by Eshkol Nevo
We left Oren, from Hadera, sick in Peru. In a small, ugly city on the shore of Lake Titicaca. I don’t remember the name. Maybe I’ll google it later. In any case, he was burning up with fever, almost 104 degrees. Maybe if it had passed the 104 mark, we would have stayed. Maybe not. We had a plan for our trek and we wanted to follow it. Bolivia. Then Brazil. Although Ari had agreed back in Israel that if he met a girl—not one just for the night, someone he really liked—all options were open, anything was possible and no hard feelings. But Oren was a guy. An Israeli. From Hadera. He had a good smile and big, happy eyes. We met him in Cusco at one of those Mama Africa parties and hit it off right away. I mean, he always told boring jokes like the ones that start with “A Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew get on a plane,” and there wasn’t a day when he didn’t get into a noisy, almost violent argument when he bargained with a street vendor, but the trio—Ari, Oren, and I—worked well together. He injected some new energy at the point in the trek when Ari and I needed it. When he asked if he could join us to Titicaca, we looked at each other and said together: Sure, great idea.
* * *
—
When I re-create the events in my mind, it doesn’t seem as if there were early signs of his illness. On the contrary, he looked like a pretty strong guy. Energetic.
An hour after the bus left, he vomited the first time. Into a bag. Then he turned very pale, and half an hour later, he vomited again. And that’s how it continued, every half hour. After each time, he said he was sorry.
No “sorry” necessary, we said. We got more bags from other passengers. We poured him tea from the thermos we bought from a street vendor on one of the stops. We said to him, Try to close your eyes, sleep a little.
When he finally fell asleep, Ari covered him with his poncho, put a hand on his forehead, and said, Wow, he’s burning up.
After a ten-hour ride on the bus, we arrived at our destination. Ari climbed on the roof and took down our three backpacks. Down below, I supported a wobbly Oren to keep him from falling and said, Don’t worry, we’ll be at the hostel in a minute and you can rest in the room.
When we reached the hostel, it turned out that they didn’t have a room for three. We pretended to be disappointed, but honestly, we were relieved. We didn’t want to catch whatever he had. Ari carried the backpack up to his room and said we’d meet at breakfast the next day, and that we’d get him something from the pharmacy to settle his stomach. When he didn’t come down for breakfast, we knocked on his door and asked whether we should bring him something to eat, and from the other side of the door, he said he was dead tired and maybe he would join us later. We went out in search of a pharmacy in the town, described by Lonely Planet as picturesque, but which in reality reminded both of us of the northern Egyptian town of Rafah: Ruins instead of houses. Sewage running in the streets. Rebellion in the eyes of the residents.
We looked at each other and said in unison, “Weren’t we here already?”—our code on the trek for “It’s time to take off from this place or these people”—and went to the port to find out when we could catch the ferry to Isla del Sol in Bolivia. It turned out that in the off-season, it only sailed twice a week, but luckily, one of those times was the next day. At seven in the morning. We also found the town’s only pharmacy next to the port. But it was closed. And according to the sign hanging on the door, it wouldn’t open until eight the next morning. Neither of us mentioned Oren as we walked back to the hostel, but it was clear that we were thinking about him, and when we reached the room, Ari said, Let’s at least bring him some tea and toast. We went downstairs to the grungy lobby, and while Ari made Oren some tea, I went to the restaurant across the street and asked for tostada, con nada. We went back up to our floor with the tea and toast and knocked on the door. At first, there was no answer. Ari said, I think he died, and I said, Not funny. But I laughed. We knocked harder, and then heard a weak voice say: It’s open. We went inside and found Oren in bed. Watching a soccer game on the tiny TV with its rabbit-ear antenna that stood on the small cabinet across from his bed. His face was very pale. His eyes were glistening, as if he were crying. Who’s playing? Ari asked and sat down a safe distance from him. Who the hell knows, Oren said. Hapoel Cusco versus Beitar Lima. How do you feel? I asked, and sat down too. Lousy, Oren said. I took his temperature. Almost 104.
Fucking shit, Ari said.
Did you find a pharmacy? Oren asked.
There is one here, I said, but it doesn’t open until tomorrow.
It’s a lucky thing you guys are with me, Oren said.
We looked at each other and didn’t speak.
Then Ari said, The truth is that, for the time being, you’re not missing anything, bro. This town is disgusting.
It is? Oren said. Because Lonely Planet says—
Lonely Planet also says that the ferry to Bolivia leaves the port twice a day.
And what’s the truth?
Twice a week. Sunday and Thursday.
What day is today? I’m totally out of it.
Wednesday.
Wow. Excuse me a sec, I need the bathroom.
* * *
—
When he came back, we didn’t talk about the ferry anymore.
We watched Hapoel Cusco versus Beitar Lima. I think I’ve never seen a game in my life with so many red cards. At least seven. Every few minutes, the referee sent a player off the field, and they refused to leave each time, until their teammates pushed them off so the game could continue.
* * *
—
Take the ferry tomorrow, Oren said when the game ended.
We’ll see how you feel, I said.
Listen to this joke, Oren said. A straight guy, a homo, and a trans get on a train—
Ari and I give each other a “not again” look.
But Oren broke off in the middle of the joke and said, I’ll be right back. And rushed off to the bathroom again.
When he came back, Ari had already taken out a deck of cards and we played Yaniv on the bed until Oren said he was wiped out, but we could keep playing without him.
Ari collected the cards and I smoothed the sheet, which had become wrinkled when we sat on it.
We stood at the door.
Oren coughed lightly and said, Take the ferry tomorrow, guys. Don’t wait for me.
This time, I didn’t say anything.
Ari said, We’re in room four, bro, if you need something.
* * *
—
We had a huge alarm clock we’d bought in the thieves’ market in Quito. It rang so loudly that you couldn’t argue with it. We set it for six in the morning. The sun hadn’t risen yet and we got organized quickly. Literally, without making a sound. As if Oren were with us in the room and we were afraid he’d wake up. Neither of us mentioned him until we boarded the ferry. Only after we had moved away from the coast and the sunrise began to glitter on the water did Ari ask: You think we should have stayed with him? And before I could reply, he answered his own question, And then what? We’d have been stuck in Rafah until Sunday? Hello, this is a trek here, not punishment.
* * *
—
The ferry got stuck in the middle of the lake. One of the motors broke down. We waited half a day for another ferry to arrive, and we boarded it. In Isla del Sol, on the steps leading from the port to the hostel, Ari slipped and sprained his ankle. But only a week later, when we realized that someone had stolen our backpacks, with all our equipment in them, from the roof of the bus we had taken to La Paz, Ari declared the existence of the “Oren from Hadera curse” for the first time. We should have stayed with that Oren guy, he said. Fever almost 104, bro. Not a joke.
* * *
—
The Oren from Hadera curse pursued us for the next few weeks: We set out on a mountain trek and had to go back because of a snowstorm. When we got back, it turned
out that all the rooms in the recommended hostel were taken and we had to go to a different hostel that was hideously depressing. No hot water in the shower. For a minute, I thought our luck had changed, because it was in that depressing hostel that Ari met Clara from Canada, the only girl he really liked in South America. But then we found out she had a boyfriend.
* * *
—
When we returned to La Paz, Ari dragged me to the Witches’ Market. To remove the curse.
We wandered around among the stalls until we found an old lady who supposedly understood English. We told her the story and she nodded and said, Very bad, very bad. Then she gave us two bottles filled with a yellow liquid and told us to drink them in one swallow at exactly midnight. We followed her instructions. An hour later, it turned out that the yellow liquid caused a huge, painful erection that lasted until morning, and two days later, in the middle of the street, someone grabbed my pouch, which contained four hundred dollars in cash.
We have to find Oren from Hadera, Ari said.
And fast, I said.
A long silence followed because neither of us had the slightest idea how to do it. There was no Facebook then. No cell phones. Nothing.
In Uyuni, a small city considered the entrance to Salar, the Bolivian salt flats, we met a group of eight Israelis looking for a minyan, not for prayer, but two people to fill the empty seats in their ten-seater van and join them on their trek. During the drive through the salt flats, they began talking about the antimalarial drug Lariam, and the sick dreams the people who take it have, although, if that’s true, a girl said, no matter how scary that drug is, it’s even scarier to stop taking it. Just last week the consulate flew an Israeli trekker from Peru to Israel after he caught malaria. Wow, really? Ari and I asked together, our voices too loud. Yes, she went on, the people he was traveling with left him behind and took off as if nothing had happened. The guy sitting next to her said, He was probably traveling with Germans, Israelis never leave the wounded behind. Never, Ari echoed his words. He looked at me. And lowered his eyes.
But then there was something else. In Brazil, on the beach in Fortaleza, we met a broad-shouldered Dutch girl who grimaced when we told her we were from Israel. Israeli men are bad news, she said, refusing to elaborate. It wasn’t until that night, after a few beers, that she agreed to tell us that a week earlier, in Rio, she met an Israeli guy named Oren. He always told her unfunny jokes, she said, but she was extremely lonely and hadn’t had sex for six months already, so she invited him to her room. But then, in the middle of getting it on, she said, out of nowhere, he slapped me. What the fuck? the Dutch girl asked, as if we were the ones who had slapped her. What a nutcase, I said. According to the law, that’s assault, Ari said. And the Dutch girl said he told her it was because of some trauma he had in the army. That he couldn’t control it. Bullshit, she said, slapping her open hand down on the bar. Fucking bullshit.
So…what does he look like, that guy? Ari asked. The Dutch girl almost broke the bottle over his head. Come on, man, that’s what you care about? After everything I told you, that’s what you’re interested in? What he looks like? If you describe him to us, Ari persisted, we can slap him when we see him. You would really do that? she asked, looking at him hopefully. Ari nodded. So she described the guy, who sounded as if he looked like our Oren: A receding hairline, like a forty-year-old. A kid’s smile. Happy eyes. Bargains like a crazy man with the street vendors.
I would have liked to say that when we came back to Israel we went to Hadera to look for Oren. Or that we at least went to the newspaper archives in Beit Ariela to check whether, while we were in South America, there had been a report about an Israeli trekker urgently flown home from Peru because he’d caught malaria. But the truth is that we left the story behind us. Just like we left Oren behind us.
He didn’t appear in our photo album of the trip. Or in the letters from the trip. I was ashamed to talk about him to Dikla when we came back, and I was ashamed to write about him when I wrote about South America.
Over the years, the shame faded. Because it’s the way of shame to fade. Only the curse was left. Ari and I still blame it for every bad thing that happens to either of us:
The engine died on the way up to Jerusalem? The Oren from Hadera curse.
Hapoel lost right at the final buzzer? The Oren from Hadera curse.
Ari has pancreatic cancer? The Oren from Hadera curse. (That’s what he said when he called to tell me about his tests. I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what a person says in such a situation. And he said: The Oren from Hadera curse strikes again, bro.)
Do you dream about your characters?
Wait a minute, there’s one last thing I have to get out of my system. But I just can’t write it. You know, in the first person. There’s a limit to honesty. Even in this interview. So I’ll do what I usually do.
HARASSMENT
It takes him a few seconds to recognize her. And even then, he isn’t sure she recognizes him. Whether she recognized him earlier from his name or only when he came into the room. Or maybe she’s embarrassed. You can’t tell anything from looking at her. She doesn’t blush. Doesn’t stammer. She continues asking him questions and typing as he replies.
She had been one of his soldiers. He was an officer, a first lieutenant. A small unit in the Intelligence Corps. Four huts. A tile path connecting them. A broken drink machine, long lunch breaks, long nights of work during operations.
On one of those nights, he thought he saw a flash of invitation in her eyes. Or maybe there really had been a flash of invitation in her eyes. What difference does it make—
Now the look in her eyes is all business.
She asks: It says here that you’re studying for your master’s. You haven’t completed it yet?
He replies: I’ve already submitted my thesis. Now I’m only waiting for official approval.
Where do you live? she asks. What’s that zero four area code?
Binyamina. It’s less than half an hour away from here by train, he replies.
She nods slowly. As if his answers are unsatisfactory.
* * *
—
He began to drive her home on Fridays, to Beit Hanan. Told her it was on his way, but both of them knew it wasn’t. On the drive, they spoke in a totally different tone from the one they used the rest of the week on the base. She told him that she wrote poems and short stories, but she didn’t think she wanted to be a writer. It was such an egotistical profession. He told her that since his mother died, they no longer had Friday-night dinners at home, and his father had become addicted, really addicted, to Coca-Cola. The time in the car passed quickly, too quickly, and when they arrived at her house, she would linger in the car another few seconds, as if she were waiting for something to happen, and then she touched his arm lightly and said, Wait a minute, and disappeared. When she came back, she held a bag of blood oranges from their orchard. Food for the road.
* * *
—
She still has long hair, even if some of it is silver now. But she no longer winds the strands around her finger when she stops to think.
Your age, she says, are you aware that it’s a disadvantage? Most of the marketing staff is in their thirties. And I should prepare you for the fact that we almost never take on people over fifty. It hardly ever happens.
Her inflection—he thinks—is almost the same.
There are also advantages to my age, he tries.
She touches the bridge of her glasses, pushes them back into place, and doesn’t ask him to list them.
Besides, I’m young at heart, he says.
She doesn’t smile.
* * *
—
She was nineteen and he was twenty-one. A two-year difference, that was all. But he was the chief officer of the section and she was just an ordinary soldier. There were
no roll calls in their unit, she didn’t have to salute him, but the hierarchy was most definitely there, in small things. Who ate in the officers’ canteen and who didn’t. Who had his own computer and who didn’t. Who participated in pre-operation discussions and who only prepared the documents, made appointments, and swept the office floor at the end of the day, moving as if she were dancing.
She’s typing something on her computer now. Apparently filling out a standard form. Does it make sense that she doesn’t recognize him? Yes, he’s bald. And has a potbelly. And started wearing glasses a year ago. And his name isn’t exactly uncommon. When he and Nirit got married, they decided to blend their surnames, so from Gonter, his name, and Oren, hers, they created Goren. But even so, how is it possible that she doesn’t remember anything, while he watches her type with those long fingers of hers and remembers everything. The entire scene appears before his eyes.
* * *
—
One Friday, when they started their drive, he told her that they had to stop off in the apartment he and his roommates shared in Tel Aviv. He had forgotten to take his bag of laundry, he said. And he would be happy if she would help him carry it because there was a ton of it. They went into the apartment and he immediately asked her how many sugars he should put in her coffee. She said, No thanks. He asked if the no thanks was about the sugar or about the coffee. Both, she said, and remained standing. Why are you standing, make yourself at home, he said, and touched her for the first time, placing a hand on her shoulder and leading her toward the blue couch, thinking: Exactly the way I pictured it, it’s happening exactly the way I pictured it. Then he went into the kitchen and made himself coffee, twice, because he was so excited, he put two spoonfuls of salt in the first cup.
