by Eshkol Nevo
The insulters storm into your apartment, and before they even shake your hand or mutter a hello, they’re already criticizing: The building’s old, right? Nobody builds like this today. Then they go from room to room, loudly listing the disadvantages of each one: The kitchen—small. The living room—faces the wrong side of the sun. The walls are thin. The bathroom is poorly planned. The bedroom is okay, but overlooks the street.
We actually enjoyed living here very much, you say, driven to defend the place where you spent most of your life.
Then the insulters give a restrained chuckle of disbelief: What is there to enjoy here?
The remodelers, on the other hand, are people with a vision. They don’t see the apartment, they see its potential. Soon after they come in, tape measure in hand, they’re already redesigning in their minds: Here we’ll take down the wall. Here we’ll put up a plasterboard partition. There we’ll build a pergola. We’ll have to join those two rooms together. And close off the back balcony.
As far as the remodelers are concerned, your presence is superfluous. A mild annoyance on their way to happiness. When you tell them that they can’t close off the balcony because it’s not legal, they say (to each other, they speak only to each other, not to you), It’s okay, we know people in city hall.
The bargainers come to close the deal. They don’t waste time. After a very quick look around the apartment—they don’t even go into the rooms, just stand on the threshold and peer inside—they sit down in the living room, gesture with their hands for you to sit down too, as if they’re the hosts and you’re the guest, cross their legs, and say: So let’s get the dirty stuff out of the way.
The first time, I didn’t understand, Michael. Honestly. I checked my blouse: was there a stain on it that I hadn’t noticed? When you live alone, that’s liable to happen. No one is around to rescue you from your stains. Or maybe they wanted to talk about the sewage. Or the toilet. Or the sewage that flows from the toilet. And what do I know about that? But no. The “dirty stuff” they wanted to talk about turned out to be money. And to talk about money meant to bargain. And to bargain meant to offer a scandalously lower price than the one that appeared in the ad, along with a firm statement: That, Madam, is the going price for your apartment.
The real estate agents always have sweaty foreheads. Five of them came to see the apartment. They all had sweaty foreheads. And they all tried to convince me that I needed an agent. We’ll do the screening for you, make sure that only serious people come to see the apartment, they promised. And by saying that, they sealed their fates.
You have to understand, Michael, that I had no desire to screen. Just the opposite. I’m a woman alone. I enjoyed all those visitors. Serious and not serious. Polite and vulgar. Anything was preferable to the echo of my voice bouncing off the walls.
And Avner Ashdot? Well, he definitely deserves a separate message.
Avner Ashdot made an appointment to see the apartment. But he didn’t give his name. I knew that an older man would be coming, but I didn’t expect him, of all people.
When he came in, I asked, “Why didn’t you tell me on the phone that it was you?”
“I didn’t think you’d remember me.”
“Come in,” I said, “I’ll show you around.” (You know me, Michael. I always channel my embarrassment into action.)
We walked through the rooms. He followed me into each one, penetrated the air with his glance and said nothing. I took him to the back balcony and showed him the view. And he still said nothing. When we went into the bathroom, I tried to break the ice: “Yes, well, I know it’s hard to top your bathroom.” But he didn’t laugh.
He didn’t have a pad in his hand, but he looked as if he had one in his mind and was taking meticulous notes on what I showed him. Finally he said, “The price you quoted in your ad is too low.”
“Too low?”
“I’m prepared to buy your apartment for 20 percent more.”
“That’s very generous of you.”
“It’s not generosity, it’s economics. The market is slow now because of the protests, but they’ll be over in the end, and then the prices here will go up again.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“That’s how it is in Israel. The happy families and the miserable families are similar. They all want the same thing—their own home. And if possible, another one as an investment. But land is sparse. There isn’t enough of it, so the prices have to go up in the end.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve also found you an apartment in Tel Aviv, by the way. For almost the same price. You’ll even have some money left over.”
“Wait just a minute, how do you know I’m looking for an apartment in Tel Aviv?”
You’re right, Michael, I should describe him to you. When I used to tell you about defendants I was undecided about, you always demanded to know, But what did he look like, Devora?
Tall, that’s probably the first thing you would say about Avner Ashdot. Tall, but not stooped. I would expect a man like that, at that age, to look like a crowbar. But no. He looked more like an arrow. Straight but not fast. I’d say his movements were measured. Every step carefully considered before taken.
But perhaps I should have begun with his clothes. Very elegant. So elegant that they didn’t look Israeli. As if he had spent many years in Europe, came back not too long ago, and still hadn’t reverted to the careless look so common here. A button-down shirt worn inside his pants, of course. A shiny belt with a large buckle. I wouldn’t want to be the child beaten with that belt.
I don’t mention beating for no reason. There is a suppressed violence about him. But where, you demand to know, Michael, where exactly does one see that violence? I’m trying, Michael. I really am. You can’t always pinpoint such things. Sometimes it’s just a feeling. The very slightest sense of menace in the air. Perhaps the eyes. They’re a beautiful shade of blue. But they’re not beautiful eyes. They don’t make you want to look into them for very long. On the contrary. They make you not want to look into them for very long.
He fixed them on me and said, “How do I know you want to move to Tel Aviv? Let’s just say…I have my sources.” And a moment later he added, “I don’t expect you to offer me your shower, Devora. But is it possible to get a glass of water here?”
And so—with each of us holding a glass of water as if it were wine—we began to talk.
We talked for a long time. Whenever I tried to channel our conversation back to the reason we were talking at all, that is, the purchase of the apartment, Avner Ashdot changed the subject and we moved further away from it.
It seems that he had worked in the Ministry of Defense for years, and as part of his job, visited many places in the world and was exposed to many different cultures. What impressed him most, what continued to fascinate him even after thirty years of travel, was the fact that every culture had its norms. In Paris, for example, it is quite acceptable to have an extramarital relationship. Part of his job was to plant eavesdropping devices in the homes of senior officials our intelligence people were interested in, and what did he learn? Most of the conversations those senior officials had, both men and women, were about their infidelities. In Italy, on the other hand, they were more conservative in their private lives, but the economic corruption there, the Mafia’s control of daily life, was incredible. In Naples, you couldn’t open a grocery store without the Cosa Nostra’s permission, and what shocked him most was that nobody there thought that was strange. They accepted it as an inseparable part of life.
Avner Ashdot told me about the many places he had visited and the many transgressions he had witnessed there, and concluded by saying, “After seeing all of that, you realize that morality is completely relative. And you become a little more forgiving, of others and of yourself.”
“I don’t know that I agree with you,” I said. “In fact, I’m sure I don’t.”
He smiled and said, “If you agreed with me, Your Honor, I’d be worrie
d.” Then he put his glass on the table and stood up.
“Think about my offer, Devora,” he said. “You won’t get a better one.”
“Let’s wait and see.”
There was something annoying about his self-confidence. Attorneys who showed that kind of arrogance always made me want to rule against them.
“Yes, let’s wait and see,” he repeated my words.
Then he bent his entire body and kissed my hand. The kiss was longer and softer than the one he’d given me in the Tel Aviv apartment. And this time I didn’t pull my hand away quickly, and felt warmth spreading from my hand to my arm to my shoulder. And from there to the roots of my hair.
Don’t worry, Michael. I’m not a silly young girl. After Avner Ashdot left, I didn’t watch him longingly from the window or call my best friend to relive every tiny detail of the meeting with her. That is not my way. That is not our way.
After Avner Ashdot left, I did exactly what you would have done in my place: I tried to find out how, as he claimed, “our paths had crossed.” And how he could have known that I was looking for an apartment in Tel Aviv. I went through all my records going back thirty years. When that didn’t work, I called Mira and asked her to check discreetly whether any of the defendants in the trials I had handled was named Ashdot. She was wonderful, as usual, and asked no unnecessary questions. The next day, she called with a negative answer. Then I asked her to check your trials, just to be on the safe side. You, it turned out, had tried an Ashdot, not Avner, but Aharon. And not an employee of the Ministry of Defense, but an accountant for Egged buses who had been accused of embezzling money from his employer. In 1996. He was single, a Holocaust survivor. With no living relatives. Which severely limited the possibility that Avner Ashdot was connected to him in any way.
I miss you so much at times like that, Michael. Couples who truly work as a team share not only household tasks, but also memory tasks. Just as I remembered your childhood for you, you remembered the cases I tried for me: the defendants, the claims, the verdict, the sorrow and the satisfaction I caused, if any, to all the sides. I would have forgotten them. Wiped them from my memory so I could go to my next trial with an uncluttered mind. And when I occasionally had to remember a verdict I had handed down, the best idea was to ask you.
So now I am asking you. And there is no one there to answer me.
I went to sleep that night feeling sad (because you were not beside me) and troubled (because of Avner Ashdot).
Correct me if I’m wrong, Michael, but in all the years we were together, we never told each other our dreams. You said that dreams were meant to fill the gap between what is and what is desired, and that in both your personal and professional life, there was no such gap. You declared, I don’t need dreams, so I don’t dream! But I actually need them. And I did dream. But I could never hold on to the dream before it dispersed in my wakeful consciousness.
I don’t even remember clearly what I dreamed the night after meeting with Avner Ashdot. Most of it is gone. Nevertheless, for the first time in many years, I managed to hold on to one image and document it in my recipe book before I forgot it. I’ll read you what I wrote, word for word, and hope that answering machine beep doesn’t cut me off in the middle:
A group of doctors, Adar in their midst, is standing over my bed in the hospital discussing the operation they are about to perform on me. I understand from their discussion that they are going to remove an organ, but I don’t know which one. I try to ask them, but no sound comes out of my mouth and they continue to ignore me and talk about me as if I can’t hear them. I take a piece of paper and write on it: “According to the patients’ rights law, you are obliged to provide me with the information I ask for.” I hand the piece of paper to the tallest doctor, and he reads it, bursts out laughing, and shows it to Adar, who is also smiling. The doctor says to him, “See? That’s exactly why we’ve decided to remove her suprego.”
You probably would have understood from the first minute. Your general knowledge was always more accessible than mine. I wasted half a day combing through medical encyclopedias until I realized that there is no organ called a suprego in our body, and that my dream apparently referred to the “superego,” the term Freud coined as part of his topographical theory that divides the psyche into three floors.
The Encyclopedia of Ideas helped me remember that the first floor, which he called the id, contains all our impulses and urges. The middle floor is the ego, which tries to mediate between our desires and reality. And the uppermost level, the third floor, is the domain of His Majesty, the superego, which calls us to order sternly and demands that we take into account the effects of our actions on society.
I hear you asking in that tone of yours, which hints that you know the answer quite well: Is there any proof whatsoever of that theory? Has it been tested, proven scientifically?
No.
If not, then what validity does it have?
It doesn’t.
Scandalous, you say. Can you imagine a verdict without any documented proof? A medical diagnosis that does not take into account the symptoms? Only in psychology can a theory without any factual basis take over the professional discourse!
I nod, seemingly in agreement, but can’t help thinking: It’s all a defense mechanism that your ego has activated, Michael, because psychology and everything else related to Adar, your only son whom you did not love, arouse such powerful impulses in your id.
All of a sudden, it’s hard for me to speak, Michael. Something is blocking my throat. I’ll pour myself a glass of water and try again soon.
A few days after his first visit, Avner Ashdot called and said he wanted to invite me to see the apartment in Tel Aviv. I told him I wasn’t sure I was interested.
But he insisted: “You don’t have to do anything. I pick you up. You see the apartment and then I take you back home. C’est tout.”
“Still, Mr. Ashdot, there is something we have to talk about before that.”
“Go right ahead,” he said.
“You said that our paths have crossed. How did they cross, if I may ask?”
“It’s not for the phone.”
“Why? Is our line tapped?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Not as far as you know?!”
“I’m kidding, Devora. You have nothing to worry about. I left the Ministry of Defense three years ago. They’re not listening in. You can rest easy. My intentions are good.”
“The path to hell—”
“—is paved with good intentions, I know. What time would it be convenient for me to come tomorrow?”
“I’m busy tomorrow, meetings in the tents on Rothschild.”
“So the day after tomorrow. You shouldn’t wait too long. Apartments get snapped up quickly here.”
I used the time I gained to do two important things.
The first: I broadened the inquiry on Avner Ashdot. You always said that it’s better not to ask people for favors so as not to be in their debt. In our position, you said, it was better to be extra careful and not owe anything to anyone. That was accurate, of course. Accurate at the time. But my status has changed, Michael. The sand of my life is running out, and what I don’t ask for today, who knows, perhaps I won’t be able to ask for it tomorrow.
A few phone calls to our friends in the police and the Defense and Interior ministries helped me to piece together the following picture: Avner Ashdot served in the Mossad and retired three years ago. He went into business, mainly real estate, and has been quite successful. He’s a widower. The father of a daughter who lives on a cooperative farm in the Arava. He has no other children. He contributes a great deal of money to charity. No criminal charges have ever been filed against him, and except for a driver re-education course he had to take a while back, he has never been in trouble with the authorities.
And no, there is no pregnant woman, not even among his most distant relatives, who was run over. Really, Michael. Give me a little credit. Did you thi
nk I wouldn’t check something like that?
The second important thing I did was buy clothes. Since you went away, I haven’t bought myself anything new, Michael. I had nothing to get dressed up for (you were the ideal partner as far as that was concerned: noticed every earring, every ring, never hesitated to give a compliment), and even now, I want you to know, I didn’t get dressed up for Avner Ashdot. I can’t even say I liked him. At that point. But the elegant way he dressed made me feel frumpy when I was with him. And I wanted us to be on an equal footing while we were negotiating. That’s all.
So I went and bought myself a new dress. And I didn’t enjoy the experience at all. The saleswoman suggested, tactlessly, that I buy a black dress. I told her I didn’t want a black dress. Even if it was slimming. I’d worn respectable, buttoned-down black and white for years, and now the door to the cage had been opened and I wanted to wear something colorful. But when I tried on various colors in the dressing room, you weren’t there and there was no one to sneak in (remember when we were young and I used to push you away, then press up against you and whisper a threat to call the police?) and the dress I wanted was too expensive, even considering the permissive financial policies I was practicing at home, and the only way I could bring myself to buy it was to think of it as the first purchase of many that I would make with the money left over from the apartment-selling and -buying deal Avner Ashdot was setting up for me.
But there is no deal, I reminded myself as I waited for him in front of the building the next day. There’s still no deal and you’re not obligated to do anything. There’s still no deal and you’re not obligated to do anything.
