Eshkol Nevo - Homesick

We continued meeting at her place for coffee and chocolate-filled biscuits until I went into the army. Then, I only left the base every two weeks, and spent the little time I had sleeping, eating, going dancing, sleeping, eating, going dancing. Call Aunt Ruthie, my mother would say. She has no children, you know. And she always asks about you. OK, I’d say, I’ll call right now. And I really meant to, but something always came up, a guy, a party, and I never got around to it. Aunt Ruthie swallowed her pride and kept sending parcels of chocolate and biscuits and poems by Dalia Rabikovitch to me at the base. I’d promise myself I’d write to her, or at least call her to say thank you, but I didn’t do that either, and right after I was discharged, I went off on my big trip. I promised to stop off and see her on my way to the travel shop, but I didn’t. When I came back home, I had to find an apartment in Jerusalem quickly because I was starting Bezalel right away. I know those were all excuses. The truth is that I just forgot her. I pushed her to the edges of my feelings and made do with the vague knowledge that she’d be there for me if I needed help. Until one evening, two years ago, when my mother called and said that she didn’t know whether I still cared, but Aunt Ruthie was in the hospital, unconscious, after she fell in the middle of the street and hit her head. I went straight to Tel Aviv. I dropped everything and went, but it was too late to talk to her, too late to tell her anything or say I was sorry. All I could do was sit next to her and hold her hand.

We don’t know what to do with her apartment, my mother said a week ago when we’d reached the twilight of one of our conversations.

Why? I asked, drawn back to the phone after my thoughts had wandered to another place. We would have rented it out, my mother said, but we’re not sure she won’t suddenly wake up. The doctors say that the chances are very slim, but it’s happened before. So where will she go back to? On the other hand, every day that passes, she’s losing rent money. And we need every shekel now, for the hospital.

So what will you do? I asked.

I don’t know, my mother said with a sigh. Maybe we’ll wait another few months.

I think you should, I encouraged her. And pictured Aunt Ruthie’s apartment standing empty and the woman in the self-portrait looking at the girl, who’s me, and asking, so, how long will we be here alone?

After the session with Hila, when everything opened up, the idea flashed through my mind: that’s where I’ll run away to. I called my mother right away and asked. She started stammering, look, I don’t know, and I cut in and said I think it would’ve made Aunt Ruthie very happy, and she said, but what’ll happen if she wakes up? If she wakes up, I said, I’ll be out of there in half an hour. Besides, she’s been asleep for a year and a half already, so why should she wake up now, of all times? Come on, Mum, it’s only for two weeks. But Amir’s such a nice boy, she said, and that pissed me off, so I said, that’s not the point, Mum. Either you want to help me or you don’t. I don’t understand, she said. Why don’t you come here? Stop it, Mum, I said. Why do you always have to be so difficult?

I told Amir that I was going to Tel Aviv for three weeks, and he asked, where will you stay? At a neutral location, I said. But he kept on, and asked, don’t you want to at least leave me a phone number? I told him the truth: there’s no line. He gave me a crooked smile and asked, so we’re having a ‘trial separation’? No, I explained, we’re taking a break, and you need one too, don’t you? He sat down on the sofa under the picture of the sad man and said, yes, the truth is that I do. And suddenly, even though I was the one who wanted to get away from him, that hurt. He needs a break too? And what if he doesn’t wait three weeks for me? All those psychology girls are just waiting for him to be available. And they’re pretty. And smart. I almost put my rucksack down on the floor, but then he started to talk. I thought we should get some air too, he said, but you know, with me, all this separation business is complicated. I never know whether leaving is just a habit with me, he said, or whether I really need to go. So you’re telling me to go? I asked, a lump already forming in my throat. No, he said, pointing to my packed bag, you’re the one who’s going. What difference does it make, really, I said, suddenly sick of all the tension. What difference does it make, I said again, putting the bag on my back and turning to go. So we’ll see each other in three weeks? he asked, and his voice broke a little. Probably, I said, enjoying planting this final doubt in him, and left.

I’ve been here ever since. In moments of weakness, I take out my picture albums and look at them. I look at the picture of him and David at the Licorice concert. At the picture of us on that first trip to the Judean desert, staring at everyone else with the exact same expression on our faces. At the picture of him hanging the sign on our door in the Castel, which suddenly looked fake, too formal. At the picture of that day at Sataf. We argued a little afterwards and I thought then that it was a terrible fight.

Every time I see his laughing eyes, that ridiculous crest of hair, the invisible line that goes from his shoulders to his arms and his waist, every time I see those things, I want to run to the nearest payphone and hear his voice, tell him I want to change my mind and ask if I can come.

But then I remind myself of how much poison there’d been between us these last few months, and I remind myself of the night he broke the plates, and I remind myself that from the minute I moved in with him, I haven’t been able to create anything, so I hide the album far, far back behind the encyclopaedias.

*

Bro,

I hope you’re reading this letter alone, with nobody around. I hope you’re reading it in the dark, with just a small lamp on so only you can see the words, because I’m about to tell you the biggest secret in the world, a secret that millions of travellers have sworn never to reveal, even if there’s a gun pointed at their groin, a secret more jealously guarded than the Coca-Cola formula, a secret that could have stayed hidden for a lot more years if I, the Vanunu of travellers, hadn’t decided it was time to take off the mask, tear open the cover, crack the safe and tell you, only you, the shameful truth that everyone tries so hard to hide: that when you come back to Israel and develop the pictures and sit down to show your poor friends the albums, everything suddenly becomes ‘fantastic’, ‘great’, then ‘fantastic’ again, and it’s hard to pick only one of the countries to recommend because each has its own special beauty, and it’s hard to say which one has the nicest people, because they were all so nice (excuse me: fantastic), and even that time in the market when they stole your travel belt with your passport and all your money in it was actually an experience, and even when the train was derailed in the middle of a trip, that was an experience too, and really, from the distance of a week or two, everything melts into one big lump, like rice cooked with too much water, and you can’t separate the grains any more. But the naked truth is that there are also scary moments on these trips, and shitty moments and lonely moments. And the worst thing is the goodbyes. No one talks about that, but a long trip is just a collection of goodbyes. From the minute you get on the first plane, you start meeting people and you get connected to them fast and deep, because it’s a trip. You talk to them about your family and your ex-girlfriend even though you met them half an hour ago, and there’s a kind of magic in the air. But the minute the plane lands, you split. They planned to meet their friends at one hostel and you’re supposed to meet some girl at another, so in the meantime you exchange your home addresses and phone numbers and promise to meet up with them during the trip. Then poof, you never see them again, and the truth is that at first it doesn’t bother you. Just the opposite. You find the girl you arranged to meet at the hostel and she introduces you to the people she’s been travelling with for two days. Naturally, they’re her best friends. And you like them too. They’ll be going back home in a week, but that doesn’t bother you. You get the scene, you’re into it, you know that after they leave, someone else will come. And sure enough, a minute after you help them load their bags into the taxi that’s taking them to the airport, you meet a guy from Argentina in the lobby of the hostel. After a five-minute conversation, it turns out that he’s your spiritual twin. He also started studying economics, he also gave up after the first year at Buenos Aires university, his girlfriend also dumped him a month before the trip, and he’s also sure that Zorba the Greek is the best book he ever read. You travel together for two weeks or so, and it also turns out that you have the same taste in girls, the same uncontrollable lust for pork chops, and the same preference for hostels located far from the centre of the city. But a second before you start hearing the music from The Double Life of Veronique in the background, he tells you that he wants to go straight to Colombia, and Colombia is definitely not your scene now. So what’s the big deal. He’ll do Colombia later or you’ll do it now. After all, it isn’t every day that you meet your spiritual twin. But no dice. That’s how it is on trips. The goodbyes come fast and easy, and when you pack your bag at four in the morning so you can catch the bus that’ll take you to the border with Peru, he doesn’t even get up to say goodbye. He just opens one eye and reminds you to leave the key to the room on the table, and you say, no problem. A shadow falls for a minute, but really only for a minute, because on the bus you meet two Peruvian chiquitas who tell you about the fiesta in their village, which doesn’t appear in any tour guide but is a must, and in a last ditch effort to persuade you to come, they offer to put you up at their house. You ask if that won’t make their father mad, and they laugh and say no, don’t be silly. Our family loves guests. By the end of the trip, you’ve almost forgotten that Argentinian guy and get swept up by the giggling of Isabella and Felicia. When the fiesta — as colourful and wild as they promised — is over, you travel around with them for a while and sleep with both of them so as not to insult either one, and in the morning, even though the sex was nice (details in another letter), you’re already feeling that itch at the base of your spine to go, to move on, to devour another place, another woman, and so it goes for three or four months. You feel like you’re floating from one person to another, one city to another, and the goodbyes don’t leave a scratch on you, they’re not even recorded in the minutes. But you’re wrong, you’re wrong big time. And when do you find that out? When you’ve said goodbye to a girl who’s been with you enough time, a girl you’ve really let into your heart. Suddenly all the goodbyes you’ve laundered come back to collect sadness-added-tax and you sit in the room you shared with her, which is yours alone now, and look out the window at the church and the square in front of it that’s full of poor kids selling broken lighters, and suddenly you’re tired, tired of everything.