by Eshkol Nevo
That was when I tried to end my dealings with him. I arranged an appointment with him. In a failing café in Kiryat Ono. I asked him to come alone. He said: You need money, kid? Is that what this is about? Because if you do, just say the word. That’s not the issue, I said (money has never been the issue, the issue is having influence, the issue is hearing words I wrote echoing in the public space, the issue is that the influence and the echo are intoxicating).
Even in the failing café in Kiryat Ono, Yoram Sirkin’s entrance caused a small commotion. The barman asked to shake his hand. The waitress wanted to take a selfie with him. And so did the stoned guy who worked in the adjacent kiosk. I watched him as he gave them his all. The last few years, I’ve seen him only on TV. We communicated only by well-coded e-mail. It turns out that there are things you can’t see on TV. The small potbelly he’d grown, along with the suit he was wearing, gave him a more authoritative air. He really wasn’t wearing glasses anymore, probably laser surgery, which enabled him to look directly at anyone speaking to him. He moved around nimbly, purposefully, and his face looked tan and healthy. As if he had been photoshopped.
In the end, it happened, I thought as he approached my table: Yoram Sirkin has stepped into the shoes of the image I created for him. The fiction had solidified into reality. The puppet had cut its strings. The parrot had spread its wings, broken out of its cage, and taken off.
What’s up, kid? he said, sitting down and signaling for the waiter. What’s happening in the world of literature? You’re a disappearing world, believe me.
Listen, Yoram—I got straight to the point—I want to stop.
Stop what?
Working for you. Writing for you.
Okay. Can I ask why?
It doesn’t work for me anymore. You and I really don’t see eye to eye, ideologically, you know, recently—
But we’re a great success, kid.
You are, Yoram. Maybe a little too great.
So the golem turns on its creator, eh?
Something like that.
Do I look like a golem to you?
No, Yoram, of course not, definitely not—
Waiter! he shouted suddenly.
The waiter hurried over, looking apologetic, and took our order.
When he left our table, Yoram said, Listen to me and listen well, and rubbed his hands together as if he were performing the hand-washing mitzvah. He spoke quietly, which is what made it so alarming.
Yoram Sirkin doesn’t force anyone to work with him. But take into account that if you cut ties with me now, when I need you most, there will be a price.
A price?
I have all your e-mails, kid. One click on Forward, and you’re finished.
Let me get this straight, you’re threatening me?
Just the opposite, kid. I’m watching out for you. How do you think people in your milieu will react if they know you’ve been working for the other side? And with your family history? What will they write in that left-wing newspaper of yours? I can imagine the headline—
No need.
There’s a Conference of Presidents, next week, kid. In New York.
I don’t know, Yoram. Let me think about it.
I only need you to write the opening and closing of the speech. No one listens to the middle anyway.
In English?
Of course in English. Obama will be there. Bill Clinton. Members of Congress. Henry Kissinger. And…your faithful servant.
He’s learned where to put the pauses, I thought.
Waiter! he shouted and rubbed his hands together once again. When the waiter arrived, he handed him his phone and asked him to snap a picture of us. “As a souvenir.”
Only when the camera flashed did I realize: Our picture. Together. In a café. He’d send it to the media. A picture is worth a thousand e-mails.
* * *
—
I wrote the Conference of Presidents speech for him. The one that made the analysts begin to talk about him as candidate for party leader.
* * *
—
Dikla and I watched the live broadcast of the speech together. It was back in the days when she rested her feet on me when we watched TV.
Sirkin held the corners of the lectern, and occasionally, with remarkably perfect timing, raised his right hand in the air to emphasize a point he was making.
I don’t believe a word he says, Dikla said, but he sure knows how to give a speech.
And he knows how to blackmail his speechwriters, I thought but didn’t say.
Tell me, she asked, was he really such a nebbish when you helped him run for mayor? It’s hard to believe that someone can change so totally.
He really was a nebbish, I said. But that was ten years ago and…he reinvented himself.
Now he’ll say something about Jerusalem, Dikla said. Somehow, they always get around to that.
Bull’s-eye, I thought but didn’t say.
Sirkin delivered the closing sentence I wrote for him about the capital of Israel, that the link between it and the Jewish people is unbreakable, pause, a Siamese connection, pause. He banged his fist on the podium for greater emphasis. And in response, the American Jews stood up and cheered.
How about that? Dikla said and pulled her feet off my lap.
What?
That image, “Siamese connection,” it’s in one of your books, isn’t it?
Wow, you’re right.
Could it be that the bastard is stealing images from you?
I don’t think so.
Sue him.
I don’t know, Diki. Let’s wait and see if it happens again. Otherwise, we don’t have a case.
* * *
—
I could have confessed to her right then. There were many other times like that, when I could have confessed. I passed up all of them.
* * *
—
In recent years, not a morning went by when I didn’t wake with a firm decision to stop it. Put an end to it once and for all.
But I don’t know how to anymore.
Could you live and write in another country?
A trip to Arad to judge a local short-story contest. They don’t pay me, but I have a soft spot in my heart for that city, and lately, the farther away I get from home, the less pain I have in my posterior heart. The hills are surprisingly green, the trip shorter than I remembered. There used to be a music festival here. Every year, I would take the five o’clock morning bus to my aunt and uncle’s house a day before it and leave a day after, and the days in the middle were the happiest I ever had. After three nights of music and sleeping bags, my entire body pulsed with the beat of the bass, there was an on-the-verge-of-joy feeling in my throat, and everything seemed possible. I went to the festival for ten years straight (turn left at this traffic circle), once with a girl I was secretly in love with (I even kept it a secret from myself), once with Hagai Carmeli, who disappeared on me then, too, in the middle of the festival, and once with Dikla, who felt it was a little too much for her. That was where I first heard Brera Tivit and the band’s electrifying drumming of Shlomo Barr, that was where I first heard the Friends of Natasha sing the words “The ships of sorrow are drowning in the great sea of small hopes and wine.” That was where I jumped into the pool in the middle of a performance, slept in the middle of a performance, and kissed someone in the middle of a performance. That was where, after a performance, I walked to my aunt and uncle’s house in torn sandals as the darkness turned slowly into light.
A disaster happened the first year I didn’t go to the festival: The organizers had sold too many tickets, and in the beginning, two guys and a girl screamed because they were being crushed by the crowd. Then they had no more air at all. The festival ended that night, and ever since, any attempt to revive it has failed (here’s the Oron Performance
Hall, there’s the place where the Black Israelites used to braid dreadlocks, and a bit farther, on the left, the head librarian is supposed to be waiting for me).
I make a desperate effort not to see what happened at the Arad music festival as a metaphor. Not to think about the fact that it happened three months before the Rabin assassination. Not to think that the avarice and the violence that brought about the disaster in Arad are exactly what is dragging us into the sinkhole now.
It’s not that I don’t have another country to go to. I do. To be honest about it, members of my generation have several other countries. But in none of them would I be asked to judge a short-story contest in a remote city, and on the way there, be flooded with sights and sounds and words. In none of them would the then and the now join together in such a way that it brings tears to my eyes. In none of them would the head librarian of that remote city, noticing the tears, be sensitive enough not to ask questions and offer me a glass of cold lemonade. Because the drive to Arad always leaves you thirsty.
How can you live and write in a place that summons up no memories? That you don’t care about? That doesn’t infuriate you so much sometimes that you want to bang your head against the wall and your fingers on the keyboard?
What is Israel for you?
They had no furniture, only mattresses. The real estate agent whispered, the mortgage. The woman was pleasant. There were only mattresses, there was no furniture. The children looked hungry. What a view, the agent said. That was five years ago. We were looking for an apartment between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, preferably with a balcony. I didn’t say a word the entire time we were there. The agent whispered, the mortgage ate up all their money. The woman tried very hard to look pleasant. The view was spectacular.
What is your earliest memory?
It was the Yom Kippur War.
Of course, I didn’t know it was the Yom Kippur War.
I was two and a half years old.
I know, people don’t usually have memories from that age.
But I remember a house full of women. My mother’s friends, apparently. Who came to help. And I was the center of attention, sitting in the living room, playing building blocks with them. Then there’s a cut, and one of them carries me to Mom’s room, where my mom picks up a simple recorder and plays something for me, until she suddenly starts to cry and one of the women carries me back to the living room. Again the building blocks. And that’s it. That’s where my memory ends. Anything I add would be a lie, or worse, an interpretation.
How do you feel about the fact that one of your books is required reading in high schools?
We’ll arrange a taxi for you, the literature coordinator said.
Great.
Write down the driver’s number, she said. His name is Mordecai. Call him tomorrow morning and tell him where to pick you up.
I wrote the number on a piece of paper and called it the next day.
A masculine voice answered. Hello. In a heavy Arabic accent. Must be a wrong number, I thought. I hung up and punched in the number again. The same voice again. This time, I tried anyway: Hello, can I speak to Mordecai?
A too-long silence, followed by: This is Mordecai speaking.
Hello, I said hesitantly. You’re supposed to pick me up at noon today and take me to Jerusalem. Should I explain how to get to my place?
Yes, yes, the voice said. Too quickly. As if he sensed my hesitation and wanted to convince me that he really was Mordecai.
Are you writing this down? I asked. And he repeated: Yes, yes.
I gave him a full explanation, and he said he’d be there, I had nothing to worry about.
His Hebrew was okay, but the accent—totally Arabic. And that was a period of frequent terrorist attacks.
We ended the call, and I began to get ready to leave. I chose the books I wanted to read from and marked the passages with my usual bookmarks—business cards from Zarathustra, the intellectual café Hagai Carmeli had once tried to open in Jerusalem. And closed a month later. As I was inserting the bookmarks, a farfetched yet believable scenario began to take shape in my mind, explaining the conversation with “Mordecai”: The number they gave me was wrong. I mistakenly reached a high-ranking member of Hamas who, after a few seconds of hesitation, realized that a golden opportunity had come his way and decided to play the game: pretend to be Mordecai, pick me up, kidnap me, and take me over the Green Line.
Though my suspicions seemed a little over the top, I still decided to be on the safe side and called the literature coordinator to make sure she had really given me the right number. There was no answer.
Having no choice, I put my nice shirt into the dryer to iron itself and got ready for Mordecai’s arrival. I’ll decide after I see what he looks like, I thought, calming myself. If he looks like a terrorist, I won’t get into the taxi. And that’s it.
But his appearance only confused me more.
When I walked out of the building, he was sitting on the hood of the car, smoking a cigarette. He didn’t have a fanatic-Muslim beard, but he looked totally like an Arab. Mordecai my foot. But his handshake was gentle, and his eyes weren’t hostile.
Ready to go? he asked.
Ready to go, I said, and got into the backseat.
We drove around the traffic circles on our way out of the city in silence. I waited for someone to call him on the two-way radio, so I could hear the name Mordecai spoken by someone else. But his radio was silent. No voice came out of it. No one asked who was available on Herzl Street. Maybe Mordecai doesn’t work with a taxi station, I thought. But if that’s true, why does he need a two-way radio? And why doesn’t he talk to me? Since when are taxi drivers not talkative?
I began to think what would happen to the stories I still hadn’t published. Would anyone bother to publish them after my death? Because that’s when they might actually have commercial potential. People value artists more after they die. They hold tribute performances for them. They bring singers. Maybe even Ehud Banai would agree to sing at mine. But wait a minute, who would choose which of my stories to include in the anthology and which to leave out? And what about all the embarrassing stories, the ones buried deep in my computer hard drive with clever code names, the ones that, if published, might hurt my loved ones, or at the very least, shock them? Do their feelings still have to be taken into account even after I’m murdered in cold blood by a Hamas squad and my body is hacked into dozens of pieces, put in black plastic bags, and tossed into the sea near Gaza?
Mordecai turned onto Route 443. He had no reason to turn onto Route 443. If the school we were driving to was in Ramot or French Hill, it would make sense. A shortcut. But the school was in central Jerusalem, so the only reason he had for turning onto Route 443 was that it would be easier to get to Ramallah from there.
You’d rather drive this way? I asked suspiciously.
Yes, Mordecai replied. At this hour, there are traffic jams at the Sakharov Gardens. And this way, we bypass them in no time at all.
As far as I knew from my Jerusalem days, there were no traffic jams at the Sakharov Gardens after ten in the morning.
His two-way radio was still silent.
Minarets loomed on the hills that lined both sides of the road. Small villages. Area B? Area C? Not clear. After all, part of the road itself is located on the other side of the Green Line.
Tell me, I tried from a different direction, you’re from Jerusalem?
Yes, Mordecai replied tersely.
Where exactly in Jerusalem?
There, next to French Hill, Mordecai replied, driving slightly faster now.
What’s next to French Hill, Ramot Eshkol? Pisgat Ze’ev?
No, Mordecai said, pressing harder on the gas pedal. It’s right next to French Hill. It’s a village. Small.
Village? The only village next to French Hill is Isawiya. I once dated a girl who lived in the French
Hill dorms, and when I slept at her place, the village muezzin used to accompany our lovemaking with his ululating call to prayer. Why didn’t Mordecai say he was from Isawiya? If he didn’t have something to hide, that’s what he would have said. So apparently he does. In another minute, he’ll probably turn onto a dirt road where the other members of the squad are waiting for him. If I’m going to die now, I suddenly thought, it definitely means that I won’t sleep with that girl from the dorms again. Ever. Not that there was a chance it would happen anyway. Years had passed and she’s already taken, and so am I. But damn it, that finality of death.
Suddenly, I was filled with the desire to live.
Stop here, I said.
What? Mordecai pretended not to hear.
Stop here, please, I said. I need to pee.
He gave me a small smile, and his soft eyes filled with scorn.
No problem, he said, pulled over to the side of the road, and stopped.
I got out of the taxi and walked over to a small bush past the shoulder. I looked right and left. If I’m going to take off, now’s the time, I thought. I can make a run for the nearby intersection where soldiers are posted. I’d have to leave my wallet, my datebook, and a few Pilot pens in the car, but what are they compared to my life? On the other hand, I thought as I tried to look as if I were peeing, if Mordecai was planning to kidnap me, he wouldn’t have stopped and given me the chance to run away. On yet another hand, maybe this is exactly how he builds trust so that later, when he veers onto a dirt road, I won’t doubt him when he claims it’s a shortcut?
