by Eshkol Nevo
Right before I opened it, I stopped and said, “Thank you.”
His voice answered me from another country: “You’re welcome.”
“And…Avner,” I said, “I’ve thought about it and…pick me up the day after tomorrow in the morning.”
I wonder if, at this point, you’ve already guessed the nature of the trap that had been laid for me. You were always faster than I was at analyzing evidence. More than once, just from listening to partial, fragmented stories about trials I was presiding at, you handed down a verdict. And most of the time, the right one.
But only most of the time. That lightning speed of yours also made you err. And all those errors tormented you during the weeks before you died. You dredged up the image of the parents of Rivi Magal, whose rapist you found innocent by reasonable doubt. Again and again, you recalled her father coming up to you in the corridor outside the courtroom, grabbing your arm, and saying, “Your Honor, forgive me, I am just a simple man, but can you explain to me why you just released a defendant who confessed to his crime?”
Lying on your sickbed, you said to me in a crushed voice, “Maybe you wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to pass judgment as I was, Devora, and maybe the people in the courtroom did not regard you in awed silence when you entered, but look at your record. Thirty years without a single injustice.”
I consoled you with soft words, of course. That’s what you do when you love someone. I said, “It’s only a minor incident.” I said, “You never took a bribe, Michael, never fixed a trial. The prosecution was negligent in the Rivi Magal case, and we both know that the rules of evidence sometimes compel us to rule according to law and not according to justice…”
But that small spot of arrogance in my chest flashed with joy as we spoke.
It’s natural for a couple who have the same profession to be jealous and competitive and to have different viewpoints. Especially if one was originally a prosecutor and the other a defense attorney. And in truth, I’d been jealous of you many times over the years. You were a more gifted and successful judge than I. Your minority opinions were accepted time after time in the Supreme Court. You were promoted and given high-profile cases, while I stayed where I was, keeping a low profile. And now it turns out that I scored at least one victory over you.
So what do you think at this point, my dear, beloved Michael? Do you already know what Avner Ashdot was hiding from me? Have enough hints been dropped?
If they have, I didn’t see them. Not at all. And the reason I didn’t see them is terrible. No mother would admit to it. In fact, I can only admit it to the answering machine. So I’ll take a deep breath and say—damn it, it’s hard—
It never entered my mind that Adar had any part in this story because, as the years passed, Adar entered my mind less and less often.
The first year of the estrangement, a minute didn’t go by without my thinking about him. Where was he? What was he doing? What was he eating? Remember that you suspected that I had a lover then? That I “wasn’t with you” when we made love? Now I can finally tell you: I really wasn’t with you. I was with him. I’d close my eyes while you lay on top of me and try to imagine where Adar was sleeping. In what bed. Did he have warm blankets?
I tried to dig up information. From his old friends. On the computer. But I found nothing. The first year, I’d walk in the streets and fantasize that I’d been diagnosed with cancer and Adar had no choice but to end his boycott of us and visit me in the hospital.
The second year, I kept thinking about him, but a bit less. You refused to talk about him. And what isn’t spoken doesn’t solidify. Just as you said in our last conversation in prison. “A complete break.” And so a year passed. And another year. And then you became ill. And I retired to take care of you. You were the focus of my life (Adar would say: So what’s new?).
Right before the funeral, I wondered whether he knew and would come, and when he didn’t, I wondered if he’d come to the shivah, and every time I looked up to see who was at the door, I hoped it was him. But he didn’t come. And I wondered once again if what had happened really justified this terrible anger of his, and repeated what you always said in reply: No, no, it doesn’t justify it. Absolutely not.
But today I would answer: What difference does it make what justifies what and who is right? This is not a court of law. And you are not being asked to hand down a verdict.
After I dreamed that my superego was being removed, I ordered a full set of Freud’s writings on the Internet and paid extra for an express delivery—I could have waited and saved the money, Michael, I know, but my id refused to control itself! Twenty-four hours later, the seven volumes were at our door.
You would clearly give me an I-told-you-so nod if I said that I found dubious ideas in Freud. Penis envy—come on. I liked your penis very much, Michael, it was a fine example of the organ, but I never wanted it to be mine. On the contrary, it always seemed a great bother to have to walk around with something like that between one’s legs.
Nevertheless, I must admit that Freud also had some interesting ideas. The sort that reverberate in the world. For example, the way the subconscious sometimes pops up in our daily lives: someone uses a wrong word, and the mistake reflects what he’s really thinking. How many times did we hear defendants or attorneys have slips of the tongue, exposing exactly what they didn’t want to say. (I remember Armond Bloom, the defense attorney who claimed you went to school with his client’s brother-in-law and demanded that you “accuse” yourself.)
It’s a shame that you can’t read Freud with me, Michael, I would have been happy to argue loudly with you about him. You would say, for example: The only thing you can judge about a person is his overt behavior, the tip of the iceberg. The seven-eighths below the surface is irrelevant. And I would have replied: But you can’t claim that they don’t exist. Then you would say: Freud idealizes the destructive impulse, and that’s dangerous. I would reply: What are you talking about? Not recognizing that a particular impulse exists is much more dangerous!
Later, as we loved to do, our bodies aflame with the righteousness of our claims, we would make love, at first continuing the argument using different devices, and in the end…not arguing at all.
So why am I mentioning Freud for the second time? (I picture you pulling your earlobe the way you used to when an attorney was bothering you with details you thought were not relevant to the case).
At the meeting I had with the protesters the next day, one fellow came in late. I looked up to greet him, and for a fraction of a second I thought it was Adar. At second glance, he looked completely different from Adar: long hair, long limbs, straight nose, thin lips. I didn’t understand how I could have thought he was Adar.
But now I think it was my subconscious. It guessed what was about to happen.
The meeting itself, by the way, was annoying. The protesters argued bitterly even though they agreed in principle on most of the issues on the agenda. I thought that their instinctive suspicion and hypersensitivity, which I did not share, were making the atmosphere ugly. Someone left the room, and when he returned a few moments later, everyone looked at him as if he’d committed a serious crime while he was gone. “What?” he asked. “What’s wrong?” No one answered. I think their exhaustion had further strained their nerves. Spending a month in a tent on a noisy street isn’t easy. It isn’t easy at all.
I tried as hard as I could to mediate, I made compromise suggestions, but they were all rejected out of hand. It seemed that although everyone there wanted cooperation in principle, their greatest desire was actually to be differentiated from the others. To say: I’m not like everyone else. I’m different. I’m a bit more right than they are.
In any case, I left that meeting less euphoric than I had been going into it, but no less convinced of the importance of trying and imagining a different reality. A new one. But at least they all agreed that the young guest project was a great idea.
How little time we apportioned to imaginatio
n in our conversations, Michael. Imagination is not important in a court of law. Only the facts are important. And so we became used to ridiculing imagination. Ignored it. Exiled it to a penal colony.
Avner Ashdot was listening to Richard Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra on the disc player of his car when I got into it. The first sounds of the third part were playing, and right after I buckled in, I said, “Von der grossen Sehnsucht.” Of the Great Longing.
Avner Asdot nodded and lowered the volume of the music.
I asked him not to lower it, and he raised it again.
We drove in silence as the wonderful sounds (sorry, Michael, they are wonderful) of the oboe and violins filled the air.
When we merged with the road to Beersheba, the last section began: Nachtwandlerlied. Song of the Night Wanderer. And I suddenly thought, how can I allow myself to go on an excursion when I could be sitting and writing verdicts? Then, like someone awakening from a nightmare to discover with relief that it’s only a dream, I remembered, there were no longer any cases waiting for my verdicts. And there never would be.
“Michael,” I said, “I mean, my husband—”
Avner Ashdot lowered the volume and turned his head slightly toward me, a small, almost imperceptible movement, but it was enough for me to know that he was listening.
“My husband wouldn’t allow us to listen to Strauss at home. ‘The house I live in will not play works by the president of the Reichstag music bureau!’ That was his position.”
“That extreme?”
“He would get angry every time there were arguments on the news for and against playing Strauss, and he’d shout at the screen, ‘You boycott Wagner?! He died in the nineteenth century. It’s Strauss you should boycott!’ ”
“Your husband, he was a second-generation Holocaust survivor, I assume.”
“Actually no. It was a matter of principle with him.”
“So he was a man of principle.”
“Absolutely.”
“Wait a minute. How do you know this piece so well if you never heard it?”
“On Wednesdays, I’d finish work before him, go home, and listen to Strauss. I hid the record in the sleeve of a Bach record. It wasn’t right. But I love Strauss so much. For me, his music is…a joy.”
“I agree with you completely. Should we stop for something to drink?”
Are you surprised, Michael? I’m sure you aren’t. I’m sure you knew what was concealed inside the Bach sleeve and decided, in your wisdom, to keep silent. To grant me that small thing and many other small things, so that when the day came, you could ask me to return the favor and grant you something big.
Strauss’s music must have softened me. Otherwise, I can’t explain the conversation that developed at the roadside stop. In retrospect, I thought that everything was planned. I was a puppet—and Avner Ashdot was pulling my strings. The offer to buy my apartment. The apartment in Tel Aviv. The premature, generous confessions about his private life. The music in the car, that music of all possible choices, Strauss of all composers. It was all a long, slow seduction. But not the seduction of a lover who wants intimacy. The seduction of a spy. Who wants information.
He said, “You never talk about your children, Devora.”
There were hardly any people at the roadside restaurant. At a nearby table, an ultra-Orthodox man was reading the newspaper sports section, a family was sitting at a table farther away from us: a father, a mother, and a baby in a carriage. The smell of a vegetable omelet was in the air.
I said, “What is there to say?”
A waitress came to our table, wiped it with a cloth, and then put down a salt-and-pepper-shaker stand that held only a salt shaker and asked, “What’ll you have?”
Avner gestured with his head for me to order first. I asked for tea and an almond croissant. He ordered a double espresso, and when the waitress was out of earshot, he asked, “So…how many children do you have?”
I liked that he waited for the waitress to walk away. I liked that even though she was very attractive, his eyes didn’t follow her but remained focused on me.
“One. I have one son.”
“What’s his name?”
“Adar.”
“That’s a nice name.”
“I agree.”
“And what does Adar say about your intention to sell the apartment?”
“He doesn’t know about it.”
“He doesn’t?”
“We’re not in touch.”
Avner Ashdot nodded understandingly. And said nothing. That was clever of him, giving me a short break. As it was, I was frightened by my own frankness. Relatives, close friends, colleagues—they were all careful not to talk to us about Adar. Even at the shivah, no one mentioned him. I wanted them to. I was prepared for it. I was afraid that there was a stockpile of words in my subconscious just waiting for a question that would dig down to the right place. But everyone kept silent. Of course, I could have spoken. Raised the subject. But until the last day, I was waiting for Adar to come in, walk with those clomping steps of his to the living room of the house he grew up in, and sit down beside me.
Avner Ashdot didn’t ask me anything else about Adar. Not even when we went back to the car and began driving again. Thus Spake Zarathustra reached its minimalist ending, so different from the Odyssean beginning: the final four bleats of viola and flute. Avner Ashdot waited for another two beats of silence, then asked, “More Strauss?”
I nodded. I thought he’d remove one disc and insert another. But he pressed a button, and the changing of the guards took place inside the player, invisible.
I heard the first familiar sounds and thanked him silently for choosing that particular piece. I thought, That too is a gift, knowing how to choose the right soundtrack. I closed my eyes and let the music flow toward me and the taste of the transgression—Strauss twice in one day—spread through my body.
When I opened my eyes and looked out the window, I was startled to see that I had no idea where I was. I thought in alarm, I’m driving with a man I barely know to a place he refuses to name, and I have no idea where we are. So what if he also likes Strauss’s Metamorphosis? Perhaps that, just like the almond croissant he bought me, is no accident either?
And then, as if he sensed my urgent need to know where I was, he said in a tour guide’s voice, “On the right you can see the Goral Hills. This is where I taught navigation to soldiers in military command courses. It looks like a wilderness, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“People and animals live in the crevices of those hills, and you can even drink water from the wells here.”
“Wells?”
“It’s hard to believe, but there are no less than nine active wells in the Goral Hills. The Bedouins tie a big pail, which once held olives, to a rope beside the well, drop it inside, and pull it up again filled with water from the depths of the earth.”
“And what does the water taste like?”
“Paradise.”
I agreed. Yes, it really is hard to believe. The idle talk, sightseers’ talk, calmed me down a bit. I looked out the window and searched for wells among the crevices.
But then he asked, “So why…aren’t you in touch with your son, Devora?”
“Ah…it’s…a long story.”
“We have all the time in the world.”
Do you remember that Saturday in Sde Boker, Michael?
A good friend of yours lent us his cabin. We drove down there to celebrate the end of your internship. We left our backpacks in the cabin and went right out to hike before the sun set. We walked to a spring you knew about and I didn’t. We walked hand in hand between the yellow walls, the space growing narrower all the time. I wondered, There’s water here? It’s hard to believe. You smiled and said, “Wait and see.” And then we saw ibexes. We saw them before they saw us, so we stopped. Silently, we watched them for a few moments until they climbed up from the wadi to the hill in a small procession. I said, “Their movements ar
e so aristocratic.” You kissed my neck and said, “Aristocratic.”
We kept walking until we reached your spring. There was no one there but us. We weren’t judges yet. We still weren’t asking ourselves twice before everything we did whether it was normative or not. We simply took off all our clothes and walked naked into the cool water. Then we spread a thin blanket on one of the flat rocks and made love on it. We’d known each other only a few months—and I was still surprised at what a passionate, uninhibited lover you were. At home, it sometimes frightened me. At home, I sometimes felt anger in your touch, felt that you were angry at me or at someone else. But out in nature, it was…natural.
I remember that a wasp landed on your rear end after it was over and I drove it away by shouting at it, “Out damned wasp,” which made us both laugh. When our laughter died down, I said, “What if I just became pregnant?” You stroked my hair and said, “A child with your eyes? That sounds wonderful.”
After a long, heavy silence that Avner Ashdot heroically maintained for many kilometers, I said, “He’s not in touch with us. Three years ago, he told us that he wanted no further contact between us. And we haven’t heard from him since then.”
“But what happened?”
“Many things. It’s…complicated.”
“Even so?”
“He…got into trouble and expected us to help him. When we didn’t, he…lost control.”
“What kind of trouble did he get into, if I may ask?”
“He went out one night with friends for some fun. On the way back in the morning, he ran over a pregnant woman who was crossing on a crosswalk. He was driving fast. Much faster than the city speed limit. She suffered a blow to the head and died on the spot. The fetus had no chance either. She was in her fifth month. They did a breathalyzer test on him right there, two breaths into the device one minute apart. That’s what they do. They found elevated levels of alcohol in his blood. Extremely elevated. He…was charged with…manslaughter.”
