Eshkol Nevo - Homesick

I sat down at a table at a small kiosk by the foot of the bridge. It looked out on to the bridge you jump from and also the river where the boat waits after you jump (you can ask the operators to plan the length of the rope so that your head lands in the water or not). I watched the New Zealanders climb on to the bridge, one by one, tie the ropes and rings around themselves, stand right on the edge of the ramp, bend forward a little, and then (with the help of a little push from the operators), jump. The first to jump, a huge guy named Rod, let out a bloodcurdling shriek that echoed and re-echoed through the mountains. I stood up like the fans in Bloomfield who stand up when they think there’s going to be a goal. I was sure he’d crashed on the rocks and that the parts of his body were like islands in the stream. But no. His bald head dipped slightly in the water and he bounced back a few times like a human yoyo till he got steady just slightly above the river, and the boat picked him up and brought him to shore. That stomach-flipping shriek of his convinced me that my decision not to jump had been right. But the ones who jumped after him were a lot calmer. Some of them blew kisses into the air before they jumped, like movie stars. Some stuck their hands out in front of them like they were diving into a pool, but my Jenny was the absolute best. She stood like a stork, one leg raised behind her, and spread her wings before she jumped.

After she jumped, my lower back started to itch. If that tiny little thing can do it, maybe I could get over my fear?

Wait a minute. Do you even know that I have a thing about heights? I don’t think so. Big surprise, right? There are things you still don’t know about me, even after seven years of friendship. It’s not exactly a fear of heights, more like the desire to jump. Every time I’m standing in a high place (like on the balcony of your old apartment in Ramat Gan) I get this strong desire to jump. Not to float. Not to fly. To jump and crash. I remember the first time it happened. It was in Italy. My mother and I went up the Tower of Pisa, and on the seventh floor (the Tower is built like a wedding cake, every floor is a layer that you can walk on), I suddenly had the urge. There was no railing. Or barricade. I could’ve taken three steps forward and found myself in the air. I was so scared I might do it that I flattened myself against the wall and pressed my hands against the concrete. I remember the cold feel of the stone. My mother was pestering me to get going: there are two more floors, she said. I told her I couldn’t move. What do you mean, you can’t move? she asked and came over to me. I can’t, I repeated. I knew for sure that if I moved, I’d jump. There was a small commotion. Tourists pointed at us. A Japanese guy took pictures. Finally, they had to bring two security people to peel me off the wall and drag me downstairs.

From that day on, everyone in my family knew that I had a fear of heights, and I went along with the diagnosis, even though I knew I had no fear, just the strong desire to jump.

Weird, huh? Just doesn’t make sense, does it? After all, I love life and never, not even during the worst parts of basic training, not even after Adi and I split up, did I ever have thoughts like that.

I’ll be damned if I understand it. Psychology probably has a name for it, right?

So why am I telling you all this? One: because it’s night here and Jenny has a boyfriend in Auckland so she’ll do a little kissing, but she won’t come to my room, and my room’s small, no windows, and someone’s snoring on the other side of the thin wall and I’m in a confessional mood.

And two: so you’ll appreciate what I did after Jenny jumped.

I got up, paid the kiosk owner for the three Fantas I drank and started walking towards the bridge. The New Zealanders, who’d all finished jumping and were drinking beer at the table next to mine, cheered me. Go, Modi, go! Rod yelled in a thick, hoarse voice that didn’t have the slightest resemblance to the shriek that came out of him when he jumped.

As soon as I got to the jumping-off spot, I started to change my mind. The operators were three young guys, and when I got there, they were just starting to chew coke leaves. The ropes lying around looked old, with split ends. The iron rings were in an advanced state of rust and the whole bridge looked too narrow to hold the apparatus they’d put on it. OK, Modi, I thought, bungee jumping is cool, but why here, of all places? There’s not a single bus on this whole continent that leaves on time. The men are almost always drunk. And a week ago, the train you were on stopped for two hours and the driver poured cold water on the tracks to cool them off (what the hell’s the point of cooling off train tracks?).

I took a quick look at the river. It was a lot further down than I’d thought and the rocks were too close. One little swerve, and I get banged up. The New Zealanders waved at me from the kiosk. Jenny was with them already, her hair still wet from her quick dip in the river. That’s it. Too late to change my mind.

I let the young guys tie me and hook me up and put cuffs around my legs. I put on the ridiculous protective vest they gave me and I told the one who asked that I didn’t want my head to touch the water. I hate it when my head gets cold.

We moved forward, me and the guy who was helping me, step by step until we got to the edge of the ramp. He grabbed me hard by the arm and asked if everything’s all right, if I feel OK. I looked down. First at my knees. Then at my shoes. One shoelace was loose, so I tightened it. And then, very gradually, I moved my eyes downward a bit more. The whole flowing river was spread out in front of me. The boat that was supposed to pick me up was waiting. Near a rock. And then — it came over me again. That same desire to jump that I’d had on the Tower of Pisa. That same craving to take one more step. But this time I could do it!! The guy with me asked me in English: Are you OK? I nodded. He said to me: you can jump now. And then I fell.

It’s hard to describe what happened then. I closed my eyes, so I can’t tell you what the river looked like. I can only say that after about ten metres I felt help-me shivers or orgasmic shivers settle on a spot on my lower back and spread from there like two arrowheads through my body. Then, before I had a chance to scream, the cable pulled me up. There was another second or two of hovering, and then, the landing. And the jerking around. And the nausea. And there’s the boat, ready to pick me up. They offer me some papaya juice, but I don’t take it. Then they bring me back to the kiosk. Jenny kisses me on the cheek. I collapse on a black plastic chair and put my feet up on another chair. I drink water from someone else’s glass. And look at the next guy standing on the edge of the ramp waiting to jump off. It doesn’t faze me in the least. Just the opposite. That nice ‘after’ feeling flows through my body, from head to toe, and suddenly I have the feeling — and it’s an even more wonderful feeling than what I felt when I actually jumped — that no tall building in the world, no balcony without a railing, will ever scare me again, because I’ve already been there, I’ve satisfied the urge — and come back (although I still have to check out this dramatic announcement in reality).

It’s weird, but I hadn’t really absorbed that it happened until now, when I’m writing, as if someone has to say or write it in Hebrew for it to be true, and if it’s in English — which is the language I’ve been speaking here for the last week — it can only be a scene from a film.

It isn’t only Hebrew that I miss, bro. It’s you too.

Maybe you can still find a break in your timetable and come here between classes?

Even with all the munchies and the bungees, the nights on a trek can be pretty long. And the days too. In one really infinitely long trip, I’ve been alone so much that I’ve starting talking to myself out loud.