Everybody eats, standing or sitting, talking, Germanwriter sits in a corner, in the green armchair, surrounded by human beings and he notices me and something strange, mysterious lights up in his eyes for a moment and goes out, I think of Jordana, look at her, I think of the German, of his look, is that regret? Is that vengeance? Is that an impossible measuring to see the condemned after what happened, to measure them for the death that is destined and withheld from them?
Here they are, all of them, the Davids, the Cohens, the Sackses, the Ilans, all the parents Jordana and I assemble, connecting their nights of terror to days of tours to the Golan, Sinai, Jerusalem, air force bases, to places where the great battles took place, I tasted the delicacies Mrs. Shimoni served me, naturally I was careful not to munch the plastic vegetables, not to open by mistake the pack of cigarettes from which a rubber doll jumps out with a sharp screech, the Shimonis' sense of humor was never to my taste, but I envied their ability to laugh even next to the picture of their son, to buy nonsensical objects together in all kinds of places in the world, to return to an imaginary and impossible childhood, and Jordana, as always, knows how to appease, to rout the pain, to organize a group dance of graves. They eat they laugh they drink, and I always inspire here the same respect everybody needs at special moments when a correct quotation of a biblical chapter or of Alterman or Bialik grants metaphysical meaning to a moment, to say solemnly: Maybe once in a thousand years our death has meaning, and to see how they become serious at Alterman's words, aware that they have lost beloved sons, to see a sublime vision beyond the yellowing bindings of the books they've issued in their memory and are now forgotten in dusty cases… Mrs. Shimoni asked me if I liked the food, I said I never ate a better mushroom pie and she smiled at me, tapped my back and so at long last I could sit. Jordana finished a round of handshaking and hugs in the enormous room, and I could see her stand alone a moment, belonging and not belonging, trying to be drawn out of herself, not to be seen, with her eyes shut she stood, as if muttering a prayer that was foreign to us, everybody was buzzing around her, and then she stepped toward me, her back bent, sat down next to me, pressed her foot and thigh and carefully put her hand on mine, like a secret bride, gently crushed my hand as if her hands were also muttering incantations, and then she opened her eyes that had been shut when she sat down, or perhaps landed on the sofa, and very slowly the flush returned to her face and the smile was stuck in its place and once again she was charming and necessary to everybody and lost to herself. For some reason, I recalled the first time we met, when I came to her on behalf of the Committee of Parents, which was then in its infancy, to help me finance a book about the son of the writer Aviram who wrote heartrending texts about his son and we sat then for long nights and pasted the photos and the writer Aviram compiled lines from various poems and then, at the front of the book, he quoted Alterman: Don't say I came from dust, you came from the stranger who fell in your stead! Jordana now asked me how was Hasha Masha and I knew that in fact she wanted to ask me how was Menahem, but she didn't ask, I said that Hasha Masha was eating vegetable soup and loathing, and she understood, and then when she started comparing my clothes to the clothes of her uncle who was always dressed with splendid restraint and never as an actor in a play like most Israelis, I felt for the first time, after many years, a physical attraction to a strange woman, her body clinging to my body, her thigh to my thigh, her foot to my foot, I can imagine what was going on through the dress, where the legs led, as Menahem once told me when I asked him why he peeped on the stairs toward the second floor of my uncle Nevzal's house where a young woman went up with her dress flying. The secret of our youth, Jordana, on both sides of life, is alien to Menahem, negates him and something rose in me, something that for the first time in years opposed Menahem himself, maybe envied him, not against myself, and the death that led him away from me. Germanwriter still sat opposite, I could see him through the bodies moving in the room. Corruption fills me beside Jordana, she sees me as the father of her lover and I'm surely betraying both of them.
And then I heard her say in English: Yes, this is Mr. Henkin, and I raised my face, and a big man (now that he stood up I saw how big he was) stood over me, his eyes like two clear lakes, caught in a kind of thin veil as sometimes on the eyes of an aging dog, his face smiled a smile that was forced but also innocent and perfect, a wise smile intellectuals sometimes have, I tried to stand up but my legs became stiff and he said: Sit, sit, and Jordana stood up carefully so as not to cut herself off from my foot too forcefully and she chuckled, a chuckle that was a mixture of sympathetic complaint, See you, Henkin, she said in her official voice, and from now on, the picture of Menahem facing him is a group picture with a Yemenite girl, and the man stood over me, still smiling, a pensive second passed, Jordana was now smiling her saccharine smile at the drinks table, unsheathing fingernails of dry and charming purity (and I surely know her wild lust, her eyes staring at photos of Menahem, staring at his dead flesh) and she disappears now, mingles in the crowd, at the window the crests of the trees of the boulevard can be seen, a moon is shining on them a silvery light and a pleasant chill blows from the window. I didn't know what to do, my hand seemed to reach out by itself, I said: Yes, nice to meet you, my body still bound to the storm taking place in me before my son's fiancee vis-a-vis the bearishness of the German's full body, and then he sat, introduced himself, as if hangmen also have to be polite.
With his king-size body he completely filled the empty space left by the thin Jordana. His long legs rose a little, stuck to one another, even his head was higher than mine, although when he leaned his head on the back of the sofa and the soft fabric touched his hair, we were almost the same height and now I could peep at his profile. Before his face looked like a hybrid of a giant dog and ancient trees, something soft, kind, but his profile was different, harsh and sharp, his nose that looked a little squashed from the front looked aggressive from the side, arrogant, in his cheeks more existential suffering than real suffering was obvious, something serious, devoid of softness. His profile had some blend of innocent nobility but also soft earthiness, for a moment he even shriveled and became tinier than he really was and instead of Jordana's delightful behind there was now the giant ass of a German, solid, heavy, a man who looked sated but full of remorse, and suffering was stamped on his face, a suffering whose nature I didn't know, my mind was empty.