by Eshkol Nevo
A three hundred Euro fine, sir, she repeated, or one of the following two options: Leave the book in the airport or board the plane with it.
From that moment on, Marcus Rosner’s autobiography was my constant companion. Although the security check separated us briefly—the autobiography slid under the scanner while I went through the physical check—we reunited immediately after that. Together, we wandered through the duty-free shops, only looking, not buying, and finally, we sat down together for a cup of coffee at one of the airport cafés. I put Marcus Rosner’s autobiography on the table, next to my cup. I thought I would browse through it a bit, maybe find some clue to the identity of the bride, who was absent from the wedding photo on the back cover, after all, Marcus Rosner couldn’t have married the head of the Judenrat, but the book was so heavy that the table began to wobble and I didn’t want the coffee to spill, God forbid, and stain the drawings inside—twisted limbs, twisted faces, piles of ears—so having no other option, I put the book on the floor, next to my right foot.
I drank my coffee and thought about the letter I was writing to Dikla. About its final paragraph. I knew it would surprise her to receive a real letter from me, with an envelope and a stamp—that hadn’t happened since South America—but I also knew it would not be enough by itself, that the final paragraph was crucial if I wanted that letter to be not a requiem but a turnabout. And finally, it began to play in my mind—after all those days, I realized how I wanted to end that letter. Not with lines from an Agi Mishol poem. With lines from a Jacques Brel song. “I will invent meaningless words for you, which you will understand.”
* * *
—
I could claim that that’s why I forgot the book.
But the truth is that I remembered Marcus Rosner’s autobiography the minute I walked out of the café.
The truth is that I still could have turned around, gone back inside, bent down, and picked it up from the floor. Five steps at the most, a quick bend of my knees—
But something inside me protested. One of my spite muscles stretched and made me leave. (Apparently the same muscle that had been at work in my senior year in high school when I had to write an essay entitled “My Thoughts on Joining the Army,” causing me to write that I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it. That I would go, naturally, but like a sheep to the slaughter. The literature teacher was shocked by my choice of words, justifiably so, and I was called down to the assistant principal’s office for an urgent talk.)
Several days after I returned to Israel, the doorbell rang. At the time, whenever that happened, I was afraid there was a messenger with divorce papers on the other side of the door. It’s true that Dikla isn’t like that, but ever since I answered a question in this interview by making up the story about a messenger with divorce papers appearing at the studio in Givat Chen, I’ve been afraid that it would become the sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that terrifies writers.
Standing at the door was a FedEx messenger.
He was holding a package with both hands.
Inside the package, along with Marcus Rosner’s autobiography, was a letter from the head of the Jewish community. Please note, he wrote, how exciting and unique is the fate of our people. A Jewish man forgets a book in an airport and boards a plane. What are the chances that the book will return to him from its exile? But lo and behold, another Jewish man sits down at precisely the same table. And it turns out that this Jew is a relative of the head of the community that had given the book as a gift. The relative reads the dedication, puts two and two together, and calls me. And so messengers and the angels of FedEx leave here and arrive there, and in the words of Jeremiah, the sons have returned home. The book has been returned to its owner in the Holy Land. Tell me—is it not clearly a miracle? Proof that our people are able survive the most terrible catastrophes and will endure for all of eternity?
I carried the book to the shelves that held my Israeli books.
There was no room for even a pamphlet on the shelf that held Holocaust books, second-generation Holocaust books, and third-generation Holocaust books. But then, with the imposing image of the head of the Jewish community looming large in my mind, I shoved some books on the shelf below it to the right, and a few Scandinavian thrillers to the left, and lost Marcus Rosner’s autobiography among them. For all eternity.
In recent years, there has been a rash of thrillers, mainly Scandinavian, but not only. Are you tempted to write a thriller?
No. In a thriller, it’s clear that someone has sinned, and the only question is when he will be caught. The real suspense—which I find fascinating to write about—is whether our sins are in fact sins. And how the hell can we tell?
The Scandinavian thriller writer Axel Wolff did not stop drinking during our meal together in Jerusalem. His face flushed, his eyes grew red, and when dessert arrived, he began to cry, really sob. Between one sob and the next, he managed to say that he was going through a crisis. With his wife. Since what-happened-in-Colombia-and-didn’t-stay-in-Colombia, she didn’t want to read his manuscripts. And he was totally dependent on her opinion. Between the lines, I understood that she was also the one who rescued him from writer’s block with the help of brilliant plot ideas that only someone free to advise from the sidelines can come up with.
I poured him a glass of water.
He drank, and then suddenly began to speak to me in Swedish.
I should have known that was not a good sign, but I kept nodding as if I understood and tried to follow the music of the words in an effort to get a sense of the content.
It continued for several minutes: He spoke to me in Swedish and beat his chest in self-righteousness, or anger, and I did a free translation in my mind.
Then he collapsed.
I hadn’t seen anyone’s body go so quickly from upright to prone since Haim Huri fell onto the grass in the middle of the Memorial Day ceremony our senior year in high school.
I hurried over to him and tried to pick him up from the floor, but he was too heavy. A real Viking. Waiters rushed over to help me, and together we managed to carry him to the couch in the restaurant foyer. Someone unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, someone else lifted his legs. In response, his eyes still closed, he mumbled the same sentence in Swedish over and over again, “Yag dödade honom, yag dödade honom, yag dödade honom…” I asked the waiters to call an ambulance, but before it arrived, he had already opened his eyes, buttoned his shirt so that it was still about to burst open on his huge chest, and began speaking English again. He insisted that there was no need to take him to the hospital. That’s how he is, he explained. Sometimes his body has to shut down totally before it can restart. And look, he can stand up, even walk a straight line. Okay, not ruler-straight but quite straight, he said. And he has a colleague from Israel with him who will make sure he gets to his hotel and into bed. That’s all he needs now, a good bed with clean white sheets, and tomorrow morning, a short espresso. Two at the most. And he’s all set. Really. Believe him.
In the taxi, he stretched his legs comfortably and fell asleep, so I couldn’t ask him what the hell Yag dödade honom meant.
I called Dikla to tell her I’d be home late.
She didn’t answer. My wife has been screening my calls for the last few weeks. My wife. Screening my calls. And she no longer dresses in front of me. Or tells me anything about what’s going on at work. Only by accident did I find out that she’d been promoted. So gifted. My wife. So distant.
I supported Axel all the way from the lobby to his room, until he fell onto the bed, fully dressed. There were three bottles of liquor from the minibar on the bedside table. All empty. Right after I made sure that his snores were just snores and not death rattles, I went over to his laptop, which was open on the desk, and typed Yag dödade honom into Google Translate.
No results.
Then it occurred to me to write yag with a j instead of a y.
<
br /> The translation appeared immediately: I killed him.
A moment later, there was a knock on the door. Not on the front door. On the other, hardly ever used door that connects a hotel room to the adjacent one.
How long did it take you to write your last book?
Actual writing time—three months.
Total time—three years.
In the middle, many other things stole my attention: Yanai’s entrance into first grade, trips to Sde Boker with night-vision equipment to make sure Shira was all right, Sirkin’s run for party head that required a new catchphrase almost every day, long testimony I was forced to give in the police investigation in Sweden, and of course, the search for Hagai Carmeli in the Rosh Pina area.
It began with Ari, who said that someone who visited him in the hospital said he saw Hagai wandering around Rosh Pina. Ari couldn’t remember who the person was and apologized: It’s those painkillers. They space me out.
Could you have dreamed it? I asked.
Anything’s possible, Ari said, and scratched his bald head. A bit embarrassed.
Still, because there was a small chance, because I have a deep respect for dreams, and because the air in my house smelled of separation anyway—the invitations to the bat mitzvah had already been sent—I enlarged a photo of Hagai Carmeli from our high-school yearbook (“Our Hagai / he’s a real blast / took his driving test seven times / and still hasn’t passed”), raced along the winding road between Acre and Safed, rented a cheap room in Rosh Pina, and began my search. I started in the town itself. I asked people, showed them the picture. On the trees in the area of the Ja’uni café I hung a few photos of him, along with detachable tabs showing my phone number. I went down to the mall, the gas station, the minimarket next to the gas station. No one recognized Hagai, but I had a gut feeling. If I were playing the hot/cold game, I just knew the other players would be saying, “Getting hotter…getting hotter.”
On the second day, I drove up to the hills above Rosh Pina with a tent, a sleeping bag, and a one-piece snowsuit that Ari once filched during reserve duty. It was freezing cold, but that didn’t stop me. I kept searching for Hagai in crevices and tunnels and forests as, above me, a flock of cranes migrated south. I waited for his rust-colored hair to suddenly appear among the fallen leaves. For a sunbeam to reflect off the thick lenses of his glasses. I imagined us sitting beside a campfire and talking. Unplugged. Like we used to.
* * *
—
Dysthymia? he asks.
I explain it to him. It’s kind of like a permanent sadness, on a low flame, that lasts for a long time without sliding into real depression.
Or maybe it’s the opposite?
What do you mean? I ask.
That starting at a certain age, it’s harder to feel joy.
* * *
—
You know what the problem is about living with the same woman for years, Carmeli?
I have no idea, man, I never have.
That her expression when she looks at you gets wearier. And dimmer.
I don’t understand, what do you want, to be admired? he asks.
A little. Why not?
* * *
—
Nothing happened in Colombia.
No?
That journalist really did come to the hotel with me. And we went up to the room, and I poured wine from the minibar for us. But then, Yanai, my youngest, called and asked what kind of present I was bringing back for him, and after I spoke to him, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get hard.
I don’t understand, so why did you tell Dikla that something happened?
I was hoping it would shake her up a little. That it would make her look at me the way she used to.
Or you hoped to bring things to a rapid end.
How I’ve missed your way with language, Carmeli—
In any case, you’re an idiot.
I know.
* * *
—
Or maybe there was another reason—
A reason for what?
For confessing to something that didn’t happen.
Okay, what?
It’s just a better story. More dramatic. Look, now you have a crisis to be stressed about, something you’ve always liked.
* * *
—
At night, I walked along the goat paths above Rosh Pina and looked for campfires that Hagai Carmeli might have sat beside. My nostrils searched for the smell, my eyes for the flames, and my ears for the sound of crackling twigs.
* * *
—
I didn’t shave for a few days. I washed in springs but I didn’t shave. My beard grew wild and I enjoyed running my hand through the soft stubble.
So many years had passed since I allowed myself to not shave. So many years of being too smooth. It was clear to me that Hagai Carmeli, if he were alive, had a beard. I have no explanation for that, I just knew it. A reddish, pointed beard, better-groomed than mine. I imagined our meeting, beard to beard. We probably wouldn’t hug, he’s unhuggable, Hagai Carmeli, but I would see the happiness in his eyes and he would see the relief in mine. Then we would gather firewood and twigs, place a piece of tissue under the twigs, and use a flint to light the fire, and when the flames were steady, we’d talk, without any stupid attempts to tell each other everything that had happened in the time that had passed, we would go straight to the burning issues.
* * *
—
And if Dikla were telling the story?
What do you mean?
Let’s say it’s her story and you’re the character of the husband. How does it feel from her vantage point?
What is this, Carmeli, an exercise in a writing workshop?
No, idiot, it’s an exercise in love.
* * *
—
Okay…so I think she feels…exhaustion.
Exhaustion.
Yes, she has no more strength.
For you?
Not just for me. If it weren’t for the kids, she would go to India for a year.
* * *
—
Go on. What else do you see from her vantage point?
Something happened when she went to the desert ashram and Sde Boker. She came back different.
A man?
I don’t think so.
A woman?
No, no. More like a decision. Something that became clear to her.
* * *
It’s too bad we can’t take a break.
A break?
If not for the kids, that’s what we should do now. A separation of forces. Each of us should go our separate ways for a year. She should really go to India, and I should go to the Sinai, despite, or maybe because of, the warnings.
So do it.
Don’t be offended, Hagai, but it’s obvious you’re not a father.
* * *
—
Will you come with me to visit Ari?
Of course.
No one but Dikla and I go to see him anymore. Would you believe it?
No one, no one at all?
At first it was an endless stream. Lots of girls. Now there’s death in the air. Death has a real smell, you know?
Does Ari say anything about it? Does he notice?
You know him, he turns it into a joke. Every time I see him, he tells me about another girl he’s “taking out of his will” because she stopped coming.
* * *
—
During my second week of searching, on a night with a full moon, at the entrance to a wadi, I saw a small campfire in the distance. And someone sitting beside it.
I approached with a pounding heart.
Sitting alone near the campfire was none other than Ehud Banai, one of my favorite singers. He was wearing a
n Ehud Banai hat. And he had Ehud Banai stubble. And Ehud Banai glasses. He had a harmonica on his chest, Dylan-style, and he was quietly strumming his guitar.
With a look, I asked if I could sit down next to him, and he responded with a glance that I could.
I listened to him play for a long time.
We didn’t exchange a word. It seemed inappropriate.
He didn’t play familiar songs that I could sing along to, only instrumental passages, without plots. One of them reminded me of the opening sounds of “You Touched the Treetops,” but it quickly dispersed into a different melody. More random.
I made an assumption: Maybe he’d come back here after years to remind himself how it all began, to commune once again with that innocent place before the applause began.
But I had no way to verify that assumption.
The ground groaned.
Time traveled.
I was filled with a sense of deep serenity as Ehud Banai strummed his guitar.
Flocks of cranes continued to migrate south, even at night. But a bit more quietly.
Finding Hagai Carmeli is not the most important thing, I thought. The most important thing is to keep searching.
In your opinion, will people continue to read books in the future?
People will continue to need stories.
And storytellers like me will continue to need people.
It’s possible that books in the form we’re familiar with now will disappear from the world. But who knows? Maybe the new form will be cooler?
Soundtracks, for example. It drives me crazy that I can’t add soundtracks to my texts.
