The Last Interview

by Eshkol Nevo

  In any case, she’s in another place, I said.

  And emphasized: Not another man—another place.

  And said: These are not normal days for me. These are the final days of a period in my life that lasted for more than twenty years. I’m walking through my life, and at the same time, observing it from the sidelines.

  Summing up, I said: But it also has advantages. In normal times, you never could have persuaded me to have a meeting in a Jacuzzi.

  When I finished speaking, there was a long silence broken only by the music coming from the lifeguard’s transistor.

  The man spoke first. A nice story, he said. Although a little too sad for my taste.

  The part I liked best was when he almost made her breakfast—said the woman who looked like Hagai Carmeli—but in the end, they both ended up in front of their computers. That’s exactly how it is.

  I didn’t think it was believable at all, the other woman said. That whole scene with the computers and the toast. Who has time for things like that on Friday morning, when you have to prepare for Shabbat? It would have been much more convincing if it all happened in the supermarket, let’s say.

  I don’t understand what you want, girls, the man said, it’s a story, it doesn’t have to be exactly like life.

  * * *

  —

  I didn’t correct them. I didn’t explain that there wasn’t the slightest bit of fiction in what I told them. I let them continue arguing and touching each other and me with their feet, under the water, accidentally or not accidentally.

  I closed my eyes, pressed my hands to the sides of my body, leaned my head back, and slid down a bit, to place my lower spine in the flow of water.

  I remained that way for a few seconds, and then opened my eyes.

  And began to cry.

  None of my three readers noticed.

  The salty drops falling from my eyes blended into the spray of the Jacuzzi.

  * * *

  —

  On the drive home, Johnny Shuali’s “Sometimes” was on the radio. I didn’t want to remember, but I did. The first time Dikla and I heard it together was in the Kiryat Yuval dormitory. Dikla had heard it before and drew my attention to it. We were in her room—she had a roommate who left the university in the middle of the year—lying on her bed, brushing against each other, and the song began.

  She said, Listen to how beautiful it is, and reached out to raise the volume.

  Sometimes you don’t realize that I’m with you,

  There’s no one else for me,

  I love you more each passing day…

  Johnny Shuali’s voice was borne on the surging sounds of his guitar.

  And when he reached “And the autumn winds have stripped me as bare as the day I was born,” I felt Dikla’s hand reach for mine. Spreading my fingers to lace hers between them.

  * * *

  —

  When I reached home, a note from her was waiting on the dining room table: I’m going to sleep. Don’t forget to go to the bakery tomorrow morning to order a cake for the bat mitzvah.

  Is it possible to live without love?

  At five in the morning, I decide to surrender to my insomnia instead of fighting it. I get out of bed quietly to keep from waking Dikla, walk to the living room, open the shutters, and wait for the dawn. All the women I’ve been with in my life enter the room, one after the other. And caress me. Each in her own way. All of them still love me. At least the way I love them. Making it difficult to reject the possibility that I might still be lovable. At six, the darkness turns into almost-light. All the women I’ve been with in my life leave the room one after the other, and a moment before they do, they bend down and kiss me on the mouth, each in her own way.

  Soon, light will flood the living room. Soon, I will go to the bakery. Soon, the bat mitzvah will take place. Soon, it seems, my life will collapse.

  But for a rare moment, I manage to see the big picture.

  What is the most unique response you’ve ever received from a reader?

  He came up to me after an event in Germany, in a provincial town whose name I don’t remember. Nor do I remember what the auditorium looked like. Or whether there was a vase of flowers on the table or not.

  He waited on the side until the last of those who wanted an autograph had gone, and only then did he approach and say “Shalom” in Hebrew. Eighty years old, at least. Tall but not stooped. A brown jacket. Watery blue eyes behind glasses. Life-experience blemishes on his cheeks.

  After the “shalom,” he switched to German-accented English.

  He said: I read your book and just bought another copy.

  He said: I wanted to ask you to write a dedication to Paul in the new copy.

  He said: Paul and I were together in the war.

  My pen stopped in the middle of writing: Wait a minute, did he really expect me to write a dedication to his Wehrmacht buddy?

  But he—perhaps understanding why I froze—added hurriedly: The War of Independence. Paul and I fought together for the entire war, and in the Battle of Latrun, he was wounded by grenade shrapnel and I did my part to help evacuate him. He kept saying he was going to die, and I calmed him down and told him that he had nothing to worry about, because in another week, we’d be drinking whiskey together. It continued like that until we finally reached the medic, he talked about the next world and I held his hand and promised him whiskey. In this world. Ever since, we meet once a week, he comes from Israel, and we drink a glass of whiskey together. Paul says I saved his life. I’m not sure it’s true. But I don’t argue with him.

  So…he should be arriving soon? I asked, opening the book to the dedication page.

  No, this time I’m going to him. He’s…very sick. In a hospital in Jerusalem, for a few weeks already. I’m not sure he’ll even be able to hold the glass of whiskey. But it’s okay. If I have to, I’ll hold it, bring it to his lips so he can take a sip, and then I’ll read him something from your book. Can you write the dedication in Hebrew?

  Of course. What should I write?

  I don’t know. You’re the writer. Maybe something about friendship?

  Do you use drugs or alcohol to help you write?

  Twenty years have passed since then.

  Many things have grown dim. Not that.

  I never wrote about it directly, perhaps because I’m afraid I won’t be able to convey it in words. That instead of writing it, I should give each reader a bit of the potion the Israeli girls had brought from home and say: Taste it, you’ll understand.

  There were two girls with us, I don’t remember their names. I met the curly-haired one years later at the photocopier in the Gilman Building at Tel Aviv University. We exchanged a few words and a glance—the deep, lingering glance of two people who had once been entwined in each other’s dreams.

  She was the one who suggested bringing us a small pouch. I had just read The Book of Tao, which had imbued me with a spirit of adventure. And I didn’t have children at the time.

  So I said, Great.

  I had no idea what I was getting into.

  The next day, they put the pouch on the threshold of the cabin I shared with Ari and went to eat breakfast.

  Inside the pouch was a green liquid. Cactus juice. That was all I knew.

  Later I found out that Indians use it to commune with their gods.

  Later I read Carlos Castaneda.

  Only later.

  Ari slept late that morning. If one of us drank it, the other probably shouldn’t, he’d said when I told him the night before that the girls were going to bring us a small pouch. I knew that if he woke up, he would be the one to drink it and I would be the sober one, as usual. So I grabbed the pouch and my travel journal and hurried down to the creek. The small bridge that spanned it was made of wooden planks, with one missing.

  It
’s incredible how I remember everything.

  I sat down on the damp ground beside the small bridge. The water flowed beneath me. The first sunbeams filtered through the huge leaves on the branches above me. I made a large hole in a corner of the small bag, like I used to do with the corner of the plastic bag of chocolate milk in camp, and sucked out a bit.

  It was bitter. Terribly bitter. So I drank the rest in one gulp. Without stopping.

  There were no usage directions on the small pouch. I had no way of knowing it shouldn’t be done that way.

  * * *

  —

  A minute later, I vomited. I hate when characters vomit in stories, but that’s what happened.

  I threw up some of the green liquid I’d drunk, and then came the first sign that my consciousness was changing. The green color of the vomit looked beautiful to me. I stared at it in astonishment, almost elation, while it was still spilling out of my mouth onto the ground.

  The ground also looked beautiful to me. Brown and blazing. And those were the first words I wrote in my journal: Brown and blazing ground.

  Then I heard voices approaching from the direction of the cabins. I didn’t want to be around people. More accurately, I didn’t feel the need to be around people. The trees, the branches, the sunbeams, the birds—supplied all my needs.

  Then I straightened up, crossed the bridge to the other bank, and began to walk down the path beside the river.

  * * *

  —

  Ari told me later that it took a long time to find me. The girls woke him up after they themselves had drunk from a small pouch. Straight Hair told him they saw me walking away on the path, and in her opinion, the stuff they had been sold was spoiled.

  Curly Hair didn’t say anything. Only occasionally, as they walked, she pointed to a flower and said: How beautiful.

  * * *

  —

  While they were searching for me, I lay shirtless on an exposed hill above the river and looked at the clouds.

  Actually, first there was the donkey. I want to be accurate. I won’t always have such a detailed, vibrant memory of what happened, and at some point, I’ll need these words to keep from forgetting:

  The donkey was far from me and close to me. The two possibilities didn’t cancel each other out. At some point, I remember, the thought passed through my mind that it was part of a painting. That it wasn’t real, that it was part of a two-dimensional painting I was looking at. Every time I closed my eyes and opened them, it was a different distance from me, but even when it was really close, I wasn’t scared. All in all, at that stage, I still wasn’t scared. Was the man who came and took the donkey away real, or a product of my imagination? It’s difficult for me to say for sure. I only remember thinking that just because the man was made of cardboard, like a figure in a shooting range, it didn’t rule out the possibility that he was human.

  After the donkey was taken away, I watched the clouds.

  Pages of my travel journal are filled with descriptions of the shapes I saw in them: crabs, monkeys, cats, and then crabs again.

  And from behind the clouds—the city of the gods sparkled at me.

  I remember thinking: Behind the clouds is an ancient city where the gods live, and now I’ve been given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see it and maybe even talk to the gods. I believed that if I focused hard enough, I would be able to communicate with the gods through the power of thought alone. Without words.

  I even wrote in my journal: I tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

  Then Ari and the girls appeared.

  We had a dialogue, some words were exchanged, I don’t remember them.

  I do remember that the two girls lay down on either side of me and Ari stood above us.

  Curly Hair was right beside me. Straight Hair was farther away.

  Curly Hair asked, What are you looking at?

  The clouds.

  She looked up and said, They’re so beautiful.

  Do you see the crabs?

  Sure, she said, and then again, they’re so beautiful.

  I felt that Curly Hair and I had a deep understanding of each other.

  Straight Hair, on the other hand, really pissed me off. She kept complaining that nothing was happening to her. That they’d been sold spoiled stuff. And she warned us over and over again that it was about to rain. As if it mattered.

  I thought, I could kill her. If she doesn’t shut up, I’m capable of getting up, grabbing a rock, and smashing her head in. And then I panicked that maybe they’d heard my thought.

  I want to be accurate: I wasn’t afraid that I’d spoken the thought out loud, I was afraid that, in the world I inhabited then, thoughts could be heard.

  Ari stood above us the entire time. I asked him to come closer to me and I whispered in his ear: Can you hear my thoughts?

  No, bro, he said.

  I think you should take her back to the restaurant, I said. I was sure he would know which one of the girls I meant.

  I think everyone should go back to the restaurant, Ari said.

  It’s going to start raining any minute, Straight Hair said.

  In response, my hand clenched into a fist.

  Rain is so beautiful, Curly Hair said.

  I always wanted a big brother, I said.

  Me too, Curly Hair said.

  I want to go back, Straight Hair said.

  I’m not moving from here, Curly Hair said.

  I’ll take her to the restaurant and come back as fast as I can, Ari said.

  * * *

  —

  The rain started a minute later—or an hour later, my sense of time had leaked away.

  Long rows of small drops fell on us from the clouds. I’d never seen rain fall from that angle, lying down, and it was so—

  Beautiful, said Curly Hair.

  So much it makes me want to cry.

  The ground beneath our bodies became damper and damper, and looser. Our bodies sank into it.

  The ground will swallow us up, Curly Hair said.

  I don’t care.

  Neither do I.

  We lay next to each other, our faces to the clouds.

  We didn’t turn to each other or touch. There was no need. We had the sense that, effortlessly, we had become connected to each other and to the nature around us. That there was a certain harmony between all the elements of the moment we were living in.

  I even wrote the word “harmony” in my journal. But that was later, in the cabin.

  I didn’t write anything while it was raining, and I wasn’t bothered that my journal was getting wet.

  Nothing bothered me. Nothing. There was nothing that I longed for. Nothing I missed.

  * * *

  Ari returned and suggested we go back with him because it would be dark soon.

  I didn’t say anything. As far as I was concerned, darkness wasn’t a reasonable possibility. It was just morning.

  Curly Hair didn’t say anything either.

  He sat down beside us. Silently. Wrapped in a poncho.

  I thought to myself, What an amazing person that Ari is.

  And he said, Thanks.

  I thought to myself, How patient he is.

  And he said, Not patient. Just worried about you.

  * * *

  —

  The rain finally weakened. And daylight died. From behind the clouds, the lights of the city of the gods turned on.

  Curly Hair said, I’m hungry. And sat up. As soon as she said that, I also felt hungry. Very hungry. And terribly thirsty.

  Let’s go to the restaurant, Ari said. You can keep looking at things there too.

  I think now about how much wisdom there was in those words. About his ability to understand that our true desire in those moments was to look. About the pa
tience needed to sit there beside us in the pouring rain—who knows how much time really passed—until we agreed to leave. About the fact that he didn’t ridicule us even once. Despite his tendency to turn everything into a joke. Even though I’m sure we looked ridiculous.

  The change came in the restaurant. It’s hard to pinpoint the precise moment. I’m not sure there was a precise moment.

  I remember that the four of us were sitting at one table. That in fluent Spanish, his native language, Ari ordered soup that was like a stew. He took pictures of us. From several angles. And I couldn’t follow the conversation.

  I managed to hear the beginnings of sentences, but then my attention wandered and I couldn’t hear their ends.

  I remember that Curly Hair said, I think it’s starting to pass—

  And Straight Hair said, It’s supposed to pass after—

  I remember thinking: It’s not passing for me. It’s not passing for me. And as Ari’s conversation with the girls grew more relaxed and logical, my thought changed: It won’t pass for me. It will never pass for me.

  I felt that something wasn’t right with me, that everyone in the restaurant could see it and they were all sending pitying, get-him-to-a-hospital looks in my direction.