*
At night, after I came back from the shelter, I had a dream. It must’ve been important because I remember a large part of it. Shmuel, a man of about sixty who has hair like straw and wears cracked glasses, was standing in the middle of our living room and explaining his theory, the same theory he had explained to me a few hours before, in reality, in the club’s coffee corner (a peeling Formica table, two chairs, one with a broken back, lumpy sugar, Elite instant coffee, containers of UHT milk, spoons that had already seen a lot in life). The world, he explained excitedly, is divided into three colours: red, white and transparent. Red and white represent the two human extremes, and transparent represents the middle road, the divine compromise. In politics, for example, the far right is white, Rabin may he rest in peace, was red, and the true path, the transparent, runs between them. The same is true of love. Men are white. Women are red. That’s why hearts break. Now — in the dream — Shmuel bent to whisper into my ear: Look at your apartment, my friend. Everything here is red, white and transparent. I looked around the apartment. The dream’s director shifted the camera so I could see, with horror, that Shmuel was right. The chairs were red, the table white, and the wall that separated us from the Zakians was transparent. Through it, I could see that Sima and Moshe were in the middle of an argument, but I didn’t hear what they were saying. There was a transparent plate on the table. On its right was a red knife, on its left a white fork. But why red, white and transparent? I asked. What’s the logic behind it? Shmuel shrugged and nodded in the direction of the picture on the transparent wall, the picture that bothers Noa so much, of a man looking outside through a window. Its original colours, purple, black and orange, had changed to haphazard areas of red and white. I didn’t like that kind of modern art, and suddenly, in my dream, I didn’t understand why Shmuel was standing in the middle of my living room instead of being where he belonged, in the club. I turned to him to find out, but he’d disappeared. Or maybe he hadn’t? Maybe he was just transparent? The thought passed through my mind as I dreamed, but I didn’t have time to check it out because I suddenly heard pounding on the window. I went to see who it was, but I couldn’t see because the window wasn’t transparent. It was white and opaque. From the voices, I could tell that Noa, Itzhak Rabin and some child, maybe Yotam, had lost the key and wanted me to open the door for them. I went to the door and tried to open it. It didn’t open. I pressed my shoulder against it, but it didn’t open. I gave it a karate kick, but it didn’t open. And that’s where the part of the dream I remember ends.
*
When I woke up in the morning, his side was already empty but still warm, and the pillow had an indentation in the shape of his head. In films, in scenes like this, after a fight, the man always leaves the woman an emotional letter saying he’s sorry, or he buys her a bouquet of flowers, and even though I know that Moshe isn’t into writing letters or bringing flowers, I did expect something to be waiting for me on the kitchen table. That’s how it is with films — they have an effect on you even if you know they’re stupid. When there was nothing there but a half-empty cup of black coffee, I was disappointed. Lilach, who’s usually calm and laughing in the morning, was whining and wouldn’t stop. That little one is an antenna. She picks up everything. That’s why we always try to argue in the bedroom, behind the closed door. I changed her nappy and cut up a banana for her, the way she likes it. Meanwhile, Liron came in and asked me to help him tie his shoelaces. I heated up some cocoa for him and added two squares of chocolate to it, to make up for eating all the cornflakes. I put cuts in his orange so he’d be able to peel it during the morning break, explained to him for the thousandth time how to loop one lace and put the loop of the other lace through it, and the whole time, I was looking for signs of yesterday’s argument in him, but I didn’t find any. As usual, he drank the cocoa too fast, and as usual, he burned his tongue a bit. As usual, he forgot to pull out the points of his collar, and as usual, he got cross when I reminded him. It wasn’t until he got to the door and kissed me on the cheek, as usual, that he suddenly turned around and asked, I’m going to Hanni’s kindergarten, right? Then I realised that not only had he heard us, but he had also understood, so I said, of course to Hanni’s, and I gave his hair a quick pat to get him moving, and he looked up as if he wanted to tell me something, but then turned around and went out. I watched him till he went into the kindergarten at the end of the block and the minute he disappeared, I was sorry I’d let him go like that, without explaining to him. But what could I explain? I didn’t even know how to explain to myself. All of a sudden, I wanted to talk to a friend about what happened. To ask her advice. But who? I put Lilach into her carriage, gently, so she wouldn’t start crying again, and thought about all my friends. Galit always says yes, yes on the phone, and then you realise from a question she asks when we’re about to hang up that she hasn’t listened to a word. Calanit just had twins and you have to talk to her in short sentences because one of the twins always screams when you’re in the middle of a sentence and you never get to the end of it. Just last week, Sigal transferred her son to the kindergarten Moshe’s talking about, so she probably has a speech about it all prepared. For it, of course. People are always ready to boast about what they’ve done, otherwise why is that people always come back looking so satisfied from trips to other countries? Really, I’d like to meet one person who comes back and says it was awful. Then there’s always my sister Mirit, but I know what she’ll say about anything before she says it. A story like this, for instance, would get her all upset right away. Why did you fight? Why was he driving in the middle of the night? Why didn’t you give in? Mirit was always for giving in. Her husband’s been cheating on her for half a year with his secretary in the army, and she turns a blind eye. She says he’ll get over it, as if it’s the flu. If my mother was alive, she’d tell her a thing or two about the flu.