Now, I also feel like turning my chair over on my desk and going. But where? I could always call someone. But who? At this hour, the world is playing musical chairs and I’m the only one left standing. Noa’s unreachable, running around between Bezalel and the café. David’s up to his bald head with rehearsals for Licorice’s first show at the Pargod. He usually calls me between one and two in the morning, whining about how much he misses Michal in a voice hoarse from singing. I calm him down, remind him of her bad qualities (she’d better not go back to him, or else I’m in deep shit) and send him back to the rehearsal. And crazy Modi is trekking around the world. Man, I could really do with a tennis game with him now. One or two sets. A backhand smash on the line. An easy, well-placed volley that he can’t get to, and then we’d sit in the pub, sweating and thirsty, drinking and laughing, laughing and drinking. But he’s so far away now, my best friend. His letters get more and more funnysophical, filled with an intoxicating sense of freedom, and cut off. Very cut off.
Which leaves me every day with the voices of Moshe and Sima arguing on the other side of the wall.
There’s something embarrassing about this vocal voyeurism, so the minute they start, I cover the water-heater hole and turn on the radio. But still, probably on the sub-threshold level (we learned about that in Cognitive Psychology — your brain absorbs impressions without your being aware it), I realised that the argument was about their son. And it was serious. Even Noa, who’s become friendly with Sima lately, mentioned a crisis. I hope our landlords don’t suddenly separate on us. It happened to David once. The woman just threw him and his guitar out of the apartment with a week’s notice. On the other hand — the thought flashes through my mind — I hope they do separate and we leave and finally there’ll be a change. No! I get my balance back. Just so I don’t have to move again. Now that I’ve finally got used to this apartment. To the neighbourhood. To Yotam. To his soft, hesitant knocking on the door.
On days like this, I find myself waiting impatiently for him.
When I see him, with the hems of his trousers folded up and his hair falling into his eyes, and the mischievousness that sometimes bursts out of the sweater of sadness he wears, something inside me smiles. Yesterday, for example, in the middle of an especially poisonous thought (Noa and I are frauds. We palm off on the world, and on each other, the pretence that we’re so calm, so cool and self-contained. But inside, we’re both in utter turmoil.) he appeared with his draughtboard. I was getting tired of draughts — we play it a lot in the club — so I offered to teach him chess. He agreed happily. It seems that Gidi had promised to teach him, but never got the chance. I stopped myself from asking about Gidi. He’ll tell me when he wants to, not a nudge sooner. I took the board out of the cupboard and opened it on the table. The bishops shook themselves off, the knights stretched. I hadn’t taken them out of the box in a long time. I took my old chess stopwatch out of a drawer and put it down next to the board, even though I didn’t think we’d use it. What colour do you want to be, Yotam? White. Kids always choose white. But for some reason, from the first time I played with my father, I preferred black. OK. Now you arrange the pieces on the board. For every one I put down, you do the same. First the pawns, in the second row. They’re the least important. Then the rook. The bishop. And the knight. Then the queen and the king. How can you tell the difference between the queen and the king? That’s a good question.
*
Lately, when Noa comes home, Amir’s happiness at her return is diluted with a kind of pre-insult. Before he has a specific reason, the insult is already lying in wait, ready to spring. He’s waiting for the kiss that doesn’t last long enough, for the careless way she drops her things. For anything that will give him an excuse to make a nasty crack. And Noa stands in front of him unprepared, taken aback. Her feet hurt her so much that she can’t restrain herself, try and understand. So she answers him back. And for a few minutes they repel each other, like magnets pressed together on the wrong side. He goes to his study. She goes to the shower. He tries to read an article, but can’t manage to understand. The soap keeps dropping out of her hand. And when she finally comes out wrapped in two towels, he gets down on one knee. I’m sorry, Noa baby, he says, I don’t know what came over me. I wait for you all day, thinking of what I’ll say, and then when you come, instead of being nice, I’m mean to you. She runs her fingers through his hair and says, I had a crazy day too. You know what, let’s decide to be nice to each other from now on. And he thinks: how can anyone think that you just decide, and all the bad feelings are gone. But he swallows his irritation and tries to change the subject. You know, he says, following her to the bedroom, Sima and Moshe fight all the time. I try not to listen, but the walls are so thin. Yes, she says, it’s that business with the kindergarten. I can’t see him backing down and she certainly won’t give in. I just hope they don’t separate and force us to look for another apartment. It would be just too much, Amir says, after we opened a credit account at Doga. Right, Noa laughs and continues, after I learned how to navigate the tile path to the house. After drivers finally started giving me a ride to the big bridge. Wait a minute, Amir says, suddenly angry, since when do you hitch rides? Everyone does it here, Noa says, brushing his worry aside. It’s not dangerous. You stand on the road and if they know you, they take you to the bridge. It’s really very close. OK, Amir says in a gentle voice that smoothes away the wrinkle that has suddenly appeared during their conversation. Yallah, do we ever talk a lot. X-Files is starting, he says in excited anticipation.
They go into the living room. He sits down on the armchair. She sits down on him. So he moves a little to the side. The opening music sounds loudly in the air. The subtitle appears: ‘The truth is out there somewhere.’
A rebellious thought passes suddenly through Noa’s mind: I’m out all day trying to make a buck. If Sima and Moshe separate and we have to leave, I’ll tell him goodbye and good luck. I’ll find myself an apartment in a good part of town. With a girl for a room-mate. And none of these problems to weigh me down.
A rebellious thought passes suddenly through Amir’s mind: It’s pretty crowded, the two of us on this small armchair.
The camera zooms in on a clearing in the woods: a group of robed people are praying to the devil. Mulder isn’t around, of course. Scully’s hiding behind a bush. And the music gets louder. Louder. Louder. The violins screech. The drums boom. Amir wriggles around on the chair trying to find some room.
*
A fifteen-minute stop, Moshe announces on the loudspeaker. Someone yells from the back of the bus: how long? Moshe bends forward again: fifteen minutes, he repeats, and waits patiently for the last passenger to get off. He looks in the mirror, checking all the seats in the bus. The old people usually get off first, their steps small and slow. This time, it’s a soldier who’s been sleeping since he got on the bus an hour and a half ago. He’s walking down the aisle, his rifle bouncing on his back and he grabs the barrel so it won’t bang against the exit door when he gets off to buy a snack. But it does anyway. Moshe extricates himself from the narrow space between his seat and the coin dispenser, takes a last look to see that no one’s left behind and gets off the bus to unwind. A nasty wind blows hard against his face. Masmiya junction looks as if there’s been an earthquake there. The iron support of a bus stop shelter, without the shelter, is lying on the black asphalt, flyers for ‘Dr Roach — Exterminators Inc.’ are strewn everywhere. Even though there’s no supermarket in the area, an overturned supermarket trolley is lying half under a car. Just a huge, slightly menacing petrol station and a snack bar. You can buy pitta filled with an omelette, hummus and hot sauce there. Moshe has never eaten a sandwich that could compare. He stops here just so he can have one. But today, his appetite is gone. Worry keeps rising in his gorge. The fight with Sima never seems to end, and when he came home yesterday, she turned her back on him again. What’ll he do now? Without thinking, without deciding that this is what he’ll do, he goes to the payphone nearby and calls his brother, the rabbi.