Eshkol Nevo - World Cup Wishes

He thought it was ‘a scandal that they don’t teach that’ and ‘literature teachers would rather teach dead poets because they have lesson plans on them all prepared’. And he also said that it would be just like Atalya — that, it turns out, was the name of the girl from Tel Aviv — to have a book like that in her house. Why? I asked, because I knew from the tone of his voice that he wanted me to ask, and he opened the car window, leaned his elbow out with that post-coital euphoria and said that Atalya had been having an affair with a married man for a few years, and a couple of hours before we arrived, he told her he couldn’t sneak out to see her that night even though he’d promised he would, and she was so upset that she had to dance out all her anger, otherwise she would have exploded, or even worse, jumped out of the window, and that’s when we knocked on the door looking so pure and innocent in our jeans and T-shirts that she just had to touch the smooth innocence she was losing as her affair with this man was becoming tangled in a web of lies, but she couldn’t end it, she couldn’t leave him because if she did, she’d be alone, completely alone.

Churchill went on describing in minute detail everything they said and everything that happened in the bedroom, and I didn’t stop him because it excited me and helped me get through the section of the road after Hadera without falling asleep, and when we started up Freud Road and the sun was painting the Carmel Mountains in sleepy gold, he said, look, Freed, there’s nobody on the road but us, this city is dead. Dead. We have to get out of here the minute after we’re discharged. If we stay, in a few years, we’ll get homogenia.

Homogenia?

We’ll be like everyone else, Churchill said. We’ll go to work, come home from work. Grow a pot belly and a mortgage. We can’t let that happen. We can’t!

OK, Churchill, I said. O-o-OK. But that wasn’t enough for him, and after we dropped off Ofir and Amichai, he made me swear that after the army, I’d move to Tel Aviv with him because without me, ‘I’ll never have the guts to do it’.

I was surprised that the great Churchill needed me so much and I felt a little weird swearing to do something that would happen in another four years. Not only that, but just two hours earlier, I’d promised Ofir to die in the army for his movie, but Churchill said he’d get out of the car if I didn’t promise, and I was tired, very tired from that whole Independence Day, so I swore to him, and with us, subjects of the British Empire, teatime is teatime and giving your word obligates you, so three months after we got out of the army, I went to his apartment to go through the ‘Flatmates Wanted’ listings he’d taken from the Student Union for me, and in the years that have gone by since then, I’ve never felt at home in a single one of the six Tel Aviv flats I lived in, but on the other hand, with time, I stopped feeling like a temporary visitor and even started to have an affection for certain places where the four of us spent a lot of time together — like the far bank of the Yarkon, or the boisterous square in front of the Cinematheque, or the American Colony on the way to Jaffa — but even those modest affections faded, faded very much, when that business with Ya’ara happened.

Without my Haifa friends, the streets of the big city seemed like dead-ends to me again. The shoreline looked like a hotel lobby again. And the people walking on the promenade looked hopelessly different from me again. Their joy of life seemed superficial to me. Materialistic. Pathetic. I ridiculed them and envied them at the same time. I felt purer than they were. Deeper. And at the same time, I felt that they had a kind of wonderful lightness I would never have, only because in my heart, I was still a Haifa boy.

I was anxious to know whether any of my Haifa friends missed me at the annual spring barbecue. Or at the screening of Late Summer Blues every Memorial Day. I found out how boring and sad it was to watch football alone, especially Israeli football. I found out how hard it was to make new friends at our age. I tried to get chummy with a few of my clients, and I even went out with some of them to an Irish pub near the beach. But it didn’t work. Too many things had to be explained because they didn’t understand immediately what I meant. It all smacked of benefits to be gained. And overcrowded schedules (apparently it’s no accident that most friendships are born in high school or on trips. You need a generous stretch of time to get close).

Mostly, all those Irish outings made me miss my old friends.

And Churchill more than any of them.

After getting our BAs, we’d taken off, just the two of us, on a long trip to South America. Ofir had just started working in an ad agency and was afraid they’d fire him if he took a too-long holiday, and Ilana the Weeper was already pregnant with the twins, so Amichai dropped out too, and it was just the two of us, Churchill and me. Me and Churchill. Nights. Days. In piss-smelling rooms. In Indian markets bustling with colour. In central bus stations that had no information desks. In long waits that went on for hours. In long rides that went on for days.

On a trip like that, you’re exposed to the true nature of the person you’re travelling with, and he’s exposed to yours. At home, you can somehow hide it, smooth it out, play nice. But on a trip like that, everything comes out. Floats to the top. And is laid open.

I never imagined, for example, how much Churchill was addicted to attention. I always thought there was something about him that projected: I have my own way and I make it on my own. It wasn’t till that trip that I realised, for the first time, that it all depended on feedback. If we didn’t meet any new people for a few days, he withered. His shoulders drooped. Even his speech became hesitant.

He never imagined what a neatness freak I was. I tried desperately to turn every miserable little room we rented into a home. And when he threw his clothes on the floor, I told him to pick them up as if I were his mother, and that provoked him so much that at some point in the trip, we decided that, for the good of our friendship, we should sleep in separate rooms even though it cost more. And it also drove him crazy that I couldn’t communicate until I had my morning tea-with-milk. And his constant complaints against the locals drove me up the wall. Look at all the natural resources they have, he’d say, pointing out of the bus window at cascading waterfalls, it’s incredible that they don’t do a thing with them. Let me enjoy the scenery, I’d think, and move slightly away from him, but he wouldn’t let it go: of course they’re poor, they’re lazy, like they can’t help themselves. They have no desire to change their situation.

For the first few weeks, I argued with him (perhaps it’s a different way of life? Perhaps they choose to be like that?) and then I just kept quiet. I listened to him complain (look at this terrible road. Why is it such a big deal to get it fixed? This is not a way of life, it’s just plain laziness) and prayed he’d shut up. Or bother someone else on the bus.

But despite everything, we didn’t separate for more than a day on that whole trip. And despite everything, we were closer when we came home. Perhaps because, as Aristotle claims, ‘Men cannot know each other until they have eaten salt together’, and perhaps because the trip gave each of us at least one chance to learn that he really could depend on the other.

When Churchill came back, he told everyone how I saved his life when he drank the San Pedro. I thought he was exaggerating a little, all I did was go to see how he was eight hours after he’d left the ranch with a bag full of green cactus juice the Indians used when they wanted to talk to the gods. Any friend would’ve done that. Before he left our shack, he said he was going to drink that juice, but I had nothing to worry about because there was no way it would have any effect on him. I believed him. After all, he was Churchill. And when I went out to look for him, I was sure I’d find him swimming naked with two Israeli girls in one of the natural water pools scattered around the ranch.