by Eshkol Nevo
* * *
—
I’m not going to write anymore, I told Hagai after the last sip.
Why not? he asked. There was no shock in his voice. And no reproach. Only pure interest. I remembered why I loved talking to him so much.
It doesn’t make me happy anymore.
So stop, he said.
I’ve become a liar, I said. An obsessive storyteller and a cannibal. Everything that happens is food for my stories, even when Dikla said, I’m leaving you not because I don’t love you anymore but because I don’t believe a word you say anymore—even then, I thought, that’s a powerful sentence, I should put it into a story—
If that’s the case—
And the world is overflowing with lies now, lies are the global currency these days.
There’s something in—
I feel like going out to play, man, to do something real, something concrete. Establish an NGO, run for the Knesset, castrate a pedophile—
Okay, you’ve convinced me. Maybe you really do need to stop writing for a while.
There’s only one text I have to finish, I said. And that’s it. Questions that some Internet site sent me a year ago. Maybe they’ve already forgotten the whole business, but I’ve been hanging on to it as if it were a lifesaver, because I had nothing else to hang on to this year. I always lie in those interviews, you know, give a writer’s answers. This time, I tried to answer honestly, or at least to move in the direction of honesty, and there was something liberating about it. In any case, I only have a few lines to finish, and then I’ll start a totally different life.
Is there anything you want to add?
When the shivah was over, I went to do some things in the apartment.
I began with the kids’ rooms. I repainted the walls in bright colors. I filled them with light wooden furniture. I put surprises on each one’s pillow to make them happy on their coming visit: white chocolate for Yanai, The Guinness World Records for Noam, and an Adidas hat for Shira. Who, surprisingly, had said she wanted to come. I didn’t think it mattered what I did, there would be sadness in the air when they arrived. I didn’t think it mattered how much sadness there would be in the air when they arrived, I was going to fight for them. For them and for everything else that still isn’t lost here, in my home and my country. Dikla texted me: Is it okay if I bring them a little early? I have something at work. I thought she probably had a date and was lying to keep from hurting me. I texted her back: It’ll be fine. I was bitterly jealous of her date. I imagined what he looked like. I could guess what he looked like. A combination of Eran, the deputy director of marketing in her company, and Barack Obama. I unpacked the few things I’d brought, arranged them in the living room and the bedroom, put up a small shelf in the work corner, and placed Zorba the Greek, The Book of Tao, and the picture of Mayan on it. There’s a hint of a smile in the corner of her mouth. Not an actual smile. Definitely not laughter. More an inclination of the mouth that hints at an inclination of the soul toward goodness. I said to her: Now it’s just you and me, I asked her: Don’t leave me. I took out my laptop, plugged it in, and opened the document that contained my answers to the surfers’ questions. I thought to myself that this would probably be my last interview, and that’s good. I pushed the little square on the side of the screen all the way up to reach the beginning so I could go over what I’d written. Then I changed my mind.
No. I won’t rewrite, won’t rethink, won’t embellish. Not this time.
I attached the document to an e-mail and addressed it to the site editor.
I took a long, deep breath, the way you do before jumping off a roof—and sent it.
CREDITS
“Islands in the Stream” lyrics on this page, words and music by Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb and Maurice Gibb
Copyright (c) 1983 by Universal Music Publishing International MGB Ltd., Redbreast Publishing Ltd., Songs of Universal, Inc. and Crompton Songs
All Rights for Universal Music Publishing International MGB Ltd. and Redbreast Publishing Ltd. Administered by Universal Music - Careers
All Rights for Crompton Songs Administered by Songs of Universal, Inc.
International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
Lyrics on this page from “Ne me quitte pas” by Jacques Brel, 1959.
Lyrics on this page by Alon Oleartchik.
ESHKOL NEVO, born in Jerusalem in 1971, is one of Israel’s most successful living writers. His novels have all been bestsellers in Israel and published widely in translation. His novel Homesick was long-listed for the 2009 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; World Cup Wishes was a finalist for the 2011 Kritikerpreis der Jury der Jungen Kritiker (Austria); Neuland was included in the Independent’s 2014 Books of the Year in Translation; and Three Floors Up (Other Press, 2017) will be adapted for film by the acclaimed Italian director Nanni Moretti in 2020. Nevo owns and co-manages the largest private creative writing school in Israel and is a mentor to many up-and-coming young Israeli writers.
SONDRA SILVERSTON has translated the work of Israeli fiction writers such as Etgar Keret, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, Zeruya Shalev, and Savyon Liebrecht. Her translation of Amos Oz’s Between Friends won the National Jewish Book Award for fiction in 2013. Born in the United States, she has lived in Israel since 1970.