Eshkol Nevo - Homesick

*

Night has fallen on the Castel, Maoz Ziyon. In the Zakian home, they turn off the last light. Only the small lights that no one notices will stay lit all night. The oven clock. The clock on the VCR. The emergency night light on the kitchen counter near the cookie jar. In the next house, where the bereaved family lives, the lights were turned off quite a while ago. Only the memorial candle is burning in the living room, every little gust of wind blowing the flame to and fro. Yotam’s parents are in bed, lying back to back, not sleeping and not making a sound. Each one needs to be held, but neither one turns around. The father is thinking: tomorrow’s a month, we’ll go to the cemetery for the unveiling of the gravestone. I hope there’s no one we forgot to phone. The mother is thinking: what is going to happen to that child, he’s hardly ever here. Whenever he should be doing homework, he seems to disappear. And Yotam himself is already sleeping. In his dream, there’s a forest where thick tree trunks reach as high as the sky. Gidi is climbing one of them, and suddenly turns into his neighbour, Amir, who played backgammon with him. Twice.

And the neighbour, Amir, closes the book, Research Methods , because he can’t absorb any more, it’s so late. He goes to the fridge and takes out a chocolate dessert that’s past its sell-by date. Walks back to the bedroom, scratches his head, puts the book back on the shelf near his bed.

There’s not a sound on the street. No people, no cars. It’s time to go outside, to breathe some stars.

*

Moments when it’s hard for Amir to be Noaandamir:

When she messes up the house and claims it’s the only way she can breathe. Neatly organised places make her feel like she’s in a prison cell, and all she wants is to leave. Don’t be silly, he tells her, and picks up a damp towel that’s lying on the rug, a used tissue and a cotton ball. It has nothing to do with freedom or prison. You’re just lazy, that’s all.

When she interrupts him during a football match, especially when he’s watching his favourite team, and asks him for the millionth time: that rule, offside, exactly what does it mean?

And also: when her need for creative space turns aggressive. When all she cares about is this frame and that negative. And all of a sudden, she can’t see him even when he’s standing a metre away. Night or day. And her entire body is telling him: go. At those moments he swears he’ll get back at her. He’ll wait till she wants to be close to him again, and he’ll be so cold that she’ll never forget. Or he could get angry and give her a piece of his mind. But Amir’s not that kind. At least not yet.

*

Enough of the album for today. On the next page, the black-and-white series starts, a series of pictures of Amir everywhere in the house, pictures with sharp, dramatic contrasts that make him look like a movie star from the 1950s. Especially the one taken in the bathroom when he was shaving, with little smidgens of lather near his ears. When I look at that picture, I can actually smell his smell. Something between vanilla and cinnamon. And that really is too much. Enough, Noa. The past is past. Close the album now. Go to the bookcase. Hide it behind the encyclopaedias.

*

Her shift at the café is over at midnight. She’s home by twelve-thirty. But I go out to the Zakian steps a little before that. She loves me to wait outside for her, it thrills her every time and, after a full day of summarising chapters of the book, with one break to play a silent game of backgammon with Yotam, I’m yearning for her. On the other hand, and there’s always the other hand, a tiny desire to be alone for a little while longer is darting in and out of my consciousness.

No one is out walking on the streets of the Castel at this hour. The wind carries the faint mutterings of the Madmoni family’s TV. A bluish light flickers from their first-floor window. The extension to their house is dark. Actually, it doesn’t exist yet. They’re building it now. The more my eyes adjust to the darkness, the more details I can see. Scaffolding, iron rods, buckets strewn all around, upside down, and a whitish something that looks like a pitta right in the middle of the roof. The workers themselves have already gone, unless one of them stayed to sleep in the little tin hut they built below the house. If there is someone there, he’s probably frozen. It’s only the end of October, but it’s cold here in the Judean hills. I rub my hands together and then bury them in the sleeves of my sweater.

A ray of light suddenly appears, illuminating the houses at the end of the block. Something that looks like the small van that takes her home comes crawling along the street. A plan begins to take shape in my mind. I’ll let her get out, let her cross the street, sunk in thought, let her come right up to the bottom of the stairs I’m sitting on, and only then will I say, in the dulcet tones of a night-time radio broadcaster: hello Noa from Maoz Ziyon. No, I think, rejecting the plan out of hand, she’ll be scared. Or maybe she’ll be angry. Why ruin things? In another few days, it’ll be a month since we moved to the Castel, and, like I wrote to Modi, touch wood, everything’s OK so far. We haven’t had any fights, at least not any big ones. The fucking is passionate, intense, the best we’ve ever had. The way she understands me, from inside, and can cut through all my defences with a single sentence straight to the truth. And the way she winds her hair up in a towel after her shower and skips-drips all over the house.

True, there’s a kind of tension brewing under the surface all the time, like a shark slipping down under clear water. And even when we’re closest, I feel my shadow moving away from us, taking off for somewhere else. When I drive to Tel Aviv in the morning and my Fiat bolts out of Sha’ar Hagai, I feel like I’m bolting out of some narrow space too. But maybe that’s just how it is. That’s how it is with couples.

The van stops. She gets out and thanks the driver. The most beautiful collarbone in the world appears when she bends. Another couple of rides and the driver will fall in love with her. She waves goodbye to him, wraps her black scarf around her and in a single movement, pulls out the hair trapped between the scarf and her neck. Then she buries her small fists in her long red coat (one night, she wore that coat with only panties under it, in my honour) and starts in my direction in that skipping walk of hers that bursts out of her coat.

*

Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv they’re starting to set up the stage — pulling ropes, dragging boards, putting up lights. A Centurion tank from the armoured corps exhibition last Succoth has been left in the square. The logistics manager of the rally is on his mobile now, pleading with the army officer in charge: put it somewhere else, anywhere. But that logistics manager isn’t what he seems. He has a secret dream. He wants to write a book and then sign copies during national book week. He wants to hear his name on the loudspeakers at the shopping mall: the author is signing copies of his book at the publisher’s stall. And the queue of people will be immense. He even has an idea for a book, an exciting novel set during the War of Independence. And also a title: ‘Burma’, after the name of the road to Jerusalem paved by the fighters. But he can’t find the time to write it. The wife. The kids. This job, a bottomless pit. For instance, this peace rally on Saturday night. They say that more than a hundred thousand people will come to hear Rabin and the mayor speak, and they’re probably right. If even the smallest thing gets screwed up — if the loudspeakers squeak, if they don’t take away that Centurion tank they were supposed to pick up this week — his boss won’t hesitate to take it out on him. So it’s better to get back to work now, he tells himself. To make calls, raise walls, nail boards. And for the time being, leave his dreams on the shelf.