the morning and met people and bought fruit for the weekend and raw tahini and new shirts and the only thing I felt was longing for you. The only reason you thought I was rougher and more together during our conversations is that they were on the phone. And I could be calm, cool and collected because you weren’t in the room with me and you had a ring on your finger, but now that you’re touching me, I can’t, keep doing it, keep doing it, everything’s on fire, and this is the only way I can love you, the only way. Perhaps I could love another woman differently, but with you, it will always be boundless, with you I melt, and yes, I’m beginning to understand that you might never save up ninety-one thousand dollars, and I’m beginning to realise that you make all those incisive comments about other people to hide the fact that you’re simply lazy and very much afraid of change, but now, as you unbutton another button on my shirt, all my good judgement and all my insights and all my caution melt into bubbling, liquid love, and that’s exactly what you couldn’t stand, that’s exactly what sets off the fucked-up part of you and will keep setting it off till you get up and leave me again and take that clean smell that makes me want to lick you and now I’m licking the inside of your ear and you abandon your neck to my lips and I kiss it and bite it gently the way you like it the way you liked it and you seek my lips and now we’re kissing and you taste of fake vanilla fake vanilla everything’s fake but so lovely so lovely and in another few seconds another few seconds less a second there will be no more words so perhaps I should use my last ounce of strength to stop and try to stop to say enough keep on doing it enough my God it’s too much perhaps —)

Stop.

Stop? Ya’ara said and moved away from me, surprised.

I want to tell you something. I have to tell you before …

So, come on, tell me, she said, moving away a little more, her neck flushed.

It’s not … What you said before … I haven’t changed … When it comes to you … I’m exactly the same.

So?

So maybe your expectations … are too high.

Maybe, Ya’ara said pensively.

And I immediately wanted to convince her of the opposite.

It could be that you’re right, but let’s leave that for later, she said and resumed stroking my chest. Now — she gave me that look over her glasses — my only expectation from you is another kiss like the last one. Is that expectation too high?

A Hollywood hero would have got up and left at that point, proving he was morally superior to the other characters in the movie and showing in no uncertain terms how much he had changed: from adolescence to maturity. From irresponsibility to responsibility. From being an idler living on the fringes of society to being a successful media tycoon.

But I’m too short to be a Hollywood hero anyway.

And I wanted to taste that vanilla on her lips again.

And after I tasted it one more time, I wanted to taste it again and again.

After we fooled around like that for half an hour beside the chessboard, I suggested that we go to my flat, and she reminded me that Churchill was there and took me to their place, which was three blocks from there, and on the way, we stopped twice and squeezed into the dark spaces between buildings to kiss, and I kissed her on the back of her neck just as I’d wanted to that day when we came back from Ilana’s shiva in Haifa, and she stood motionless and said that the waves of pleasure reached all the way to her big toe and she was probably going to be the first woman ever to come through her big toe.