“I don’t know.”
Her head is spinning and she leans against the wall. “Is there someone who can come and be with you?”
Long seconds go by. “No. Not now.”
“Don’t you have a friend, some guy from work?” Or some woman, she thinks. That girl he had once, the young one, what about her?
“I haven’t been working for two months.”
“What happened?”
“They’re renovating the restaurant. Gave us all a vacation.”
“Restaurant? You work at a restaurant? What about the pub?”
“What pub?”
“Where you worked …”
“Oh, that. I haven’t been there for two years. They fired me.”
I didn’t tell him anything either, she thinks. About my dismissals, from work and from the family.
“I don’t have the strength, I’m telling you. My strength lasted just until today.”
“Listen,” she says quietly, calculatedly, “I was planning to go up north tomorrow, so I could stop by your place for a few minutes …”
His breath turns rapid again, wheezing, but he doesn’t rebuff her immediately. She stands at the window with her forehead touching the glass. The street looks ordinary. No unfamiliar vehicles. The neighbors’ dogs aren’t barking.
“Ora, I didn’t understand what you said.”
“Never mind, it was a silly idea.” She pulls herself away from the window.
“Do you want to come?”
“Yes?” she answers in confusion.
“That’s what you said, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“But when?”
“Whenever you say. Tomorrow. Now. Preferably now. To tell you the truth, I’m a little afraid to be here on my own.”
“So you were thinking of coming?”
“Just for a few minutes. I’m on my way anyway—”
“But don’t expect anything. It’s a dump.”
She swallows, and her heart starts racing. “I’m not scared.”
“I live in a dump.”
“I don’t care.”
“Or maybe we could go out and walk around a little. What do you think?”
“Whatever you say.”
“I’ll wait for you downstairs, and we’ll walk around a bit, okay?”
“On the street?”
“There’s this pub down the road.”
“I’ll come and then we’ll decide.”
“Do you know my address?”
“Yes.”
“But I have nothing to give you. The place is empty.”
“I don’t need anything.”
“I’ve been on my own for almost a month.”
“You have?”
“And I think the store’s closed.”
“I don’t need food.” As she talks she darts around the apartment, punted from one wall to the next. She has to organize, finish packing, leave notes. She’ll go. She’ll flee. And she’ll take him with her.
“We can … there’s a kiosk around here—”
“Avram, I couldn’t eat a crumb. I just want to see you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“And then you’ll go back home?”
“Yes. No. Maybe I’ll go on to the Galilee.”
“The Galilee?”
“Never mind that now.”
“How long will it take you?”
“To get there or to get out of there?”
No response. Perhaps he didn’t get her little joke.
“It’ll take me about an hour to close up everything here and get to Tel Aviv.” A cab! she remembers and her heart sinks. I need a cab again. And how exactly was I planning to get to the Galilee? She shuts her eyes hard. A distant headache is signaling, probing. Ilan was right. With her, five-year plans last at most five seconds.
“It’s a dump here, I’m telling you.”
“I’m coming.”
She hangs up before he can change his mind and proceeds to charge around in a frenzy. She writes a note for Ofer, sitting down at first, but soon finds herself standing up, hunched over. She explains to him again what she herself has trouble understanding and asks him to forgive her, and promises again that they’ll go hiking together when he finishes and asks him to please not go looking for her, she’ll be back in a month, mother’s word. She puts the note in a sealed envelope on the table and leaves a sheet of instructions for Bronya, the maid, written in simple Hebrew with large letters. She says she is going on an unexpected vacation, asks her to bring in the mail and take care of Ofer if he comes home on leave — laundry, ironing, cooking — and leaves her a check with a larger payment than usual for the month. Then she sends a few quick e-mails and makes some phone calls, mainly to girlfriends, to whom she explains the situation without exactly lying but without telling the whole truth — above all, without mentioning that Ofer went back today, of his own free will, to the army — and almost rudely intercepts puzzled questions. They all know about the planned trip with Ofer, and have been looking forward to it excitedly with her. They realize something has gone wrong and that a different idea, no less exciting and bold, a temptation that is hard to resist, has come up at the last minute. They think she sounds strange, dizzy, as if she has taken something. She keeps apologizing for being mysterious: “It’s still a secret,” she says with a smile and leaves a trail of worried friends behind her, who immediately call one another to analyze the situation and try to figure out what is going on with Ora. There are some colorful guesses and a few conjectures of passionate pleasure, probably abroad, and perhaps the occasional lick of jealousy at this newfound bird-of-freedom who is their friend.
She phones the Character — phones him at home, despite the time and the explicit prohibition. She does not ask if he can talk, ignores his huffs of anger and alarm, informs him that she’ll be gone for a month and that they’ll see what happens when she gets back. Then she hangs up, delighted with his muffled whispers. She records a message on the answering machine: “Hi, this is Ora. I’m going away probably until the end of April. Don’t leave a message ’cause I won’t be able to pick it up. Thanks and goodbye.” Her voice sounds tense and too serious, not the voice of someone leaving on an exciting and mysterious vacation, so she records a new message, this time with the cheerful tone of a skier or a bungee-jumper, and hopes that Ilan will hear it when he finally gets wind of the situation in Israel and wants to find out how Ofer is, and that he will be filled with jealousy and amazement at the wild time she must be having. But then she realizes Ofer might call home too, and that sort of tone might rag him, so she records a third message, using the most toneless, formal pitch she can muster, although she is betrayed by her exposed and always slightly wondrous voice. She grows angry at herself for being preoccupied with such things, and in a state of distraction she dials Sami’s number.
After leaving Ofer at the meeting point, she had sat down next to Sami in the taxi and apologized for the shameful mistake she had made by calling him. With utter simplicity she explained what state she had been in that morning and, in fact, for the rest of the day as well. Sami drove while she spoke at length, until she had completely unburdened herself. He said nothing and did not turn to face her. She was a little surprised by his silence and said, “What I’d like most now is to just scream about the fact that you and I have even reached this point.” Expressionless, Sami opened her window with the button on his side and said, “Go ahead, scream.” She was embarrassed at first, but then she put her head out the window and screamed until she was dizzy. She leaned back against the headrest and started laughing with relief. She looked at him with eyes tearing from the wind and a flushed neck. “Don’t you want to yell?” she asked. And he said, “Trust me, it’s better if I don’t.”
The whole way back he sat hunched forward, focused on driving, and said nothing. She decided not to pester him anymore, and was so tired that she dozed off and slept until they got home. She has replayed their conversation countless times since then — if it could be called a conversation; he had barely spoken — and concluded that she did the right thing, because even though he didn’t say anything, she was really talking on his behalf too, loyally representing his side in the little incident without letting herself off easy. When Sami finally pulled up in front of her building she had said, without looking at him, that now, after today, she owed him a favor beyond any of their ongoing scores. In her fluttering heart she thought: a Righteous Gentile’s favor. He listened gravely, his lips slightly parted and moving, as if he were memorizing her words, and when he drove away and she walked slowly up the steps, she had the feeling that despite everything that had happened, despite his strange silence the whole way back, their friendship had actually deepened today, having been tempered by a more genuine fire: the fire of reality.