Jerusalem Beach

by Iddo Gefen

  7.

  SHE WAS FIRED a month later. Her boss claimed they were forced to make painful cutbacks. She didn’t believe him, but refrained from arguing. Being laid off helped her make up her mind. Michael’s offer had come a week earlier. They were strolling through the Hadera Forest and he told her that until she was there with him, she wouldn’t possibly be able to understand.

  “But there is no getting closer than this,” she said, sticking her hand out to measure the tiny distance between them.

  “Closeness isn’t a matter of geography,” he asserted, then added that if she really wanted to understand, she’d join him.

  “Where?”

  “Germany,” he said. “If you have the guts, that is.”

  A clipped laugh escaped her. He stopped in his tracks, and she gently brushed her hand over his beard.

  “I’m listening. Explain to me how it’s supposed to work,” she said.

  “There’s no instruction manual, you just come,” he replied.

  She looked up, mumbled something about how it was going to rain, and he stroked the back of her neck and said he couldn’t understand how she could give up a chance for true freedom. She grimaced. Got upset. There was something condescending in what he had said.

  “You’re right,” she announced. Then she confessed that maybe she had chosen accounting only because her parents had convinced her to study something practical. And that most of her conversations with her friends were indeed shallow and meaningless, and that yes, she had gotten a nose job when she was eighteen. “But you don’t get it, that’s what holds me together.” She explained that all those restrictions and tiny rules she had adhered to almost religiously were what kept her sane. Made her feel safe. And if watching MasterChef once a week was the price of a normal life, she was willing to pay it.

  She wanted to win the argument, but he wouldn’t reply. He withdrew into one of those silences of his.

  They made their way back to the car in oppressive silence. A moment before parting, her car door already open, he took a yellow envelope out of his pocket and handed it to her.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “A plane ticket to Berlin,” he said and caressed her cheek. “Two weeks.”

  “Hadera or Germany?” she wondered in confusion, and he quickly replied, “Your choice.” He told her she was welcome to use the plane ticket and spend two weeks alone in Berlin. “Or you can come here,” he said, and promised he’d wait for her at the entrance to the train station, that she wouldn’t even have to give him a heads-up. That he’d be there, waiting, in case she decided to show up.

  She looked at him and asked if he was trying to make her fall for him.

  “That’s up to you,” he replied.

  She adjusted the rearview mirror, closed the door, and started the car. She stopped at Apollonia Beach to look at the waves. She had planned on staying there all night to mull over his offer, but the cold got to her after ten minutes. Once again she thought back to the time she ran away from home; today, no one would have a panic attack if she disappeared.

  * * *

  Friday night at her parents’, she announced she was considering a trip to Germany. She rushed to explain that she needed to clear her head, and immediately felt that she had blown her cover. That everyone at the table now knew that for the past two months she’d been in a bizarre relationship with a guy from Hadera who wasn’t even there, and that now she was considering whether to go on a vacation in Germany or to visit him. But her confession received only a nonchalant reaction. Her father recommended a hotel in central Berlin and her aunt patted her on the back and said it was important to have a bit of fun. Tamara smiled, slightly disappointed that once again she had been edged out of the center of attention.

  8.

  HER PARENTS INSISTED on driving her to the airport; they bid her farewell at the entrance to Ben Gurion, her father looking a little sad, her mother settling for a brief hug and rushing her off to the duty-free shops. Before they said goodbye, she took a selfie with her parents, thinking the ruse should start from the very first moment. She posted the photo along with the status Then we take Berlin, and told herself the tribute to Leonard Cohen made the lie a little less horrible.

  She watched them walk away, already missing them terribly.

  She entered the airport and slipped into the bathroom; squeezing herself into a stall along with her suitcase, she sidled up against the door, took her phone out of her left pocket, and called the airline. She had prepared an elaborate story for why she couldn’t make the flight, but the customer service lady didn’t even ask. Tamara opened her suitcase and fished out a long floral dress. She had gotten it from her mother a few years ago, and had since announced to anyone who would listen that she’d never wear it, hoping now that putting it on would make her harder to recognize.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, the cleaner having already knocked on the door twice asking if everything was okay, she came out of the stall. Taking the escalator downstairs, she passed by the arrivals hall and made it to the platform two minutes before the train’s departure. She quickly bought a ticket and boarded the last car, plopping her bag onto the seat next to her. Fixing her gaze on the floor, she prayed she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew. She was happy to discover that her selfie with her parents had been awarded eleven likes as well as a comment by some girl she didn’t know, who wrote “couldn’t be more jealous.”

  Tamara leaned her head against the window and tried to fall asleep.

  9.

  HE WAS WAITING for her at the entrance to the station. She didn’t notice him at first, was busy studying her reflection in her cell phone screen. He let out a little cough and she jumped, startled and then embarrassed by the situation. They were silent for a few moments, and he kept staring at her.

  “Nice dress,” he said.

  “I’m glad you like it,” she replied. “It’s the last time I’m wearing it.”

  He hesitated before reaching out and brushing his hand over her hair. There was a certain measure of awe in his touch. She liked it.

  “You got a haircut,” she said. His short hair made him look more serious. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him. It had been years since someone had hugged her like that. Tightly. Not her exes, not her friends, not her family. They stood there for a few moments. When he let go of her, she wished he hadn’t. He picked up her suitcase. “Heavy,” he remarked as they descended the staircase.

  They headed out of the station and started walking. Tamara was hoping his apartment was close by; she felt as if she had flown halfway across the world.

  “We’ll just take two photos for Facebook and then go grab a bite.”

  “Can’t it wait till tomorrow?” she asked and let out a giant yawn, but he said that unfortunately there was no time to waste. He explained that the first few hours of the disappearance were critical, since no one had any reason to question it yet. He then told her there were a few places in Hadera that if you photograph them at the right angle and crop part of the background, looked exactly like Berlin.

  “If only the people of Hadera knew,” she said.

  He smiled.

  She considered whether to continue objecting, but curiosity got the better of her.

  * * *

  Not far from the train station there was a stone wall covered in oversized graffiti art.

  “What, like the Berlin Wall?” she scoffed. “Listen, it looks nothing like it.”

  “Wait,” he said, lowering the suitcase next to a big rock and waving her to follow. He stopped in front of a big drawing of Bob Marley with his eyes closed.

  “You’ve thought of everything,” she said, and he smiled contentedly, pointing at the word Legende that appeared next to the painting.

  “Why is it misspelled?”

  “It’s in German,” he explained. He asked her for her phone, then positioned her with her back to the wall, took a few steps back, and photographed her again
st the painting.

  “Give us a real smile,” he asked, and she said it was difficult to smile when she was afraid of stepping in dog poop.

  “We have each other,” he said, and when she looked at the photo she realized he was right. It was awfully easy to create the illusion of happiness.

  They hiked up a narrow trail back to the street. He took her hand and blew warm air into it.

  She looked at the people trudging along the sidewalk and then at him, thinking how much intimacy had sprung up between them since he had become the only person in the world who knew her exact location.

  They went for a bite at a mediocre Italian restaurant. She ordered ravioli with mushrooms and he told her to take a photo of it, preferably from above. She protested, noting that it wasn’t a German dish, but Michael insisted that when it came to photos of food, national indicators were irrelevant.

  “Beer is the only telltale,” he argued, and ordered them two bottles of Weihenstephaner. He said he preferred Goldstar, but the ends justified the means.

  “So really, you live to impress others.”

  “Well, part of the time,” he admitted. “The problem is that others do it all the time.”

  * * *

  His apartment was on the second floor of a building not far from the train station. He said he believed it was a Jewish thing, the need to live next to an exit route. He opened the door and she fumbled her way to the bed before he even turned on the light—as if to say, no more photos. She closed her eyes and after a few moments felt him lying down beside her, his hand reaching out but not touching. She turned around, pressed her face against his, and kissed him. Then she opened her eyes and caressed his cheek. They both smiled mischievously, as if they had pulled one over on the world and lived to tell the tale.

  10.

  WHEN SHE WOKE up the following morning, a cup of coffee was waiting for her on the bedside table. She looked around curiously, surprised to find out his apartment wasn’t the dim hideout she had imagined it would be. The floor was parquet, the walls a light cream. She recognized textbooks from their university days in the heavy bookcase, above which hung an acoustic guitar. Michael emerged from the kitchen with a tray laden with bread, an omelet, and chopped vegetable salad, saying it was a small, insufficient compensation for persuading her to spend two weeks in Hadera. She bit into the fresh bread, nibbled the salad, and considered asking if he was ideologically opposed to salt, but decided against it.

  He had a folder on his laptop that contained dozens of photos of tourist sites in Berlin. “Time to create some lies,” he told her. “I shot them all myself,” he boasted, and asked her to choose three. He said they didn’t have to be the prettiest photos, but of places she was likely to visit.

  “And then you photoshop me in?” she wondered.

  He grimaced, apparently finding the idea offensive. “Hell no,” he protested. “You have to know how far you can stretch a lie. For instance, the photo with your parents isn’t that great.”

  “Why?” she asked, insulted. He told her he had researched her Facebook user habits and concluded she wasn’t the kind of person who posted selfies.

  “I find it a little troubling that you’d know that,” she said. “That’s nothing,” he said. “Nowadays you have algorithms that can determine whether a person has cancer or is about to divorce his wife just by his expression in a photo.”

  Michael said that if anything, it would have been much more like her to post the Leonard Cohen song without the photo, but reassured her it was a mistake that wouldn’t actually raise any suspicions. He suggested she wait two days and post a photo of a tourist site with a funny status, like she had done during her trip to Athens, and that toward the end of the week she upload that German DJ’s remix of the Asaf Avidan song. She couldn’t bare how painfully accurate he was, or see the point of living in a world in which her every breath was so predictable.

  * * *

  She took a shower and called her father to let him know everything was okay. Michael thought it might not be such a good idea, and suggested she settle for a text message, but she made it clear it wasn’t up for negotiation. She also knew there was no need to worry, because her parents never took much of an interest; the most she could expect of them was a perfunctory question like whether her hotel offered breakfast.

  Her father’s voice soothed her. She thought he’d probably feel sad if he discovered she’d been close by this entire time.

  Afterward, Michael took her to the café that served as his office, a five-minute walk from his apartment. He told her he sat there with his laptop a few hours every day, doing the books for a Canadian online gambling company that operated via a Gibraltar-based server. When he first moved to Hadera, he promised himself he wouldn’t go near accounting, but after his savings ran out he decided four hours a day was a sacrifice he could live with.

  “I know it’s not as romantic as a video artist in Germany,” he said, “but I realized that—”

  “Then where are you actually?”

  “What?”

  “Where are you really?” she asked, resting her hand on the table.

  “What do you mean? I’m here.”

  “Yeah, now. But sometimes you’re in Germany. And when you’re working, you’re in Canada or Gibraltar,” she said, struggling to put her thoughts into words.

  “I’m not the only digital nomad, you know.”

  “So,” she said, putting her other hand on the table too. “It doesn’t seem messed up to you? Living in a world in which the body has become, I don’t know, meaningless?”

  “On the contrary,” he replied firmly. “It’s liberating.”

  She didn’t like his answer. He took his laptop out of his bag and placed it on the table.

  “Maybe you should spend the rest of the day on your own,” he proposed.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked in a huff, and he quickly clarified that he wasn’t trying to get rid of her, putting his hand on hers in a conciliatory gesture.

  “You’re welcome to stay here with me,” he said. “I just thought you came for yourself too.” He explained that these two weeks were a rare opportunity to do whatever she felt like doing. Without thinking about work or even him. “To really experience this freedom,” he said.

  She reached out and gently caressed his cheek. “I was hoping you’d say that,” she lied, terrified of spending a single day in this world without a defined purpose.

  * * *

  She wandered the streets, feeling slightly relieved when she stumbled upon an old man playing the accordion. She dropped a twenty into his case, grateful for the opportunity to just stand there for a few moments. Then she walked into a nearby ice-cream parlor and bought a pistachio gelato. She ate it slowly, wishing to prolong the moment of defined action. She had left her phone in his apartment but didn’t want to go back, didn’t want him to think she was having a hard time being alone.

  She decided to go to the beach. For the first time in years, she took the bus, and when she got there she discovered she was the only beachgoer on that winter morning.

  On Saturdays during the summer months it was impossible to walk more than an inch of shore without stepping on some kid’s head, and now she had the entire place to herself. She stood in front of the water, realizing that all the years she had spent traversing the world were without ambition. She didn’t want to buy a house in Givatayim. Didn’t want to climb up the company ladder. Didn’t want to go on vacation in New York. She wasn’t sure who she had borrowed these dreams from, but knew with absolute certainty they weren’t really hers. She stretched out on the sand, her hair saturated with the tiny grains. The gray clouds sailed above her. The girl who ran away from home would have been proud of her.

  * * *

  On the way back, it started to rain. The two older women sitting in front of her on the bus kept exchanging glances, and she felt proud of herself.

  “Where were you?” Michael shrieked when she walked into the
apartment, quickly wrapping a blanket around her. “You got wet?”

  He sat her at the kitchen table, served her corn soup, and told her how guilty he felt for sending her out into the world without an umbrella. She didn’t like corn but gobbled it all up.

  “How was it?”

  “Good,” she replied. “Really good.”

  He smiled with satisfaction. “I didn’t think that after only a few hours I’d find myself like this,” he said.

  “Like what?”

  He blushed. “Missing you.”

  She smiled. Spotting the Lonely Planet Germany travel guide on the table, she asked, “Researching ideas for new posts?” He said no. He sat down beside her and said he was starting to prepare, in the event that she decided to stay for more than two weeks. In that case, they really would have to go to Berlin together, to take more photos. “Otherwise people will start getting suspicious. And it doesn’t hurt to stock up on photos.”

  “Maybe,” she said, taking a few moments to savor the idea of the two of them in a four-star hotel, sitting on the balcony gazing out at some river. If they even had a river over there.

  11.

  SHE BEGAN TO realize that the upkeep of a fake life took quite an effort.

  They spent hours each day drawing a detailed map of all the places she visited, the dishes she ate and the shopping she did, searching for post-worthy moments. The real satisfaction came when she finally let her imagination run wild. For instance, the post she wrote about sneaking into an event thrown for the Mayor of Berlin, or the photo she uploaded of a beer bottle she had spilled over a married German man who tried to pick her up. She was pleased by the likes and comments of people who didn’t bother to conceal their jealousy, relished the thought that maybe someone was looking at her profile the way she used to look at other people’s.