Eshkol Nevo - Homesick

You, he says, and smiles a nasty little smile. Since when has Shmuel been nasty?

Me?! I say, my voice choked. I was sure he’d mention someone in his family or that girl who shattered his heart when he was seventeen. But me? Yes, he says, and his smile spreads to the sides like hands. When you came here, your sun was sending out pleasant, caressing rays. But lately, my friend, I sometimes have to stop talking in the middle of a conversation with you just to relieve the pain you make me feel. O-ka-a-y, I say, stretching out the ‘kay’. I don’t have anything else better or cleverer to say. Shmuel is quiet and I think: am I hurting him even now, this minute? He sees Nava approaching and stands up, frightened. I squeeze his hand — again that limp handshake of his — and he moves away, leaving me and Nava with a weak wave of his hand and his usual parting words: see you next week, God willing.

After he disappears up the steps, I go over to the coffee corner and try to stabilise myself: calm down, Amir, he’s crazy, he’s talking bullshit. Your question must have been too nosy and he decided to hurt you deliberately. I say all that to myself, but deep inside me, I suspect he’s right, and that shakes up all my inner organs. One of my kidneys crashes into my spleen, my liver into my pancreas, my pancreas into my appendix. I feel it happening inside my body even though I don’t know exactly what the appendix is, but during our training session, when Nava asks if everything’s all right because I look a little pale, I say yes, everything’s all right because I don’t trust her enough, I don’t feel that I can share anything intimate with her without being afraid that she’ll apply one of her theories to it. But still, she probes: I saw you and Shmuel having a long conversation, she says. Yes, so what? I attack and she retreats, gives up and goes on to Ronen. Suddenly I’m sorry she doesn’t insist, because how can you keep something like that to yourself? You have to talk to someone about it. But Ronen is chattering excitedly about his science class, and the conversation moves away from me, further and further away, until it ends with Nava looking sharply at her watch, and a minute later we’re all climbing the urine-saturated stairs. She locks the heavy door and we each go our own way, Ronen to his motorcycle, Chanit to the bus and Nava to the large, mysterious van that’s always waiting for her outside.

The Fiat’s right headlight has popped out again, and I push it back into place. I toss the rolled-up crossword puzzle into the back seat, sit down behind the wheel, try in vain to get my heart beating normally again, and start the long drive back to Mevasseret.

*

It’s outrageous, Dad said. And Mum said, yes, that an Arab should walk around the neighbourhood for months like that without anyone stopping him? And Dad said, a fiasco, a plain fiasco. I was eating an omelette and thinking that this was the first time they’d agreed on something since Gidi. Dad thinks that it’s time to take apart the museum in the living room and move it to Gidi’s room, and Mum says over her dead body. Mum wants them to keep meeting with that woman from the Ministry of Defence, and Dad doesn’t. But they don’t talk about all that. They have this way of arguing without words. Mum takes out Gidi’s yearbook to look through it and Dad gets up and leaves the room. Dad makes appointments with the Parents’ Forum for Security and Mum makes noise banging pots in the kitchen on purpose to show him what she thinks about it.

But they agreed about the Arab and I was so glad that they finally saw eye to eye on something that I didn’t want to spoil it, so I didn’t tell them that the Arab was just an old man with a limp, and that’s why no one suspected him. All I did was take a slice of bread and put a piece of my omelette on it along with a slice of tomato and two olives and hoped they’d keep on being nice to each other and maybe after breakfast they’d even sit close to each other in front of the TV like they used to, but then Dad said, it just goes to show that we have to chase those terrorists down everywhere. Here, in the territories and in Lebanon. Mum sighed and said, but so many children die doing it. Dad declared as if he was giving a speech in front of his Forum, that’s how it is, that’s the sacrifice we have to make for security. Mum said, I don’t believe you really think that. It’s only talk, right? Dad said, what do you mean? Mum looked at him and decided to hold back and not tell him what she meant. But Dad started to cough, a little cough at first, and then with his whole throat, and Mum asked, should I get you the inhaler? Dad got up, his face red, and said, I don’t need any favours from you, don’t bring me anything. And Mum started to go to their room anyway to get the inhaler, but Dad grabbed her hand and said, I told you not to go, didn’t I? They looked at each other as if they’d act differently if I wasn’t there, and the truth is, I really didn’t want to be there any more. I didn’t want to hear him tell her to say again that it was his fault and that’s that. I didn’t want to hear her answer as usual, what are you talking about, that’s not what I think. I got up from the table and Mum asked, where are you going? You haven’t finished eating. The truth was that I wasn’t planning to go anywhere, just up to my room, but the minute she said the word ‘going’, it made me feel like going, so I put on my coat and she said, you’re running away to those students again? I said, yes, so what? Dad tried to say something, but instead of words, coughing came out, and Mum said, really Reuven, go and get your inhaler, and he ran to their room, coughing without a stop, leaving the two of us alone. Mum stood in front of me and didn’t say anything for a minute, trying to decide whether to let me go or not. Then she took the Beitar scarf off the hook and gave it to me, saying, wear this at least, so you don’t catch cold. I put it around my neck and held it by the ends, and she asked with an angry expression on her face: tell me, have you told that student that I want to talk to him?

*

The traffic’s moving, but I’m all jammed up, even when I pass the airport (the thought flies through me, I could fly to Modi now). I drive past Ben Shemen. Past Latrun. On the radio, a woman broadcaster with a feathery voice asks the listeners, tell us what’s happening on the roads, and I think that if I had a mobile I’d call and report on the internal jam that I’ve had for a month already, without any visible accident, but I don’t have one. There’s no money for airtime when you live on air, and anyway, I’d already reached Shaar Hagai, with the hills close to the road on both sides, which feels different every time. Sometimes it’s like a woman’s vagina taking you in warmly, and sometimes, like today, it’s grey and threatening and suffocating and you feel as if snipers from the Jordanian Legion from the War of Independence are standing on the hills. In another second, they’ll shoot out your tyres and you’ll end up like one of those rusted tanks on the side of the road. You wonder, where’s the Burma Road, where’s the Burma Road, but here’s the turn to Shoresh, and I’m still driving, still alive. The radio isn’t picking up anything now except for the stations devoted to the newly religious. A woman is home, as we say, her honour is in the home, the announcer whispers into the microphone, with God’s help, he hopes … but I turn off the radio before he can say what he needs God’s help for. I start up the hill to the Castel, and the Fiat sputters a little but keeps climbing. With God’s help, Noa will be home and I’ll be able to tell her about Shmuel. Yes, she’ll know how to put the crosshairs on the target. She’ll take me in her arms, soft and perfumed, I think and turn on to the bridge, ignoring Doga, glide down Anonymous Hero Street and park the car behind Moshe’s bus. From the end of the paved path, I see that there’s a light on in our house, which means nothing because Noa always forgets to turn off the lights when she goes out. Lately, when I walk up the path, I imagine going into the house and catching her cheating on me. I don’t have an exact picture of the man. I can only see his back, and her face, peering over his shoulder, is contorted with passion, then surprise when she sees me. And the weird thing is that the whole scenario doesn’t make me angry. Just the opposite. It gives me a feeling of intense pleasure, especially when I imagine myself waiting contemptuously until the guy gets dressed and goes. Then I put all my CDs into a bag and take down the picture of the sad man and leave the apartment without looking back. This time too, the closer I get to the door, the springier my steps get. Excited, I decide not to peek through the window and burst right inside. Noa isn’t in the living room, but I feel her presence in the air. And I think someone else is here too. Amir?! she calls from the shower in a voice that’s too innocent, and I start walking to the bathroom. Maybe they’re already having their ‘after’ shower. The curtains hide their bodies and I suddenly remember that scene from Psycho , but I don’t have a knife. Hi, she says, pulling the curtain open. There’s no one with her. She’s alone. Alone. My fantasy shatters into a thousand pieces that fly into the air in slow motion. I lower the toilet lid and sit down. You won’t believe what happened, she beats me to it. Almost every one of her stories starts with ‘You won’t believe what happened’, and then it turns out to be about a cup of coffee that spilled on her in the cafeteria or a report on Hila who, for the fifth time this week, has found the love of her life. But this time she tells a story that really sounds unbelievable. Some Arab, she says, one of Madmoni’s workers, went into Avram and Gina’s house and claimed that the house belonged to his family in ’48, and that his mother left something of hers in one of the walls. Gina wanted to throw him out, but Avram jumped up and said that the worker was Nissan, their little boy who died when he was two, and that no one was to touch him.