something almost transparentâalmost but not quite, so that it seemed like the secret to wellness, however unlikely, could still be hidden there. But my time was up, and I was excused from the need to answer. At the door we shook hands, a gesture that always struck me as strangely out of place, as if, with all oneâs organs spread on the table and the allotted time in the operating room almost up, the surgeon were to wrap them each neatly in plastic wrap before putting them back and hurriedly sewing you up again. The following Friday, having given Vlad instructions to look after my apartment while I was away, taken one Xanax to get through security, and another hurtling down the runway, I was aloft on a night flight bound for Ben Gurion airport.
TRUE KINDNESS
I DONâT SUPPORT THE PLAN , I told you. Why? you demanded, with angry little eyes. What will you write? I asked. You told me a convoluted story about four, six, maybe eight people all lying in rooms joined by a system of electrodes and wires to a great white shark. All night the shark floats suspended in an illuminated tank, dreaming the dreams of these people. No, not the dreams, the nightmares, the things too difficult to bear. So they sleep, and through the wires the terrifying things leave them and flood into the awesome fish with scarred skin that can bear all the accumulated misery. After you finished I let a sufficient amount of silence pass before I spoke. Who are these people? I asked. People, you said. I ate a handful of nuts, watching your face. I donât know where to begin on the problems with this little story, I told you. Problems? you said, your voice rising and cracking. In the wells of your eyes your mother saw the suffering of a child raised by a tyrant, but in the end the fact that you never became a writer had nothing to do with me.
Â
S O WHAT ? Where to begin? After everything, after the millions of words, the endless conversations, the relentless goings on about,the phone calls, the explaining, the badgering, the emphasizing, the obfuscating and the clarifying, and then the silence of all these yearsâwhere?
Itâs almost dawn. From where I sit at the kitchen table I can see the front gate, and any minute now youâll return from your nocturnal rambling. Iâll see you appear in your old blue windbreaker, the one you dug out of your closet, and youâll bend over to unhook the rusted latch and let yourself in. Youâll open the door, take off your wet sneakers, ridges of mud on the edges and blades of grass stuck to the soles, and then youâll come into the kitchen and find me waiting for you.
Â
W HEN YOU and Uri were very young your mother lived in fear of dying and leaving you alone. Alone with me, I pointed out. She would look three, four times before crossing the street. Every time she came home safely she had won a small victory against death. She gathered you and your brother up in her arms, but it was always you who clung to her the longest, burying your little runny nose in her neck as if you sensed what had been at risk. Once she woke me up in the middle of the night. It was soon after the Suez War, in which I fought just as I fought in â48, just as anyone fought who could hold a gun or throw a grenade. I want us to leave, she said. What are you saying? I asked. I wonât send them into a war, she said. Eve, I said, itâs late. No, she said sitting up, I wonât let it happen. Why are you worrying, theyâre babies, I said. By the time theyâre old enough there will be no more fighting. Go to sleep. Three weeks earlier a guy in my battalion was walking outside our tent when a shell hit and vaporized him. He was blown to bits. The next day a dog that everyone fed their scraps to brought his hand back and sat chewing on it in the noonday sun. It fell to me to wrestle the severed hand from the hungry animal. I wrapped it in a rag and kept it under my bed until someone
TRUE KINDNESS
I DONâT SUPPORT THE PLAN , I told you. Why? you demanded, with angry little eyes. What will you write? I asked. You told me a convoluted story about four, six, maybe eight people all lying in rooms joined by a system of electrodes and wires to a great white shark. All night the shark floats suspended in an illuminated tank, dreaming the dreams of these people. No, not the dreams, the nightmares, the things too difficult to bear. So they sleep, and through the wires the terrifying things leave them and flood into the awesome fish with scarred skin that can bear all the accumulated misery. After you finished I let a sufficient amount of silence pass before I spoke. Who are these people? I asked. People, you said. I ate a handful of nuts, watching your face. I donât know where to begin on the problems with this little story, I told you. Problems? you said, your voice rising and cracking. In the wells of your eyes your mother saw the suffering of a child raised by a tyrant, but in the end the fact that you never became a writer had nothing to do with me.
Â
S O WHAT ? Where to begin? After everything, after the millions of words, the endless conversations, the relentless goings on about,the phone calls, the explaining, the badgering, the emphasizing, the obfuscating and the clarifying, and then the silence of all these yearsâwhere?
Itâs almost dawn. From where I sit at the kitchen table I can see the front gate, and any minute now youâll return from your nocturnal rambling. Iâll see you appear in your old blue windbreaker, the one you dug out of your closet, and youâll bend over to unhook the rusted latch and let yourself in. Youâll open the door, take off your wet sneakers, ridges of mud on the edges and blades of grass stuck to the soles, and then youâll come into the kitchen and find me waiting for you.
Â
W HEN YOU and Uri were very young your mother lived in fear of dying and leaving you alone. Alone with me, I pointed out. She would look three, four times before crossing the street. Every time she came home safely she had won a small victory against death. She gathered you and your brother up in her arms, but it was always you who clung to her the longest, burying your little runny nose in her neck as if you sensed what had been at risk. Once she woke me up in the middle of the night. It was soon after the Suez War, in which I fought just as I fought in â48, just as anyone fought who could hold a gun or throw a grenade. I want us to leave, she said. What are you saying? I asked. I wonât send them into a war, she said. Eve, I said, itâs late. No, she said sitting up, I wonât let it happen. Why are you worrying, theyâre babies, I said. By the time theyâre old enough there will be no more fighting. Go to sleep. Three weeks earlier a guy in my battalion was walking outside our tent when a shell hit and vaporized him. He was blown to bits. The next day a dog that everyone fed their scraps to brought his hand back and sat chewing on it in the noonday sun. It fell to me to wrestle the severed hand from the hungry animal. I wrapped it in a rag and kept it under my bed until someone
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