The Last Interview

by Eshkol Nevo

Dikla, who is wide awake now, gives me a questioning look.

  Amichai asks if I really do know Jamal Kanfani.

  I say I do, and then he asks if I can come to the airport to clear up some doubts they have.

  I ask if we can do it on the phone, and Amichai replies sharply, No.

  I say, Wait a minute, and summarize the conversation for Dikla. She knows Jamal. One of the times we met to eat hummus in Jaffa, she joined us, and later said—she doesn’t tend to say such things—that he’s a guy after her own heart. She doesn’t tell me what she thinks I should do now, but I see in her eyes what she thinks I should do.

  * * *

  —

  When it’s all over, I drive Jamal to his hotel. I want to ask what the real purpose of his trip to Israel is, but I’m afraid of sounding like another interrogator.

  He asks how my kids are.

  I ask how his kids are.

  I tell him that my eldest daughter is very happy in the boarding school she moved to, but I still worry about her all the time.

  He tells me that his eldest daughter is coming to Ramallah for a week this year as part of the Palestinian Diaspora’s Return project. Like your Birthright project, he says.

  He doesn’t tell me what exactly happened in the side room the security people took him to.

  And I don’t tell him that, halfway to the airport, I almost made a U-turn because I suddenly began to be fearful and suspicious. And that the main reason I didn’t make a U-turn in the end wasn’t our friendship but the knowledge that Dikla would be contemptuous of me if I did.

  I stop in front of his hotel.

  He turns to me, his eyes shiny, and says, “Thank you.” In Hebrew. For the first time.

  I ask if he wants to meet tomorrow, in Jaffa, after my workshop.

  Inshallah, he says, and from the tone of his voice, I understand that he has other plans.

  So we’ll talk, I say.

  We’ll talk, he repeats.

  We part with a strong hug.

  He gets out of the car, and I watch him through the side mirror, making sure he’s walking to the hotel with his suitcase, that the doors really open for him, that he really goes inside.

  If heaven really exists, what would you want God to say to you at the pearly gates?

  That no one will ever ask me questions taken from the Bernard Pivot questionnaire.

  That Ari isn’t there yet. That at the last minute they’ll discover a miracle drug for his illness and he’ll live for years after taking it.

  Last month, because of the painkillers, he shifted between totally groggy moments to totally sober moments.

  I went to see him yesterday, and he suddenly said to me: Remember how angry you were at me when I didn’t come to see you guys after Shira was born?

  Of course I remember, I thought. How could I forget the only real argument we ever had? After she was born, everyone came to congratulate us. To give us gift cards for the best baby store in the country. He was the only one who didn’t come. I waited a week. I waited a month. After four months, I was hurt to the core and began to block his calls. You should do the opposite, Dikla said. Call him. Tell him right to his face how unacceptable it is not to come to see us. Everyone deserves a hearing. Good friends definitely do.

  Two hours after the conversation, Ari appeared at our place. With a bag of gifts, most of which were completely inappropriate for babies, a huge bouquet of flowers, and a pot of chili con carne for dinner. He volunteered immediately and without hesitation to hold Shira so we could eat, and while Dikla and I sat at the small kitchen table, he cradled her in his thick arms and sang to her: La linda manita que tiene el bebé / Qué linda, qué bella, qué preciosa es. He told us it was a song his mother used to sing to his brothers and sisters, and just imagine, until two minutes ago, he’d had no idea that he remembered it at all. Shira, who didn’t take to strangers easily and usually reacted with piercing screams when she was held by unfamiliar hands, was completely calm in Ari’s arms, and when we finished eating, he handed her to me, took a step back, studied me, and said, You were born to be a father, and to Dikla he said, That’s what he always wanted, you know? Once, on a bus trip from Bolivia to Brazil, out of sheer boredom, I asked him what he dreamed of. And what did he say? Not being a writer and not books. Being a daddy.

  I hope your turn comes soon, Dikla said.

  He gave a bitter chuckle and said, I can’t see it happening.

  Then Dikla said she was going to rest for a while, and we sat down on the living-room couch, turned on the TV, and watched soccer. We didn’t shout when there was a goal to keep from waking Shira, who was sleeping peacefully on my chest, and when the match was over, I walked Ari to the door. Only then, right before he left, did he say, Listen, I don’t know why I didn’t come until now. Something held me back, bro. I have no idea what. But bottom line, I was a shitty friend. And I’m sorry.

  * * *

  —

  Now I get it, he told me yesterday in his apartment.

  What?

  I get what it was that held me back then.

  When?

  After your Shira was born.

  Forget it, bro. That was a long time ago.

  No, listen. There are people who see the future, right? All kinds of tea-leaf and coffee-grinds readers?

  Yes.

  So every time I tried to imagine myself as a father, my imagination got stuck. Like a computer that gets stuck and nothing comes onto the screen. Just like we have a reserve of pictures from the past in our memory, I think we also have pictures from the future. And if something isn’t supposed to happen to you, you don’t have an image of it in your mind.

  Maybe. I mean, it’s possible.

  But I’ve been on strong drugs this last week. So it could be that…I’m talking crap.

  It definitely could be. But bro, let’s hope you get well. You know. And meet a girl.

  Sure. And Hapoel will win the championship.

  And maybe, in her pictures of the future, one will have kids in it.

  Twins.

  And maybe that will be enough.

  Triplets.

  And peace will come.

  And the Sea of Galilee will overflow its banks.

  And the Negev will bloom.

  And hospitals will serve gourmet meals.

  Are you hungry? Should I get you something from downstairs?

  No. Go home. And give Dikla a big hug.

  Okay.

  Colombia or no Colombia—she’s the love of your life. And the mother of your children.

  You’re right.

  A few minutes later, he was asleep. Maybe, I thought on the way home, he’s like Yaakov Shabtai, whose books were about the end of his life years before he had a heart attack. Maybe Ari really knew in some hidden, prophetic corner of his heart that he would become ill at a young age before he could become a father. And maybe that was what kept him from coming to see us when Shira was born.

  Maybe that was also the reason he could never give himself completely to any girl he dated, including a few who really, and I mean really, were keepers. Maybe he had guessed that there was no point. That it would cause only pain. And that when all is said and done, it’s better to eat, drink, and be merry, because tomorrow…

  Or maybe not, I thought. Maybe I’m letting him off easy here (apparently those are our true friends: the ones we’re willing to let off easy).

  * * *

  —

  When I walked into the house, Dikla was working on the computer. I went over to her and did what Ari said. I bent down and gave her a big hug. She hugged me back. A weak hug. Then patted me lightly on the back, with one hand.

  What’s with the pat on the back, I said, annoyed.

  What?

  What are we, pals?

  What’s the proble
m?

  Once you used to hug me differently.

  That’s how I hug now. Besides, you’re interrupting my work.

  Well excuse me, really—

  Maybe you should go and do some writing?

  I haven’t written for two years, Dikla.

  So just go answer some of the questions in that interview—

  Do you write on the computer or in a notebook?

  With a feather pen. And an inkstand. And when the pages fly off into the wind—I have no backup. I pick them up from the sidewalk one by one and, of course, pay for it with a slipped disk. You can’t sit on a chair when you have a slipped disk, so I write standing up in front of an open window for several hours, like Agnon, until I come down with tuberculosis. Burning up with fever, unable to speak, lying on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, I dictate my books to Dikla with the movement of my eyelids. I blink Morse code and she writes it down. Or she writes whatever she feels like writing. I listen to the music of her laptop keyboard clicking and come to the conclusion that, yes, she’s writing what she feels like writing. Bottom line, it doesn’t suit her to be someone’s assistant. Even in a fantasy. After all, at the few events she attended with me, she always said sarcastically that it seems a writer’s wife exists only to allow her husband the freedom to write.

  I try to change my dying pose so I can see what she’s typing, but all I see is one word: liar.

  * * *

  —

  Computer or notebook? I wouldn’t dare to write without the Undo button, without the ability to retract, which frees me from the greatest fear of all: making a mistake.

  If only we could click Undo for events in real life.

  The literature coordinator in the Jerusalem school tells me that they cut the Palestinian worker’s monologues out of my book—and instead of nodding in submission, I end my meeting with the students right there and then in protest.

  Or I’m in the Subte, the subway in Buenos Aires, and see Hagai Carmeli—rust-colored hair, protruding elbows—walking away from the escalator, and instead of giving a damn about Carolina, the embassy’s cultural attaché, and waiting for her to take her smartcard out of her bag, I jump over the barrier, shake off the guards, break into a frantic run, and manage to get on the same train he does before it pulls away from the platform and is drawn into a black hole.

  Or I see the name Yoram Sirkin on my phone. A month after the municipal elections. And just block it.

  Or Dikla. The night I come home from Colombia and she’s in our bed, snuggled under the blanket, I still wake her with kisses, but instead of telling her a story, I carefully pull away a corner of the blanket, put my hand under her shirt, and move my finger to her spot, the tiny indentation between her buttocks and lower back, and gently draw little figure eights around it until she turns to me, the smell of her breath filling me with desire, and we make love. And even after our lovemaking, I don’t tell her a story but ask how she is, because it takes more courage to listen than to make up stories, and she tells me snippets of what happened over the week I was gone, the successes and the failures, at work and with the kids, and doesn’t ask how it was in Colombia, and I don’t answer.

  And there was the kid at camp. In the summer between the fifth and sixth grades. I think his name was Dan, but I’m not sure. His hair was parted on the side and his sports pants were too small for him.

  We used to get off the bus at the same stop and talk constantly until we reached his house. But at camp itself, I ignored him. Barely spoke a word to him. At recess, I made sure to sit far away from him, and when the other kids started snubbing him, I joined in.

  His only crime was not knowing how to play soccer. But he tried anyway. He wanted to participate. But on the field, he hurt our team in games against other teams.

  Then it was decided—I really don’t remember who suggested it, all the faces but his have been completely erased—not to speak to him anymore. At all. To make him leave the camp and by doing so, improve our team’s chances of winning the championship.

  It went on for four days. At first, he spoke to us and we just didn’t answer. Then he stopped trying.

  I remember the look on his face, the depth of the pain in his eyes.

  I remember that the counselors didn’t intervene. Even though it was a clear case of abuse.

  I remember him sitting alone during breaks with his chocolate milk, his sandwich, and his hair parted on the side. Looking at me. Only me. For four days.

  * * *

  —

  Camp finally ended, and the last bus ride home dropped us off at the same place.

  In silence, we passed the house where the bulldog used to leap onto the fence, its teeth bared, and I never had the courage to walk past it without Dan at my side. We passed the Danish consulate, with its flag in front, and reached his house, which was the most beautiful one on the street.

  There were a few seconds—maybe less, fractions of a second—before he turned to open the iron gate, when I could have said I was sorry.

  Sorry for not doing anything. Sorry for not stopping it. After all, it only takes one to break a silence.

  I didn’t say anything. Not even bye. He didn’t either, just opened the gate, went inside, and closed it behind him.

  I kept walking, and when I reached my house, I burst into tears.

  I remember my mom, alarmed, not understanding what had happened to me. Trying to get me to speak.

  I remember myself saying, I don’t want to go to that camp next year.

  I remember her asking, What happened?

  And I remember that I bit my lips. Ashamed to tell her.

  * * *

  —

  I would Undo the way I acted with Dan. Or maybe, in fact, I would Cut and Paste. A Cut and Paste that would bring us together years later in a situation where he’s the strong one—let’s say, a couples’ therapist Dikla’s friends recommended to her. His hair would still be combed to the side, but his pants would no longer be too short. We go to him to find out if we can still be saved, and when we walk into his office, I see how, for a fraction of a second, before the professional curtain drops over his eyes, they light up with the same flash of admiration that lights up the eyes of men who see Dikla for the first time. That combination of her impressive height, her long, straight brown hair, and her look of boldness. Of seriousness.

  In any case, Dan grants me only a quick glance, a seemingly I-don’t-recognize-you look.

  But later on, he unreservedly supports every claim Dikla makes against me, while he reacts to my claims with the thinnest of smiles and a meaningful raise of the eyebrow.

  Do you plan your books?

  Do we plan our dreams?

  Do you have a recurring dream?

  I have a recurring nightmare.

  Someone hacks my hard drive and steals the terrible first versions of my books. And all the speeches I wrote for Yoram Sirkin.

  Then he calls me from a cellar that looks like the ones in Tarantino movies and demands that I pay a ransom.

  He has the voice of a pimple-faced teenager, but I agree.

  Then he doubles the amount.

  And I agree to that too.

  But he doesn’t show up at the meeting place he set, on a street lined with garages.

  Like an idiot, I wait there with an envelope filled with dollars, and it becomes obvious to me that, in the meantime, he has sent all the files to the entire list of NATO nations, and I have been publicly exposed in all my nakedness.

  Is there such a thing as “writer’s envy”? And if there is, does it motivate you to work harder at your craft?

  I do not envy writers. I envy Boaz Barzilai. He’s the partner of one of Dikla’s friends. And whenever he comes to our place, or we go to theirs, there’s a moment when he and Dikla gravitate toward each other to talk. The companies they work for are more or less
in the same field, data security, so the conversation always begins there, but the conversation is not the issue—I sit far enough away so it doesn’t look like I’m eavesdropping but close enough to eavesdrop—the issue is her face as she speaks to him. I deliberately don’t say her eyes, it isn’t only her eyes, it’s a performance in which her entire face, the eyebrows and lips and cheeks, is set in a small smile. Then her lips and eyes grow brighter again, and a finger always joins in, pushing away strands of hair that really don’t need to be pushed away, and again the lips and the neck, that is, the place where the bottom of her neck meets her cleavage, where she places her long fingers, and then the show once again rises to her lips and cheeks, that are set in an even more generous smile, and the entire performance, in all its elements, is so familiar to me because once, not long ago, it was enacted for me.

  Will you encourage your children to follow in your footsteps and become writers?

  No, but if one of them does become a writer, it will probably be Yanai. The kid was born a fiction creator. When he was a baby and claimed that monsters came into his room at night, we figured it was his age and took turns sleeping on a mattress beside his bed to “protect him” from them. And at age five, when he told his day-care teacher that he had a twin brother his parents hid in the safe room, we laughed about it with her and said, Well, okay, it’ll pass as he gets older.

  It didn’t pass. The older he became, the more stories he invented, and the more convinced he was that they were true when he told them to us or to people who happened to be visiting us: Superman stopped by his kindergarten and took a few kids for a short glide above the clouds. Ronaldo stepped out of the TV and played soccer with him, and he, my son, won. Today God made it snow only on his day-care center, and all the kids built a snowman. Why didn’t your teacher take a picture and send it to the parents? Because snowmen don’t like to have their picture taken. And he isn’t the little brother of the family. Of course not. Apart from his twin in the safe room, he has an annoying little sister named Tali (why Tali, of all names?). And he wouldn’t go to the first grade next year, he’d go straight into the second grade. Because he’s so good at arithmetic.