There was a small TV set outside the cell, for the guards. I couldn’t see the screen because the guards had turned it towards them, but I could hear. From the kind of talking I heard, I guessed the news would be on very soon. First there was a quiz with organ music and loud applause after every sentence. Then they talked about food, and a woman talked about a British film they made in a large castle not far from London. Then there was the sports announcer, and I put a hand behind my ear so I could hear how many goals Liverpool had scored against Everton. Then, half an hour before the time I guessed the eight o’clock news would go on, there was trumpet music all of a sudden, and the guard called his friend, hey, there’s a newsflash. Looks to me like something happened.
There was hope in my heart: maybe the newsflash was about me? Maybe they’d tell about the policeman who shot at an Arab inside a house?
It turned out to be a suicide bombing. In Jerusalem. Lots of injured people. The number of dead unknown. The second bombing in the capital coming hard on the heels of a previous attack, the broadcaster said, and then the rest of the news started. I kept on listening. I hoped that maybe between reports from one hospital and another, they’d stick in a little item about what happened in el-Castel today, but they didn’t say anything about it. Abadan. A lost cause. I was done for. I felt like someone who tried to jump on a donkey and fell off the other side. What did I make that whole scene for? What good did it do? I couldn’t even bring my mother the chain. And what would Nehila do now? Where would she get money to buy food? There was nothing left in the house that she could sell. And little Imad would be starting school next year. We needed money for his books, for clothes. And who’d bring the money if not his father?
One of the guards who was watching television came over to my cell, looked at me with red eyes and spat in my face. You son-of-a-bitch, you’re all sons-of-bitches. Force is the only thing you understand, only force.
I went to the back of the cell and sat down on a stained mattress.
He kept spitting at me and called his friend to join him: come on, man, a little target practice.
I covered my face with my hands. I felt as if someone was sticking a needle into my vein and injecting me with hatred.
They kept on spitting, collected all the saliva they had in their mouths and throats and hurled it at me. It was a ‘bulls’-eye’ when they got my face, a ‘hit’ when they got my body. I knew that game from my days in prison.
*
A storm is raging around us: Ovadia goes over to Ronen to ask him something about black holes, then changes his mind. Then goes over to him again. And changes his mind again. Joe and Zachi are having a loud, aggressive argument about whether you can move backwards to capture a piece in draughts. Nava tries to calm them down before one of them grabs someone else by the throat. Gideon the speechmaker is making a speech to the entire room. He’s holding a tattered book he took from the club’s small library and reading, putting the stress in the wrong places, something by A.D. Gordon. Some of the people in the room cheer him on. Some order him to shut up. Shmuel and I try to ignore all of it. We’re engrossed in conversation, our heads bent, our voices lowered. A thin, invisible bubble surrounds us, separating us from the commotion in the room. But what hurts you, Shmuel? I ask him, and he suddenly stops talking. He’s just finished giving me another lecture on his theory of colours, and out of an uncontrollable urge — how many times can you listen to the theory that the world is divided into red, white and transparent — that direct question suddenly comes out of my mouth. He takes off his cracked glasses and wipes them with his shirt. Without them, he looks younger and more lost. He puts his glasses back on, stares straight ahead and says nothing. His knee is jerking nervously, and he says nothing. It’s possible that he didn’t hear. And it’s possible that it’s too soon. That not enough trust has been created between us for him to share with me what’s really bothering him. But how can trust be created when every week I have to remind him all over again what my name is? Besides, maybe his theories were not meant to hide anything deeper, maybe the theories are the thing itself. And why is he the one I’ve latched on to? Of all the suffering people here, why him?
Look, my friend, he says, trying to please me, as if he senses that I’m about to give up on him, you asked me a tough question. And it’s not that I don’t know the answer. I know it very well. So what’s the problem, Shmuel? I ask, and immediately regret the question because there he is, taking off his glasses again and turning his face away from me, wrapping himself in that silence of his. Don’t push him, idiot, don’t push. The problem is, he says to me — thank God, I haven’t lost him yet — that what I’m about to say will make you doubt me. You’ll say to yourself that Shmuel is crazy, disturbed. And what do you think I say to myself now, with all your weird theories? the cynic inside me replies, while I myself am silent. If he wants to, he’ll talk. The pain, he finally says after another silence and a twitch that closes his right eye, the pain isn’t actually my pain, but all the pain that exists in the world. Oh no, I wince, he’s going to come out with a new theory. Should I interrupt him now? I don’t mean the ‘world’ in cosmic terms, he reassures me, but more the people who fill the world with their pain. You see, in every person’s chest there is a sun of pain and sorrow, and that sun radiates fiery rays. If you’re well protected, those rays don’t penetrate you. But if you’re not protected, the pain of the people close to you enters you and burns you from inside. And you just don’t have any sunblock to slather on your skin? I ask, and realise right away that my tone is wrong, that my attempt at humour is inappropriate here. I don’t have that layer of skin, he corrects me without any anger. There’s no protective skin between me and the misery in the world. To tell you the truth, he says, bringing his mouth to my ear as if whispering a secret, I did have skin like that. But a few years ago, it melted away and left me exposed to all the rays that strangers radiate at me. Wow, I say and put my hand on my chest to stop the pounding of my heart, what you’re telling me, it doesn’t sound easy. No it isn’t, Shmuel nods, scratching his head fiercely, hurting himself. From the other side of the room, Nava signals to me with her hand on her watch that the time is almost up, we have to start arranging the chairs. Why the pressure? Doesn’t she see that I’m in the middle of a conversation? Tell me, I say, ignoring her and turning to Shmuel, can you give me an example? An example of what? he asks, watching Nava fearfully as she hurries the other members to leave. An example of a person, I say, talking faster, a person you find it hard to be near because you feel that his pain is too strong, that it’s blazing too hot for you.
You, he says, and smiles a nasty little smile. Since when has Shmuel been nasty?
Me?! I say, my voice choked. I was sure he’d mention someone in his family or that girl who shattered his heart when he was seventeen. But me? Yes, he says, and his smile spreads to the sides like hands. When you came here, your sun was sending out pleasant, caressing rays. But lately, my friend, I sometimes have to stop talking in the middle of a conversation with you just to relieve the pain you make me feel. O-ka-a-y, I say, stretching out the ‘kay’. I don’t have anything else better or cleverer to say. Shmuel is quiet and I think: am I hurting him even now, this minute? He sees Nava approaching and stands up, frightened. I squeeze his hand — again that limp handshake of his — and he moves away, leaving me and Nava with a weak wave of his hand and his usual parting words: see you next week, God willing.
After he disappears up the steps, I go over to the coffee corner and try to stabilise myself: calm down, Amir, he’s crazy, he’s talking bullshit. Your question must have been too nosy and he decided to hurt you deliberately. I say all that to myself, but deep inside me, I suspect he’s right, and that shakes up all my inner organs. One of my kidneys crashes into my spleen, my liver into my pancreas, my pancreas into my appendix. I feel it happening inside my body even though I don’t know exactly what the appendix is, but during our training session, when Nava asks if everything’s all right because I look a little pale, I say yes, everything’s all right because I don’t trust her enough, I don’t feel that I can share anything intimate with her without being afraid that she’ll apply one of her theories to it. But still, she probes: I saw you and Shmuel having a long conversation, she says. Yes, so what? I attack and she retreats, gives up and goes on to Ronen. Suddenly I’m sorry she doesn’t insist, because how can you keep something like that to yourself? You have to talk to someone about it. But Ronen is chattering excitedly about his science class, and the conversation moves away from me, further and further away, until it ends with Nava looking sharply at her watch, and a minute later we’re all climbing the urine-saturated stairs. She locks the heavy door and we each go our own way, Ronen to his motorcycle, Chanit to the bus and Nava to the large, mysterious van that’s always waiting for her outside.