Eshkol Nevo - Homesick

Before I could feel embarrassed, she pulled her Walkman out of her bag, put the earphones gently over my ears — lightly grazing my cheeks — and pressed the play button. Classical music filled my head, actually something light, with sprightly flutes and triangles and an overactive trombone. Dvorak, she said, pointing to the Walkman. Dvorak, I said, nodding slightly, as if I’d known Dvorak since I was a kid. I had the feeling she’d given me that Dvorak to hear not only because it was pretty, but also to let me know — without words — what she was feeling. So I leaned down and pulled out my Discman with a flourish. I looked through my CDs for one that would suit the occasion, and finally picked Machina’s ‘ Children’s Story ’: ‘The prince is in love with a golden-haired princess’. I’d never have the balls to play a song like that for an Israeli girl on a first date, but with a Czech girl, in a different country, what could happen? She listened, and the second time the chorus rang out, she hummed along with it in gibberish.

Meanwhile, the waitress came over with our food. And you know, bro, how I eat (‘Like a disturbed child with no co-ordination.’ That’s how Noa described it, right?) To cut a long story short, I pulled out my best manners. I didn’t stick my elbows into the sauce. I cut the meat slowly with my knife like a boy in a British boarding-school. But I must have got a little carried away, because after we’d been eating quietly for a few minutes, she burst into semi-asthmatic laughter and imitated me eating, so serious and focused on my mission. Then I imitated her, the way she took a little taste of each kind of vegetable but didn’t actually eat anything. And that’s how we started a lively dialogue with our hands, our thumbs, our eyes, our eyebrows, our necks and our intuition. What can I tell you, Marcel Marceau is Louis de Funès compared to what went on there. The funniest thing was that at some point, during one of the breaks, I looked around and saw that we were the most talkative couple in the restaurant. The other four couples — two locals and two tourists — sat across from each other without talking and looked up at the ceiling or stared at the menu, bored.

Later, we walked to my room. On the way, we ate burnt corn on sticks, even though The Lonely Planet doesn’t recommend it. While we waited for them to heat the corn, she rubbed her hands together, so I gave her my coat to wear (chivalry, an international language). In return, she gave me a wet kiss on the cheek and wound her hand around my waist after we finished eating and started walking again.

About what actually happened in my room, I have only one thing to say: I’m speechless.

We’ve been together since then, six nights already. And I’m not bored even for a minute. What would Yossi Chersonski say (if Nina and I were a performance and he was reviewing us)? ‘Original? Yes. Suitable for everyone? Questionable.’ I have no idea how long it can last, this ‘no words necessary’ thing (remember how they used to write that under drawings in the newspaper?). All I know is that two of my biggest screw-ups in love, including Adi, were because of words spoken at the wrong time, and that this quiet lets me listen to Nina more than I’ve ever listened to any other woman I’ve been with. I listen to her nostrils (when they get a little wider, it means she wants me), her dimples (there are sad dimples and happy dimples, and I’ve learned to tell the difference). I listen to her walk, to her sudden stops. And I always listen to her inner music.

What is inner music?

Aha!

Funny you should ask, because I’ve just developed an interesting theory (when you don’t talk all day, you have a lot of time to develop theories).

This is how it goes: everyone has his own basic internal music that’s always playing inside his body, with the volume turned down, and that music is what determines the pace at which he thinks, loves, writes and gets enthusiastic (I just added the enthusiastic thing because of my inner music). If you stop reading and close your eyes for a minute, you can hear your own inner music (or the upstairs neighbour yelling at her kids). Anyway, that inner music affects the kind of external music we like. Usually, people look for external music that goes well with their inner music. For example, someone who’s full of wild music will buy CDs that fit that wildness, that give it the appropriate background, that balance it without being too different from it. Someone whose inner music is full of hidden tension will seek external music that’ll dissolve the tension. The same thing is true of people. If you think people choose their mates because of the way they look or how much money they have or how clever they are, you’re wrong big time. A first date is actually a concert. People eat, drink, recite their CVs to each other, but the whole time, they’re really only listening to the inner music of the person sitting across from them. They see whether they can play their music together, hit the right chords, and only then do their hearts decide. Later too, couples don’t stay together because they have interesting conversations or because she’s different enough from his mother or he’s similar enough to her father, but because their inner music fits together over time, and if it doesn’t, if it’s too similar or too different or too noisy, the courts won’t help. And relationship counselling won’t help. At some point, it’ll be grating, either to him or to her.

Or not. All theories flounder when it comes to love. Like, you write to me that instead of bringing you closer, the apartment in the Castel only pushes you and Noa farther apart. Does that make sense? OK, she’s blocked on her final project and you’re upset about the club, but you still go to sleep together and eat spaghetti with student-style sauce and scream ‘Nirvana Unplugged’ together (I got it here from some American, truly a fantastic CD). Don’t you?

I hope it works out for you. Don’t throw it all away and stop playing music together. After all, like you wrote, Noa gets into your soul the way no other girl ever did before. And she’s wild about you. I saw the way she looks at you when you talk. And I saw the way you look at her when she dances. Ah! That’s the problem with these letters. The crazy delay. I’m writing these things about Noa, and who knows what might have happened by the time you get it. And with me too. I’m writing to you about Nina, and by the time you get this letter, she might be back in the Czech Republic.

Meanwhile, thank God, she’s sleeping in my bed. The blanket’s trapped between her legs and she’s hugging the pillow. Her inner music — slightly indistinct, slightly drifting — keeps playing even in her dreams (what is she dreaming about?).

I’m sitting on the table and carving on it so that later I’ll have proof this week really happened. (I hear you saying, so you actually do need words. There’s something to that.) Through the window, I can hear an occasional rumble from the direction of the volcano. The last time it erupted was two years ago. The city was covered in ash and people breathed through surgical masks. Ever since, there’s a disaster-on-the-way feeling in the streets, and every time the volcano gives a little cough, people stop and cross themselves (they believe that the volcano is a god, the god of fire, and that the Christian cross works with him too. It’s amazing how everything’s all mixed together here.).

Anyway, tomorrow morning we’re leaving for Lake Atitlan, so I hope the volcano won’t erupt tonight, our last night here.

I hope I didn’t dump too much stuff on you (I just had to speak Hebrew with someone).

(And I’m sorry about all the parentheses in this letter. I just reread it and got scared.)