The sun is setting on Reconcito now, the clouds are painted orange and a light breeze is making the treetops dance. In a little while, when it’s completely dark, the fire-flies will start flickering. An amazing sight, a dance of lights. But, except for them, there are no lights here at night, and it’s a little hard to keep writing this way (even though it might be interesting to write once at night without seeing what you’re writing, without worrying about straight lines and spaces between letters, without thinking about whether you’re being understood or not. Maybe I’ll try that with my next letter. Poor you).
Meanwhile, adios.
Send me something to the Israeli Embassy in La Paz. People tell me they hold letters there.
Regards to Noa.
Modi.
*
Sometimes Amir sees him when he goes outside — the little brother of the soldier who died. In the deserted field between his house and theirs, the boy pets stray cats. Shepherds ants. Builds a monument to his brother, stone on top of stone.
Always alone.
He never looks up and tries to catch Amir’s eye, even though he knows he’s standing nearby.
*
You can hear everything through these walls, and when I say everything, I mean everything. More power to them, those students, almost every day and sometimes twice a day. And the sounds she makes, oh my God. I mean, not always, sometimes you only hear the bed creaking and the two of them laughing, but every once in a while, when it works for them, she has no shame, that Noa, she lets all the pleasure out, and the funniest thing is that Lilach, my little one, every time she hears Noa enjoying it, she gets scared and starts crying, and I have to pick her up and calm her down, and myself a little bit too, because the truth is, those noises get me all confused. I mean, sometimes it’s just annoying and I feel like knocking on their door and telling them to turn down the volume if they don’t mind, but sometimes, when Moshe is on the road till late and I’m alone in the house all day with the nappies and the running noses and the radio that plays piano music, then those noises give me a kind of tweak under my stomach and I start looking at the clock, come on, when will Moshe get home, and when he finally does, if the kids are in bed already, I hug him a little longer than usual, and kiss him on the chin, which is a kind of signal we have, and he starts complaining, I’m tired, dead tired, but I know him, my teddy bear, and I know what to do to wake him up: black coffee, a few steamy looks, some rubbing on the back of his neck, and in a few minutes we’re in bed, without making noises, but with lots of feeling good, because we’ve been together for eight years, since high school, and we know what to do and what to say, except that at the end, when it’s all over and we’re lying on our backs, a little bit apart from each other, Moshe always mumbles, baruch ha’shem, thanks be to God, and that annoys me, so I say why baruch ha’shem, what does God have to do with it, because I hate it when he starts talking like his brothers, but no matter how many times I tell him that, he keeps on saying baruch ha’shem and claims it just comes out of his mouth automatically.
*
When we were sitting shivah, I couldn’t wait for it to be over, for all the people to go back to their own houses, especially Aunt Miriam, because she was the reason they moved me into the living room. I wanted us to take the chairs and the mattresses out of the living room, and the piles of dishes, and the half-eaten pieces of kubeh, so there’d finally be some space and they’d let me go back to my room and play games on my computer or watch TV, which I couldn’t do all week, and I’d have time to think about Gidi and all the new things they said about him last week, some of them really not true, like for instance that he loved the army and all that, but the minute the shivah was over and Aunt Miriam, who was the last one to leave, disappeared into the taxi that came to take her to the airport, I was already starting to miss the noise and felt sorry I’d wanted everyone to go, because all of a sudden there was a new kind of quiet in the house that was different from the Saturday morning quiet when everyone’s sleeping or the quiet in my class when the teacher tells everyone to read silently from their readers.
Mum and Dad hardly ever talk to me, and if they do, then it’s only to tell me what to do — brush your teeth, turn down the sound on the computer — or to ask questions like what do you want in your sandwich or what time should we pick you up after your karate class? What’s even weirder is that they hardly ever talk to each other either. And if they do talk, let’s say at supper, you can hear in every sentence — even if it’s only ‘pass me the pepper’ — that they’re angry.
Dad’s angry because of the shrine — that’s what he calls it — that Mum is setting up for Gidi in the living room. He doesn’t say anything to her, but you can see what he’s feeling from the way the muscle in his cheek starts twitching every time she hangs up another picture or lights another candle or frames another one of the letters we got from the army. And Mum is angry at Dad for the things he said to the newspaper. ‘Why did he have to do that?’ she asked Aunt Margalit on the phone when Dad was at work and I was hiding behind the cabinet, listening. ‘I don’t understand him. If he has to pour his heart out, let him talk to me. And besides, why does he attack other parents? Where does he get the nerve to judge them?’
This isn’t the first time Mum and Dad have been mad at each other.
When Mum wanted to have another baby, two years ago, it was like this. But Gidi still lived at home then. He’d take me to his room and make me fall down laughing with his animal imitations, and then he’d sit me down on his bed and explain to me that it’s normal for Mum and Dad to disagree, it doesn’t mean they’ll get divorced tomorrow like Roy’s parents did, and chances are they’d make up in a week or two and everything would go back to the way it was.
But Gidi’s gone now and when I can’t take the mood in the house any more, I go straight out to the empty lot without telling anyone first. I jump out the window in my room so Mum won’t ask where I’m going, land on the ground with my legs spread, like a gymnast, hop over the fence and go to collect more stones for the monument. Or I play with the cats. No one bothers me with questions. No one looks at me as if I’m a statue in a wax museum, the way the kids in my class have been doing since I went back to school.
Only that tall student who lives in the apartment across the way comes outside sometimes to hang his washing up, or look for the newspapers he thinks are in the bushes. I know that all the newspapers are on the roof, because the guy who delivers them doesn’t feel like going all the way to the door, so he throws them from the road and misses, but I don’t say anything. Yesterday, after he tripped over a big rock and fell while he was looking, he smiled at me because he felt stupid, and I almost smiled back, but at the last minute I sealed my lips together and pretended I didn’t see. I don’t need someone else to feel sorry for me.
*
Amir, there’s a noise in the living room.
It’s the wind.
Maybe it’s a thief?
It’s the wind, but if you want, I’ll go and check.
I want. I love feeling that you’re strong and you protect me.
Does that mean I can’t be weak with you?
You can, but not too much. Come on.
I’m getting up.
Wait a sec, what do we actually have to steal?
Nothing. Wait, we do. The newspaper.
We still haven’t had a single one?
No.
Did you talk to the delivery people?
Yes.