On the other side of the empty lot, every day Yotam’s mother sweeps her falling hair into a dustpan. Right after Gidi’s death was when it began. And her hair used to be so long and thick. Yotam’s father liked to run his fingers through it when he lay beside her in bed. Or smooth it down gently, starting from her forehead. Now they’re both so grim. He doesn’t touch her, and she doesn’t touch him. Only sometimes at night, unintentionally: his stomach presses against her back, her head rests on his chest, limb brushes limb. And in the morning, they go their separate ways with nothing to share. She brushes her teeth. He gets dressed. She combs her thinning hair. He cuts himself shaving but doesn’t swear. Sometimes, at work, his wheeze gets worse. He had asthma when he was a child, and it has come back now that he’s mourning his son. The doctor told him to get an inhaler, so he went out and bought one. Every night he takes it out of his shirt pocket and puts it on the table next to his ring. But he doesn’t talk about it, so she doesn’t ask him a thing.
*
I knew it would happen. How long can you not do homework and not participate in class and not bring an atlas to geography? I knew that someone would finally get fed up with it. And today, after I left citizenship class four times to go to the bathroom and met my form teacher in the hallway one of those times, it really did happen. She came into the lesson just before school finished and gave me a letter in a white envelope with the school logo on it addressed to Mr and Mrs Avneri — and even though I didn’t open it, I knew very well what it said. Grades deteriorating, behaviour deteriorating, social involvement deteriorating, deteriorating, deteriorating. Funny word, deteriorating. You can hear what it means when you say it, like crunch or splash. I didn’t give the letter to Mrs Avneri. Why bother? I knew what she’d tell me. I can actually hear her voice: you know how hard it is for us, Yoti, so why are you giving your father and me something else to worry about? Instead, I pushed the envelope under the monument I built for Gidi in the empty lot. For a minute, I had the feeling he was sitting on one of the branches of the big tree near Noa and Amir’s house watching me, disappointed at the way I was acting, but I ignored it and kept adding stones on the sides so the letter wouldn’t show, and I spread a few smaller stones and some earth in the spaces between the larger stones. My form teacher will probably call Mum, but I have another few days till then. I went into my room through the window, grabbed my draughtboard and ran across the lot to Noa and Amir’s door. I hoped one of them would be there alone, it didn’t matter which one.
Amir was really glad to see me, but his cheeks were all stubbly, like he was in mourning. It’s great that you came, he said, and stroked my cheek, I’m just taking a break from studying.
Wanna play backwards draughts? I asked and tapped the board with my fist.
You know what, Yotam, he said as if he was making an announcement, no. I think you’re ready for chess.
*
A few weeks after the assassination, there’s an outbreak of ‘N-Na-Nach-Nachman-From-Oman’ stickers on the streets. Cars infect each other with the sticker, and then it moves to pieces of white cloth hanging on balconies. An authorised commentator explains on the radio: this is the formula for a prayer written by Rabbi Nachman from Breslau, which appeared in this riddle-like form at the beginning of the twentieth century and tends to reappear during times of public anxiety.
Driving to Tel Aviv, Amir whispers to himself a couple of alternatives:
S-Swe-Swee-Sweet-Sweetheart
Or
P-Po-Pot-Pota-Potat-Potato Chips
If he worked in an ad agency, he might have made a sticker out of it.
But he didn’t. He didn’t work at all. He took time off this term so he could devote himself to his studies. (Which means he has time to think. Maybe too much time.)
*
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to stop working. These long days alone in the apartment. For the first few hours, I can still study: summarise chapters, mark passages, choose the right word from the ones the electronic translator offers. But after a while — and every day, that ‘while’ gets shorter — I get restless and start wandering. Gorge myself on raisins. Peel oranges and eat the peel. Throw a tennis ball against the wall above the computer and hope it hits something on the rebound, breaks something, so there’ll be some drama. Otherwise, without drama, the poisonous thoughts begin. I already know. They’re just waiting for the opportunity, lurking, dying to fill the void, like the less secure participant on a date. They make me jealous of people who work, people whose days are full and who can happily repress, at least for a few hours, whatever is troubling them. Yes, what’s wrong with repression? Entire psychological theories are based on the assumption that repression is bad for one’s mental state and that people should be liberated from their repression mechanisms the way an occupied region is liberated from its occupiers. After half a term at home, I say: repression is wonderful. Denial is great. Long live sublimation! I say it and keep pacing, vulnerable, inside these four walls. The bile of my soul rises in my throat. The theories that Shmuel from the club told me about return to haunt me. His red-white-transparent world menaces and attracts. His cracked glasses wound me. I can’t get the completely unimportant, completely irrelevant ‘what’s going to happen’ thoughts out of my mind: What’s going to happen when my savings are gone? What’s going to happen with college? What’s going to happen with the stain that’s been growing on the ceiling since the water heater exploded? How can I be a psychologist if everything gets to me? I’m influenced by everything. I don’t even have a laugh of my own. I keep taking over the laugh of whoever I happen to be close to. Once I used to laugh like my father, then like Modi, now like Noa. I’ll probably end up laughing Shmuel’s strangled, jerky laugh that collapses in on itself.
If it wasn’t freezing outside, I’d go for a short walk around the neighbourhood, up to Doga’s and back through the playground with the broken swing and past the stationery shop that’s never open. The last time I did that, my cheeks hurt from the cold. If it snowed, at least there’d be something romantic about the whole business, but Maoz Ziyon is located right on the dividing line: cold enough to preserve people in stone jars for three months, but not cold enough for white flakes.
I remember my first snowfall in Jerusalem. I was the new kid in class again, and nobody bothered to tell me about the unwritten rule in that city: if it snows, no one — not pupils and not teachers — goes to school. The guard at the entrance smiled pityingly at me as I went inside. I didn’t understand why. I walked down the empty hallways, expecting that someone would come running towards me with a basketball in his hand, or that a teacher would come walking down the hallway with her high heels clacking on the floor. It wasn’t until I went into the classroom that I figured it out. The chairs were upturned on the desks. Yesterday’s Bible homework assignment was written on the board: describe and explain the fall of King Saul. Outside the window, snowflakes continued to curl around in the air, like my father’s signature. I took my chair off my desk and sat down. Every movement I made — moving my schoolbag, shifting my position in the chair, coughing — was tremendously loud in the empty classroom. I waited a few minutes; maybe one of those nerdy girls who sit in the front row would come. When that didn’t happen, I got up, turned my chair over on the desk as noisily as I could, on purpose, and went home. On the way, I trampled on the lumps of snow that had piled up on the edges of the pavement, my eyes tearful from the wind.