Love was something he had slacked off at. Ten days had passed since he and Hagit had last made it, which meant it was time for action. Since in recent months the judge had been an elusive partner, prematurely tired at night and prematurely quick to rise in the morning, he had decided to consider other times of the day — such as before the Japanese movie, which was still three hours off. Hagit, however, was far from eager to undress or to miss the five o’clock news. It took many tender endearments, plus switching on the heater in the bedroom, to get her to take off her pants and blouse. Aroused by her half-naked body, Rivlin proceeded slowly, wary of making a false step or overshooting the intricate target zone of her desire.
And yet it went badly. Their kisses and caresses, even in places that had never failed them before, were stale and counterfeit. The room was too hot, and the tingle of passion soon turned to a thin, unpleasant trickle of sweat. Hagit, impatiently fretting and complaining, asked to be excused and even urged him to finish without her, which was something she generally hated. Though unhappy about it, he went ahead and made love to her motionless body for the sake of his peace of mind during the movie. Yet something about the way she shut her eyes, as though to protect herself, upset him at the wrong moment, and he came with a paltry dribble.
“It’s all right,” she said comfortingly, after he had rolled off her. “Don’t worry about it. Next time…”
He didn’t answer.
The Japanese Museum would have had a comfortable theater had the rows not lacked a middle aisle, thus forcing too many people to stand up for those taking or leaving their seats. The movie, though of recent vintage, was in black and white, presumably to convey its somber mood, while the English subtitles were difficult to read quickly — a serious problem in a film that had more talking than action. The film (so a flyer handed out to the audience explained) was about the passage from life to death and took place in a Japanese purgatory, where the newly deceased were interviewed. To gain admission to the next world, they had to forget everything about their lives except for one happy memory, which they were allowed to keep for all eternity.
It was storming outside. The drumming of rain on the roof gave Rivlin a cozy feeling as he watched the arrival of the interviewers. A likable group of young men and women who resembled social workers or vocational testers, they had their quarters in a small, drab office that reminded him of the former quarters of the income-tax bureau in an old building near Haifa port. Unlike other Japanese movies he had seen, in which the actors expressed simple, everyday emotions with a frequently jarring agitation, in this one they talked calmly and quietly. They, too, it appeared, were dead, stranded between worlds because they had been unable to choose their happiest memory. Their punishment was to have to help others choose.
After a long opening scene in which the interviewers chatted over coffee and cake, the first newly dead person arrived. Rivlin found the interview difficult to follow. His eyelids drooped, and his head fell to one side. After a while he roused himself and glanced at his wife. Hagit took her eyes off the screen, at which she had been staring with stupefaction, and smiled. “What do you think?” he whispered. “It’s one of these intellectual art movies,” she said reassuringly. “Let’s give it a chance.” He heard a thin whistling coming from his left. He turned to look at the attractive woman sitting next to him, whose large, bald husband was the source of the sound. She hurried to wake him, and he sat up, rubbed his eyes, gave Rivlin an apologetic look, and resumed staring grimly at the screen.
Outside, the rain beat down harder. Although the movie had been showing for barely ten minutes, to Rivlin it felt like a year. How much more of this could he take? The Japanese purgatory, though profoundly symbolic, did not speak to him. He scanned the audience of middle-class intellectuals and culture lovers, many of them known to him from concerts at the Philharmonic. Most seemed determined to rise to the movie’s challenge, while only a few showed signs of dropping out. He glanced back at Hagit. Although she was still managing to sit straight, her eyes were closed. Now and then, as if fighting off the sleep engulfing her, her head bobbed in agreement with the sound track, in little Japanese bows. He nudged her. She didn’t wake. He had to whisper her name to make her open her eyes and flash him another warm smile.
“Already asleep?” he scolded.
“No. Just for a second. What’s happening? Are you following it?”
“God knows. It’s awfully complicated. But you can relax. No one is going to get killed because they’re all dead already.”
She laid an affectionate hand on his knee and gave it a squeeze. “Let’s see what happens,” she encouraged him. “Lean back. My lawyers said it was a good movie.”
A crew-cut, ornery-looking old man now appeared on the screen and told an interviewer about his native village. He remembered the wind and the grass. Rivlin felt cheered. The first happy memory was on its way.
But it wasn’t so simple. The ornery man couldn’t decide which memory was his happiest. And the next time Rivlin awoke, it was only a quarter of an hour later. The attractive woman was asleep now, too, leaning on him lightly. He tried moving away from her. But this only made her lean more, and in the end he had to push her gently back toward her husband. She awoke annoyed, and he turned back to his own wife, who was now sleeping so soundly that her bowing had stopped.
The rain had died down. A deadly quiet prevailed in the little theater. The camera panned on the industrial area of a large city, where a dead Japanese woman was stonily describing the accident that had killed her.
This continued for an hour and a half before the lights came on for intermission. Rivlin, his head full of Japanese memories, awoke with a start. Hagit greeted him brightly, while his attractive neighbor gave him a dirty look, as if he had done something indecent to her during their joint sleep. Her husband rose and stretched himself groggily.
“Let’s get out of here,” Rivlin said.
“Maybe the second half will be better.”
“It won’t be.”
“I hate leaving in the middle. There’s nothing terrible about falling asleep from time to time. The movie is made of separate episodes.”
But he found falling asleep at movies and concerts embarrassing, and exhausting to fight against. He rose and made their whole row rise with them. People stood by the buffet, sipping coffee and cold drinks while discussing whether to remain for the film’s second half. Those who had stayed awake explained what it was about to those who hadn’t and coached them for the remainder. Rivlin, tired of happy Japanese memories, took Hagit by the arm and steered her toward the exit.
A storm-buffeted moon staggered through the sky between tattered clouds. He brushed wet leaves from the windshield of their car and said, pierced by sorrow,
“I would have been through with that interview in a minute. I could have said right away what my happiest memory was and gladly forgotten everything else.”
She bowed her head. “Yes. I know.”
“You know what?”
“The memory you would have taken with you.”
“Which?”
“Ofer’s wedding. The garden of the hotel.”
“You’re right,” he said, a bit annoyed to have his thoughts read so easily. “Ofer’s wedding. Despite, or maybe — who knows? — because of all that’s happened since then.”
He started the car as his wife climbed into it, then backed carefully out of the narrow parking space.
“And I,” Hagit mused, “would have ended up stranded between worlds. I have too many happy memories to choose just one. Especially of things that happened before I met you.”