Eshkol Nevo - Homesick

*

At night, after I came back from the shelter, I had a dream. It must’ve been important because I remember a large part of it. Shmuel, a man of about sixty who has hair like straw and wears cracked glasses, was standing in the middle of our living room and explaining his theory, the same theory he had explained to me a few hours before, in reality, in the club’s coffee corner (a peeling Formica table, two chairs, one with a broken back, lumpy sugar, Elite instant coffee, containers of UHT milk, spoons that had already seen a lot in life). The world, he explained excitedly, is divided into three colours: red, white and transparent. Red and white represent the two human extremes, and transparent represents the middle road, the divine compromise. In politics, for example, the far right is white, Rabin may he rest in peace, was red, and the true path, the transparent, runs between them. The same is true of love. Men are white. Women are red. That’s why hearts break. Now — in the dream — Shmuel bent to whisper into my ear: Look at your apartment, my friend. Everything here is red, white and transparent. I looked around the apartment. The dream’s director shifted the camera so I could see, with horror, that Shmuel was right. The chairs were red, the table white, and the wall that separated us from the Zakians was transparent. Through it, I could see that Sima and Moshe were in the middle of an argument, but I didn’t hear what they were saying. There was a transparent plate on the table. On its right was a red knife, on its left a white fork. But why red, white and transparent? I asked. What’s the logic behind it? Shmuel shrugged and nodded in the direction of the picture on the transparent wall, the picture that bothers Noa so much, of a man looking outside through a window. Its original colours, purple, black and orange, had changed to haphazard areas of red and white. I didn’t like that kind of modern art, and suddenly, in my dream, I didn’t understand why Shmuel was standing in the middle of my living room instead of being where he belonged, in the club. I turned to him to find out, but he’d disappeared. Or maybe he hadn’t? Maybe he was just transparent? The thought passed through my mind as I dreamed, but I didn’t have time to check it out because I suddenly heard pounding on the window. I went to see who it was, but I couldn’t see because the window wasn’t transparent. It was white and opaque. From the voices, I could tell that Noa, Itzhak Rabin and some child, maybe Yotam, had lost the key and wanted me to open the door for them. I went to the door and tried to open it. It didn’t open. I pressed my shoulder against it, but it didn’t open. I gave it a karate kick, but it didn’t open. And that’s where the part of the dream I remember ends.

*

When I woke up in the morning, his side was already empty but still warm, and the pillow had an indentation in the shape of his head. In films, in scenes like this, after a fight, the man always leaves the woman an emotional letter saying he’s sorry, or he buys her a bouquet of flowers, and even though I know that Moshe isn’t into writing letters or bringing flowers, I did expect something to be waiting for me on the kitchen table. That’s how it is with films — they have an effect on you even if you know they’re stupid. When there was nothing there but a half-empty cup of black coffee, I was disappointed. Lilach, who’s usually calm and laughing in the morning, was whining and wouldn’t stop. That little one is an antenna. She picks up everything. That’s why we always try to argue in the bedroom, behind the closed door. I changed her nappy and cut up a banana for her, the way she likes it. Meanwhile, Liron came in and asked me to help him tie his shoelaces. I heated up some cocoa for him and added two squares of chocolate to it, to make up for eating all the cornflakes. I put cuts in his orange so he’d be able to peel it during the morning break, explained to him for the thousandth time how to loop one lace and put the loop of the other lace through it, and the whole time, I was looking for signs of yesterday’s argument in him, but I didn’t find any. As usual, he drank the cocoa too fast, and as usual, he burned his tongue a bit. As usual, he forgot to pull out the points of his collar, and as usual, he got cross when I reminded him. It wasn’t until he got to the door and kissed me on the cheek, as usual, that he suddenly turned around and asked, I’m going to Hanni’s kindergarten, right? Then I realised that not only had he heard us, but he had also understood, so I said, of course to Hanni’s, and I gave his hair a quick pat to get him moving, and he looked up as if he wanted to tell me something, but then turned around and went out. I watched him till he went into the kindergarten at the end of the block and the minute he disappeared, I was sorry I’d let him go like that, without explaining to him. But what could I explain? I didn’t even know how to explain to myself. All of a sudden, I wanted to talk to a friend about what happened. To ask her advice. But who? I put Lilach into her carriage, gently, so she wouldn’t start crying again, and thought about all my friends. Galit always says yes, yes on the phone, and then you realise from a question she asks when we’re about to hang up that she hasn’t listened to a word. Calanit just had twins and you have to talk to her in short sentences because one of the twins always screams when you’re in the middle of a sentence and you never get to the end of it. Just last week, Sigal transferred her son to the kindergarten Moshe’s talking about, so she probably has a speech about it all prepared. For it, of course. People are always ready to boast about what they’ve done, otherwise why is that people always come back looking so satisfied from trips to other countries? Really, I’d like to meet one person who comes back and says it was awful. Then there’s always my sister Mirit, but I know what she’ll say about anything before she says it. A story like this, for instance, would get her all upset right away. Why did you fight? Why was he driving in the middle of the night? Why didn’t you give in? Mirit was always for giving in. Her husband’s been cheating on her for half a year with his secretary in the army, and she turns a blind eye. She says he’ll get over it, as if it’s the flu. If my mother was alive, she’d tell her a thing or two about the flu.

In my mind, I could hear Mirit say, but Mum was alone in the end, have you forgotten that? My mother had a heart attack and it took three weeks for one of the neighbours to notice. The medics who came said that if they’d reached her in time, there might have been a chance. Do you get it? Mirit goes on in my mind, I know that Doron is cheating on me, but at least I have someone in the living room who asks if I’m OK when I cut myself with the salad knife in the kitchen.

A second before I answered Mirit in my head, the doorbell rang. Noa, the student. They were out of milk. Come in, please, I told her, don’t be shy. She came in and before I could warn her, she banged her head on the new lampshade. What can I do, I said and straightened the swinging lampshade; we’re all midgets in this house. Everybody’s short in my family too, she said, rubbing the place where she got hit. So how did you turn out like that? I asked. I don’t know. My grandmother’s slightly taller, so maybe it’s from her, she said. There’s not much left, I apologised, waving the almost empty milk carton in the air. How about having your coffee here, I suggested, and without waiting for an answer, I filled up the kettle and took out a couple of cups. She talked to my back: She actually likes being tall. She was very introverted when she was a child, hardly ever spoke, and people noticed her just because she was taller than the others. Without her height, she would’ve been completely invisible. Well, I said, people probably notice you a lot now. With your legs, you could be a model without even trying. Don’t be silly, she protested and patted her thighs, and I thought: I’d take those thighs any day. I poured the coffee and milk, moved the carriage closer to the table and sat down. And what were you like as a child? she asked, blowing on her coffee. Me, I laughed, just the opposite. I was always the smallest, the last one in line in gym class, and that’s why I didn’t have a choice, I had to learn how to talk, to make myself heard. I had an opinion on everything from the minute I was born. I made sure everyone knew who Sima was. Besides, that’s how my mother brought me up — if you have something to say, say it. Don’t be afraid of anyone. Later on, when I was older and I used to argue with her for hours to let me stay up and watch Dallas , she was a little sorry she’d taught me that, and she’d say, raskh pehal hezar , your head is as hard as a rock, but I really think she was proud of me. And I’m like that to this day, stubborn. Like yesterday, for instance … I started to say and stopped. What happened yesterday? Noa asked. I liked her tone. Interested, but not pushy. Wanting to know, but didn’t have to know everything. So I started to tell her about the argument with Moshe, and before I knew it, I found myself talking about his family, how from the first minute, from the first family dinner, even before Moshe and I got married, they adopted me like a daughter. But on the other hand, they always gave me the feeling that I was a disappointing daughter, that I didn’t know how to make Moshe kubeh hemusteh the way he liked it, that I had too many opinions, that I didn’t know how to do up the house so it looked nice. If I offered them coffee when they came over, they’d get insulted and Moshe would explain to me quietly in the kitchen that I shouldn’t offer coffee first because that means I’m being stingy with food. But if I didn’t offer them coffee, they’d also be insulted. I’ve been with Moshe for eight years and sometimes I have the feeling that a whole life won’t be enough for me to learn his family’s rules. Yeah, Noa says and touches my elbow, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I waited for her to tell me a little about Amir’s family, but she didn’t say any more, so I told her about my mother, what a special person she was, and how she raised us by herself after my father ‘got religion’ and took off, and how she used to wear the same dress all summer so she’d have enough money to buy us books and notebooks, and how she’d sit with me and Mirit a week before school started to cover them with coloured paper and put stickers on them. She had a special folding technique, I don’t know how she did it, but the teachers would always say what beautiful covers I had, hold the books up and say, look at these, children you can all take a lesson from Sima.