The Last Interview

by Eshkol Nevo

  Those Saturday visits to my grandmother and then my aunt were intertwined with my childhood: We went from Poland to bohemia in five minutes. We left my grandmother’s house with large bags of secondhand clothes and walked up the street to Aunt Noa, who afterward, would cut those fabrics into pieces that would be sewn into her brightly colored wall carpets. She had begun making those carpets during the Yom Kippur War because she couldn’t dance when friends were being killed every day, and since then, she had created more than a thousand. She didn’t receive pieces of fabric only from us; they flowed to her from factories and sewing workshops all over the country. She blocked out designs on large sheets of cloth and then sent them, along with the pieces of fabric, to her dancers-admirers to do the menial work of sewing. The breathtaking results hung on the walls of the studio as if it were a gallery, and as a kid, when I finished jumping around to the sounds of Stevie Wonder, I would stand in front of those carpets and try to understand them. Then I’d give that up and try to dance to them.

  Aunt Noa never agreed to show her wall carpets in a real gallery. Nor did she agree to be interviewed or receive an award from Tel Aviv University. And she didn’t agree to die.

  She suffered great physical pain during her final years—slowly, before our eyes, she turned from thin to skeletal—but still clung stubbornly to life so she could finish yet another carpet. Yet another dance.

  * * *

  After Aunt Noa’s death, my father collected materials that could serve anyone who wanted to write her biography. Among those materials, I found love letters she had written in her youth from London to someone named Robert who lived in Israel. When I read them, it occurred to me that there is a gene that makes the people who possess it feel a more intense sense of longing than other people. And that gene is hereditary.

  They sent the material to publishing companies that rejected it, claiming that the name wasn’t well-known enough to the public at large for her biography to sell. I’m writing about her now so that others will remember that there had been such an Aunt Noa in the world, and that she gave many people the courage to be what they wanted to be. Including me.

  Are you involved in creating the covers for your books?

  I choose from various options I’m given, not to mention that I drive the designers crazy until there’s an option I like. But in the unlikely event that this interview is turned into a book, I wouldn’t need options. And I wouldn’t drive anyone crazy. A photo of my aunt Noa Eshkol’s wall carpet, the one in our living room, will appear on the cover: layer upon layer upon layer. And under them, a wound.

  On the first inside page will be a warning completely opposite to the usual one:

  The plot of this book, the characters mentioned in it and their names have been taken from the life of the writer. Any resemblance between the plot of the book and real events is not the slightest bit coincidental. Any resemblance between the characters and their names, and real people, living or dead, and their names is not the slightest bit coincidental either. Nevertheless, given that the writer is a compulsive storyteller, every statement made in his name, including this one, should be taken with a grain of salt.

  Only one word will appear on the dedication page: Dikla.

  (This will be either a gift of love or a memorial to love. It’s too early to tell. Yesterday, she packed a small bag and drove off. To an ashram in the desert. She said she needed time to think. She didn’t say for how long.)

  There are a lot of dreams in your books. What role do dreams play in your real life?

  My dreams are embarrassingly simple. Sometimes, when I wake up and remember how crude and direct my dream was, I say to myself: From you I would expect more.

  Dikla’s dreams, on the other hand—

  She forgot to take her notebook with her when she went to the ashram.

  She left it on her bedside table.

  A stronger person might have withstood the temptation.

  * * *

  —

  My mother calls me. In the dream, it’s clear that she has found a technological solution that enables the dead to have a direct phone connection with the living, and such conversations are routine. She tells me, I’m proud of you, Dikla, and I ask, Why didn’t you tell me that before? That’s what’s good about dying, she replies, you get perspective. What exactly is it that makes you proud of me? I insist on knowing, I manage to hear her sigh, and then the call is cut off, leaving the rhythmic sound of dialing that grows louder and turns out to be his alarm clock.

  * * *

  —

  No one comes to Noam’s bat mitzvah. Which, for some reason, takes place in the school gym in Ma’alot. We sit in the gym and wait and wait, but no one comes. The deejay keeps playing songs to get people dancing, but there’s no one there to dance. Yanai bursts the balloons with a pin. I cancel the pizza order. Noam is too shocked even to cry. We leave the empty gym and walk to the huge parking lot where there are only two carriages. He goes to one and we go to the other. When we start driving, Shira says: Couldn’t you control yourselves?

  * * *

  —

  I’m in Colombia, in the city called Cartagena, looking for that woman. I follow a smell that leads me to a club I’m sure she’s in and as soon as I see her, I’ll ask her, yes or no, a story or reality, but the music in the club is really good. There’s an Enrique Iglesias song, “Duele el Corazón” (“My Heart Aches”), so instead of looking for her, I start dancing, and in the dream, I know that it’s only a dream and I’m sorry it’s only a dream because I feel so so so good, and then there’s a cut. And I’m in a desert, maybe in Colombia, maybe in Israel. The sun is so strong that my shadow looks completely different from me, as if it’s someone else’s shadow.

  * * *

  —

  I win the Man Booker Prize in the “writer’s wife” category and refuse to accept it. They call me up to the stage in English, and I stand up and answer in Hebrew, No thanks, and only after I sit down again do I see that the man sitting beside me isn’t the man I’m married to but Eran, our assistant director of marketing.

  * * *

  —

  I perform Watsu with the baby, Shira, not at the pool I usually go to but in the moshav Beit Zayit pool, which I have never been to. I cradle her in my arms and glide her through the water the way Gaia does with me, singing the melody of Billy Joel’s “Honesty” to her without the words, but then suddenly there’s a kind of hole in the pool like there is sometimes in rubber pools, and the water drips out slowly until we’re left sitting on the exposed bottom surrounded by coins that people threw into it when they made a wish.

  * * *

  —

  I forgot to dye my hair and all the cats in the neighborhood come to me to be fed.

  * * *

  —

  I’m in that damn sentry booth in the Arava desert. But I’m at the age I am now. And I’m not wearing a uniform. Darkness, howling jackals, and again that terrible fear rises up in me that I have no one and I’m alone. Completely alone in the world. My heart races with the all-alone anxiety. I try to tell myself that I’m already a mother and I have the kids, but that doesn’t help the pounding of my heart, which is growing stronger, so I call ERAN, the suicide hotline, like I did then, ashamed that after twenty years, I’m back to where I was then, but instead of ERAN, the suicide hotline, Eran, the assistant marketing director with the broad shoulders, answers, and in the dream, I wonder what dreaming about him for the second time means.

  * * *

  —

  We’re in the office of the deputy mayor of Lefkara, the city in Cyprus where we were married. This time we’re there to separate, but it turns out there’s a problem: My right arm is attached to his left one. The deputy mayor examines the connection with a magnifying glass and says he’s sorry, but surgery is not possible.

  * * *

  —

 
I go to visit Ari in Ichilov hospital and wander from room to room with a bouquet of flowers trying to find him, but all the rooms are occupied by bald women who look like my mother, even though my mother actually died of a heart attack. When I go to the reception desk to ask where Ari is, the nurse checks the computer and tells me that he’s in Tel Hashomer hospital. How can you not know where your husband’s best friend is hospitalized? she scolds me and takes the flowers from me as if I had failed an exam and now all was lost. I drive to Tel Hashomer, and I even have the number of his room, twelve, but when I go inside, it’s my husband lying in the bed, hooked up to an IV, his eyes closed, and Ari is sitting at his bedside saying to me: I’m sorry, you arrived too late. I cry hysterically in the dream, not understanding how they had managed to hide the truth from me all that time.

  Is there any biblical character that is especially close to your heart?

  Every now and then, I look for a pit in which I can hide from the world for a while. Like Joseph, Jacob’s favorite son, who was hated and shunned by his brothers. First, he withdrew from harsh reality into dreams, and when he could no longer dream, he withdrew into the pit. I know that isn’t the accepted interpretation of the events in that chapter, but that’s only because people don’t notice that the pit is dug between the verse “And Judah said unto his brethren: What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood? Come and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites…” and the verse that comes right after it: “And there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt.” How can you explain the fact that Judah persuades his brothers to sell Joseph, but the ones who actually sell Joseph in the next verse—and earn twenty pieces of silver!—are in fact Midianites? There is only one satisfactory explanation: In the middle, between the verses, Joseph refuses to get out of the pit. He didn’t take hold of the rope his brothers threw down to him, so how could they pull him up? With his keen senses, Joseph realized that only there, in the darkness of the pit, could he dream without interruption, where his brothers couldn’t mock him for being a dreamer and no one could criticize him for the contents of his dreams.

  For seven days and seven nights, Joseph dreamed about gold coins and many gods and a beautiful hand brushing a stalk of grain across his collarbone, dreams that the Bible didn’t dare, couldn’t dare, to include in the official story. During that time, Canaanites passed close to the pit he was hidden in, Jebusites and Hittites, but even though Joseph was very hungry, he didn’t call out to them. Absolutely not. He still didn’t miss real life and its pain enough.

  In his last dream, on the final night, his brother, little Benjamin, was torn to pieces by a wild beast, and Joseph could not restrain himself and cried at his grave—

  And only after he woke up from that dream, only after he wiped away the real tears on his cheeks—

  He called to the Midianites that passed by the pit. He caught the rope they threw down to him. Used it to climb out into the dazzling light. And returned, his heart fluttering, to his role in the Bible.

  * * *

  —

  Sometimes, books are—for their readers and writers—a pit to burrow into.

  This interview is that kind of pit as well.

  You can’t imagine what is going on outside.

  * * *

  —

  Dikla called from the ashram on Saturday evening and said: I need a little more time with myself. Her voice was different. Politer. Sure, I said. Of course. Then she asked to talk to the kids. Then she texted me a list of chores related to the bat mitzvah that had to be done that week. I knew them all, but I still texted her back: Received. Will do. Enjoy. Love. She didn’t text me back. Or answer my calls over the next few days. I read on the Ashram in the Desert site that a Tantra festival would be held there the coming week, and the guests were invited to participate in workshops called “Unleash Your Inner Goddess,” “Dance of the Heart,” and “Until the Next Pleasure.” That did nothing to increase my peace of mind, but what could I do? I drove the kids to their afternoon classes. I drove them back from their afternoon classes. I drove them to birthday parties. I drove them back from birthday parties. I nurtured and nourished, explained and restrained, and after they went to sleep, I looked at Mayan’s picture for a while and watched TV until I fell asleep. I never fall asleep in front of the TV when Dikla is home.

  On the third night, I remembered the moment when the boy in the movie The Life Before Us asks the old man, Hamil: Can we live without love? But I couldn’t remember Hamil’s reply.

  On the fourth night without Dikla, it crossed my mind that maybe this week was her experimental dry run to find out what it was like for her to live apart. On the fifth night, I reached the conclusion that she wouldn’t come back. There are stories like that, about mothers who one fine day simply get up and go, leaving behind a brokenhearted husband and children who are screwed up for life—that kind of mother is always tall and beautiful, like Dikla. And she always has another man in the wings.

  She wouldn’t really do that, I tried to calm myself down, she’s not the type, but then I remembered small moments from our life together, when something suddenly exploded inside her, without warning, and I watched in amazement as my noble wife slapped someone who had blocked her car on Ibn Gevirol Street; stood up in the middle of a premiere at the Jerusalem Film Festival and shouted at Lars von Trier that he’s mentally disturbed; stopped the car in the middle of Geha Highway and got out because I had the nerve to say something critical about her sister; drove off the road into an olive grove in Crete, stopped the car, and put her hand between my legs.

  On the sixth night without Dikla, I could already imagine what kind of man she was dallying with in the ashram. A widower. That was obvious. Her eyes always cloud over when she talks about widowers. The wife of that widower died from an illness less than a year ago and he’s alone with their two sons now. That short stay in the ashram is the first time he has allowed himself to leave them. He brought a guitar. So he could play around the campfire at night. With that guitar, the sharwal, and the rasta braids, he looks a little like Lenny Kravitz, if you think about it. Lenny Kravitz with a sorrowful look in his eyes. A combination that Dikla would find hard to resist for long. While I was making sandwiches, they were most likely talking together in the ashram. She and her sorrowful widower Lenny. While I was helping Noam with her homework, she was most likely inviting him to continue the conversation in her mud hut. Or he was inviting her to continue the foot massage in his mud hut. Or they were splashing around together in a small pool. Half naked. Or not just half. She tried not to look but still saw that every man has his good points, and he tried to look, discovering the secret known only to me, that Dikla is even more beautiful without clothes than she is with, and then, after he leaned toward her and she leaned toward him and they reached the point of no return, she decided not to return. And when she does return a few months or years later, he is with her, holding her hand, and when I try to object, he shakes his rasta braids from side to side as if I’m disappointing him personally, places his free hand on my shoulder, and says, That’s how it is, bro. I’m sorry your situation has let you down.

  How did the idea for your last book come into being?

  The messenger from the Transportation Ministry said sign here, here, and here. After I signed, he informed me that I had accumulated too many points for traffic violations and therefore, in accordance with the law, my driver’s license was being revoked as of that moment. The next day I went to the vehicle registry office. I tried to argue. To plead. To finagle my way out of it.

  No license. For three months.

  The first few days, I stayed home, mortified. Who would drive the kids to school? To their after-school classes? What was I supposed to do? So, having no choice, I went back to using public transportation, and after a week of ri
ding trains and buses, I realized that a miracle had happened to me. Nothing less. Israelis in the public space, how can I put it delicately, are not exactly Brits in the public space. They don’t read books or evening newspapers. They talk on their cells. Loudly. And I sit there, eavesdropping. From moment to moment, conversation to conversation, I understand that I have stumbled upon a gold mine.

  During my three license-less months, I heard: Men being dumped live. Inheritance conflicts dripping with bad blood. Financial manipulations that, if exposed, would send those involved to prison. Military secrets—when the operation would begin, what the targets were, and which troops would take part.

  And just when I thought that I’d heard everything, there came the crowning glory.

  She boarded the train at Binyamina. And about a minute later, she began to speak. She sat down behind me and I deliberately didn’t turn my head so she wouldn’t suspect I was eavesdropping. Her voice was gentle and ingenuous.

  From what she said, I understood that she was speaking to her sister.

  I also deduced the following details:

  She was supposed to get married in two days.

  She was canceling the wedding.

  The groom didn’t know.

  The only one she’d told was her sister (and everyone sitting in the train car).

  Then came the really fascinating part, the part that granted the conversation an indisputable place in the pantheon. From Hadera northward, they spoke only about the dress. She was very concerned about it and wanted her sister’s advice. What the hell do you do with a wedding dress? Sell it? Rent it? Keep it and remake it into an evening dress?