Was — a fig tree putting forth its figs.
Our boy was — a myrtle of dense roots.
Was the most fiery of poppies—
“Well, go on,” she gripes. “Why did you stop?”
Avram, rapidly: “The whole restaurant is really one big room, like a very wide hall, with no interior walls, just support pillars. It’s a pretty run-down building.” He describes the place with a furrowed brow, like someone delivering extremely important testimony that has to be exhaustive and precise. She is grateful for the meticulous details, which take her away from here — from the marble square. The twenty-eight names are carved in stone, she remembers, and there’s a mass grave, too. She was on a school trip here once, when she was thirteen. The teacher stood facing them, wearing shorts, and read with a booming voice from a page: “Nebi Yusha was but a fortress on the road, and now it is a symbol for all times!” Ora had surreptitiously peeled a clementine on the marble square, and a teacher had yelled at her: “Show some respect for the fallen soldiers!” If only she could be that stupid and ignorant of sorrow today, to stand eating a clementine on the marble square. It’s good to get away from the news a bit, that man had said. Especially after yesterday. A scream kicks around inside her body, searching for a way out, and Avram, continuing his mission, takes her to a district of auto-repair shops, trucking companies, and massage parlors in South Tel Aviv. He walks her up a crooked, dirty staircase. Starting on the second floor, there are rugs on the stairs and pictures on the walls, and the smell of incense. “And you walk in,” he says, and she suddenly remembers: Dudu was killed here. Dudu from the song: In the Palmach, none could outdo / Our hero, our lost soldier, Dudu. She racks her brain for a word that rhymes with Ofer.
“And inside”—Avram’s voice hovers somewhere out there in his little India—“the whole big room is covered with rugs, and there are lots of low tables, and you sit on big cushions. As soon as you walk in, at the far end opposite you, you see gas ranges with huge, charred pots. Mighty pots.”
They leave the fortress and Ora lets her breath out. She looks at Avram gratefully, and he shrugs his shoulders.
The words, she thinks dimly, they’re coming back to him.
“You’ll laugh, but I’m the oldest one there,” he says.
“No kidding,” she mumbles, stealing a look back at the fortress. “Come on, let’s cross the road here.”
“I swear,” he chuckles, shrugging one shoulder as if apologizing for some trick played on him long ago, in the years when she was absent from his life. “The owner is all of twenty-nine, and the cook is maybe twenty-five. All the others, too. Sweet kids.”
Ora feels somehow robbed — why is he so excited about a few kids he barely knows?
“They’re all graduates of India. I’m the only one who hasn’t been. But I already know everything as if I’ve been there. And they don’t fire anyone at this place. There’s no such thing as firing.”
They walk among hedgerows of fleshy prickly pears, past a large tomb with domes on its roof and trees growing out of its walls. Blankets and mats are scattered around the large chambers that look out onto the Hula Valley, and there are a few empty dishes, left from offerings brought by the faithful to Nebi Yusha — Yehoshua Ben Nun.
“Some of the people who work there couldn’t get a job anywhere else.”
People like him, she thinks. She tries to picture him there. The oldest one, he’d said with real surprise, as if that were utterly improbable. As though they were still twenty-two years old, and everything else was a mistake. She sees him among those sweet young people, with his heaviness and his bulky slowness, with his big head and long, thinning hair hanging down on either side. Like some exiled, downfallen professor, forlorn and ridiculous at the same time. But the fact that they never fire anyone reassures her.
“And they don’t give you a check at the end of your meal.”
“So how do you know how much to pay?”
“You go up to the register and tell them what you ate.”
“And they believe you?”
“Yes.”
“What if I cheated?”
“Then you probably had no choice.”
“Are you serious?” A little light goes on inside her. “Is there really such a place?”
“I’m telling you.”
“Take me there, now!”
He laughs. She laughs.
“The walls are covered with big photos that someone took in India or Nepal. They change them every so often. And on the side, near the bathroom, there are three washing machines running constantly. Free, for whoever needs them. While people eat, some guys and girls go around offering treatments, Reiki and acupressure and shiatsu and reflexology. And soon, when the renovations are done, I’ll start working in the sweets.”
“Working in the sweets …” she echoes.
The picture suddenly picks up speed. She sees him darting around, clearing tables, taking out the trash, vacuuming, lighting candles and incense sticks. She is fascinated by his movements, his swiftness, his lightness. “Avram FSF,” as he used to introduce himself to new girls, with a flourish and a bow: fat, speedy, and flexible.
“And whoever wants to can smoke. Anything, no problem.”
“You, too?” She laughs nervously — she can’t see the fortress anymore, but she suddenly feels as if they’re running, as if the path is pulling them too quickly to Jerusalem, to home, to the notice that might be waiting there for her with the calm patience of an assassin. I’ll go back — it flickers in her — and there’ll be death notices up on the street. On the utility poles. Next to the grocery store. I’ll know from a distance.
“Go on, tell me.” She turns to Avram in a panic. “I want to hear!”
“Well, nothing heavy, mostly joints.” His hand habitually pats the non-pocket on his chest. “Sometimes a hash blunt, some E, acid, if there’s any going around, nothing serious.” He looks at her and smiles. “Do you still uphold the Scouts’ commands?”
“I was in the Machanot Olim, not the Scouts,” she reminds him drily. “Forget it, I’m afraid of those things.”
“Ora, you’re running again.”
“Me? It’s you.”
He laughs. “You suddenly get these … You start running ahead as if God knows what is chasing you.”
To their left, the Hula Valley grows steamier as the heat increases. Their faces are red, burning with effort and warmth, they drip with sweat, and even speech is tiring. On the side of the road, at the foot of an old olive tree, lies a huge, fancy chandelier. Avram counts twenty-one crystals, all intact, connected with stylish thin glass pipes. “Who threw this here?” he wonders. “Who throws out something like that? It’s too bad we can’t take it.” He crouches down and examines the chandelier. “Good stuff.” He tilts his head and laughs softly, and Ora questions him with her eyebrows. Avram says: “Look at it. What does it remind you of?” She stares and doesn’t see anything. “Doesn’t it look like some sort of ballerina? Like an insulted prima donna?” Ora smiles. “It does.” Avram stands up. “It’s shimmering with insult, hey? Look at it from here, wallowing in its tutu, I swear.” Ora laughs deeply. A forgotten pleasure gurgles into the corners of her eyes.
“And Ofer?” he asks later. “Does he take anything?”
“I don’t know. How can you know anything about them at this age? Adam, I think so. Here and there.”
Or most of the time, or all of it, she thinks. How could he not? With those guys he hangs out with, with his eyes, always bloodshot, and that bashed-up, bashing-up music. Oh God, what do I sound like? When did old age creep up on me like this?