Standing in the doorway was a young guy wearing black. With the scraggly beginnings of a moustache.
Ahalan, brother, he said.
Ahalan, I said, returning the greeting, not understanding where he was hiding the pot of kubeh.
Would you be interested in an amulet from Rabbi Kaduri? he asked, pulling out a yellow box. We have all kinds of amulets in all shapes and sizes.
Ah … look … I started to say, but he’d already opened the box.
This, he said, pulling out a medallion, is a pendant with a portrait of Rabbi Kaduri, also inscribed with letters that have special power in the Cabbala. You probably know what they are.
I nodded as if I did.
And here, he went on, I have cards with the Rabbi’s blessings on them for all occasions. This card has a blessing for success in business, this one for health and a happy life, and this card is for marital reconciliation — all signed in the Rabbi’s own hand.
And what’s that? I asked, pointing to the candles sticking out of the box.
Those, he explained, slightly embarrassed, are oil candles. You have to light them while you say the prayer that’s written here, on the side, and that will guarantee our success in the elections next month. Would you like a candle?
No, thank you.
Maybe a pendant? Some cards? You can also send letters to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and get a personal reply from him.
I think I’ll pass.
That’s a shame, brother, because it’s all free. Maybe you’ll take something anyway? A card? Come on, just one card.
OK, I said. Give me the card for marital reconciliation.
He handed me a card excitedly, patted me on the shoulder and asked if I wanted to buy a cassette of religious songs by Benny Elbaz, ten shekels, all of it for charity.
No thanks, I said, rubbing the card nervously.
No problem, he said, patted me on the shoulder again and announced to the empty lot and the cats, we’re on the way back to our former glory! and skipped quickly down the tiled path.
I closed the door and threw the card into the rubbish bin. A second later, I regretted it, took it out and hung it on the noticeboard above a bill.
I went back to bed, got under the covers and put the pillow behind my neck. Tiny fragments danced in my eyes. For a minute, I wasn’t sure if that quick visit of my long-lost brother had really happened or whether I’d imagined it. I thought that if Noa were here with me, I’d tell her everything and that would make it real for me. An invisible fly buzzed in the room and kept bumping into the window. Suddenly, I missed her terribly.
*
And then, one night after I came home from the bar, it appeared. All at once, like those fans at the games Amir watches who burst naked on to the football pitch and steal all the attention.
Suddenly I knew. I knew. What. I wanted. To do. For. My final. Project.
I was so excited that my hands started to shake, actually to shake, but I didn’t try to steady them, I let the idea — which at that minute contained only one word, LONGING — spread through my mind and send associations in every direction. It all happened with lightning speed. As if that project had been incubating deep inside me, just waiting for the right moment to hatch. Come here, my little beauty, come here, I coaxed it. I took a pile of white paper out of the drawer and started drawing sketches that I taped to the wall. In the centre, I hung an illustration of myself holding a phone, and then I started surrounding myself with more and more longing. My mother was there, with a scarf she knitted for her first boyfriend, who died in the Yom Kippur war and she never talks about him. Saddiq, the worker who came into Avram and Gina’s house was there with his grandmother’s gold chain around his neck. And there was a new immigrant from Argentina who I called Franka, and a cinema usher who caught my eye in Jerusalem a year ago and seemed to fit now. And there was a guy I’d never met, but I could see him, I could imagine him down to the smallest detail, and I knew that there would be no objects in his frame, just the text of what he says about longing for something since he was a child, but not for anything specific, just in general. I drew him and stuck the drawing on the wall. I drew other figures with and without objects and wrote all kinds of words that came into my head, like toy, boy, joy, and the whole time I had the feeling in my throat that I was about to cry, the feeling I get whenever I’m creating from the right place. Suddenly, I didn’t care about what my instructors would say. When I have an idea that really makes me shiver, no one can put me down, no one! And if they dare to make a peep, I’ll just add them to the list of the people I’m photographing because they must be longing for something too. Maybe for the time when they really did create and didn’t just criticise. Yes! That’s it! Fantastic! I’ll photograph Yishai Levy at the door to a gallery. Standing there, but not going inside.
I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep all night. I wanted it to be morning so I could start setting up appointments with all the people I wanted to photograph. I wanted to call Amir and tell him that I finally had an idea for my project. I thought about the fact that I shouldn’t call him, because it would ruin everything. I thought about the fact that I didn’t want to be an artist because you use so much of your emotions as raw material for creating that you lose the ability to just feel. I thought about the fact that I didn’t know how to do anything but take pictures, so I had no choice, I had to be an artist and pay the price. I thought about the fact that I was hungry. And that’s a kind of longing too. I got up to make a grilled cheese sandwich, and when I was separating the slices of cheese from the paper, I thought: will they miss each other? I thought I was an idiot, but talented. A talented idiot. I ate the grilled cheese in the kitchen and picked up the crumbs with the tip of my finger. Then I sat on my bed and waited for the first light to flicker between the slats of the blinds.
*
They sat on my bed and talked. Really talked. I squeezed my eyes shut so they’d keep on thinking I was asleep. Dad sat on the right, and every once in while, I felt his knee touch my leg. Mum sat on the left and I could smell her perfume, which she hasn’t used since Gidi, and then this week, all of a sudden she did.
Mum said: It ended OK this time, but it could have ended badly.
And Dad said: Yes.
And Mum said: We should have paid more attention to him … I don’t know … Tried harder.
And Dad said (I couldn’t believe he agreed with my mother two times in a row): Yes.
And Mum said: You should have told me about the business, Reuven.
And Dad said: I should have done a lot of things. But what’s the point of talking about what’s over? What good will it do?
And Mum said (I could already feel them start to fight): Look, you’re doing it again. You’re not willing to talk about anything.
Dad took a deep breath (I felt the bed go up and down with it) — and didn’t answer her.
Mum didn’t say anything either. I felt how — very slowly — the fight that was hovering right over my bed went out of the room.
After a while, Dad said: You know, he’s right. We really have to try and go back to the things we used to do. Then he cleared his throat and said: Like going out on trips. Or dancing.
Mum sighed and said: I can’t. Every place reminds me of him. Tel Aviv because of the sea, and the Dead Sea because of the time he opened his eyes in the water, and the Carmel because of the pitta and labaneh, remember?
And Dad said: He ate the whole thing in three bites.
And Mum said: So how? How can I go there? I’ll choke the minute we pass Zichron Ya’acov. If I manage to keep breathing till we get to Zichron, then there’s that military cemetery at the entrance to Haifa, and on the way to the mountain there are three or four monuments in memory of children killed in road accidents or terrorist attacks. It’s like that everywhere in this country. Everything’s full of death, of things that remind you.