by Iddo Gefen
They spent a considerable part of their day together, but there were moments when Michael would withdraw into himself for no apparent reason. He’d disappear from the apartment for hours at a time, or spend all morning in bed, brooding, an indecipherable look on his face.
“This isn’t easy for me,” he admitted. “Being on my own for an entire year and then suddenly spending all this time together.”
It wasn’t easy to hear, but she understood. She tried to give him space, hoping to learn how to cope with his soul’s unpredictable undercurrents. She told herself life wasn’t black and white, and that she had to learn to live with the grays. She tried to ignore the niggling thoughts. Mostly one that kept popping into her head about the small yet essential difference between her and Michael. Because despite the fact that she was enjoying the whole experience, she simply couldn’t understand how someone could live like that for an entire year. She was beginning to suspect that he wasn’t really looking to live two lives simultaneously, but only one.
“After a month it kind of gets old, doesn’t it?” she asked one evening, adding that her two weeks were almost up. He didn’t reply, but his expression read loud and clear. She realized that for Michael, existing in the real world was merely a technical glitch that kept him from living where he really wanted to.
“Don’t you understand that life is out there?” she asked. “The internet isn’t an actual substitute.”
He didn’t deny it. “I think the same way sometimes,” he said. “In the past few months I’ve been asking myself whether it’s time to get out of it. On the other hand, there are so many possibilities I haven’t even explored yet,” he said, and a twinkle flashed in his eye. He started talking about the infinite potential of online living, about the possibility of preparing in advance thousands of posts that would continue to upload years after his death. To completely free himself of the limitations of time and place.
“But why do you keep running away from what’s happening here?” she asked with frustration. “Why not live the life you want in the real world?”
He bit his lip and nodded, as if he had already asked himself the same question more than once. “Because this thing called life is made up of just two feelings,” he said. “Missing someplace you’ve never been to, and longing for someplace you’ll never be. The rest is routine. Drab routine that consumes even the most beautiful moments in life. After all, even people who build rooms in paradise have to pay income tax.”
“So what is it that you want?” she asked, and he smiled.
“To create a single, flawless space. One in which every moment is pure happiness. Facebook lets you do that. Live only the peaks and chuck out the rest, you get it?”
She froze. “Wait. The people who build rooms in paradise. What?”
He smiled. “You don’t remember?” he asked. “In the university cafeteria. A bunch of us were talking about what profession we’d choose if money was no object.”
“I remember vaguely,” she mumbled, hugging herself.
“You were the only one with a good answer. You said that when you were little, you realized not everyone wound up in the same heaven, because each person had a different notion of heaven. That as a child you imagined heaven as a big apartment building in which everyone had their own room where they realized their wildest fantasies.” She looked at him and remembered how she had imagined a man whose room was an island with coconuts, and a woman whose room was a whole city underwater.
“And then you said if that was what heaven was like, you want to be the woman who builds the rooms.”
Her heart started racing. “Strange that you’d remember,” she said.
He put his hand on her arm and stroked it with a gentleness she didn’t know he had in him. “I loved you even back then,” he said. “The rest was just for protocol.”
She didn’t think he’d be the first to confess. She drew his face to hers until their foreheads touched. She closed her eyes, and instantly knew the one thing she truly wanted. “We’ll go,” she said. “We’ll go to Berlin.”
This time it was he who hesitated. “Let’s wait a day or two, think it over,” he said, and admitted that since their last conversation he had begun to wonder whether he was in fact taking it all a step too far.
She wouldn’t let him back out. “You’ll have an entire week with me in Berlin to think it over,” she insisted.
* * *
An hour later they had already bought tickets and even booked the first night at a hotel. What few doubts he still had soon faded, and in the following days he didn’t stop talking about the trip, where they’d visit and in which restaurants they’d eat. She settled for a laconic email to her parents announcing she was extending her trip. She didn’t care about Berlin. Or about the vacation he went on and on about. She just wanted more time with him. She knew there were things between them that needed more time and closeness to grow. She just had to make sure they made it to Berlin in one piece.
One evening, while at the grocery store, she spotted from between the shelves a woman who had gone to college with them entering the shop with a stroller. She quickly pushed Michael’s head into a cucumber display. They kept perfectly still for a few good minutes, hiding between the tomatoes and sweet potatoes, looking at each other with that secret smile of theirs. Once the woman and her baby left the store, she sighed with relief, thinking that maybe it actually was possible to live an entire life like this.
12.
HER MOTHER CALLED two days before the flight, in the middle of the night. She didn’t hear the phone ring. When she woke up to go to the bathroom, she happened to see the text message.
“I took Dad to the hospital. Chest pain.”
Tamara dialed her mother’s number in a panic. She called again and again until her mother sent her another text saying they were in the examination room and she’d call her later.
“I’m coming,” Tamara wrote her, to which her mother replied that it was a shame to cut her trip short especially for them, and promised to update her when they knew more. Without reading the rest of the message, Tamara started picking up the clothes scattered around the apartment. Michael woke up and found her sitting on the floor, trying to stuff another sweater into her bag.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She pointed at her phone and he read the texts, sat down beside her, and wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace.
“Just don’t forget you’re still in Germany,” he said while stroking her hair. “I’ll find you the earliest flight. You’ll be there by tomorrow afternoon. Maybe even before.”
Her body recoiled from him. She leaned back and considered him, certain he was joking.
“Did you really just say that?” she asked, furious at his tormented expression, as if he had hijacked her pain.
“How are you going to explain to your mother that it only took you an hour to get to Ichilov?” he said. “I know it’s a tough situation, but we have to think straight.”
She pushed him off her, then picked up the shirt he was sitting on.
“The last thing I care about right now is your fucking Germany,” she yelled, and the more she thought about what he had said, the more absurd it seemed. “Never in my life have I thought a person could be so detached.” She got up and started pacing the room.
“You knew what you were getting into,” he mumbled. “It could burn me too, don’t you get it?”
She wanted to kill him. “What’s wrong with you?” she screamed at him. “Don’t you understand my father is dying?”
He didn’t answer, and she had nothing more to say. She looked at him again, saw him withdrawing into himself, fixing his eyes on the floor, and couldn’t understand what she was still doing there.
“I’ll call you a taxi,” he said without looking at her. He tried to dial, but his hand was shaking badly.
“No need,” she announced and started walking toward the door. Slowly.
“I hope you come back
.”
* * *
Once outside the apartment she called a taxi herself. Waiting for its arrival, she got another text from her mother: “Gallstones. He’ll be fine. Sorry for making you worry. Good night, have fun.”
* * *
She slunk back into the apartment. Michael was sitting on the couch, breathing heavily. She poured herself a glass of water and sat down beside him.
“He’s fine,” she said.
“Glad to hear,” he replied quietly, without looking at her. “You’re right. I’ve gone too far.”
She patted his head gently. Said she was the one who’d gone too far.
He didn’t reply.
“I hope you don’t regret that we met,” she said, revealing the fear that had been building up inside her those last few days.
He looked up, his eyes red. She gazed at him, at his hands that were shaking.
“Us meeting,” he said. “It wasn’t a coincidence.”
He admitted he had stalked her on Facebook. Orchestrated a chance encounter the moment he saw she checked “attending” for that conference and realized she’d be in Hadera. He confessed he had no idea what would come of it, but decided he didn’t want to let such an opportunity slip by.
She placed her glass on the table. “Surprising,” she said.
“That I stalked you?”
“That I didn’t figure it out myself.” She looked him in the eye. “But why me?”
“Because of the rooms in heaven,” he said.
She didn’t buy it. “Why me?” she insisted.
“Because I was alone,” he mumbled and added that she had been right from the start. That it had all gone too far. That he had completely lost himself this past year. “I have to get out of here,” he said.
“Wait,” she replied. “Let’s fly to Berlin and decide there.”
He didn’t say a word.
13.
THE EVENING BEFORE the flight, she found him sitting by the bed, packing his clothes. Then he announced he was going to buy a book for the flight, kissed her on the cheek, and left the apartment. She lay on the bed and closed her eyes. She felt a heaviness settling inside her.
When she woke up it was already night. Tamara reached out for her phone, checked if there were any new WhatsApp messages, and logged into Facebook. She wanted to see how many likes she had received for the most recent photo she had uploaded. The fourth post that appeared in her feed was Michael’s. He had uploaded it thirty minutes ago.
There’s no place like home
Back in Israel in a few hours.
An airplane emoji appeared next to the text, and according to his check-in, he was “en route to Israel.”
She got out of bed and went into the kitchen. As she had suspected, Michael was sitting at the table in his familiar black jacket, a small suitcase at his feet. He looked at her quietly, as if he had been waiting for her.
“An English gentleman about to board his carriage,” she said.
He smiled. “I’m sorry. I can’t stay here anymore.”
“You couldn’t wait a week?”
“I’m an impulsive guy.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” she replied in a sarcastic tone, afraid she was going to burst into tears. She pulled up a chair and sat down in front of him. She kept looking at him, how different he was from the insecure guy who had sat across from her at the restaurant.
“The apartment’s paid for till the end of the month,” he said, and told her he thought she’d be better off going to Germany. “It’ll make it easier to describe where you’ve been. It’s not the same without being there in person.”
She didn’t see the point trying to convince him to stay. She had come to terms with it quicker than she had expected.
“Were you happy with me?” she asked.
He smiled again.
“Yes,” he said. “Reality didn’t have the chance to mess that up yet.”
“Life isn’t black and white. You have to learn to live with the grays too,” she told him.
“True,” he said and got up. For a moment he seemed to be considering whether to hug her, and eventually decided he should. She got up but didn’t hug him back.
“But I can’t,” he said. “I’d rather have you without all the grays.”
His words were physically painful.
He turned around and walked out. She sat down in his chair, listening to the sound of his suitcase being dragged down the stairs.
14.
THERE WAS NO river view. No balcony either. But the hotel room was comfortable and cozy, and the people were as nice as he had said they were. She hadn’t actually planned on checking, but her phone automatically connected to the hotel Wi-Fi, and he had just uploaded a few photos from his homecoming party. She looked at the people surrounding him, didn’t recognize any of them. A bespectacled girl sat next to him for the entire party. She clicked on her profile but couldn’t find any information about her.
She lay on the bed. In a moment of desperation, she shared Amir Lev’s song about Holden’s ducks. She wasn’t sure what she meant to say by it. But maybe that was why she felt it was the most real thing she had ever posted in the virtual world.
How to Remember a Desert
1.
AND THERE, IN the white waiting room, she suddenly cringes, realizing Amichai was right. Had been right all along. That two people actually could be in the very same spot, without so much as a molecule separating them. That nowadays, you could squeeze into another person’s insides, hold on tightly without letting go.
“There will always be some space left,” she’d protest whenever Amichai brought up the idea, and secretly thank whoever it was that made sure to put that space there. But Amichai was adamant. He sidled up and squashed and crushed, and she let him keep trying. And he really did try. In the bedroom, the bathroom, the car. He’d press up against her wherever he could. Before she left, she told him her skin was red from all his bizarre attempts. But he kept at it till the end.
* * *
A young woman in scrubs walks in, calls out the names of people in the waiting room. Ruthie considers her, thinks her eyebrows are nicely done. Then she turns her attention to the couples sitting around them, and realizes they’re the oldest one in the room. She tries guessing by how much. At least twenty years. Maybe even thirty?
“Ilan and Ruthie Zamir?”
“He’s Zamir, I’m Meiner,” she rushes to correct her. “I mean, as of tomorrow we’ll both be Zamir.” She glances at Ilan, worrying he might have taken offense, but he seems unperturbed.
“It’s fine, nowadays you can hyphenate after the wedding, be Zamir-Meiner,” the woman says, and Ilan replies with a smile, saying, “Too late to fix us, we’re old-fashioned.”
A few people in the room start laughing.
“Welcome to Lucid Memo,” the woman says, reminding the room that pre-wedding couples are entitled to a pampering spa treatment after the procedure. Then she explains the process. Goes over safety regulations. Hands them forms and points out that at the end of the procedure some might experience light-headedness, “especially patients of advanced years.” Ruthie wonders whether that last comment was directed at them. Before leaving the room, the woman says the couples will be called one at a time. Two men sitting to their left are holding hands and whispering to each other. One of them turns to her.
“I have to ask, are you related to Meiner the founder?”
“You don’t have to, you want to,” she replies, and Ilan quickly adds, “He’s her ex-husband. Very nice fellow.”
“Did he at least give you a discount?” the guy asks, and someone else laughs and says, “Discount? They’ll be lucky if he doesn’t plant a false memory in them.”
“He’s a decent fellow,” Ilan says, and she takes his hand and squeezes it hard, the way she always does when people talk about Amichai.
2.
THE WOMAN LEADS them into the procedure room. Two round and wide machines stand in the middle of
the room. She explains they look and operate a little like MRI machines, then hands them green hospital gowns and asks them to change in the little nook behind the curtain. Ilan goes in first. She follows. The gown is a size too small, but she doesn’t mention it.
“Excited?” the woman asks. Ilan says yes. Ruthie nods.
“So how many memories are you sharing today?”
“Two.”
“They didn’t explain when you signed up that you have to do at least five?”
“I’m not doing more than two,” Ruthie announces, and Ilan adds, “We agreed with your people on two when we spoke on the phone.”
“I apologize, we don’t even have an option for two on our price list.”
“Then we’ll pay for five and do two,” Ilan replies, and Ruthie smiles. She loves his resolve, how he doesn’t play games. How he stands behind her.
The woman makes a quick call. Inquires. “I’m sorry, they should have updated me,” she says. “Two it is.” She reminds them it’s important that the memory they share have a defined time and place, otherwise the machine will struggle to copy it, explaining they had yet to nail the abstract memories. “The whole procedure will take thirty minutes. If one of you needs to tinkle, now’s the time.”
“We went at home,” Ilan says, and the woman smiles. Handing them each a glass of a clear liquid, she explains it’s supposed to help the brain register the new memories. She stresses its blurring effect. Ilan drinks it slowly. Ruthie downs it in one gulp. It’s terribly sweet.