by Eshkol Nevo
* * *
—
Dikla came to the funeral with me.
A few days after the bat mitzvah, we agreed—that is, she asked and I had no choice but to agree—that I would leave the house. I rented an apartment on a nearby street. I moved the few things that were “mine” and not “ours” into it. Mainly books. Nonetheless, Dikla came to the funeral with me. She didn’t just come with me. She picked me up in her company car and walked at my side as the coffin was taken to the grave. I thought it was a nice gesture on her part. And that if we hadn’t known each other and I was seeing her for the first time there, in the cemetery, with her button-down white blouse and her hair pinned back, I would have been turned on.
I thought that I didn’t regret a single one of the thousands of days we’d been together. It had been good. We’d been good. And even if our temporary separation becomes permanent, and a real, not imagined, messenger with divorce papers knocks on my door this week, she will always be the love of my life.
* * *
—
After I read my eulogy and went back to stand at her side, she groped for my hand and held it for the duration of the ceremony.
It had been clear to everyone, including me, that I would be the one to write the eulogy. But it took me long hours to write even a single word. Reading through the e-mails we’d written each other over the last few years, I came across something I’d written to him from London, a few months before they found the tumor.
* * *
—
Twenty-five years later, the major subjects of debate at the Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park are still the same: Muhammad, Jesus, the banks, it’s not easy to be a homosexual. And the grass is exactly the same color: English green. And it’s cold. But not cold enough to chill you to the bone.
Remember how we started arguing loudly then, about nothing, just to get people to gather around us?
Meanwhile, you’ve become a lawyer who argues cases in court. And I’ve found my own way to give voice to what was silent inside me.
I no longer need to stand on a bench to attract attention. And in the free time I have on my work trips, I’d rather watch. Do you feel that way too?
I don’t know why I’m writing you now.
Maybe because I miss you and the time when we had time to travel together to far-off places.
Maybe because you told me on the phone before I went to London that you feel stuck. That you’re dying to leave the firm now, of all times, after you made partner.
I’ve been feeling like that for about five years already. Even though I manage to hide it from everyone. Even you.
And suddenly, here in the park, I had a kind of lucid moment, you know? For a second, I could see the inner reel of my life. The one that is usually hidden from me.
I don’t know if I can explain myself. But for a second, I could see that, despite everything, we managed to move out of square one, you and I. And if we did it once, there’s no reason we can’t to do it again. Right?
* * *
—
I couldn’t imagine getting through that entire letter without choking up in the middle.
So in the end, at the grave, I just talked about how Ari and I met. Not the story of the basketball court in Malcha Stadium. The real story.
Our Memorial Day ceremony in high school included a parade that ended in the soccer field. We marched in threes, in the blazing sun, as the names of the fallen were read. The list grew longer every year, and every year, a few students who couldn’t take the heat fainted and dropped onto the grass during the ceremony. Since the fainting was as age-old as the ceremony itself, “evacuation monitors” were appointed every year to silently and unemotionally carry the unconscious on a stretcher to the side of the field, where a medical crew waited.
Ari and I were monitors that year. On the days preceding the parade, we practiced opening the stretchers and carrying them, over and over again. But none of the teachers who taught us how to do it could have prepared us for the fact that Haim Huri was the first to fall.
Haim Huri was a head taller than us. And ten inches wider. Captain of the basketball team. Arm-wrestling champion of the class. But the year was 1985, the Israeli Army was still mired in Lebanon, many new names had been added to the list, and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky to soften the sun. Haim Huri fell like a twig in the brief pause between the letters L and M.
Haim fell, Ari whispered to me.
We ran over to him with the stretcher, dutifully rolled his huge body onto it, and panting so much we could hardly breathe, raised the stretcher onto our shoulders and began walking.
The first aid station was about one hundred meters away. After about ten meters—we collapsed. The stretcher was too small, and Haim Huri slipped off. We tried to catch him—and we fell too. We picked ourselves up, put Haim back on the stretcher, and after another ten meters, my knees started to shake and I fell—and the stretcher, Haim Huri, and Ari fell on top of me.
Forget it, Ari said, I’ll take him and you take the stretcher.
To this day, I haven’t been able to figure out where he got the strength to carry Haim Huri piggyback.
But that’s what happened. He put him on his shoulders and started walking. I skipped after them with the stretcher. When we reached the first aid station, I was sure Ari would be angry at me. Or make fun of me. We were at the age when you elevate your own status by putting down others. Instead, Ari lay down on the grass, exhausted, and laughed at me. He laughed quietly—after all, we were in the middle of a Memorial Day ceremony—but there was no mistaking it: Ari thought that all of it had been more amusing than humiliating.
* * *
—
You gave me another pair of eyes, friend, I told him.
And I ended my eulogy with three lines from “Fall and Get Up,” by Shabak Samech, his favorite band.
Because there’s another place so sweet,
Where you have more time,
As much as you need.
* * *
—
After the funeral, we went to his parents’ house. I say “we,” in the plural, out of habit, even though Dikla apologized for not joining us, saying she had to go home and make supper for the kids. We stood at her car, in the dirt parking lot, and the embarrassment in the air strangely resembled the embarrassment that comes at the end of a first date.
Thank you for coming, I said.
What do you mean, of course I came.
I don’t know, I said. You were never crazy about Ari.
He introduced us, she said. He was a part of my life for twenty years.
Right.
What you said was nice, she said, and then quickly corrected herself. Not just nice. True.
Yes, true. I looked down.
I brought you this, she said and took the new Docaviv Film Festival program out of her bag. It came in the mail and—
Thank you for…thinking of me, I said.
And then, suddenly, she crossed the time that separated us and hugged me. She wrapped me in her two long, delicate arms. In the middle of the cemetery parking lot.
It had been weeks since a woman had hugged me.
We remained immersed in each other for a long time. Body inside body inside body.
Memory inside memory inside memory.
Finally, she broke away from me. Slowly. First her breasts. Then her neck. Then her arms.
Will you be okay? she asked. From a safe distance.
I nodded. And she got into her car.
* * *
—
The next day, I went to the shivah.
And also the day after that.
The pain of Ari’s death was too great for me to remain alone with it, so I found myself spending an entire week with the Strelin family. I didn’t sleep over. There was a lim
it. But I would come early in the morning and leave at night with the last of the visitors, carrying away with me the many trash bags that accumulated each day.
* * *
—
My thoughts that week were surprisingly lucid.
The dysthymia disappeared almost completely. Pills hadn’t made it go away. Sessions with psychologists hadn’t made it go away. Training for the triathlon hadn’t made it go away. Falling in love hadn’t made it go away. It just went away by itself.
I remembered how, every time we moved from city to city when I was a kid—and we did it often—I would be sad for months before the move, and when it finally happened, I was actually relieved.
I think that deep inside, I mourned the inevitable separation from Ari and from Dikla before it happened, I passed through all five stages of grief in advance, and now a kind of energy that had been trapped inside me was released.
I felt no weight on my shoulders, as if I’d taken off a backpack after a trek.
Being cut off from everyday demands—from text messages, e-mails, students who want to know when I’d finish reading their texts, the Stockholm police. (Who weren’t satisfied with my written testimony that I had indeed heard Axel Wolff say he was the murderer, and in endless phone calls, demanded more trust-inspiring details from that damned night in Jerusalem. You’re a writer, the chief investigator said, what reason do we have to believe you?)
That total break gave me something I hadn’t had for a long time.
Perspective.
I could look at my life and its collapse over this past year from the sidelines. And understand what it was all about.
How it happened. What led to what. How I was caught in the web of lies I myself had spun.
* * *
—
On the sixth day of the shivah, Sirkin called. I blocked him. He called again. And again. I went outside with the phone. He wanted me to write an outline for the debate. I told him that I was sitting shivah for a friend. He said it was urgent. I told him to go to hell. He threatened again to expose our relationship. Without hesitation, without clearing my throat, I said, Do whatever you want, Yoram. I have nothing to lose anymore.
* * *
—
On the last day of the shivah, Hagai Carmeli showed up.
He walked into the living room. With that puzzled expression of his. And a red beard.
At first glance, he looked the same. He hadn’t faded at all.
I was surprised he’d come. And at the same time, it was the most natural thing in the world.
I went over to him. I could see in his face that at first, he didn’t recognize me. And then he did.
We hugged. That surprised me. Hugs were never his thing. You could barely get a high five out of him.
After the hug, we still held each other’s shoulders loosely. Now I could see the small wrinkles on the sides of his eyes. And the sunspots on his cheeks. If we were women, that would have been the moment one of us would say that the other looked absolutely wonderful. But instead of playing fast and loose with the truth, we walked over to a corner of the living room.
I said, Bro, where have you been? I looked high and low for you! Far and wide! Up and down!
He didn’t reply. He just smiled that minimal smile of his.
* * *
—
Ari’s father came over to us. Stooped. So stooped.
Hagai, he said in a gloomy voice. It’s good to see you.
I’m so sorry for your loss, Hagai said as he stood to greet him.
No one could feel more sorrow than we do, but thank you. There are empanadas on the table if you’re hungry. Don’t be embarrassed to take some.
Thank you, Hagai said.
Ari’s father tilted forward at a sharp angle, and, for a moment, I thought he would fall onto Hagai. But then he straightened and turned to go back to the kitchen.
Hagai sat down again and said, I’m sorry that…I disappeared on you like that.
What happened?
He rubbed his beard for a while.
And then said: A girl.
And was silent for another three beats.
* * *
—
I remembered that the pace of Hagai’s speech used to drive Ari crazy. I like people you can have a ping-pong conversation with, he once explained to me, and that Carmeli talks tennis. Two hours between sentences.
I think it’s because he wants to be precise, I defended him. And I didn’t rush him now either.
I saw her reading your book, Hagai finally said. In Buenos Aires. In the El Ateneo. That bookstore in the opera house?
I knew it! I knew you were in Buenos Aires! I ran after you there, in the subway, but—
I went up to her and said that you and I were close friends. She was curious about that. So she agreed to have a drink with me when she finished the chapter.
Wait a minute. What was she doing there?
A trip after she finished her degree.
A kid, eh?
A cloud passed over Hagai Carmeli’s eyes. Something about the word “kid” grated on him and he gave me a disappointed look. On the verge of scorn. A look that, in high school, he reserved for those who preferred Queen over the Smiths.
A few seconds later, he looked away and spoke quietly. Almost to himself.
I didn’t feel any gap between us. We were together for a month, more than a month, in Buenos Aires. It was…the happiest time of my life. Maybe the only happy time of my life. One night, I drank enough to…propose. She said no, she was young…and needed time to take it all in. To get her thoughts in order. Then she went to Bolivia with her girlfriends. They rode in a van to La Paz—
Don’t tell me. Death Road.
Yes.
Was her name Mayan?
No. Nirit.
Describe her to me.
He described the girl standing beside Mayan in the picture. Holding a surfboard. Black curls. A straight part between them. Huge eyes. A slightly arrogant stance.
Then he was silent for a few beats.
He touched the corner of his eye with his pinkie finger. And wiped away a tear. A single tear.
He was silent for another three beats. Withdrew into himself.
Then suddenly, he came out of his reverie and asked: Wait a minute, who’s Mayan?
* * *
—
I told him about the meeting in Ganei Tikvah. And about Mayan’s mother, who came up to me with the picture when it was over.
I hesitated for a moment before telling him about the relationship that developed between me and Mayan after she died. But then I thought, if anyone could understand—
He nodded occasionally and looked at me nonjudgmentally, and when I finished telling him, he asked: Want something to drink?
He went and got some Zero for me and real Coke for himself.
He handed me the plastic cup and asked: Do you still have the picture?
Sure, I said. In my workroom.
He rubbed his beard, looking as if he’d just thought of something, and said, Remember how we used to go to the beach and I didn’t go into the water?
Of course I do, I said, you used to bring a chessboard with you. And play against yourself.
She taught me how to surf, Nirit, he said. Can you picture me surfing?
Then, in a choked voice, he said, She called me “Carmeli” and I called her “Cheeks,” because her cheeks were kind of plump. When I was with her, it felt like everything would work out.
The place they went to, he said, had no hope or loss, no regret or sorrow, not even pain, the place they were in had everything. It was a perfect place.
He didn’t have to say he was quoting a poem by Natan Zach.
We were silent for a while. All around us, people continued to talk about
Ari and about Yoram Sirkin’s upsurge in the latest polls. Someone said that Sirkin couldn’t speak a single word of truth, someone else replied that there’s no such thing as truth anymore. Truth is passé. Trays of empanadas kept coming out of the kitchen. Ari’s photo album was passed around, and when it reached me, I couldn’t browse through it, not yet, it was too soon for me, so I handed it to Hagai, who, to my relief, also passed it on. Every now and then, I could hear Spanish break through the Hebrew. Outside the building, someone turned on a lawn mower. Hagai got up and came back with two empanadas, one for him and one for me. I remembered that, even when we used to sleep over in the basement of his house, he would always fuss around us, bring drinks, food, pillows to put under our sleeping bags, rekindle the embers of the conversation with a new subject, the neckline of our history teacher, Doreen Schwartz, black holes, The Hobbit, Maradona. When our eyelids had almost dropped, he would keep us awake by suggesting that each of us talk about his favorite masturbation fantasies. He would begin, and the others would follow. Their fantasies were always as bare-bones as a mug shot, and my turn came quickly. With me, there were obstacles, conflicts, rounded-out characters, and plots, so that by the time I finished speaking, everyone was fast asleep—except Ari. Before zipping up his sleeping bag for the night, he would say in a sleepy voice: Bro, I think you’re going to be a writer. But you have to learn when to stop.