by Eshkol Nevo
When we arrived, she wanted to say goodbye at the gate.
But the suitcases, I said.
I’ll manage, she said, putting an end to the conversation.
Then there were another few seconds of silence. And desert wind. And the wait for a divine voice to come from the heavens as it did when Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac: Lay not thy hand upon—
Then she kissed us both on the cheek.
And said to Dikla, Mom, don’t cry. It doesn’t suit you.
We remained standing in front of the gate for a few seconds. Watching as she walked away. Then we got into the car and sat there in silence. Not speaking. Not moving. For quite a while.
You’ll definitely write about this trip, won’t you, Dikla finally said.
What? Where is that coming from now? I said.
But she chuckled and said, I hope you’ll at least write the truth.
The truth?
I know you. You’ll add a quote from some poet. Describe the desert. Do everything not to incriminate yourself. Oops, sorry—not to incriminate “the character of the father” in the story.
Incriminate myself? In what, exactly?
Are you serious?
Explain it to me, incriminate myself in what?
When, in your opinion, did we begin to lose Shira?
It wasn’t a specific moment, Diki, it was an ongoing—
I’ll tell you exactly when it was. When you wrote about her in that book.
It wasn’t about her—
You think she’s stupid?
But she never—
Read it? I know that in your fantasy, she’s only supposed to read your books on her future trip to South America. But reality doesn’t always line up with your fantasies.
How do you know?
I read it in her blog.
What blog?
Ophelia’s Blog. A friend sent me a link, and after the third post, I realized it was her. Here. Read it.
From Ophelia’s Blog:
My Dad
My dad tells stories. That’s his profession. He tells stories to other people. And sometimes to himself. Let’s say he really loves to tell himself that he’s a good person. And a good dad. And if something doesn’t fit that image, he ignores it. For example, if he takes things from his daughter’s private life and puts them in his book without asking her permission, he’ll tell himself that he’s disguised it enough so that no one will notice. He really loves that word “disguised,” my dad, and he’s right. When the book came out, no one really noticed that he stole from his daughter’s soul. Except for his daughter, who read a passage from the book on the Internet. And didn’t say anything about it to him because the moment she realized that anything she tells him might appear later in one of his books, she doesn’t want to share anything with him anymore.
My Mom
Mysterious. I wish I could be as mysterious as my mom. And regal. I have a kind of ordinary walk, and she always moves like a dancer, straight and tall. I can’t hide my feelings. If I love someone, I have hearts in my eyes. But she—she doesn’t give of herself easily. Only in small doses. And only to someone she really likes. Let’s say, I have about ten girlfriends and though I divide bits of me among them, I actually feel alone most of the time. My mother only has two friends, Gaia and Hagit, but they are really close. In any case, she’s fine with being alone. She’s not afraid of it. And she always seems to be holding on to a secret. That’s probably why Dad and other men are crazy about her. I think her secret is that she doesn’t know how to be happy. But I’m not sure.
My Mom and my Dad
They once loved each other very much. I tell that to my sister, Noam, and she doesn’t believe it. So I tell her that I’m the oldest and I’ve been in the house the longest, so she has to believe me. There used to be things like this too: Dad and Mom do a slow dance in the living room after Friday-night dinner. Dad and Mom laugh their heads off in the middle of the night. Dad and Mom go on vacation alone and leave us in Ma’alot with Grandpa. They don’t go on vacation alone anymore. And there’s always a kind of tension in the house, mostly in the area of the kitchen and the living room. As if, any minute, something’s going to fall and break. That’s another reason I want to move to Sde Boker.
* * *
—
I don’t remember anything about the drive back. Only that, at some point, it started to pour. And all at once, it stopped completely when we reached our street. The wipers kept working. Of all the songs in the world, David Bowie’s “Absolute Beginners” was playing on the radio. We stayed in the car for another few seconds. We didn’t speak. We had the feeling that when we stepped out of the car, we would be stepping into a totally different life.
Why are there no Japanese in your books?
Because of what they did to David Bowie in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.
Writing is sometimes (perhaps always?) an attempt (destined to fail?) to get even.
* * *
—
Dikla was the one who introduced me to Bowie.
A few weeks after we started dating, we reached that moment when you feel secure enough about the future to ask about the past. So I asked who her first had been. David, she said.
David? I wondered. It sounded like the name of a volunteer on a kibbutz.
Bowie, she explained. Some people call him Ziggy Stardust.
Wow, I smiled, that’s a pretty high standard.
I had no choice, she said, and I didn’t smile. Boys in Ma’alot never gave me a second glance.
They probably wanted you but were scared, I said.
No they didn’t, she said. They just wanted other girls. More easygoing ones.
So…You hung a lot of David Bowie posters on your bedroom walls?
Posters? Are you kidding? We had a relationship, David and I.
You don’t say.
I used to talk to him. Tell him things. And he opened up to me too.
What did he tell you?
I’m not sure I can say. It feels like a betrayal of David.
Are you serious?
* * *
—
Later, she gave me a quick course on David Bowie. She played all his records for me and read aloud passages from interviews with him that she kept in a special folder. People think he’s a cold person, she explained, but that’s absolutely not true! It’s just that, people who were…unusual or not accepted when they were kids never forget it and always feel a little Major Tom.
* * *
—
We watched Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence the way people watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Again and again and again. And again. And at every viewing, we added another private ritual, another small interjection. Some were meant to slam the Japanese characters (Yes, commit hara-kiri! It’s exactly what you deserve!), others were meant to praise Bowie (You look great in the scarf with the holes!), but most were emotional and pointless calls to Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto to do the impossible and act on the suppressed homoerotic attraction between them (Come on, kiss already!).
This morning, after I dropped Noam off at school, they played “The Man Who Sold the World” on the radio, and when the song ended, the announcer said that Bowie had died.
I hurried home to Dikla. I thought I’d find her crying and pictured how I would console her. But when I got there, the house was empty. She’d gone to work. I waited a few hours so as not to be the bearer of bad news, and then I texted her: Sorry for your loss. She replied: Sad. And when she came home in the evening, she said she’d bought tickets for Yoav Kutner’s lecture on Bowie at the Eretz Israel Museum on Friday morning. She didn’t think Kutner would have much to tell her that she didn’t already know, but maybe it would do her good to be in the same room with other people who loved David. Maybe she’d be able to cry. I’d be happy to go with you
, I said. She replied that she had already asked Gaia, her hydro-therapist, to go with her. But we could find out if tickets were still available. There was nothing malicious in her tone, she’s not like that. She wouldn’t deliberately say something to hurt me. It was just the situation at the time: I wasn’t the first option on her list.
In the end, Gaia stood her up. I swallowed my pride and went with her. Friday morning. The Eretz Israel Museum. A talk in the lecture-series style. The tickets were waiting for us at the box office. We went into the auditorium expecting to see people our age. But it was mainly pensioners sitting in the seats. What did they have to do with my David—I knew that Dikla was thinking the same thing and I saw that small, familiar wrinkle of disappointment that went from her mouth downward. Actually, we’re not much younger than they are, I thought. Kutner came onto the stage. Showed us the album cover of Space Oddity and played the title song for us. The sound was good. I put my hand on Dikla’s. She didn’t return the caress or the pressure, but she didn’t move her hand either. Kutner played “Jean Genie” and talked about the differences between psychedelic folk and rock-and-roll blues. For whoever cares, I thought. Then he showed us the cover of Hunky Dory, the album that has “Life on Mars?” on it, and played “Changes,” saying that changes was a motto for Bowie. Never repeat yourself as an artist. Always do the opposite of what people expect from you. Dikla nodded slightly at his words. And she’s not a nodding sort of person. A lecturer can evoke a nod from her only if he says something super-exact. After Ziggy Stardust, Kutner talked about Bowie’s film career, told the audience that in another minute, he would be screening a scene from Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, and said a few words about the behind-the-scenes of the movie. Dikla’s hand moved almost imperceptibly under mine. Of all the scenes in the world, he had chosen the one we loved most, the one we used to rewind to see again and again. The parade ground. All the prisoners are standing in groups of three. Sakamoto, the camp commander, is about to vent his anger on them. His long sword is ready. Then Bowie steps out from the line. Walks up to him, his head held high. Stops in front of him—and touches his shoulder gently. The startled Sakamoto pushes him to the ground, but Bowie is not defeated. He stands up again, takes hold of Sakamoto’s shoulder, but this time moves his face close to his—eyes to eyes, lips to lips.
Come on, kiss him already!—Dikla and I shouted in the middle of Kutner’s lecture, part of a series, in the Eretz Israel Museum on a Friday morning—Kiss him!
Heads turned toward us. Mouths shushed us. Dikla took my hand and said to me, Come on. We stood up to leave. The entire row grumbled and stuck their feet out to trip us. To slow us up. In the background, Kutner kept talking about Bowie’s transformation into a pop star in the eighties, and we heard the opening, slightly clichéd notes of “Modern Love.”
We escaped from the auditorium. Out onto the lawn. The open air. Laughing. Laughing hysterically. Dikla’s laughter slowly turned into tears. Her shoulders shook. I hugged her. I held her close to my chest. Every spot on her body had a sister spot on mine. Everything was touching. She said, Enough, it’s pathetic, crying for someone I didn’t know. It’s pathetic. I didn’t cry for my mother like this, she said. I didn’t say anything to her. I just kept stroking her hair. Then we walked to the car with our arms around each other, feeling as if we were inside a bubble. I hoped it was a sign of the future. I feared it was only a flashback.
Why don’t you write about the Holocaust?
He came up to me at the end of the lecture. A dignified-looking man. In a tuxedo. The head of the Jewish community in a large German city. He held it in both hands, not one.
As a token of our esteem—he said, as if he were giving a speech, though he was speaking only to me—we would like to present you with the autobiography of a member of our community, Marcus Rosner.
Thank you, I said.
He handed me the book and added, in a different, more tentative tone: Marcus is…a survivor.
Thank you very much, I said and bowed my head. I am most grateful.
* * *
—
Hardcover. Very hardcover. Nine hundred and thirty-six pages. In German. Here and there, an old black-and-white photo. Here and there, a drawing. Ugly. Distorted. Repellent. His handiwork, apparently. On the back cover, a brief text and small photo of him taken on his wedding day in the ghetto. There was no bride in the frame, not even a veil, but from the poles of the wedding canopy being held by three unsmiling men, you could tell it was a wedding. Marcus Rosner himself stood in the center, wearing a gray cap, glancing at the person who looked nothing like a rabbi but was apparently presiding over the ceremony. Maybe the head of the Judenrat?
The next morning, I tried to get Marcus Rosner’s huge volume into my suitcase but couldn’t manage it. I swear, I just couldn’t manage it. The zipper wouldn’t close, really. Then the phone in my room rang and it was Thomas, who had been sent by the publisher to escort me, calling from reception to say that the taxi was waiting, we had a train to catch and we already missed one train because of me.
I don’t like saying it, but I write really well on German trains.
There’s room under each pair of seats, the German countryside at the end of winter—bare trees—isn’t spectacular enough to distract me, no one speaks loudly on his cell, no one recognizes me from reserve duty, from the university, from my ad agency days, there’s no one to greet me with hi bro, what’s happening, what’s up, what’s new, man.
* * *
—
I was in the middle of a letter to Dikla when the phone rang. The head of the Jewish community was on the line.
We enjoyed your lecture very much yesterday, he said.
Thank you, I replied in my most modest voice.
To tell you the truth, he continued, when you sent us the title, “How and Why I Discovered I Was a Jewish Writer,” we were a bit surprised. After all, you were born Jewish, so what was there to discover? And yet…you opened our eyes.
Thank you very much.
I’m calling you about a different matter.
Yes.
The reception desk in the hotel called us.
I see.
It seems that you forgot Marcus Rosner’s book in your room.
Oh my God.
Oh my God if he finds out. Imagine the insult.
Of course.
I sent a messenger posthaste to the hotel you will be staying at tonight.
Thank you very much, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Naturally, I won’t tell Marcus. Just confirm by return e-mail that you have received the book.
* * *
—
I swear that this time, I fully intended to cram the book into my suitcase after it arrived with a messenger as promised, but the next day was Saturday, and all the stores in the city are closed on Sunday, so I had to buy all the presents for the kids, I had no choice, each one wanted something else, and Noam asked for high, pink boots, which barely fit into the suitcase, so it was either the pink boots or Marcus Rosner’s autobiography, and the phone in my room rang, and I knew it was Thomas, sent by the publisher to escort me, calling from reception to tell me that the taxi was waiting, and we’d already missed two trains because of me, and Noam was going through a difficult period anyway, what was happening between me and Dikla had affected her, even though she didn’t talk about it, and girls that age can be so cruel to each other, and the whole business of outward appearances is critical to their self-esteem, and if I come home without the boots, she’ll be so disappointed—
Having no choice, and with a heavy heart, I made a selektzia. I shoved Marcus Rosner’s autobiography way under the bed and left.
* * *
—
The train had almost reached the final station and I was close to finishing the letter to Dikla—when the phone rang.
The tone of the head of t
he Jewish community was hostile this time, even threatening, but the content remained matter-of-fact.
The book. You forgot it again. Luckily, the hotel owner is Jewish, so he had the sense to call me. Marcus called as well, by the way. To ask what you said about his book. I didn’t tell him. Of course not. As it is, his health is failing. A thing like this could finish him off. You writers, your minds are always somewhere else, aren’t they? I sent another messenger to the next hotel you will be at. At my own expense. Certainly at my own expense. But this time, if you will forgive me, will be the last, yes?
* * *
—
The next morning, I didn’t give up. There was no way I could get the book into my suitcase without taking something out, so I removed two shirts, a pair of socks, a slimmer volume I had brought with me, and also a raincoat I especially loved, and left them in the hotel room. I put Marcus inside. He had suffered enough.
In his wedding picture, he had actually tried to smile, but the corners of his smile drooped. And the men holding the poles of his wedding canopy looked terrified. As if standing outside the frame were armed Germans making sure that the head of the Judenrat didn’t deviate from the rules of the ceremony. As if, when the event was over, they shot everyone and didn’t notice that under the pile of corpses, the groom was still breathing.
* * *
—
With a clear conscience, I reached the airport check-in with Marcus Rosner’s autobiography safely tucked in my suitcase. But my suitcase turned out to be overweight. By four kilos.
It’s only four kilos, I pleaded with the Aryan clerk.
That’s a three hundred Euro fine, she persisted.
Look, I said, pulling the book out in front of her, the only reason I’m over the limit is this book, I received it as a gift, I explained, and added, in a different, more subdued tone, the writer is…a survivor. The only one in his family to survive his wedding. They shot all of them right after the ceremony.
